Pick Your Battles
Hi Babe,
Thank you for your letter.
It seems that both you and your son may be feeling misunderstood which can lead to frustration, resentment, and loneliness. The love you have for this young man pours through your letter. Please don’t despair, there are a couple of habitual resets that can have you both living in harmony at least 85% of the time (he is a teenager after all, we can’t expect miracles). Fortunately and unfortunately, our children are our mirrors. It is our role to support them into adulthood, teaching them the best we can — their creativity, enthusiasm, bravery, and spark are but a few traits that we want to encourage — but they are also our greatest teachers and there is a great deal we can learn from them too.
When you are a single parent you can take your child’s behaviour SO personally and it can feel like everything they do is a direct reflection of whether you are failing or succeeding as a parent, and deeper still as a person. If you have perfectionist tendencies then this can be overwhelming for you and also your child. One of the biggest challenges for you personally is to let that go. You mention it all feeling similar to the dynamic with his father, this is your opportunity to approach this differently to change the narrative.
I say this because I would suggest you try to not argue, for at least one week. No matter what. If he needs discipline then you must enforce it because children respond well to structure, but do not engage in the back and forth of an argument so pick your battles. He will pick up on everything you say but once it becomes repetitive he might develop selective hearing and push against it. So even when you’re communicating for his own good it will sound the same to him as everything else which he has deemed as nagging. He also will pick up on your energy of course and if you’re tense and confrontational he will respond accordingly.
What do you enjoy to do together? Do that, try to do something fun and light. Don’t put any pressure on it, just relax even if he doesn’t. He‘s watching and learning.
Communicate calmly and from a place of love, not authority. It can be hard to do this as we go into autopilot a lot as parents. His autopilot is to resent anything that sounds like ‘telling’. This is because he is of an age where he is discovering who he is in the world: he is fast becoming a young man with hormones aplenty, he is developing deeper relationships within his peer group, his character is evolving. So it is important that he feels trusted and has a sense of independence. Allow him some room for expression, see it as a way to open communication where he does not feel judged or that he must not share too much because “Mum won’t understand”.
The biggest piece of advice from one mother to another would be, do what you can to ensure he knows he is loved and worthy regardless of anything else. His sense of self depends on it! Allow yourself to gently release some control and trust him to take some. I’m sure he will surprise you with his maturity and potential. Release yourself from your expectations of yourself and of him. See what happens.
You’ve got this Mumma! You are doing an incredible job, allow yourself to enjoy the journey. If you ever want to talk things through, just holla.
With love, Malee
