Article 13: Temporary People

I love working with troubled teens.

I am shocked at the lack of mental health resources that are available to them through the system....but that topic is a series of posts for another day.

This note is for the parents who are scratching their heads, wondering where their loving child has gone, and who is this disgruntled young human stomping around their house making outrageous demands.

As adults we seem to forget the bigger picture and respond to these years through a narrow lens.

We react out of emotion rather than logic.

We compare our life problems to those of the child and start making the case that their complaints are not valid and certainly not worthy of the drama they are attaching to them.

We are sure that this misinformed human must be corrected and we start to argue and sometimes out right fight with them and demand that they see life through our eyes.

This response only feeds the teen's fight or flight mode and if not corrected can do damage to the relationship.

Instead, I offer that the parents take a deep breath and ask themselves a simple question.....

Do they believe that their child will act this same way at 19 years old?.....25 years old?....30 years old? or will they have a completely different outlook on life by then?

As adults we may change as the years go by, but teens change dramatically within a much shorter period of time.

This is why I call them "temporary people."

The person you are fighting with will not exist in 24 months from now or less.

This does not make the experience of being at odds with your child any more pleasant, but it does help to remember that all things come to pass and so will this.

If we focus on the long game we can not take the moment so seriously.

The person who is telling you that you, "You don't know anything!" won't be around for long.

I would ask that you focus on the goal of preserving the relationship instead of fighting with this temporary version of your child.

You got this!