Tag Archive for: my teen is emotional

Tired of the Shouting Match?

/2 Comments/in , , , , /by

Getting to the bottom of our emotional reactions to our kids can be difficult.  The heat of the moment can cause us to do things we said we would never do. And it has taken me a long time to understand these reactions even in myself.  Years, in fact.  If I’m feeling something going on inside of me, my tendency now is to get to the bottom of it and understand why I feel the way I feel.  And then make amends with my kids if I’ve responded in an unhealthy way.  I’ve learned that rather than listening to my feelings, I need to put my prefrontal cortex (thinking brain) in charge.  I’m finding that I’m better at it now — well at least most of the time.

But at times I’ll admit that anger, frustration, or fear will well up within me and I have to fight it back.  It’s a skill.  It is an awareness.

And it doesn’t typically come naturally to any of us unless we’ve seen it modeled.

That’s what puts many of us as parents at a deficit as to what to do with our emotion and what to do with our kids’ emotions.  Typically it becomes a standoff.  We tend to match our child’s emotional level trying to get them to “hear” us.  The next step becomes the escalating shouting match.

It doesn’t work.

And it hurts the relationship.

Parents from my generation usually didn’t give much thought to how a child felt in the moment.  I’m guessing most of us have heard the proverbial “sit down and shut up” or “will you just be quiet” or “stop crying”.  Maybe we’ve even said it to our kids when we’re exhausted and don’t think we can take the whine another minute.   Yes, our child might calm down in the moment, but we’re setting them up for future emotional outbursts.

The goal of helping us and our kids become more aware of our independent feelings is so that we lessen their sometimes destructive hold on us.  There is  a case study conducted by a UCLA professor that showed that awareness and naming our feelings lightens the emotion and actually makes us happier.

Who doesn’t want happy kids?

What I’ve discovered through working with moms is that sitting in the emotional ‘spin’ of our child actually helps contain them.  What I mean by that is that by validating that it is okay for our child to feel the way they feel helps them accept themselves and love themselves in the moment despite how they feel.  It doesn’t matter that what they did was hurtful or disrespectful or uncalled for.  It doesn’t matter that they aren’t handling themselves in a mature fashion.  What matters is that they know that in the moment when they feel out of control, that they are loved and everything will be okay.  

When we validate our child we’re communicating that they are valued and precious even in the moment they are in.   It says that we love them even when they are spewing all over everyone else.  A hug, looking them in the eye, and sitting with them holding their hand and offering tissues helps them know that someone is there to help them deal with the pain of the situation even when it might seem totally uncalled for to us.

Their feelings are their feelings.  Our job is to just be there for them in their moment.

Let’s say your 14 year old comes in after school, slams the back door, fails to take his muddy shoes off as he walks across the carpet.  When you ask him what is wrong, he shouts, “I hate you”, and then proceeds to slam his bedroom door breaking the hinge in the process.

Most of us tend to focus on all the things our kid did wrong:

  1. Slamming the back door.
  2. Wearing his muddy shoes on the carpet.
  3. Shouting “I hate you” which hurts us deeply.
  4. Breaking the door.

We focus on what happened rather than what our child is feeling.

When we put the emphasis on what was done wrong, we fail to get to the root of our teen’s feelings–the heart of the issue.  When we react in a harsh way, “How dare you speak to me like that” or “You are going to have to pay to repair this door” or “Come clean up this carpet right now”, we’re focusing on what was done to us not what is going on inside our teen.  By ignoring the reason for the outburst and not letting them vent in the moment, we are teaching our teens to either stuff and ignore their feelings or that their feelings don’t matter.

Research is showing that these are the very things that trigger addictions — emotional pain that the teen isn’t able to contain.  When feelings become overwhelming and aren’t understood, more and more teens start medicating to deal with feelings they want to get rid of.  When we choose to be in their moment and help contain them, we are lightening their emotional load.  We’re letting them see that nothing is wrong with those feelings and we’re here for them.

Galatians 6:2

Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

I’ve sat with moms who have shared the frustration of not being able to connect with their adopted children as they become teens.  The hurt and feeling of abandonment of a teen can be overwhelming.  Dealing with the fact that they were given away can bring much pain deeply rooted in who they are.  The same goes for the girl who has become an outcast in her circle of friends or the boy who doesn’t measure up in sports or has a creative bent unlike his male peers.  

The teen years are a time of self-discovery as they try to figure out who they are.  It’s a time when they need to be nurtured–not taken to task for the things they do or don’t do.

Spending time in their emotional world and teaching them to self-process their feelings will help them move from emotional “doom and gloom” to “this will all blow over and I’ll be okay”.  It will allow your teen to move the situation from their emotional brain to their thinking brain which moves them toward maturity.  Once you’ve helped them, then and only then is it time to help them cognitively process the muddy carpet, the harsh words spoken in anger, and the broken hinge — in a gentle, matter of fact way.

Teaching our teens to process their emotional stuff will help them move to the more mature process where they can start viewing situations from the other person’s perspective.   It means that they will begin to move from the emotion of  ‘I can’t believe she did that to me’ to a mature thought process of ‘she typically doesn’t treat me this way, I’m guessing she is having a bad day.  I wonder if I did something to upset her.’  

Wouldn’t it be great if even as adults we could quickly move from the emotion to mature logical thinking? What if we could give the other person the benefit of the doubt instead of spinning in their emotion getting caught up in the other person’s level of anger? Wouldn’t it be satisfying to realize that instead of heaping our emotions on top of an already volatile emotional situation we could help soothe the other person in such a way that we both felt good about ourselves and our relationship?

Dare you to think about the emotional situations in your own home.  Are you responding to your child’s emotional fire in a healthy way?

“Let go…and Let God”,

 

 

 

 

Time to Tame the Beast in Your Teen?

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Let’s face it, most of us have emotional outbursts from time to time.  Even if not openly for everyone to hear, at least internally where we tell ourselves that the person who has “hurt” us is in the wrong.  Hopefully we don’t go into this mode as often as our teens, but we do have these negative conversations.

 The question is how do we as adults deal with these experiences and move to equilibrium quickly and are we passing the right skills along to our tweens and teens to help them tame the emotional beast?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen grown adults who still haven’t learned the skills to calm their emotions.  Several years ago I witnessed an auto accident where a guy speeding in a sports car was involved.  Watching from  a distance I stared in disbelief as this man jumped out of his car raging and screaming as he ran toward the other car ranting to the other person involved.  He was totally oblivious to the state of the other person’s injuries.  The man was so emotionally charged in the moment he became an emotional beast ready to take out the individual whom he now saw as an opponent.

There is now brain research that  gives us a clue as to what is going on internally when we have those meltdowns–or sometimes shutdowns.   Most of the time those feelings will override our ability to think in a cohesive pattern causing us to go into a negative spiral.  When we go into the negative self-talk mode then the world around us becomes a dark place where we tend to emotionally vomit on someone who will listen–usually people with which we feel most comfortable around–family–or we go into our own personal inner sanctuary where we shield ourselves from the pain.

Helping our children harness those feelings by speaking truth into their lives can teach them skills that will provide a foundation for more emotional maturity.

So what are some of the things you can do as a parent when your kid comes home from school grunting as he walks past you in the kitchen, ignoring your greeting, disappearing into his room as he slams the door?

 Or what do you do when you and your child have had angry words and he shouts “I hate you!”?  

What if you see your kid punching his younger sibling or screaming words that you cannot believe are coming from his mouth?

Or you child seems to have retreated to a place where she seems to not be emotionally present?

  1. Take a deep breath and pray.  God sees your child’s pain.  Ask Him for wisdom in how to deal with this child in this moment.
  2. Give your teen space.  Every emotional outburst doesn’t need to be dealt with immediately.  I’ve coined a new catch phrase when I meet with parents.  If it isn’t a situation of life and death, choose to deal with it later–meaning after the emotion has subsided.  Even if the slammed door has come off it’s hinges or the younger sibling has a bloody nose, deal with the blood and not the emotionally charged teen.
  3. Re-engage when cooler heads prevail.  Re-engage in a safe place.  Maybe it is in the quiet of your teens room when everyone else is in bed or you take him to his favorite burger hangout or coffee shop, either way gently broach the subject without raising defensiveness in your teen.
  4. Ask your teen to do some soul searching.  What was he feeling in the moment?  What does she think triggered the outburst?  Was there ever a time he had that feeling before?  If so, what happened in the past and are those two events connected?  Research shows that anger in a given situation can sometimes be traced back to a previous event that seemed similar to the current event.  Because of that, your teen could have had a heightened emotional charge because the “feeling” was connected.  In other words, the emotional outburst was actually triggered because of what happened before–not necessarily the current situation.
  5. Help your teen become aware.  With your teens permission, come up with a way to cue your teen in on her emotional  escalation.  A simple hand gesture or funny phrase can easily raise awareness.
  6. Give you teen options for the future.  Share with your teen possible calming techniques for future situations.  Reading a book, asking someone to listen to their side without judgment (some kids process quicker if they can verbally dump their angst),  playing soft music that doesn’t further enhance their anger, or prayer and meditation are all ways to cope with negative feelings.  Your teen may find other ways that will bring calm to a given situation — a bubble bath, a chat with a friend, or doing something fun with a family member that takes their mind off the pain. Encourage your teen to tell you when they are struggling.  Even encouraging your teen to utter a simple statement such as “I’ve had a bad day and need to be alone or I need to process what happened” is a mature response that indicates they are becoming aware of their need to take control of their own emotional beasts.
  7. Share scriptures that will build confidence in your teens ability to take charge of feelings.  Most of us can allow negative thoughts to spiral out of control when our feelings run amok.  Scriptures that speak to their situation help our teens accept that the battle actually belongs to the Lord. 

2 Corinthians 10:5

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

John 8:32

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Colossians 1:22

But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—

Dare you to be pro-active in taming the emotional beast in your teens rather than being a reactive agent adding fuel to that already roaring flames.  Teach them the skills to self-sooth their hurt and anger so they can reach full emotional maturity.

“Let go…and let God”,

 Even us moms need a safe place to deal with the feelings that emerge within us as we parent during the tween and teen years.  Our With All Due Respect eCourse is a great place to share and learn from other moms. And for a limited time, it’s free! And remember that you will need a copy of the book as we go through it together.  Moms tell us all the time that they’ve learned so much and how their parenting responses have changed significantly since working through this curriculum.  “I wish I’d read this book years ago” is a common response.  We encourage you to read it and let us know what you think.  It may revolutionize your parenting.