Palmer made me cry last Tuesday.
Trust me, this kid has made me cry before! When he was a teen, I had a journal entry called “Cry 1000 Tears” where I started keeping track of all the times I cried about the challenges of being a mom in general, and a mom to Palmer in particular. They were tears of worry, insult, indignity and of feeling lost about what to do.
Last Tuesday’s tears were different, though.
This time, tears ran down my cheeks in front of an audience as we gave a presentation together. Palmer was saying the kindest, most loving things about me and how hard I had worked to hold our family together during some rough years.
I’m not sharing this to brag, because if I was going to brag, I’d talk about how I used to be able to bug that kid just by walking in the door, eating, or chewing. I’m pretty proud of how I can still annoy him just by clearing my throat too many times. 😁Rather, I share this to wave a flag of hope for parents who are in rough years with their kids now.
Somewhere between crying 1000 tears and standing next to Palmer in front of an audience, I learned some skills, Palmer grew, and things shifted.
In a therapy session with a mom client this week, I found myself doing what I love to do with parents in therapy: I was teaching her how to have a therapeutic presence with her teenager. Her kid is quick to be annoyed with her, quick to storm off to his room, and quick to shut her out.
If I had to summarize my advice in five words, it would be:
GO
SLOW
AND
CREATE
SPACE
To explain it in a few more words:
When you have a question about your kid’s thoughts or opinions, ask it and then listen.
And then… listen a little more.
In therapy training, they teach us that if we pause after someone answers a question, sometimes they will continue and THAT is when we get a deeper response.
It’s so simple: create space by staying quiet a bit longer than you might normally.
Then, if you get a more tender response, go slow. Treat their sharing like a delicate piece of glass that needs to be handled gently. Saying “I’m so glad you shared that” followed by a pause is soooo much more inviting than jumping in with our advice and opinions.
One of the very best ways I know to have a close relationship with tween, teen and young adult children is to convince them that they can share anything with us. And the only way to convince them is to demonstrate, time and again, that when they talk, especially about hard stuff, that we will:
GO
SLOW
AND
CREATE
SPACE
Remember: The juiciest answers usually come after the first answer and after a warm silence on our part.
With love and laughter,
Kerry and Palmer
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