 I love seeing all the pictures of the fall leaves changing color. The pictures are so real. It’s as if you can imagine yourself in that moment, the cool breeze and the color explosion of the leaves all around you. After months of looking past the green leaves without much thought, the sudden change grabs our attention and forces us to notice. It’s stunning.
Earlier this week I was in a class where we were talking about parenting. The teacher shared a story about how she had wanted to compliment her daughter on being a good leader. But before she said anything, she paused for a moment to think it through. Would her comments improve or change her daughter’s leadership skills? Would she say it only to feed her own ego (and maybe her daughters) to feel pride in her accomplishments? Her daughter had already shown that being a leader was part of her inherent personality, something that came naturally to her without guidance or instruction. My teacher chose not to say anything, allowing her daughter’s leadership instincts to develop naturally, without the added pressure the accolades might have made her feel. This was a new concept for me. Don’t give accolades for a child’s strengths? The thought made me pause and stuck with me. Later, I was with a group of moms who all were a part of our school, though I had never met any of them before. After chatting with the group for a while, a woman I hadn’t spoken to asked about my child. When she heard my son’s name and that he was in fourth grade, she wondered aloud if it was the nice boy in the class she volunteered in. She went on to explain how nice this boy is and how polite he was every time she was in their classroom. She even told her daughter she should be friends with this boy. When I showed her a picture of him, she said “Yes, that’s him! I love it when he’s in my group.” I was beaming with pride to receive this unexpected compliment. As I drove home I thought about how the woman’s comments related to our class discussion. My son has always been a kind-hearted, empathetic boy. Did I teach him to be that way or is it part of his natural personality? Of course, you could argue I’ve taught him what behaviors are acceptable at school. But on the flip side, how could I have ever enforced his behavior at school when I’m not around? This leads me to agree this is his personality. He is empathetic and kind that is his natural state whether I try to influence it or not. These stories are all positive and wonderful, but what do you do if you are getting negative feedback on your child’s behavior? What do you do if their behavior at home is not acceptable? I can tell you the kind-hearted boy described above can be just as cranky and unpleasant as the next kid when he is exhausted or hungry. It’s easy for parents to get caught up in how we think our children should act, what we think they should be interested in and how we think they should do things. However, though our intentions are good, we may be ignoring what feels right to them. If your child is acting out at home or shutting you out, they have lost touch with what they feel is natural or they feel like they cannot express themselves. There is a broken connection. You can start mending the connection by reopening the lines of communication and seeing things from your child’s point of view. Allow them to take the lead by choosing the activity or meal. Connect with them on the things that are important to them to reignite their natural instincts. (If you want to dive deeper and receive more tips on how to communicate with your child, I encourage you to check out my course on Communicating through Connection. You can find details here.) Like the changing leaves of fall, sometimes it takes something drastic to happen for us to notice. The vivid colors of orange, red and yellow shout from the trees that we have been surrounded by this natural beauty all along. It is within all of us, even our kids, all the time. It cannot be ignored, it is part of who we are and though we don’t need anyone’s encouragement for it to grow, it certainly helps when you are surrounded by people who will encourage you to nurture it. Heart-FULLy Yours, Kacey
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 This week I took my son to the playoff game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Los Angeles Dodgers. He loves the Diamondbacks. As we walked into the stadium, he thanked me for bringing him because going to a playoff game was “on his bucket list”. I can relate, when I was his age, I too loved baseball. I loved going to games, eating hot dogs and Carnation chocolate malt ice cream. We would cheer and sing along with the organ music in the cool night air and cheer for……the Dodgers. My loyalty was split - what’s a mom to do? How could I cheer “against” my son when I saw how excited he was?
We arrived at the game early to beat the traffic and meet up with some friends. Anticipation was in the air, the Diamondbacks needed to win or their season would be over. Even though most of the fans were wearing Diamondback colors, the was plenty of Dodger blue in the stands. This happens a lot here, over the last 20-30 years, Arizona has become an affordable relocation destination for those fleeing the high cost of living in other states. As a result, Arizona is a melting pot of team loyalties. It’s not uncommon to see a high number of fans from the opposing team at any sporting event. We made our way to our seats. The music is pumping and fireworks are exploding during the team introductions. The atmosphere was more like a concert than a sports game. Sitting next to me my son was taking it all in, his eyes wide with wonder, eager for the game to begin. A man and his father sat down in the seats next to us. The father was had on a Diamondbacks hat, while the man was wearing Dodger blue. The Dodger fan sits next to me. We chit chat about the teams and the ages of our sons. He talks about what a big fan his dad is of the Diamondbacks and that he is just along for the ride. In spite of being dressed to support the visiting team, he says he wouldn’t mind seeing the Diamondbacks win to keep the series exciting. As the game went on, he consumed more adult beverages and he started to cheer very loudly. As the Diamondbacks tried desperately to start a rally, he stood up and started yelling “Look at the scoreboard!” (the Dodgers were winning). I let the first few comments go. Then he asked why I wasn’t talking to him anymore and I said “This game means a lot to my son, he’s only 9 and he loves this team. You don’t have to be a jerk and yell scoreboard.” I think he was shocked and surprised I would call him a jerk. It stunned him into silence for a bit, but a couple plays later he was back at it. Around the eighth inning, my disappointed son looked over and said, “I’m ready to go”. When you become a parent, it often feels like you are looking at life for the first time. You see things you never saw before and this was certainly one of those moments. As I drove home I wondered, when did sports become such a mean and nasty experience? It has become quite normal to “talk trash” to your friends or other fans when their team doesn’t win. Why do we do this? Why do we feel the need to rub it in someone’s face and make them feel bad? Why do we need to gloat that our team is the best? Why is it that our team winning gives us such personal satisfaction? That may seem like a silly question. Maybe you never equated your team winning to your own self-worth, but think about it for a minute. If watching your team win doesn’t give you a feeling of fulfillment, then why spend the time and money to watch? Similarly, when you talk to many sports fans, they will say “Oh I hate this team”. I am guilty of this as well. But why does another team have to be the enemy? Why hate an entire team whose players you don’t know personally? Hate stirs up emotions like anger, irritation, aggressiveness and defensiveness and while those strong emotions might not be your intent, are you able just to turn off all those feelings when the game is over? Or do some of those bad feelings linger and spill over into other things (like being frustrated over the traffic after the game or arguing with other fans)? What are we teaching our kids? Kids enter sports with a clean slate and an innocent purity for the excitement of the game. When they witness this behavior, we are showing them that the negativity is a normal part of sports culture. Sporting events are actually a wonderful way to unite a group of people. Games bring together groups people that can set aside their differences for a few hours while they cheer for the same outcome. We’ve seen sporting events unify entire cities after tragic events like 9/11. We’ve seen events like the Women’s World Cup and the Olympics unite and electrify entire countries. But it just seems to me that lately, there is more and more animosity and negativity growing in sports. It feels inevitable that the innocent joy my son feels today, will be overtaken by trash talking negativity. We have enough in our world to be angry about. There are enough forces in our nation pulling us apart instead of uniting us. Let’s not add sports to the list of divisive activities. Let’s keep sports where they belong – as a fun, unifying form of entertainment in an uncertain and challenging world. Heart-FULLy Yours, Kacey Don’t miss a post – sign up to receive the blog in your inbox every week. Scroll to the top of the page and you’ll see a box to enter your email in the upper right side of the page.  In a couple of days, I will have a teenager in the house. My daughter has been counting down to this day for the last year. To her, this is a very big deal. To me, this is a reminder that life is going much faster than I realize. I ask myself, how is it possible she is already thirteen? Looking back in totality, the years seem like a blur, which is so weird because within those years there were moments when the seconds ticked by as if they would never end.
What does it mean to parent a teenager? Without us even realizing it, our parental brains flip over a new page of expectations now that our child is a teen. On that page are topics around increased responsibility and trust. In fact, just the other night, parental expectations started to get the best of my husband. He had asked our daughter to empty the dishwasher, one of her regular responsibilities, yet when he mentioned it to her he was met with her best eye roll of exasperation. The eye roll triggered his frustration, so I pulled him aside. He thinks he shouldn’t have to ask multiple times, that it should just be done. I don’t disagree, but in these situations, regardless of the age of our child, we have to take the time to consider things from their point of view. Our daughter gets distracted, because let’s face it, there are a hundred other things to do that are more fun than putting away the dishes. I asked my husband “Why are you so fired up about this?” He replied that he feels he is always the one cleaning everything up. He feels she is old enough to take more responsibility in taking care of things around the house, because if she doesn’t, what’s her place going to look like when she’s on her own? I said to him “Well luckily you are not going to have to live there.” I’m sure that many of you can relate to my husband’s frustration. In fact, many of you have probably said (or thought) the same things. I completely understand, but let’s break things down. Why does she have to empty the dishwasher? This is an agreement we have with her that if she wants a phone, she must pay for part of the monthly fees. Emptying the dishwasher is one way she earns money. This is a huge incentive for her because life without a phone is unfathomable for a teen. From our perspective as parents, everyone who lives in the house must help around the house. This is a pretty reasonable request, so where does the emotion come in? For my husband, the emotion enters when he has to ask multiple times until the chore is done. Now we must decide what is most important – that the chore be done by a certain time every day or that it gets done? Once you decide which is most important, you must enforce it without a reaction. It does no one any good to get upset in the process. During our discussion, my husband also drew the conclusion that if we are not more firm with her about picking up her things and doing her chores the first time, she will have a messy apartment in the future. Why do all of us parents jump to this conclusion? We do it all the time and not just with a messy room, but with bad grades (they won’t get a job) or with arguments with friends (they’ll be lonely). We believe that one unemptied dishwasher at age 13 will lead to being featured on an episode of “Hoarders” in 10 years. Parents are so dramatic and then we use this drama to justify some of our crazy. We all need to relax and address only the problem that is right in front of us. It’s easy to see how we get carried away worrying about the teen years. A lot of things change and neither the parent, nor the child, is ready for it. For years we have blamed these changes on hormones, but a recent article I read states the behavior of teenagers is actually related to changes in their brain. (Hormones are an indirect influence at best.) Research shows the brain of a teenagers is more sensitive to emotional reactions than the brain of a child or of an adult. In other words, emotional stimuli that seems moderate to an adult or a child, can set off an extreme reaction in a teen. Our teens may not even understand or be ready for these reactions. I think this is so important to remember, our teens are not ready for their emotions. They don’t know how to handle them so it is our job as parents not to react, but to sit with them through this sensitive time. After all this, I’m not sure I really answered my original question of what it means to parent a teenager. Maybe that’s because if you strip away everything on the outside our role is ageless - we are the safe place where our children can always find unconditional love and belonging. Heart-FULLy Yours, Kacey Don’t miss a post – sign up to receive the blog in your inbox every week. Scroll to the top of the page and you’ll see a box to enter your email in the upper right side of the page. |
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AuthorI started writing this blog because I wanted to have deeper conversations beyond "How are you?", "Busy", with other parents. Over the years I've shared personal stories, articles, authors and topics to facilitate conversations with parents about the joys and the challenges of parenting. |
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© 2021 Balanced Heart Coaching
Disclaimer: I may receive affiliate compensation from the resources and websites mentioned on this website.
© 2021 Balanced Heart Coaching