9 Things Not to Say to Your Teenager – PureWow

7. “You are lazy”

Here’s one that I thought about more than I said, until another mom told her son’s story to a friend of ours who is a coach. “He’s not lazy, he just hasn’t found what he’s passionate about yet,” the coach said. The mom, a famous actress, was reflecting on how her daughter’s lackluster job search contrasted with her own experience as a young go-getter. “Ambition is a gift,” sighs the actress. So…rather than disrespectfully pointing out my child’s faults, every time I notice what I think is laziness, I strategize how to get him involved in the next task, doing the dishes. to register for the correct course load. .

8. “I don’t believe you”

This one is a surefire conversation starter. Although it is developmentally appropriate for all children to experience untruths, there is no point in trying to catch a child lying in this way. What are you really asking for: the truth or for your child to spin a better story? Instead, I’ve learned to say why I have doubts and ask my child why he might feel like he shouldn’t be honest with me and how I hope I’m wrong. When I did this, calmly and simply, I often asked my son to tell the truth and tell me why he lied. (We agreed that being honest is much easier since you don’t need to remember what you said.)

9. Talking to your son in an aggressive, irritated and emotionally charged tone

The latter, not a phrase but a general way of speaking, was a recurring theme in our family therapy sessions when my son was about 14 years old. Looking back, I see myself as a single, terrified, working mother with few parenting skills and fewer free hours to learn and practice mothering. My son needed bigger and different parenting than I did, and I was at sea…and I was pretty transparent about letting everyone (including my son) in on my turmoil. Add to that the fact that I didn’t understand his resistance to my tone at all…Did he not see that I was simply trying to keep at bay my fears of being crushed by late-stage capitalism? I had to do some serious spiritual and mental health learning to get myself out of that fear and into acceptance – the DBT idea of ​​radical acceptance – and really internalize that I needed to prioritize well-being of my family, which meant I had to stop. being such a scared and grumpy mom.

Today, my son and I are able to appreciate our relationship and each other much more than we ever did when I was blurting out the emotionally charged statements that came to mind. Counterintuitively, he and I had to accept each other’s limitations—and I had to learn to pause and think before speaking to him—in order to grow. I never wanted to hurt his feelings, and he didn’t want to hurt mine, and now we don’t…because we say what we think, but we don’t mean it meanly.