Harry's Corner
Parents of Teenagers, Stuck Taking Out the Emotional Trash
From The New York Times, Motherlode Blog, December 16, 2015
Psychologists have long observed that teenagers sometimes manage uncomfortable feelings by passing them off to their parents. Remember how your toddler wordlessly handed you her wrappers and empty juice boxes, and you reflexively accepted them, even when both of you stood right next to a wastebasket? In the adolescent equivalent, the trash is emotional, not actual, but the effect is the same: Our teenagers sometimes lighten their loads by passing their problems to us.
An adolescent seeking empathy isn’t the same as an adolescent trying to unload a feeling. It’s the difference between a teenager limply asking: “Do we have ice cream? I failed a test today and only Chunky Monkey will make life bearable” and a teenager glibly announcing, “Just F.Y.I., I failed a test today,” while making a beeline for Netflix. The former elicits compassion from parents. The latter produces dismay.
Transferring hard feelings to parents is not new to this generation (and, of course, not entirely limited to teenagers). I remember a lonely night in my first year of college when I phoned my mom, two time zones away, to complain of homesickness. She listened quietly, then offered many wise suggestions for how I could make things better. I instinctively rejected every one of them before abruptly ending the call on a melancholy note. My roommate materialized, and freshly unburdened, I joined her for a happy night out. When my mom called the next morning to check in, I was baffled by the exhaustion in her voice. She had been awake most of the night worrying about me.
Did I thank my mom for the gift of shouldering my sadness? No. I wasn’t consciously aware of having passed her a leaden emotional baton, any more than she was conscious of agreeing to accept it so that I could skip blithely away. Like most teenagers, I regarded my sadness from the night before in the same way we all regard the actual trash we throw away. Relieved of it. Done with it. When my mom called that next morning, I certainly had no interest in revisiting my unwanted feelings.
So what is the garbage-collecting, sleep-losing parent to do? Usually, nothing. Nothing, that is, beyond taking on, and taking out, the emotional trash. For many of the problems teenagers face, dumping the hard feeling is a remedy unto itself. Making my mom upset freed me to find a solution to my homesickness. In my work as a psychologist, I’ve known plenty of teenagers to bomb a test, fall apart about the grade at school, come home and unsettle their parents by acting cavalier about it, and then buckle down for the next exam.
Parents burdened by a teenager’s feelings deserve support from loving partners and friends. I know that my dad often took care of my mom while she took care of me. And with time and practice, adults can gain some perspective on these transactions and take comfort in watching how quickly most teenagers regain their footing as soon as they’ve shed their cumbersome distress.
Of course, almost anything that can be done can be overdone. The ease with which teenagers can now dispatch a disquieting text message has, without a doubt, contributed to the surge of helicopter parenting. I’m certain that I had “I-want-my-mom” pangs several times a day in high school and college. But acting on that impulse was usually inconvenient, if not impossible, so my friends and I managed with our nearby supports, solutions or distractions. Cellphones can easily become trash chutes. Accordingly, we need to be alert to how, and how quickly, we respond to troubling texts and calls, especially those coming from a teenager who hasn’t developed other strategies for managing daily dilemmas. “Bummer about the failed test. Got a game plan? Luv, Dad” is a perfectly reasonable response to a worrisome text from a teenager.
Both neuroscience and common sense tell us that the teenage years are often characterized by intense and erratic emotions. On the whole, teenagers have a variety of healthy tactics for managing life’s bumps (upsetting their parents being only one of them) but even the sturdiest of adolescents would sag under the weight of their feelings if they couldn’t toss some of them into handy and dependable receptacles. As we exchange presents this holiday season, let’s stop for a moment to honor the gift that so many parents give their teenagers all year round: the willingness to accept, and find a way to dispose of, the inevitable debris that comes with growing up.
Lisa Damour is a psychologist in private practice in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a clinical instructor at Case Western Reserve University and the director of Laurel School’s Center for Research on Girls. Her forthcoming book, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood, will be available in February 2016. Follow her on Twitter: @LDamour.
