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Remind Yourself that Your Teenager is a Teenager
As simple as this sounds, its one of the most important aspects of parenting and relating to teenagers. Most adults suffer from projection bias when it comes to teens, in that they project onto teens their own adult ways of thinking, feeling and acting. Being aware of this helps us to adjust our expectations. Having and maintaining reasonable expectations is not the same as lowering your standards. You can maintain high standards for your teen, while understanding they’ll often miss the mark.
Name the Unmet Expectation
A loss of trust is always the result of an unmet expectation. “I asked her and she agreed to be home by 10pm but she didn’t get home till 11pm. I expected her to keep her promise but she didn’t.” You set a rule for your teen, they agreed to it and you expected them to follow it but instead, they broke it. This is disappointing and often very hurtful.
List Your Emotions
When we’re hurt, especially by our children, that disappointment morphs into lots of painful emotions, fear, sadness, anger, frustration, hopelessness. Its important to name, for yourself, all of these varying emotions. What you can’t name, you can’t tame. Putting language around thoughts and feelings which are nebulous at best, makes them more concrete and easier to control.
Talk with a Third party
This doesn’t need to be a counselor, although it could be. Find a friend, colleague, spouse or family member with whom you can share your disappointment and frustration. It might take more than one chat. Journaling is another effective way to understand and process thoughts and feelings. This is the appropriate place to process the intense, raw emotions, not with your teenager.
Talk to Your Teen
This talk is about letting the teen know, in a very formal way, exactly what they did wrong and how it affected you. This is especially important for a generation of teens who are increasingly disconnected from the effects of their behavior upon others. Letting them know you’re hurt in a firm, serious but calm way helps them to experience authentic healthy guilt. Overly emotional, shouting, can lead to shaming that misses the mark. When a teenager is shamed, they don’t get that their behavior is bad, they think “I’m a bad person.”
Make a Choice to Forgive
Reestablishing trust is a two way street. The trust formula is fidelity + time = trust. They need to be faithful, that’s their job. But if the trust is to be regained, you must give them meaningful, yet appropriate opportunities to regain trust in the way that it was broken. How you do this and how quickly you do this will depend upon the nature and/or frequency of the incident. Conferring with like minded parents who share your values will help you find the balance between being too distrustful for too long and too trusting to quickly.
Pray
I could have put this first, but didn’t want anyone to write this process off as an overly simplistic “pray it away” solution. Forgiveness is a process only possible through grace. Prayer throughout every step of this process is essential. Remember, prayer is more about changing us than changing the other person. As we change, everything around us changes. “Lord help me to see” is one prayer Jesus seems to always answer in the Gospels. Lord help us to see our teens, help us to see a path to renewed trust. Lord help us to see a path to forgiveness.
