Being happy means knowing it’s not about you. Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
The Struggle with Teen Happiness
As parents, sometimes it seems impossible to bring your teen happiness. However, keeping your child happy is not as hard as it may seem.
The Teen’s Approach to Attaining Happiness
Teens are constantly encouraging each other to pursue what feels good in the moment. They have a “You only live once” attitude. This is what teens do for happiness.
The Parent’s Approach to Bringing Their Teen Happiness
As parents, we tell our teens that their future is what’s important. We care about their grades, conduct, reputation, and attitude. We tell them, “We just want you to be happy,” but we don’t let them play video games until 2 a.m. on a school night. Somehow, we know that’s not good for them even though it makes them happy.
Who’s Right?
Are teenagers correct in thinking you should do whatever feels good in the moment? Are we parents right, who think living should be for our future happiness and goals? Could we both be wrong?
Problems with Living for the Moment
If you only ever live in the present, then everything is momentarily gratifying. However, teens who indulge themselves whenever they feel like it will never have permanent happiness. Once they experience something, they will need a bigger activity/item to bring them the same emotional high. While watching a movie until 10:00 p.m. might have thrilled your child at one point, now they’ll want to stay up all night at a friend’s house for the same feeling.
Consequences that Come from Living for the Moment
Also, bad decisions can be made when teens try to bring themselves happiness using this mindset. An adolescent might have sex with someone they don’t love, try drugs or alcohol, or cheat on a test.
Problems with Living for the Future
On the other hand, if you live only for your future, you will still be unhappy. What a waste to have all the gifts of youth and enjoy none of them. When was the last time you could sprint after your friend while laughing hysterically and not get winded or sore? How long ago was it that you could go out tanning without worrying about skin cancer? When did it last sound like fun to get a block of ice and slide down a long grass hill while trespassing at midnight? You can’t be so focused on your future that you miss everything in front of you.
A Better Answer to Teen Happiness
Now that we’ve exhausted the two most common ways people try to become happy, what’s left? What I am going to propose would be a major shift in your teenager’s thinking. For that kind of shift to take place, you will have to lead the way. Start seeking opportunities to serve others. Show your teen that to achieve lasting happiness you have to focus on something bigger than yourself. That is the real key to teen happiness, helping your child look beyond themself.
Helping Your Teen Find Purpose
It is your job to help your teenager know why they’re here on Earth. If you teach your teenager that their purpose is to attain status and things, then that’s what they’ll pursue. This will leave your child unfulfilled and empty. Their purpose must be a timeless and selfless one. In my family, our purpose is to be dedicated followers of Jesus Christ. We believe this will create a compassionate heart, driven and focused attitude, and happy child. If you don’t choose to go the faith-based route, choose some way to serve others. True teen happiness comes from looking outward, not inward.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Sharing with teenagers Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Have A Better Connection With Your Teen
To have a better connection with your teen, you have to remember what it felt like. Next, you have to tell stories. Your teenager loves to hear about your ups and downs. If you handle it right, they will learn from your mistakes.
Telling Stories to Teenagers to Build Connection
Teenagers feel comfortable with adults who can tell stories that relate to the teen’s reality. If your teenager is occasionally drinking at a party, your teen will respond well to stories about what you did at parties when you were a teenager. Your past can be a place of connection between you and your child. Surprisingly, this is a way to show empathy.
What If Your Teen Is Totally Different Than You Were?
Maybe your teenage years were vastly different from your own child. Perhaps you were a popular athlete, and your kid is an unpopular mathlete. Even if you didn’t have the same exact experience, you can still relate.
There were days when you felt uncomfortable in your own skin and days when you didn’t like your parents. You still had moments of triumph and moments of defeat. Having the exact same experiences is not the important thing. The important thing is helping your adolescent understand that you also had to figure out who you were;it wasn’t easy then either. Their knowing this helps you build better connection with your teen.
Making a Better Connection: How Much to Share With A Teenager
Be discretionary in what you share with your teenager. Don’t overshare. You don’t want to tell your child things that are going to cause them emotional harm. Stay focused on the goal of building connection with your teen, which means sharing at the level of their maturity.
For example, some parents dealt with teen pregnancy when they were younger. They might have terminated the pregnancy, or given the baby up for adoption. Some teens will respond well to this information, but some will feel devastated. You know your child well and have to be discerning about when to share what and in how much detail.
An Example of When to Hold Back
I know a parent who drank a lot and used drugs throughout high school. Sharing this with his child would not be wise in his particular case. This is because his son would use the information as permission to drink and do drugs. He knew not to tell his son because his son seemed to glorify the druggie lifestyle. While this provides an opportunity to build connection with your teen, this dad knew it would be counter-productive.
An Example of Effective Sharing to Build Connection with your Adolescent
I’ve knew another mother who experimented with drugs when she was younger. She chose to share this with her teenage daughter because the daughter listened when the mom told her about some painful consequences. In this case, the daughter saw it as something to learn from.
Tip for Building Better Connection with Your Teen: Don’t Lecture
You don’t want to turn your past stories into an opportunity to lecture your child. This turns teenagers off to you instead of helping teens build better connection with you.
You want it to be a conversation that leads them to feel safe sharing with you too. Don’t use a thinly veiled story from your past as a criticism of your teenager’s current behavior, or as a criticism of their friends. Just tell your story without implying any judgement on anyone else.
Disclosing parts of your past to your children can be enormously beneficial for them. It can help them understand why you are the way you are as a parent. Your child will learn from mistakes they don’t have to make. It can help your kid feel like you relate to what they are going through. Disclosing about your past is an excellent opportunity to build stronger connection with your teen.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Having a good parent-child relationship with a teenager isn’t impossible. Image courtesy of photostock at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Strengthen Your Relationship with Your Teen
It is extremely important to actively work on your relationship with your teenager. It is such a big deal to your teenager that in their own way, they will let you know if it’s not being done properly. Teens want you to strengthen your relationship with them.
How Teens Show You They Want a Better Relationship
They don’t often sit you down to have a chat about how you should spend more time together. Instead teenagers act out by getting poor grades, experimenting with drugs or alcohol, becoming sexually active, or being rude towards you at home, etc. (There are other reasons teens might behave this way too; it’s not one size fits all).
Steps You Can Take to Strengthen Your Relationship with Your Teen
In order to build a stronger relationship with your teenager, there are some things you can do. Start with obvious common ground.
Start with Common Ground
I worked with one teenage boy that hadn’t spoken a word to his father in two years, and they lived in the same house. His father knew the boy liked certain music from the seventies. The father had some of the music on vinyl, so he set up his old record player. He started playing his old albums and didn’t say a word. That got the teenage boy to come out of his room at look at what was going on. His father simply asked him if he’d like to see what other records there were. The teenage boy said he would, and looked through them with his father standing there.
They didn’t say anything to one another, but they were spending time together. The dad stregthened his relationship with his teen through music. The father bought concert tickets and invited the boy. When they went to the concert, the father was very careful not to say anything judgmental about his son, any of the concert-goers, or on any topic for that matter. Over time the boy began to trust his father not to be critical (a past problem between these two). After a year of very slow progress, there is now a real relationship between father and son.
Mark, a therapist on our team, has already raised his teens. He worked very hard to find common ground with both kids. Although hard at the time, it has paid dividends now that they are fully grown.
Don’t Force It, But Don’t Do Nothing
Assess where you are in your relationship with your teen. Start right there. Don’t try and force something that doesn’t exist, and don’t try and make it happen too quickly.
Be Non-Judgemental
Take your time and be patient. Be very cognizant of how many judgments you are making. It is a great idea to keep those to yourself. Be aware of how defensive you are feeling. Remember that you don’t have to respond if your teenager says something offensive, responding is up to you. Sometimes what you don’t say to your teen helps strengthen your relationship.
Prioritize Your Teen
Make your teenager a priority. I guarantee you have some unimportant priorities that seem very big to you. I know that for a fact because we all do. My ridiculous priority that sometimes gets put in front of relationship with my kids is cleanliness. I get so worked up if the house isn’t clean, that I miss valuable time with them.
What are your unnecessary priorities? Is it work? Golf? Football? Exercise? All those things are great, and so is a clean house. They just aren’t great when they become the thing that MUST be done before having focused time with your family. Out of order priorities weaken instead of strengthen your relationship with teen children.
Stronger Relationships with Teens Mean No Blame-Game
A lot of parents come to me and blame their teens for disrupted relationships. Frequently, they tell me that it was much better a couple years ago while they still had an elementary school aged child. However, elementary school aged children usually go with the flow more and do what you say. Typically, they will take an interest in what you’re doing in order to get your attention.
Once you have teens, they think for themselves. They know what they find enjoyable. Even though that might be a little bit different than what you like to do, it doesn’t mean they prefer you not be around. They just prefer you leave if you consistently criticize what they like to do. So instead, consider taking an interest in it. Then you still have an influence on, and still get to spend time with your kid.
Wrapping Up
Developing a stronger relationship with your teenager takes intentionality and work. Unfortunately, adolescents aren’t usually the ones who will make the first step. You might feel like your efforts are falling on deaf ears (It’s even worse when that feels intentional). However, at the end of the day, strengthening your relationship with your teen is essential. You have almost finished raised your child. Don’t give up now even though it feels frustrating and hard!
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Help your teen do better in school with more sleep Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Improving Teen Sleep
Teenagers are notorious for not sleeping enough during the school week, and then sleeping very late on the weekends; proper sleep has great importance for a teen. This disrupts their sleep quality and patterns. However, I truly understand why they do it; most teens are exhausted by the end of the week.
Consequences of Poor Sleep
The importance of teen sleep is paramount. Not sleeping enough causes irritability, poor memory, depressed mood, affects eating patterns, is linked with use of caffeine and nicotine, and lowers immunity. The average teenager needs 9 hours and 15 minutes of sleep every single night. Most are lucky if they get 8 hours. Part of the struggle is that in adolescence it is normal for the circadian rhythm (the body’s natural sleeping and waking pattern) to shift. Adolescents often cannot fall asleep until close to 11pm. However, most schools start around 8am. That means there isn’t even enough time to get proper sleep.
Ways to Improve Sleep
This will seem obvious, but it is worth mentioning. Things that can help your teen fall asleep earlier are keeping their room very dark at night, finishing dinner by 7pm, stopping homework and phone use by 8:30pm, and using the last half hour of the day to wind down. Do not let your teenager have a TV in their room, or let them play video games in their room. Those are two activities associated with mental alertness; their room needs to be associated with rest. Also, their bed should only be used for sleeping. A lot of teens like to do their homework on their bed, text while sitting on their bed, read on their bed, etc. Again, you want your child to mentally associate their bed with sleep. These are all things that can help you get your teen to bed by 9pm.
Why Improving Teen Sleep is Important
Initially you may experience resistance on the idea of an earlier bedtime. Try and explain the benefits. Tell your teenager that school becomes easier with more sleep. Tell them also that they will be healthier, have more energy, and get along better with family. For teens who struggle with their weight, explain to them that the proper amount of sleep links to a healthier body weight.
What Do We Do About Teen Sleep In Counseling
When a parent brings their teenager into counseling with me, one of the first things I check on is how much sleep the teen is getting because of the importance of good teen sleep. Many adolescents come for depressed moods, irritability and low self-worth. Most of the kids who feel this way also are very short on sleep. Many of these kids sleep about 6 hours per night during the school week.
Right away we agree on improving their sleep schedule. We move up their bedtime by a half hour each week until they are in bed with the lights out for 9 hours per night. In about 25% of cases, this is all the adolescent needs to feel completely better. In almost 100% of cases it helps the adolescent feel somewhat better.
After you read this take a few minutes to examine the sleep patterns in your family. Is everyone watching TV before bed? Do some members of the family texting until they fall asleep? Are your kids doing homework until 11pm? Do you have to wake your teenagers up two or three times every morning before they start getting ready for school? These are all signs of bad sleep hygiene (yes, that’s an actual term). Maybe if everyone works on it, the whole household will get along better.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Responsible teens are much happier than entitled ones. Photo courtesy of Marin and freedigitalphotos.net.
Entitlement in Adolescents
A while ago, I was fortunate enough to hear John Townsend speak. He is witty, engaging and above all, wise. He had really good things to say about adolescent entitlement.
One of the key points he made was that we should not say, “I deserve” this or that. That verbage causes us to actually lose power. When we think we deserve something, we assume it’s due us. That means we’re upset when we don’t have it, and we don’t see how to go and get it for ourselves.
What To Do If Your Teen Is Entitled
If your teenager tells you, “I deserve an iPhone,” it means they’ve given you all the power to control when and how they get it. They are completely relying on you to provide this for them. Instead it’s much better to teach your children (and yourselves) to use the words, “I’m responsible” to get the thing you want. If your adolescents learn to say this, they then believe it’s within their power to earn things. I agree with Dr. Townsend on this point completely because it teaches your teens motivation, and goal setting. Those two things can be hard to teach a teen, but they help to end entitlement in adolescents.
Entitlement to Special Treatment
Another point Dr. Townsend made that was fantastic is essentially to be very careful about believing you’re “exempt from responsibility,” and therefore, “owed special treatment.” When you read that sentence, I’m sure you don’t think you’re guilty of this. Afterall, at first I didn’t. Then he went on to explain that ALL of us do this from time to time. We think it’s fine to share our opinions without being careful of someone else’s feelings. We can be particularly guilty of this on social media. However, we don’t want to hear opinions contrary to our own; that’s deemed offensive.
The Most Common Area of Teen Entitlement
When it comes to teens, I hear the problem of being “exempt from responsibility” and “owed special treatment” in one particular area all the time. This is with their teachers and coaches. I hear teens’ parents tell me their child had a bad teacher or bad coach. They say this in front of their teenager. This causes entitlement in your adolescent. Some parents even go as far as to change their teenager’s schedule at school in order to get a particular teacher and avoid others. My question to you if you do this is: Why does your child deserve the best teacher? It’s nice when it happens, but does anybody deserve that? And, there’s that word “deserve” again.
Responsibility in Adolescents is the Opposite of Entitlement
The better thing to teach your child is to be responsible for finding a way to learn and earn a good grade even with the less engaging teachers. There’s that other word, “responsible.” Besides, learning to function with less than optimum learning conditions is more important than learning the subject matter. How many times in your life have you used your 11th grade trigonometry from that class with the great math teacher? Compare this with how many situations you’ve been in where your boss or client was less than great. Aren’t you glad you learned to cope with “bad” teachers after all?
What Can Parents Do?
Firstly, you have the ability to model good behavior. Show a lot of gratitude for all the things in your life. Understand that God gives and takes away as He wills. We aren’t owed anything in this life. Your kids will greatly benefit from that outlook too. They’ll work hard and enjoy what they have, but they won’t be destroyed every time they don’t get their way.
At Teen Therapy OC, combatting entitlement in adolescents towards parents is a key goal in nearly every counseling relationship. Many, many adolescents who come in struggle with entitlement. They are angry with parents for “taking away my phone,” or “not letting me go out with my friends.” Of course this doesn’t describe everyone, but for those it does, we work on adolescent entitlement reduction. Everyone ends up happier.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Sleep is vital to your teen. Image courtesy of imagerymajestic at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
Importance of Good Sleep
I’m bringing up teen sleeping habits because I hear parents express concern over this in my therapy office all the time. I have to admit, how well and how consistently your adolescent sleeps is a really big deal.
Good sleep has very strong links to happiness, immune functioning, ability to perform in school, memory, safe driving, and the list goes on.
Why Are Teens Short on Sleep?
Teenagers are notorious for foregoing sleep in order to complete homework assignments, text their friends, play video games, and go on TikTok. However, none of these are a good excuse not to get about eight hours of sleep per night. If your teen is occasionally staying up late to finish an assignment that’s one thing, but if they do this night after night, this is a problem.
Surprisingly, adolescents still need a hard and fast bedtime. Furthermore, you have to enforce it. It’s essential for their health and well-being. If they have trouble waking up in the morning for school, then it means they aren’t sleeping enough. That’s their body telling them to get to bed earlier.
The Family’s Role in Good Teen Sleep
Interestingly, there’s a good chance if your teen has poor sleep habits you do too. So what steps can you take? Firstly, get yourself on a good sleep schedule, and stop watching late night TV. Your sleep is absolutely more important! As a result, you will be more productive at work, nicer to your family, a more enjoyable friend, and you will quite possibly shed those few extra pounds that have been nagging at you. Essentially, people who sleep well actually crave healthier foods and exercise more easily (they are more energized).
Secondly, prioritize this aspect of health in your family culture. There is a tremendous emphasis on the foods we eat and the amount we exercise in today’s culture. Obviously that’s reasonable. On the contrary, there’s not nearly enough discussion about the value of sleep in one’s overall health. Getting enough sleep improves immunity, thought clarity, lowers disease risk, and prevents injuries. And, it feels good!
What if My Teen Sleeps Too Much?
On the other hand, if your worries about your teenager’s sleep come from the other side of the spectrum, there are different concerns. For example, if your teen naps often and also sleeps eight plus hours per night, then I have a different set of concerns. Excessive sleep is a symptom, but there are many differing problems that cause hypersomnia in adolescents. Here are a few: depression, drug use, endocrine issues, and physical illness. It’s very important to talk with your doctor in this situation. Your doctor might recommend psychiatry or therapy, but your doctor might also catch something else that’s wrong. In any case, for your teenager to need a total of more than 10 hours of sleep per 24 hour stretch warrants a conversation with a doctor.
Once you get the family back on a good sleeping schedule, everyone’s life will be better, and everyone in your household will be happier. Our therapists at TTOC love to talk about sleep! We want to help everyone in your family sleep more and sleep better. We especially believe in its importance for your developing teenager.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Hello, I’m Lauren! If you notice your teen struggling, you might be feeling helpless, hopeless, frustrated or concerned as a parent. Try to remember, there is hope. I want to help your adolescent feel better. My hope is for them to enjoy their life again. I want them to feel confident they can handle whatever situations arise.
