The first key to parenting well during the challenging adolescent passage is understanding what’s really going on inside our teen. Then we want to be smart about how we respond once we’ve tuned in. Primary to my work with parents is the notion of parents providing a “container” in our interactions with our teens. Both the container and that which is being contained are parts of a living, dynamic process unfolding in our day to day lives with our teens.
When we inquire into what is really happening during the time that we are with our teens, it’s pretty illuminating. The dots begin to connect, and the impact of what we are doing or not doing can be startling.
Humans continually experience inner sensations and feelings and often these are uncomfortable. Teenagers live an intensified version of this. At times their feelings will surface in their speaking, and at others in their behaviors and actions. The way in which they are heard and responded to determines what happens next. When we, as parents, have the capacity to be in touch with and provide a listening to the inner experience and feelings of our teen, those emotions can then be completed and integrated. They become part of the larger whole, freeing up psychic energy for the natural next movement forward. Now it can be possible for our teen to have an internal sense of calm, coherent containment.
When containment does not occur, the feelings are set aside, separated from the whole, leaving the full emotional power of the original experience unresolved. Left raw and uncomfortable, they can demand the full attention of the teen’s resources. His or her natural urge for creative, constructive movement toward integration and maturity is interrupted. Now our teen has to invest lots of psychic energy in an attempt to remain internally separate from the accumulated reservoir of uncomfortable feelings. Neither the teenager nor the parent may know that the feelings exist. Even though they live outside of awareness, the accumulated feelings become the directing force for the teen’s internal experience and outer behavior.
Being able to keep our connection with our teens alive by being able to listen well is foundational, but our teens also need to know where the edges are for them to feel safe, secure, and contained. Being in touch with a teen’s true inner needs makes it possible for us to provide him or her with the sort of limits that provide advantage. These boundaries give the teenager the option for development of brain capacity for emotional integration. Without effectively set limits, the teen loses that possibility and will be in a constant state of spilling over the edges in their internal experience, never able to settle into themselves.
A basic understanding of these dynamics helps us as parents to be in touch with ourselves, in touch with what is happening inside our teen, and directly in touch with our teen through our listening, our connection, and our communication. It is the fortunate teenager who can be returned to himself or herself each and every day through the interactions that occur with those around him. It is our greatest luxury to be free to be fully ourselves, and it is, without exception, the greatest gift we can give our kids.
