I wasn’t there for him, so I avoided setting limits with him.” Ray was talking to me about his son Brad, who had begun drinking and running with a bad crowd. However, in assuming he would solve one problem, he actually created a second problem, and now his son was worse off.
Fortunately, Ray saw the flaw in his thinking. A self-diagnosed workaholic, Ray had, from his own report, been too wrapped up in his career to connect adequately with his son. However, now that Brad’s problems were serious, Ray had reprioritized his life and was making up for lost time.
I asked him, “Why did you think that not setting limits would help?”
“I know, it doesn’t make sense. I think I felt guilty for not being there enough when Brad needed me. So I thought the time I did spend with him should be positive.”
Guilt fueled Ray’s flawed thinking, as it does for many parents. Both guilt and fear are internal emotional states that often prevent parents from setting the right boundaries that can help a teen learn responsibility. So it’s important for you to understand how these emotions can affect your own parenting and what you can do to resolve them.
Guilt
Guilt is a feeling of self-condemnation over doing something that hurts your child. When parents are too harsh, let their kid down, or are absent in some way, they will often be harsh and critical with themselves. This feeling of self-judgment can be very strong and intense.
However, guilt is not a helpful emotion. Some parents mistakenly view guilt as a sign that they care about their teen. But guilt is more about the parent, because guilt centers on the parent’s failures and badness rather than on the teen’s difficulty and hurt. Guilt does nothing to help the teen’s situation. Instead, guilt creates an obsessive pattern of thinking that cycles around, making you beat yourself up. Guilt keeps you from doing something that will make your teen mad, disappointed, or frustrated, because you want to avoid even greater and more intense guilt feelings.
If you struggle with guilt and want resolution, learn to experience remorse instead. Remorse, the healthy alternative to guilt, centers on the other person. Remorse is an empathic concern for the pain that your teen feels. It is also solution oriented. If you feel remorse over something you have done that has hurt your teen, your focus is on helping your teen heal from the damage you have done. The apostle Paul explained remorse in terms of the difference between worldly sorrow and godly sorrow:
Yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.12
When you feel remorse toward your teen, you free yourself to be sad about what you have done and to repair the effects. When guilt doesn’t weigh you down, you are free to set and keep limits with your teen, so that your child can benefit from experiencing structure, clarity, and consequences.
So face your guilt feelings. Tell yourself: I will sometimes let my teen down. I will not always be what my child needs me to be. Understand that this is inevitable, but don’t stop there. When you do something that hurts your teen, put your focus on how this affects her, and allow yourself to feel remorse instead so that you can give her the structure and boundaries she needs. You will help your own life as well as your teen’s.
That was certainly true for Ray and Brad. Ray allowed himself to feel a healthy remorse about what had happened with his son. As a result, his care for his son drove him to spend more time with him and to connect with him in ways that helped Brad feel loved and secure. Ray also established much more consistent and effective boundaries and consequences, which helped to increase his son’s self-control and sense of ownership over his life.
Fear of Withdrawal of Love
Some parents fear that if they set limits, their teen will distance and detach themselves and withdraw their love from them. This fear can cause these parents to avoid boundaries at all costs, and to do their best to keep their kid connected. When this happens, it teaches teens that they can get their way and avoid limits by cutting off the love supply. These adolescents often have difficulty experiencing healthy adult relationships, because they have learned to withdraw love, as a form of emotional blackmail, until the other person caves in. You don’t want this relational future for your teen.
If you are vulnerable to fear, you may have some sort of dependency on your teen’s goodwill and feelings toward you. You may be trying to get your teen to meet your need for love and connection. If so, you are in jeopardy of not doing right by your child.
To resolve your fear of withdrawal of love, connect with other adults who will support, affirm, and encourage you, as we discussed in the last chapter. Such adults can meet your relational needs. Use their good feelings to fill the vacuum so that when your teen withdraws because of some limits you have imposed, you can tolerate the withdrawal.
When your teen withdraws, take the initiative to go after him and try to reconnect. Teens sometimes don’t have the skills to pull themselves back into relationship, so they need their parents to help them. But while you are inviting your teen back into connection with you, keep your requirements and expectations intact. Your teen still needs them.
Remember that teens need a certain amount of time and space to pull away from parents — not totally away, but enough to form their own opinions, identity, and values. When you experience this withdrawal, realize it’s a normal part of your teen’s developmental passage. Don’t personalize it. Instead, help your teen know that it’s a good thing for him and that you’ll be there when he wants to reconnect.
Fear of Anger
Adolescents get angry a lot. They live in protest mode, so it is second nature for them to get mad at everything in the world, especially their parents. But some parents are conflict-phobic — they are uncomfortable and afraid of being the object of their teen’s wrath, and so they avoid setting the limits their teen needs. However, this teaches adolescents that if they throw a tantrum, they can get out of a limit. Teens who learn this will also have difficulty experiencing healthy adult relationships. To help your child avoid this relational future, you’ll want to teach him to accept responsibilities in relationships without having outbursts.
Many parents who fear their teen’s anger have either had little experience in dealing with anger or had some very negative experiences. Whichever the case, these parents have few tools to deal with angry people, so they avoid confronting them because it’s too uncomfortable.
If this is your struggle, in addition to fearing your teen’s anger, you may also fear the strength of your own anger. To resolve this fear, learn to experience and normalize anger — your own and others’ — as a part of life. Make this an intentional item of growth for yourself.
You can get used to angry feelings by dealing with them in your own supportive relationships. Tell others about your discomfort with anger, and practice expressing your anger in safe relationships. Also learn how to listen while others express their anger. Instead of panicking or fearing the worst, focus on what the person has to say and then have a conversation about it. Dr. Cloud’s and my book How to Have That Difficult Conversation You’ve Been Avoiding13 may be a good resource for helping you learn how to have healthy, confrontational conversations so that you can work through your fear of anger.
If your teen is never angry with you, you’re probably doing something wrong! So let your teen get mad at you, and stay present with her, as long as she is in some sort of control of herself. Remind yourself that when parents hold to the established limits, adolescents respond in anger. This is normal. If you can stay with your teen’s anger and still love her while holding the line, she can more readily learn to give in and let go of her anger, which is a major step toward maturity. The task is to stay connected to your teen even while she is angry, and yet still hold the line. With this approach, she can more readily accept your limit and give up her angry protest of your rules.
Guilt and fear don’t have to paralyze you so that you can’t set limits with your teen. The more you work out your own struggles with these unhelpful emotions, the better equipped you will be to help your teen experience and accept your love and your limits.