Your terrible teens
Last winter, Linda Green’s* Ottawa home was a domestic war zone. Her daughter, Annie*, then 16, wanted to take two high school summer courses in the Mediterranean and Linda, 47, wanted to see her do it. “I looked at it as an opportunity for her to find her passion for learning again,” she said at the time. But Linda’s husband, Jake*, was adamant he wouldn’t pay a cent toward the trip. “She doesn’t deserve it,” he told Linda. “She’s rude and she leaves her stuff all over the place. She has no respect for anyone.”
Jake and Annie’s relationship had been deteriorating for a while. By March, it had become so bad Linda was afraid to leave them alone together. “When I’m there, I can mediate a bit,” she says. “But otherwise they can’t be in the same room without fighting.” Linda and Jake hadn’t always seen eye to eye on how to handle their daughter, but on this issue of whether to fund the trip, they were truly split. “I felt as though he was seeing only the worst in her,” recalls Linda, pointing out that Annie had a straight-A average but had become bored at school. “I was beginning to feel as if it could become a deal breaker,” she reveals. “I wasn’t even sure he loved her anymore.”
I felt her pain. When my daughter, Carly, was in her teens, I wondered if my marriage would survive. The niggling differences in how my husband, Paul, and I dealt with our kids had probably always been there. But they became more pronounced as it became obvious our sweet-natured, sunny daughter had been kidnapped by aliens and replaced by a moody, anarchic clone. Paul and I rarely agreed on the right response to Carly’s tendency to break the rules and worry us half to death. I felt we should be stricter, agree on consequences and then abide by them. He thought that tactic would only drive her away. I believed he undermined my attempts to discipline and he believed...well, I don’t really know what he believed. He wasn’t all that great at articulating it.
Our experience is hardly unique. The fact is, says Leah MacInnes, a registered marriage and family therapist (RMFT) in Victoria and president of the British Columbia Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, our kids’ teen years are an inherently difficult time — and not just for them. “Parents have to achieve a balance,” she explains, “between allowing their child to be independent, but also keeping her safe. Frequently, parents have differing views about how to set limits and boundaries.”
When you and your spouse come from different backgrounds, those views may diverge even more dramatically. “We learn how to parent from how we were raised, or sometimes in opposition to how we were raised,” affirms MacInnes. Such was the case with Linda, born into a liberal household, and Jake, who hails from a strict religious background. “Rudeness and what I would regard as normal teenage behaviour just weren’t tolerated in his home,” Linda explains, “whereas I’m able to let a lot of stuff roll off my back. I see it as being about a child growing up. She hasn’t figured out yet how to behave, when to hold her tongue and how to play the game.”
Jake and Annie’s relationship had been deteriorating for a while. By March, it had become so bad Linda was afraid to leave them alone together. “When I’m there, I can mediate a bit,” she says. “But otherwise they can’t be in the same room without fighting.” Linda and Jake hadn’t always seen eye to eye on how to handle their daughter, but on this issue of whether to fund the trip, they were truly split. “I felt as though he was seeing only the worst in her,” recalls Linda, pointing out that Annie had a straight-A average but had become bored at school. “I was beginning to feel as if it could become a deal breaker,” she reveals. “I wasn’t even sure he loved her anymore.”
I felt her pain. When my daughter, Carly, was in her teens, I wondered if my marriage would survive. The niggling differences in how my husband, Paul, and I dealt with our kids had probably always been there. But they became more pronounced as it became obvious our sweet-natured, sunny daughter had been kidnapped by aliens and replaced by a moody, anarchic clone. Paul and I rarely agreed on the right response to Carly’s tendency to break the rules and worry us half to death. I felt we should be stricter, agree on consequences and then abide by them. He thought that tactic would only drive her away. I believed he undermined my attempts to discipline and he believed...well, I don’t really know what he believed. He wasn’t all that great at articulating it.
Our experience is hardly unique. The fact is, says Leah MacInnes, a registered marriage and family therapist (RMFT) in Victoria and president of the British Columbia Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, our kids’ teen years are an inherently difficult time — and not just for them. “Parents have to achieve a balance,” she explains, “between allowing their child to be independent, but also keeping her safe. Frequently, parents have differing views about how to set limits and boundaries.”
When you and your spouse come from different backgrounds, those views may diverge even more dramatically. “We learn how to parent from how we were raised, or sometimes in opposition to how we were raised,” affirms MacInnes. Such was the case with Linda, born into a liberal household, and Jake, who hails from a strict religious background. “Rudeness and what I would regard as normal teenage behaviour just weren’t tolerated in his home,” Linda explains, “whereas I’m able to let a lot of stuff roll off my back. I see it as being about a child growing up. She hasn’t figured out yet how to behave, when to hold her tongue and how to play the game.”
