Parenting is Tough on Relationships!
Following are 5 discussions worth having with your partner to protect your relationship and ensure you are on the same page when things flare up.
When Teenagers Rage… What Happens to Yours?
Teenager brains and adult brains both experience big emotions. One brain has developed the neural pathways between emotional brain and logical brain, and it is not your teenager.
This means as parents it is up to us to remember and understand emotional regulation will be experimental and role modelled. When the adults in a teenagers world respond with compassion and support, their neural pathways develop in the right way.
If you are struggling with your own emotional regulation, Relationship Counselling at New View Counselling, can help you stay stronger as a team. Your partner can learn how to support you when you heat up and even help soothe you if adult emotions are overflowing. We are human, we all go there.
Extreme Behaviours need Extreme Consequences
Agree or disagree? Our parents possibly parented with extremes because they were parented with extremes. If this is an acceptable approach, a thought to ponder would be 'how do I respond today to 'authoritarian' leaders, managers, and partners?
Validating emotions and thoughts is not a soft approach - it is taking the time to understand your kid, their perceptions, their world and who is in it. The ways we need to explore solutions to challenges today are different because the challenges are different. We are all learning and every parenting day is a new day - even if you have 5 kids because I bet they are all different.
Relationship Counselling can help you both understand what gets in the way of offering validation and time to explore or understand your kid.
Parenting is like being a builder, you almost need a new trade specialist for each stage
Our parenting skills need to grow, adjust and evaluate at each stage - this is normal, and this is why good parenting is tiring, ongoing and hard work.
In the toddler days we are building foundations. Then we use scaffolding to provide safety while the layers we build create strength and character. During the scaffolding stage we need to consult with the interior designer (the kid themselves) about what works, what feels uncomfortable, what is instinctive.
If keeping up with your construction obligations is wearing you down, Relationship Counselling can help call in other trade's. There may just be behaviour that is not ‘normally developmental’ and needs specialist support.
Emotions are caused by thoughts not events
Remember when there was chaos at a school event (maybe your kid had a sneaky drink with their mates before attending [oh, sorry flashback to my own Yr12 Prom], or a night time party turned into a punch up, or something has triggered a door slam and scary silence for hours - and all you asked about was ‘what happened, and what was your part, and who were you with...’
Minor details really - instead focus on what they were thinking, even dumb decisions have a driver. The challenge here is picking the right time to ask questions and knowing when to stop before it becomes an interrogation.
Relationship Counselling can help understand our 'Core Beliefs' (the reasons why we respond the way we do). This conversation can go deep but in counselling, you will understand each other better also. In understanding our parenting relationship better we become better parents.
Teenagers are in their own world they take no notice of mine
Teenagers are consumed by their world, but you are a part of it!
How you respond, the emotions you express, the way you deal, does contribute - you might not see the impact because they may not express it in a way you notice or at a time when you can observe it.
As parents we were in tune with how we spoke when our toddlers were developing speech.... it is very similar when teenagers develop emotional regulation. What you see is them feeling overwhelmed and not knowing what to do with intense emotions or even be able to articulate what it is. Scientifically this is called 'Neural Growth and Synaptic Pruning'.
Relationship Counselling can help you both better understand role modelling and when and how to allow time to cool down... for yourself and your teenager. They are watching how you both resolve conflict and manage stress. Reach out if this is taking a back seat while you manage teenage behaviours and challenges.
