4 Convos I’m Having with My Teen(s) Before High School
Getting them prepared, reminding them of their safe place, and helping them stay focused on the long game.
It’s official: I am now the mother of a teenager (!?!). Which is crazy, because in my heart he will always be four. I know you know. (What’s even wilder is that my younger two are not far behind — officially “tweens” at age 9). 😅
If you’ve been with me online for a while, you’ve seen Brady, my oldest, as he’s grow up. He’s kind and thoughtful, smart and funny and well-spoken. He’s in seventh grade, plays a bunch of sports, and has a knack for sending me funny animal videos exactly when I need them.
He’s a wonderful kid. And I’m so lucky to be his mom.
But lately, I’ve noticed that being Brady’s mom has required me to shift my parenting a bit. (It feels so very “both / and” [happy / sad] to be here in this season).
His needs are changing. He doesn’t need me to hover and helicopter as much as he needs my listening ear and guidance. After all, like my dad says, we’re not raising kids: we’re raising adults. And over the past few years, as Brady’s started the process of growing into who he’s supposed to become, Bryan and I have started to navigate some of these new parenting waters… big feelings, deep conversations, and sometimes, simply, a lack of conversation.
It’s different than what we’re used to, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just… not quite the same as parenting a little kid.
If you have a kid around this age (or if you think back to your own middle school years), you know what I’m talking about. This stuff is all normal. Around age eleven or so, kids start to pull away from their parents and start asserting who they are — their likes and dislikes, their personalities, the people they want to hang out with.
Seeing your kid try to figure out who they are feels a lot like watching a baby deer trying to walk on their gangly legs for the first time. They try to push themselves up and take their first wobbly steps, sometimes taking a bad step and falling on their faces. But eventually their muscles grow stronger and so does their confidence.
Pretty soon, they’re doing it! All on their own! Or as one of my littles used to say ALL BY MY OWNSELF. 🥹
That’s how it goes though. They try new things and fall on their faces and sometimes make choices we might not agree with. As painful as the falls are sometimes, they learn from them and grow. As a mom of kids entering or soon to enter their teen years, I just want those stumbles to not hurt so bad.
I want my kids to know they aren’t alone. And I want them to know they can call me / us for help if (and when) they stumble a bit.
So, how do we help our older kids navigate this new, sometimes-scary-but-also-exciting stage of life? How do we help them grow into confident, caring people with good character? And how do we help them see us, as their parents, as a source of help and trust instead of a source of frustration and shame? This question reverberates in my head daily. Because when my kid gets into a situation he’s not quite sure how to navigate, I don’t want him to think, Oh no, Mom’s going to kill me. I want them to think, I’ll ask Mom, she’ll know what to do.
This is when I turn to other parents and experts who have been where I have, who have waded through the waters of parenting teens and gotten everyone somewhat safely to the other side. Like Michelle Icard.
Michelle’s been working with parents of teens and tweens for nearly twenty years. And she tells parents that one of the best ways to support kids as they grow is to keep the lines of communication open between you, to become a source of safety and non-judgment for them.
I knew I was going to love the book she’d written when I heard that advice for the first time… because MY parents raised me with this in mind. I have gone to my parents with concerns and questions that would, quite frankly, make you blush. But they never did! I knew I could trust and count on them. And I did.
Michelle’s book Fourteen Talks by Age Fourteen has been one of the most practical guides for me in the past few years. I can’t stop recommending it. This line that Michelle writes is one of the reasons why:
“[Sometimes parents] don’t trust that their kids will make smart decisions, so they deny them the opportunity to make any decisions. The irony is, kids don’t learn how to make smart decisions without practice. Given that kids need to have experiences, good and bad, to learn from, the best thing a parent can do is help them evaluate, process, and reflect on what works and what doesn’t. That only happens through good conversations. In other words, Experience + Conversation = Powerful Learning.”
Right?? SO GOOD.
As my kids grow I want them to have the runway to try new things, but remember they have a soft place to land with Bryan and me. I want them to have a space where they can work out their feelings and experiences — and that place is in talking it out with us.
(Side note: THIS is why I am FOR kids eventually having social media while they live under your roof — because when they move out, it will be a part of their lives, like it or not. I want to be able to walk my kids through the complexities of these things — while I can still sorta get their undivided attention and I see them every day. I could write a whole post on this…)
I digress. :)
So given Michelle’s advice, here are four conversations I’m going to have with each of my kids as they hit their teen years. This isn’t the exact wording, and I’m sure these conversations will be much longer when they happen. But here’s what I want to say and speak over my kids before they hit the high school halls: