Password: tween

Transcript:

Okay. So generally I find when working with parents and writing my Washington post columns, that the pendulum exists in our parenting life around friendships and independence for our tweens and young teens. And this is for a variety of reasons, both real and imagined, right?

So let's take a look over here. Chaotic would mean that you don't pay any attention to the company that your children may or may not be keeping you are allowing boundary-less,autonomy and independence that, um, you may feel slightly concerned that you don't know about your kids' whereabouts or who they're with, or, um, where they go during the day on their own, but you don't really want to do anything about it. You may feel over in this chaotic realm, some of your language may be, well, nobody watched me and I was fine, or kids need to learn. And you know, if they need to learn the hardest of ways or this isn't my job, my kids old enough to know how to do X, Y, Z, right? This may be some of your thinking.

Now, if you go over into this rigid end of the pendulum, this thinking may be, um, my kid is 100% not trustworthy, does not deserve to have any independence or autonomy. You, um, go to the extreme in, um, monitoring their friendships, who they keep company with, where they go, what they do. This is across social media or in person. You have extreme rules and hoops to jump through that your child can never do to earn independence. You, some of your narratives may be my kid hasn't earned it. Um, they're just not old enough. You can date when you're 20, right? You just are hyper controlling and rigid. And it doesn't matter where your kid is developmentally or trustworthy wise. You're not going to allow it.

And then in the messy middle, you are allowing independence, autonomy, and friendships to come and go to find their way that there is some failure and some wins, but you trying to dance in the relationship with the child. So you may allow them to go into the room and close their door and be, you know, on the phone with their friends for a couple hours. And that may feel okay, but you know, you go in and say, that's enough. You have to join the family, or you have to do your chores or just go out in nature, right? So you're not bing-bonging back and forth. You're trying to land somewhere in the middle.

Now, something really important here is that all of us have our own family culture and needs based on, like I just said, our culture and then the developmental needs of your child. So if you come to me and say, my child, my tween, my young teen tends to make not great friendship choices, right? Due to some immaturity due to some neediness due to some sensitivity, you may feel that your messy middle is over a bit in here. Not that you're trying to control everything because life still has to happen, but there may be a little bit more monitoring needed. Or you may say my child's impulsivity leads to explosions when he's gaming and saying things to his friends, he regrets, and right. So there may be more monitoring here, right? Whereas you may tell me, my child is totally autonomous, ready to kill it out in the world. And because of the society we live in, it's not that safe for him to be freewheeling, right? So I've had families whose black sons could not go jogging on their own in the neighborhood because it wasn't safe. Right. So we would, you know, the larger culture would say, well, let them go run. Let them go play, for some people that is not safe. Right?

So your messy middle you'd like it to be up here, but it's going more toward this way. Right. And you're dancing with both the independence, the autonomy and the realistic fear. Okay. So it's just really important to understand that I don't want you to be here or here or here or here or here. It's not about what I want. It's about balancing your understanding of yourself as a parent where you've come from the culture you grew up in your family culture, your family of origin, your biases, your worries, your fears, that, and what your tween and young teen actually needs in their life. Right?

So some of us get really rigid and fear-based, and I don't blame you because the news will keep you in a loop of terror of kidnapping and violence and horror. And then we kind of just keep that rigidity going into the tween and young teen years, when the kids are telling us, listen, I can do this. Right. And so how can we bump to the middle? And some of you may have let go too much. Um, my kids good. Right? And now your child is distant. You don't know their friends. You don't know what they're doing, and you're feeling detached and discouraged. So how can we bring it over here? Let's get going.

Lesson Activity

GYJ:

Where do you fall on the pendulum? Be honest....

How does it feel to know that you don't need to be perfectly in the middle to be able to encourage your child's autonomy?

How does it feel to know that you cannot compare yourself to anyone else's family, because every family is different and has their own needs and ways of doing things?