Say the true thing.

I know you’ve been there.

Your teenager is spending an awful lot of time in their room. They also can’t seem to wake up before 2 pm and you know it’s because they can’t go to bed at a decent time to save their life.

You see them creep into the kitchen for food and before you can stop yourself, you hear it escape your mouth oozing with sarcasm. “Well, nice of you to finally join us.” Your teen shrugs and their eye roll might just register on the Richter scale. Before you know it, they’ve put themselves back in their room leaving you to wrestle with how you’re in this place when it wasn’t all that long ago isolation in their room was the last ditch effort to correct behavior with time out from a tantrum.

Part of you wants to jerk the door off the hinges. The other part of you laments over the baby you once knew: the one who couldn’t get enough of you and thought you hung the moon.

Time out. So very much of this is normal and you have a choice to make. The next thing you say and step you take is critical because it’s either making a deposit into a future relationship with your kid or stands to drive the valley between you even wider than it already is.

Say the true thing.

You miss them. You want to see their face. You want to know about their life right now. What do they like? What are they feeling? You want time together.

Those statements, the true feelings, will be absorbed in a far more positive way and make a deposit in your future relationship with them.

Let me remind you you’re the adult here and you can choose different. You are responsible for your feelings and you have enough life experience to see beyond the here and now and choose the better way to respond.

Say the true thing.