INSIDE: How to connect with your teenage daughter is a question many moms ask. How can you connect with your daughter when you’re mostly experiencing eye rolls? Read on!
The time we have left with our girls before they graduate high school is dwindling like sands through the hour glass (Can you name the soap opera that used that line?!?! I digress…), so I strongly desire to connect with them. My answer to Question #4 from this newsletter, which offered four questions to help you walk into Summer with grace, is connection. This answer beautifully complements what you want to know based on how you voted in a readership survey.
We are moms who care deeply about connecting. 
For the purpose of this email, let’s define connecting as loving our kids/teens in ways they feel loved. So how do we connect with our kids? How do our teens know in their knower that they are loved?
Let’s start by determining what hinders connection. In talking with my girls, observing those around me, and chatting with other moms, love inhibitors take two forms: (1) external deterrents – what’s happening on the outside and (2) internal deterrents – what’s happening inside ourselves. External deterrents can look like busyness and phone usage. Because we’ve covered those in previous newsletters, let’s focus on internal deterrents.

How to connect with your teenage daughter (internal deterrents):

  1. Being too strict
  2. Not being a safe place to land
We want to love as God loves us; we want to parent how God parents us, but our fear (manifesting into excessive rule-making as a way to control potential outcomes) and misunderstanding of our kids’ generation/specific kid behavior + subsequent judgment (meaning we may not feel like a safe space) can stymie our connectivity. Ask me how I know…
Parents who love well give rules, commands, guardrails, structure, and best practices to their children just as our friend Jesus does for us. So clearly, I’m not saying we shouldn’t have rules or that our kids dictate our schedule, rhythms, or their curfews. I am saying that strictness, excessive rules, and saying “no” based on our fear does not help us build connection. (To read more about fear-based parenting, go here.) Arbitrary rules designed to control that are capriciously enforced have the potential to push our kids away. 
Parents who are safe places for their children love like the Lord parents us because we are a rock, a shelter, a safe refuge in the storm that is school and growing up. Kids who do not believe their parents are a safe place will have a hard time connecting with mom and dad. A safe place looks like not overreacting when they share a failure or mistake. Seeking to see understand our child’s point of view and being humble enough to change our mind. Keeping the attention and focus on the child and not pivoting the conversation back to us. Learning what we can about what it’s really like to be a kid or teen in today’s world.
A safe place is where a child sees delight in the eyes of her mom. 

Here are three ways about how to connect with your teenage daughter

  1. Listen: Listening is the most basic (and most difficult!) way to connect. If you’re anything like me, you’re listening for the moment to share advice, a resource, or a solution. You’re also not so great with the game face. And yet, listening is one way our people feel loved. Listening to your child tell you about Minecraft or how to make slime may not be what you want to listen to, but it’s the fastest way to your child’s heart. (And it sets you up for success when your child is a teenager because you’ve built a track record for listening.) To learn more about listening, pop in your earbuds for Becky Harling on Grace In Real Life Episode 173.
  2. Initiate fun: Kids, especially teenagers, are wired to seek out fun. You don’t have to schedule Fun Time; although you can, and your teens will welcome a free ticket to go to the movies with you or a Starbucks on mom’s dime. Perhaps a more simple way is to ask yourself how to incorporate fun and playfulness into what you’re already doing. Can you grab donuts after running errands? Could you leisurely look at earrings instead of dashing in and out of Target at the speed of light? To learn more about initiating fun, listen to Courtney Ellis on Grace In Real Life Episode 170.
  3. Apologize: When you’ve made a mistake or sinned against your child, the fastest way back to connection is to name what you did wrong and ask for your child’s forgiveness. Please remember your apology doesn’t include why your behavior was justified (in your mind), but it does include an acknowledgement of how you didn’t handle a situation correctly and an apology, then an ask for your child’s forgiveness. (Also, please don’t get mad if they say, “No, I don’t forgive you.” Adding anger and shame to an already tenuous situation never helps. I’ve tried it. It doesn’t work.

Here are a few questions to help you connect with your teenage daughter

(The first question is for you, the remainder are for you to ask your child/teen):
  1. How can I tell when I’m connecting with my child? What does that look like for us?
  2. What feels like connection to you? Is it a hug or a high-five? Is it mother-daughter time at Starbucks? Is it me doing your laundry? (Brush up on your child’s love language if you don’t already know it!)
  3. What’s something fun we can do together?
  4. What makes you feel loved? (This question is from Susan Seay)
  5. What could I do right now that would let you know how much I love you? (This question is from Susan Seay)
  6. What are you not telling me out of fear that I might love you less if you told me? (This question is from Susan Seay)
  7. What do I do that makes you feel embarrassed? Irritated? Annoyed? (This question is from Susan Seay)
Friends, remember that connection is not built in a day. Be gracious and excessively gentle with yourself and your child as you work toward connecting in a way that fills his bucket and your bucket, too. Connection means coming in contact with each other, bumping into each other’s rough edges, stopping and starting and stalling out, and starting all over again.
Half the battle in connecting with your children is showing up. 
Keep showing up, friend. Keep putting in the time. Treat learning how to connect with your child as a science experiment: Start with a hypothesis, a.k.a. I think my child/teen might like to do this. Then see if it works. If it works, YAY! If it doesn’t work, that’s okay. Pivot and try again.
Showing up is grace. Leaning in is grace. Learning about what it’s like to be a kid in 2024 is grace. Asking the Lord for help is grace.
You + Jesus = got this!
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