Navigating the Path to Independence
“My 13 year old wants to spend all her time with her friends. Isn’t that our goal, raising them to be independent? Why all this focus on keeping them close?”
If we've accepted our child's dependency needs AND affirmed her
development into her own separate person, she'll stay fiercely
connected to us even as her focus shifts to peers, high school and the
passions that make her soul sing.
It's appropriate for teens to want to spend more time with their peers than their parents as they get older, but kids who are well grounded in their families will respond well to parents' efforts to stay connected. And parents who have bonded adequately with their children at each earlier stage will feel invested enough in their teens to stay connected, even if a lot of effort is required.
It’s
critical, during the teen years, for parents to remain their
children’s emotional and moral compass. Kids will begin to experiment
with intimate relationships outside the family, but to do that
successfully, they still rely on those intimate relationships at home
remaining solid. That means that a 13 year old who focuses mostly
outwards is probably looking for something he wasn’t getting at home.
We
need to invite our children to rely on us emotionally until they’re
emotionally ready to depend on themselves. Too often, in our culture,
we let teenagers transfer their dependency outside the family, with
disastrous results. Teens often give up a great deal of themselves in
pursuit of the closeness they crave, only to crash against the hard
reality that other teens aren’t developmentally able to offer them what
they need.
It is NOT a sign of healthy emotional development for a teen to push parents away, or for parents to let him. That’s a sign of a damaged relationship. Attempting to parent when your relationship with your child is damaged is like pushing a boulder uphill. It’s never too late in your relationship with your child to do repair work, to move closer. But it’s a whole lot harder to build the strong connection you want if the foundation isn’t there.
