Trauma and your teen

Always remember that your child’s behaviours have meaning. Usually difficult behaviour masks difficult emotions.

I recently had the tremendous privilege of attending the Christian Alliance for Orphans Summit, held this spring at Willow Creek Church. One of the workshops I made a point of attending was taught by Jayne and David Schooler, who have recently come to Calgary as our guests leading a workshop entitled Becoming a Trauma-Competent Healing Parent.

As we all know, parenting teens can be among the most challenging tasks of our parenting experiences and teens who have experienced trauma in their early years are particularly at risk for troubling behaviours. It is not uncommon for us to begin to emotionally distance ourselves as our kids can be disrespectful in expressing their views, emotionally unregulated due to their hormonal fluctuations and critical of many things about us as parents, even our values and practices.

The most important – and most difficult – thing, I believe, is to continue to find ways to achieve meaningful connection with teens as they wade through a period of increasing independence from their parents. While independence is one of the developmental tasks of adolescence, teens still desperately need to feel connected to a loving caregiver.

The Schoolers listed a number of questions to ask as we parent in this period of our children’s lives:

• Have I empowered my teen (meaning, have I met their physical needs)?
• Is what I am doing connecting or disconnecting?
• Am I catching the behaviour “low”?
• Am I avoiding any separation that can be avoided?
• Am I bridging any separation that cannot be avoided?
• Have we been working on life value scripts? (These are short phrases that summarize family values, e.g., “obey first time,” or “be kind and gentle”).
• Am I developing a deeper attachment to my teen?
• Am I allowing the behaviour to disrupt the connection or break the relationship?
• Have we created a safety plan for dysregulation?

So, how do we maintain connection?  Here are a few suggestions:

• Continue to take good care of yourself emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually. You cannot parent well when overly depleted yourself.
• Always remember that your child’s behaviours have meaning. Usually difficult behaviour masks difficult emotions. Ask yourself what hard feelings s/he might be experiencing.
• Continue to look for ways to have fun with your child. The activities you pursued when they were younger may no longer be relevant, but look for some ways to build in fun as a family or just in one-on-one relational activities.
• Look for ways to work together as well; tackling chores together helps build connection.
• Take an interest in their interests, even if they are not yours; go to music, sporting or community events that they express interest in.
• Avoid using discipline that disconnects, like sending them away from you or threatening to do so.
• Keep working at getting to know your teen. Their interests, values and ideas are changing; try to keep up. Asking open-ended questions and practicing good listening skills will go a long way.

Wendy Kittlitz is vice-president of counselling and care ministries for Focus on the Family Canada. She has worked as an adoption professional for 15 years and is also an adoptive mom.