Is it more important to validate and empathise with my teens about their difficult relationship with their dad, stepmum and stepbrother; or support him as a co-parent, even though I can see the damage it is doing? I have two teenage daughters, 14 and 16, who have a fractious relationship with their dad and his family. He approaches parenting in an authoritarian way and I can see the negative impact this has on our daughters’ self-esteem and self worth.
They are delightful young people and I am very proud of how thoughtful, intelligent and individual they are – the horror stories of parenting teens are not something that I have to worry about and I have an open, respectful relationship with them. Because of this, they often come to me, together and separately, about the problems they have with their dad, stepmum and stepbrother.
The problems can generally be distilled, at their most basic, to their dad and stepmum being quite disregulated, confrontational and reactive. I feel like I’m doing the right thing by giving them a space to talk and vent. However, I also know that this means I’m not presenting a united front with my “co-parent”, which research shows can also be damaging for children. Am I doing the best thing for them?
Eleanor says: I think variations on your dilemma come up in parenting quite a lot. With co-parents, teachers, a friend’s parent – you’re supposed to back other adults up, until you’re not, and you’re just supposed to know where the line is. If their dad was calling them names or throwing things, nobody worth listening to would tell you to maintain a united front with him. You’d do a worse disservice to your daughters by teaching them that their suffering wasn’t grounds to break ranks.
You know that moment after something unexpected or shocking happens in public, and everyone looks to everyone else to figure out what to do? I think when we’re young, we look to adults like that. We’re still forming expectations, learning what we have the right to be surprised by. When adults do something upsetting or puzzling, we look to others’ reactions to see where we are on the spectrum of the unexpected: is it just, some people are like that? Or is this one you’re allowed to be indignant about? Is it shocking or just disappointing? A whole world of ethical education lives in what we teach young people by being surprised or unsurprised by others’ behaviour.
The difficulty is making room for legitimate complaints – and the legitimacy of the very idea of complaints – without just turning this into a proxy fight. Even squeaky clean teens can quickly learn how to turn one parent into a crowbar against the other. And you might not want to deal with the fallout if anything you say gets accidentally repeated.
Is there space between being a united front – where that means brooking no grievance against him – and undermining him? Is there a way to give your teens the space and right to feel what they feel without letting your own views be a bellow to their flames?
I’m thinking of the posture you might take if you’d been sent just to hear their side of a conflict. What you’d do if you didn’t have a tie to, or view on, the people they were speaking about. This posture emphasises their feelings rather than yours. You wouldn’t be a collaborator in adjudicating him and his family. You’d ask questions about how they can manage those feelings going forward. You wouldn’t solicit details or “then what did they say?!” style narrative. You’d be a receptacle, not a participant.
If that feels like it’s sustainable, it might be one way to live up to the two sets of obligations you have here; to your kids and to their father.
For whatever it’s worth, you said a lot here that glows with esteem – about how proud you are of your girls, how intelligent and grown you think they are. You might find that stressing these feelings with them counteracts some of the effects on their self-esteem you’re worried about. One way to protect people from the negative in their lives is to sift through it, spend time with it and point out why it was wrong. Another is to simply give them a space where it doesn’t get in – so that in your company, their value and worth is a given.
If you can give them space to feel what they’re feeling – without suggesting that you feel it yourself – you might be able to ensure they have at least one parent with whom that’s the case.
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