When your teen was younger, you probably had big dreams and ideas for how your relationship would be and how their life would turn out.
Perhaps you imagined family game nights or going to college basketball games with your teen. Maybe you imagined them getting great grades in school, participating in extracurricular activities, and preparing to go to a good college or university. You may have thought that they would come to you with the good, the bad, and everything in between, trusting you to offer them the perfect life advice.
It can be difficult to come to terms with the fact that these dreams may not be fulfilled and parenting might not be exactly what you hoped it would be. Maybe instead of late night chats where you give advice, your teen barely says two words to you all week. Maybe your teen isolates themselves from others and would want nothing less than to join a teen or club at school. Maybe your teen doesn’t care for school and is struggling to pass their classes.
When your teen’s behavior and your relationship with your teen are not going as planned, it’s easy to feel frustrated, hopeless or resentful. However, when you wallow in these feelings it will only make matters worse.
Instead of allowing negative feelings to take control, practicing radical acceptance will help you regulate your emotions and manage your grief.
What is radical acceptance?
Radical acceptance is a skill used in dialectical behavior therapy that involves completely accepting the reality of your current circumstances. This doesn’t mean that you are giving up on your teen, but rather that you are acknowledging the facts so that you can grieve and then make appropriate changes.
Practicing radical acceptance
By practicing radical acceptance, you can cope with the grief of missing out on what you hoped would happen with your teen so that you can find ways to improve the relationship between the two of you.
Here are a few ways to practice radical acceptance.
Acknowledge the reality of your situation
There comes a time when you need to face the facts of your situation and realize that reality does not always match up with your expectations. Even if it can be tough to admit, teens do not always have great relationships with their parents and guardians, and they do not always behave in ways that they should.
When you are able to acknowledge these facts and refuse to let your emotions dictate your response to your reality, you can take steps toward change.
For example, if you are disappointed that your teen is not more involved at school, you may be tempted to try and make them join a teen by threatening punishment. This will only lead to further disappointment when your teen continues to avoid extracurricular activities anyway. Once you understand that your teen cannot be controlled or forced to behave differently, you will be able to come up with ideas that will be more effective.
By choosing to accept that some situations are outside of your control, you will be able to keep yourself from being stuck in painful situations that breed bitterness, anger, and depression. Instead, you will be able to recognize that your circumstances are less than ideal and allow yourself to accept this fact with your entire mind and body.
Acknowledge your feelings
While you don’t want to cause yourself to suffer and wallow in negative feelings about situations that you cannot control, it is important that you still give yourself space to feel.
It’s okay to feel sad that your teen doesn’t want to spend time with the family. It’s okay to feel disappointed when your teen doesn’t seem to have any plans for their future.
When you recognize your feelings, you can practice self-care and use positive coping strategies to help manage these emotions so that you are able to keep them from taking over.
By allowing yourself to acknowledge these feelings, you can keep them from festering until they become unbearable or start to influence your actions.
Acknowledge your relationship with your teen
Even when your teen’s speech and actions do not align with your values, they are still a part of your family. In times of family stress, it is more important than ever to show your teen that you still care about them unconditionally, and that you are there to offer love, support, and guidance no matter what.
In doing this, you will start to realize that you can still have a strong love for your teen even if your relationship is painful or challenging.