Be thankful for your kids, they are a gift from God.
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We have so much to be grateful for.  It is incredible that we can live in a country with so much freedom.  God truly blessed each and every one of us in ways we take for granted every single day.  Even having clean water and enough to eat is not a given in many parts of the world.

The reason I remind you of this is because if you’re reading my blog it means you’re probably hurting.  It means your teenager is behaving in some way that scares you.  It means you’re feeling overwhelmed as a parent and you aren’t sure what to do to help your child.  That is the most helpless feeling in the world.

It does us a lot of good to count our blessings.  This is especially true when it comes to your teenager.  I realize things are tough right now, but there are a lot of things going right too.  It’s very easy to become very focused on resolving one problem.  When you do this, you forget to see all the other things that aren’t problems.

I have a few clients in my therapy practice who struggle with body image.  Their focus on their body image is so intense that it often dominates the teen’s whole life.  It’s difficult for the parents of these teens because they worry about whether their child is eating enough, exercising too much, or just loathing their appearance.  The parents of these children have found it helpful to refocus on what is going right with their kids.  In some of the cases, these teens still maintain good grades and do not use any substances.  They are still loving and engaged with the family.  These parents try and keep perspective that there is a lot going well even though there is also a problem.

Life is like that, isn’t it?  We see problems run parallel with blessings all the time.  We shouldn’t ignore the problems, but we shouldn’t ignore the blessings either.  In fact, if you think back over your whole life, I bet you can hardly identify a time when things were all good or all bad.

Raising kids is about maintaining the perspective that things could always be better and always be worse.  Tell them constantly what you’re thankful for about them.  Work with them on improving what they can do better, but don’t make that the only thing you talk about- that would come across as critical.  You want them to know all the reasons you think they’re great too.

Helping teens grow and families improve connection,

Lauren Goodman, MFT