Battle or Blessing: How’s it Going with Your Teenage Daughter?
I remember when I was 8 months pregnant and another mother came up me and said,
Is this your first? I said YES in a happy voice. And then I would get the smirky grin and they’d say You just wait!!!!!!!!!
Implying my life would be over when I was a parent, and it would be terrible with one struggle after another.
And it happened recently. Someone asked me how old my daughter was and I told her she was 14 and I got the smirky grin with a condescending You just wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! .
(REALLY! Is this helpful?)
And what are you waiting for?
THE BATTLE
I call this parenting approach the Battle Mentality.
From this perspective you believe parenting is one big battle after another, and you better gear up especially for the teenage years.
Battle Mentality of Parenting
- Parenting is a series of battles
- There is a winner and a loser
- It’s about obeying the rules and getting it right
- You mistake FORCE for power
Force is the BIG one.
If you believe force is power you will
- Justify losing control. I wouldn’t have yelled but she wouldn’t listen
- Threaten her with words that leave her feeling shamed. (Oh yeah, you lose control here too.) That’s the best you can do. Good luck on getting into college.
- Make her get it right, which leaves her feeling she never can get anything right.
- Become an FBI agent monitoring your child 24/7. You spend your energy trying to catch them in a lie. However this approach prevents you from seeing their heart, soul, gifts and potential.
****This Battle Mentality approach to parenting is not FUN for you or your child.
But it’s more than that. It is extremely detrimental to your child because someone has to be the loser.
When your child feels like a loser you have lost the relationship and you have lost their heart.
How do I know about the battle mentality? Is it because I have worked with mothers and adolescents for 20 years as a life coach and marriage and family therapist? Is it because I was in full time youth ministry before that?
Maybe?
But mostly, it is when my daughter turned 12.
Even though I was miss adolescent expert, when my daughter turned 12 all the theories flew out of my head. There I was in battle mentality and I was losing her heart.
It might have looked like I was winning the battle, but inside I felt powerless.
So I did some big time soul searching and asked myself what is true power in parenting?
I know the Battle Mentality doesn’t work. Underneath all that force you are in big time fear. You are afraid you are losing your kid. You are afraid something might happen to them. You are afraid at how they are going to turn out.
Winning the battles with your child is not going to give you a healthy relationship with your child.
The good news is there is another way.
See, when I was 8 months pregnant I was anticipating the blessing of my baby girl. I had my daughter on the older side of the child rearing years and every little thing she did as a baby delighted me. Yes I was sleep deprived and all that, but each day I looked for the blessing of her little hands, a smile, or her kicking her legs back and forth while lying on her back.
This is the Blessing Mentality approach to parenting.
You are looking and waiting for BLESSINGS not battles.
And when you anticipate blessings you find them even when they are in their teens.
Your teen is not just a “behavior problem.” She is an amazing human being created by God, full of seeds of potential AND her prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until she is 25. (This means she is hardwired for impulsivity and drama.) So there is going to be conflict and she is in process. But the Blessing Mentality would never reduce a child to being a “liar” or “lazy.”
When you are in the Blessing Mentality you define power in a whole new way.
It is a deep internal power.
Let’s look at this new definition of power.
- Power of your own clarity
- Power to be at peace and centered and not get pulled into any teenage drama dances
- Power to encourage and not threaten
- Power to believe in your child and not lose hope.
- Power to take effective action and set boundaries
- Power of forgiveness and authenticity
- Power of congruence Your heart, mind, and actions line up with your core beliefs and Spirituality
When I discovered this power it changed everything for my daughter and I. Believe me I’m not perfect, you can ask my daughter, but it’s so much better. I realized it’s WHO I AM that impacts my daughter and not my magnificent mother lectures.
AND I have been blown away at the amazing changes I have seen in my clients who have implemented the Blessing Mentality.
Because I know this really changes lives, I created Power Your Parenting: A 7 Week Program to Help you Reconnect With Your Daughter (and Reclaim Your Life).
I am launching this program once this year. It is starting April 18th, 2011
There are a few spaces left.
Send me an email at colleen@poweryourparenting.com and I will send you some details about the program.