Supporting a Teenager Through Difficult Times: When You’re Struggling Too

There comes a point in parenting when the child who once needed you for everything begins to pull away. Of course, we know it's supposed to happen. Teenagers need independence. They need privacy, their own friendships and a life that doesn't revolve around their parents. Knowing that doesn't necessarily make it easy.

Sometimes the change feels less like your child becoming independent and more like losing the person you thought you knew.

When did I stop knowing my own child?

One of the hardest things about parenting a teenager can be the feeling that you simply don't know them anymore. The conversations become shorter. The bedroom door closes more often (Seems to be shut permanently these days!)  Questions that once would have been answered without a second thought are met with a shrug, silence or irritation.

They don't seem to need your advice. They don't come looking for reassurance in the way they once did. Sometimes it can even feel as though they only want you when they need a lift, some money or something sorting out.

And that hurts. You can understand intellectually that your teenager is growing up while still missing the closeness you once had. When they're struggling emotionally, it becomes harder still. You desperately want to help, but the more you try to reach them, the further away they sometimes seem to move. Your child starts looking at ways they can cope – such as self harming, lashing out, throwing things, screaming at you and us, as parents are mostly not equipped to deal with such issues.

You want to help but it goes a lot deeper than just whipping them into counselling. I found I could no longer talk with her the way we used to. She wouldn’t open up to me, so of course, I blamed myself for what was happening – even though I did not know what I had done. Probably nothing, but I was the ongoing target of her miseries.

Two steps forward, one step back

Supporting a teenager through a difficult period is rarely a straight road. You can have a wonderful conversation and think you've finally turned a corner. There might be a few good days when they seem happier, more communicative and more like themselves.

Then suddenly you're back where you started. What happened?

Was there an argument? Something at school? A friendship problem? Social media? Lack of sleep? Something I said? Something somebody else said? Or was there no obvious reason at all? When you're living through it day by day, it can be surprisingly difficult to remember what happened or when.

Looking back, this is something I wish I'd thought about sooner. I wish I'd written things down. Not to scrutinise every word or analyse my child, but simply to help myself see the bigger picture: the difficult days, the better days, possible triggers, changes in behaviour and those little signs of progress that are so easily forgotten when another bad day comes along. Sometimes progress isn't a straight line. Having a record can help remind us of that.

The pressures facing teenagers have changed

Being a teenager has never been particularly easy, but today's teenagers are growing up in a world very different from the one many of their parents experienced.

School pressure doesn't necessarily end when they leave school for the day. Friendship problems can follow them home through their phones. Social media provides an endless stream of other people's apparently perfect faces, bodies, friendships and lives against which to compare their own. They're trying to work out who they are while being exposed to opinions, expectations and judgement almost constantly.

As parents, we can't remove all of those pressures. Sometimes we can't even persuade our teenagers to tell us what those pressures are. And feeling unable to make things better for your own child can leave you feeling incredibly helpless.

Parents can feel very alone too

This is the part we perhaps don't talk about enough. When your child is struggling, people quite rightly focus on the child. But who supports the parent? It can be incredibly lonely. You may not want to talk to friends or relatives because it feels too private. You may worry that you're betraying your child's confidence. You may fear people judging your teenager — or judging your parenting. Or it’s just plain embarrassing – you feel like a complete and utter failure as a parent.

Sometimes it simply feels like airing your family's dirty laundry in public. So you say nothing. You carry on with work, shopping, cooking and all the ordinary things that need doing while privately wondering what you're getting wrong and whether things will ever feel normal again. You can love your child fiercely and still find this stage of parenting exhausting, upsetting and bewildering, and those feelings can exist together.

Writing things down can give you somewhere to put it all

You can't always talk to someone. But you can write. A journal doesn't judge your family. It doesn't interrupt. It doesn't tell you what you should have done. It simply gives you somewhere private to put the thoughts that are going round and round in your head.

Writing can also help you step outside the emotion of a difficult moment and notice things you might otherwise miss. What happened before a particularly difficult day? Have certain situations appeared more than once? What seems to help? What makes communication harder? Have there actually been small improvements that you've forgotten because today happens to be a bad day? And importantly: how are you coping?

Because supporting your child shouldn't mean completely forgetting about yourself.

You don't have to have all the answers

Perhaps one of the hardest adjustments in parenting a teenager is accepting that our role has changed. We can't solve every problem anymore. Sometimes our teenagers don't want us to. But being pushed away doesn't mean we've stopped mattering.

We can still be the steady presence in the background. We can listen when they're ready to talk. We can notice when something doesn't seem right. We can celebrate the small steps forward and try not to lose hope when there's another step backwards. And we can acknowledge that this is difficult for us too.

I created Loving Through the Storm – a Coping Journal for Parents Supporting a Child’s Mental Health from an understanding of how lonely and confusing this period can feel.

It's designed to give parents a private place to record thoughts, emotions, behaviours, possible triggers and progress while also making space for their own wellbeing.

Because sometimes you need somewhere to put everything you're carrying — even if, for now, that somewhere is simply the pages of a journal.

It’s been a long four years of being in this cycle and I wonder whether it will ever end and that my child will begin to lead a more normal life. Will I ever feel, like a did a good job again – I once thought I was a good parent. Now, at this present moment, I feel like it’s the opposite. I’m so tired, it has made me question about what I want from life. Having children is making sacrifices about your own life. They always come first no matter what but will I ever get to the point where I can stop feeling like she’ll never get there?