“Mom, which jeans should I wear, the black ones or the blue ones?”
“How about the blue ones?”
“No, I look horrible in them. They’re ugly.”
“Okay, so wear the black ones.”
“They’re out of style. You never help me with anything. I hate you.”
Is there a parent of a teenager who has not heard those words? When teens ask us what to do about pretty much anything (starting with fashion choices and escalating to what they should do with their lives), pretty well the worst thing we can do is to give advice.
That’s because our answers — whatever they are — are anathema to teens. And that’s because their developmental stage requires them to be figuring out how to come up with their own answers — which explains why no answer we give can ever be right, simply because it’s not theirs.
Teens desperately need to hear our stories of growing up. Not the ones that begin: “When I was your age, I walked 12 miles through the snow to school (and back) every day, I wasn’t soft like you, I never complained.” (Or the modern version of that.) When we tell our kids how we toughed out/survived/aced challenges, we issue an implied judgment, that they’re soft or lazy or not as strong as we were at their age.
Because teens are so horrendously worried about their place in the world and figuring out who they are, they tend to be insecure about everything. And an insecure person is quick to feel judged by the most benign statements.
The other response that makes them see red and shut down is a lecture. “Susie, you look great no matter what you wear. I just wish you could know how gorgeous you are” comes out sounding like a lecture; and teens can’t hear lectures. It makes them snarly.
So when your teen asks you to make a decision for them, resist, resist, resist. Instead, when you’re faced with the blue versus black jeans question, tell a story about how hard a time you had making those decisions when you were young. As in: “When I was your age, I could never figure out what to wear. I had a really hard time choosing my clothes for school every day. It was awful.” It still will not be what they want (because nothing could be) but it’s what they need. What they want is to not have anxiety, and nobody can chase that away.
Another thing to say is: “I was worried about making friends and not being cool.” That too will not get a positive reaction — today — from your teen, but it will be helpful. Your teen will maintain the usual sullen silence but inside be thinking: “My parents worried about being cool? Maybe it’s normal.”
Over time these little revelations of yours will help soothe some of the anxieties. Start telling your teen stories about your childhood. Not those stories. Obviously you’ll not choose to share the times you were a total rule-breaking rebel, but everything else is probably helpful to your teen. As parents, we tend to shy away from sharing stories of our adolescence, perhaps out of a (misguided) desire to protect our kids. We don’t want to scare them.
But it’s paradoxical: By not telling them about the hard times in our own young lives, we foster an image of ourselves as super-heroes (which, oddly enough, they think we are anyway, despite their complaints about our innumerable parental inadequacies). By our silence on the subject of our weaknesses, we let them think we were invulnerable at their age.
It’s helpful to let them see that we were teens like them — with great uncertainties. They then think to themselves: “My parents lived through this, so I might.” It’s incredibly calming for teens to discover that not everybody has it all together. Knowing that helps them tolerate how hard it is to not have the answers.