There’s a moment that hits harder than you expect.
The moment your child stops asking for hugs.
The moment the jokes get an eye roll instead of a laugh.
The moment you feel like you’re tiptoeing just to keep the peace.
It’s not that you’re afraid of your teen.
It’s that everything feels fragile now and you don’t know how to say the wrong thing without setting something off.
That feeling has a name.
You’re walking on eggshells.
And it hurts.
The grief nobody talks about
No one really prepares you for this part of parenting.
The part where the bedtime stories are gone.
Where “Mom, can you help me?” turns into silence behind a closed door.
You’re still showing up.
You still love them.
But now, everything feels tense. You’re watching your words. Reading their face. Holding your breath.
And even though you’re doing all of that out of love, it feels like it’s never enough.
What walking on eggshells does to you
When you live in constant alert mode—wondering when the next blow-up will come—you stop trusting yourself.
You start shrinking.
You overthink everything.
You second-guess what used to feel simple: a hug, a reminder, a check-in.
Your body knows it’s not safe.
Not because your child is unsafe, but because the relationship feels unfamiliar now.
And that disconnection is real.
Why it’s happening
Your teen isn’t trying to make life harder for you.
They’re trying to make sense of their own emotional world—and they don’t know how yet.
So they lash out.
Or shut down.
Or pull away from the one person they feel safest with: you.
That doesn’t mean you’ve lost them.
It means they’re handing you the hardest parts of their pain, hoping you won’t drop it.
Here’s what can help
This isn’t a fix-it list.
It’s a reminder of what’s real and what’s possible:
– Stay consistent, even when they test you
– Speak calmly, even when they don’t
– Let them know they’re allowed to feel—but you don’t want them to harm themselves.
And when it feels like too much, take a breath.
Your steadiness matters more than your perfection.