By Amy Keyes 
Raising teenagers is not for the faint of heart. I’m in the throes of it. If you’re treading lightly in solidarity beside me, you know what I’m talking about. And if you’re not there yet, I’m sure you’ve heard loud and clear what’s coming your way.
It’s a perfect storm of their hormones . . . and mine. Which for the record, are blazing in all of their middle aged glory. Tension seems to be bubbling under the surface of every conversation, just waiting to erupt into a series of shutdowns and slammed doors. To say that I feel like we are all walking on eggshells much of the time would be an understatement.
It’s crazy being on the parenting end of the teenage years. I remember the delicate balance that existed between my parents and me when I was that age, and I hold space in my heart for all of the things I didn’t know they were trying to navigate: working full time, raising kids, saving for college, setting ceilings of boundaries made of glass that were bound to be shattered by inevitable teenage rebellion, constantly questioning how much of that shattered glass to try and piece back together into a new set of boundaries and how much to sweep up into a pile and discard. Essentially, how to loosen the grip on childhood in those years that turned us from teens to adults.
What I’m discovering in these years of raising my own teens is that being a parent is a never ending dance of knowing when to intervene and when to back off. It’s a constant tango of stepping on toes and retreating to regroup and find a different way to help my kids build the foundation of grit, determination, and resiliency that they need to walk out of this house and into the wider world.
As a middle school teacher, I spend all day practicing this dance with other peoples’ kids. Pushing them forward in baby steps. Reading the cues of when they need space. Circling back to check in when enough time has passed. I know that in the end, what they need to cultivate the skills of independence, is to actually get to be independent. So I try really hard to bring in the balance that allows them to do this. To work through their own struggles. To learn from their own mistakes. And then, they can really celebrate their hard earned success.
But for some reason, I am not so good at this at home. When it comes to my own kids, I really—and I mean really—have a hard time finding the ability to loosen my grip and back off. Especially when they are stuck in the quicksands of teen struggles. My natural instinct is to jump in and try and pull them out. One question, one solution, one word of encouragement, one Instagram quote at a time.
And while in the moment, my perspective is that I’m being supportive and reminding them that I’m always there, I often reflect on how my actions actually make them want to release my hand and sink back into that quicksand. As I’m trying to fix it all for them, knowing full well the detriment this causes in the long game, they actually want to figure out how to climb out of it on their own.
I’m listening to a book right now titled How To Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid For Success by Julie Lythcott-Haims. It’s a very real reminder of how very little time I have left with my kids at home and the importance of working on myself to help loosen my grip. The message resonates with me that if we, as parents, are always doing the things for our teens, they will walk into the larger world lacking the problem-solving skills and resilience to do the things by themselves.
I mean when you boil it down, it is really so simple and poignant, and yet so incredibly difficult for me (and I imagine so many parents) to implement. It’s hard to know if it’s just the plain unconditional, endless love we have for our kids, or the anxiety so many of us feel when we think of the adversity they will face in their lives, or the thought of our kids ever being in any sort of pain. Whatever it is, it’s so much easier said than done to allow them to sit in tough stuff. But I know I need to let them. And even though for me, my heart will ache a little more now, I know it is what they need so that their hearts can handle whatever life throws their way.
by Whitney Fleming 
