Research confirms that young people are experiencing high rates of loneliness, often at higher levels than older age groups. This is never truer than at Christmas when the stress on togetherness and online images of idealised festive cheer can counter-intuitively make people feel even more isolated.

Research confirms that young people are experiencing high rates of loneliness, often at higher levels than older age groups

In 2025, a survey found that 72% of 16 to 25-year-olds said loneliness negatively impacts their mental health, much higher than any other age group. Another large review identified loneliness as peaking between ages 18 and 29, with one in three young adults reporting frequent loneliness. The Duke of Sussex, meanwhile, gave an impromptu speech earlier this autumn at the Diana Award in central London also talking of the loneliness that many young people experience. He described how young people could feel isolated if “lost and separated from a group”.

Social media clearly has a lot to answer for. Young people see images of others supposedly enjoying perfect holidays online which naturally makes it seem as if their own celebrations don’t match up. Those who have grown up with social media have fewer real-life interactions and can suffer too from bullying or adverse experiences online.

The legacy of Covid and the advent of widespread working from home hasn’t helped. When I was researching my own book on adolescent mental health recently, one mother told me that her teenager had become so shy during Covid that she would send her to the shop with a written list to hand over to the shopkeeper in case she was struck mute with nerves.

What, then, can we do? The psychiatrist Dr Jamie Arkell from London’s Nightingale Hospital tells me he now asks his young patients to measure exactly how many hours a day they are online, how that makes them feel, and how they might reduce their screen time over the festive season. Some psychiatrists are beginning to give “disconnection prescriptions”.

My own view from running workshops for parents and teachers on adolescent mental health is that we are better off also focussing on the ‘pull’ of what we might call soul-time at this spiritual time of year and activities that connect with others, rather than the ‘push’ of less scroll time. What we focus on expands; we are what we pay our attention to, as our brain rewires itself and constantly creates new neural pathways. So, we do well to focus on the good stuff.

I’m referring to the timeless benefits of offline living and in-person activities, especially volunteering. Numerous studies confirm that acts of kindness cheer us up, benefit society, as well as healing some of the damage of isolation at this time of year. Focus outwards, not inwards. Helping others can help us in turn.

We are better off also focussing on the ‘pull’ of what we might call soul-time at this spiritual time of year, rather than the ‘push’ of less scroll time

Seek out chances to get outside, play sport, and spend time in the kind of public spaces which are being designed more thoughtfully to invite connection: benches facing each other, communal talk tables, free chess boards and community walls for public expression and local event promotion. There are already “Happy to chat” benches which feature a sign saying “Sit here if you don’t mind someone stopping to say hello” popping up in Newcastle. Many bookshops now serve as digital detox zones, offering cafés, events, and open-mic nights.

And there is one upside to our digital age. There is support online for young people from charities including SANE, The Mix, Mind and the Samaritans. As for us? Invite someone young over in addition to your elderly neighbour.

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Recently I received an email from a friend about her daughter, let’s call her Jenny. She had been to Oxford, had got A*s in all her exams, and was doing a graduate law degree sponsored by a Magic Circle law firm. Yet Jenny also struggled with insomnia and had periods of acute procrastination which ‘rattled her’ as a person who always set herself high standards, her mother explained. Did I know a therapist who might help?

Then there’s the case of Laura Delano, author of the recently published How The Mental Health Industry Took Over My Life – And My Fight to Get It Back. Reflecting on her life now, Laura says: “I remember thinking: why is life all about getting good grades, being a good athlete, having good manners, being thin, and all these superficial elements? I became obsessed with achieving to the point where I developed an eating disorder and was exercising six hours per day. As the eldest of three siblings, I felt pressure to be a role model.”

The dangers of perfectionism among young people and indeed their parents have been preoccupying me too for a while

And finally, along comes Dr Tara Porter, a child psychologist who has worked with adolescents for more than 25 years in the NHS and has recently written Good Enough: A Framework for Parents. She realised that all her patients had something in common. “Whatever their diagnosis,” she writes “the kids weren’t feeling good enough”.

The dangers of perfectionism among young people and indeed their parents have been preoccupying me too for a while. It’s something I’ve written about in my own new book The Gift of Teenagers. Because it matters. Trying to be perfect can damage us, as well as our teenagers. Not only does it engender this miserable feeling of being unworthy, it can also hold us back. Neither we, nor our teenagers, take risks, for fear of exacerbating those unpleasant feelings of failure even more.

Why do we strive for perfection?

This drive for perfectionism was identified by the British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott as early as the 1950s. He specialised in relationships between parents and children. In his clinical practice, he often met parents who felt like failures: parental shortcomings came with shame and fear of social judgement. Psychologists developed a model for measuring perfectionism in 1991, and gradually as a society we have gravitated further and further towards an ideal of flawlessness, even as the challenges we are facing as parents have become more complex.

“Our culture has become so competitive we need to feel special and above average just to feel okay about ourselves”

One reason may be society’s fixation on economic growth. In our capitalist system, companies and marketeers encourage us to be dissatisfied with how we are, in the quest for greater sales. A second reason may be the rise of social media and its images of perfect individuals and idealised family life, which have exacerbated our tendency to compare ourselves to others.

A third reason for the ever-expanding trap of perfectionism is our competitive culture. As the Texan academic Kristin Neff has argued, “Our culture has become so competitive we need to feel special and above average just to feel okay about ourselves . . . [We create] what psychologists call a ‘self-enhancement bias’: puffing ourselves up and putting others down.”

How then can we dial down this drive to be the best? Not just in general, but when it comes to being parents? Because if we parents can be less perfectionist, this in turn is the best way to help our teenagers. And most importantly, how can we reduce some of the shame and disappointment in ourselves for not managing this? How can we instead believe we are good enough? And make this attitude an essential part of our parental thinking? And in turn share these ideas with our troubled teenagers, and be models for them of a different approach?

How to escape the perfectionist trap

Four strategies have helped me avoid the trap of perfectionism: believing in the virtues of imperfection, adopting a less goal-oriented approach, focusing on my inner worth, and becoming less judgemental of myself and others.

For strategy one, let’s return to Winnicott. He coined the phrase ‘the good enough mother’ in his 1971 book Playing and Reality, a collection of papers published during his career. He acknowledged the inevitability of imperfect parenting, believing that the good enough mother starts with an “almost complete adaption to her infant’s needs”. But over time she allows the baby to experience small moments of frustration. She is not perfect, but ‘good enough’.

It is not just that we don’t need to be perfect, but that we should avoid it for the sake of our children. We need to fail our children on a regular basis so they can learn to live in an imperfect world. There is no such thing as a mistake, only chances to learn. We flourish because of self-repair and so do our teenagers.

The second way to feel good enough is to look at activities, and our approach to them, as either ‘telic’ or ‘atelic’ pursuits. Telic activities – from the Greek telos, meaning goal or purpose – dominate our lives. Give the presentation, pass the exam, write the book. The value of each is perceived in terms of the completion of the goal. The more goals we complete, the closer we edge to feeling perfect.

We need to fail our children on a regular basis so they can learn to live in an imperfect world

The immediate problem with telic activities, of course, is that finishing the task throws up a new dilemma: if the purpose was to finish the task, what is the purpose now the project is completed? What next? The answer is often to take on another project. Life, and our children, are then in danger of being seen as a series of projects – both personal in the case of parenting, and professional. Our sense of fulfilment is only temporary, during the brief window when a project is completed. The pressure is then on to complete the next project. It is a natural breeding ground for perfectionists.

Contrast this with atelic (non-goal-based) activities. The value of these pursuits does not lie solely in their completion. To find such activities, ask yourself why you are doing something. Is it for the result? Or because you find it fulfilling? It might be walking for walking’s sake, especially circular trips rather than A-to-B walks. Baking for baking’s sake, and not necessarily to produce a cake for someone’s birthday. Reading a book not because it will deepen your knowledge, but because the subject just interests you. All good Idler pursuits!

This brings me to my third strategy for feeling good enough: focusing on inner worth. Our inner calm comes from feeling connected with ourselves. True confidence comes from focusing on our innate qualities as a human being: the gifts with which we were born. These qualities stand, whatever else we do and whatever boxes we tick that are recognized as valuable by others.

Finally, strategy four. Try and be less judgemental. The more we judge others, the more we judge ourselves. It is counterproductive: it puts us back on the validation treadmill. The less we engage in these kinds of judgemental comments about other parents, the less we engage in these same judgemental conversations about ourselves. By not judging others we allow ourselves a more open and curious approach, outside the dynamic of winning or losing, of being right or wrong. Or perfect or imperfect.

Thus armed, my hope is you yourself might defeat the scourge of perfectionism, and become a role model to your children of how to do so too. And in the future there just maybe fewer Jennies and Lauras.

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Living in difficult circumstances, being over-supervised, the need to feel special, the rise of mobile phones, the breakdown of traditional families, and the spanner Covid threw in all these works have all played their part in worsening adolescent psychological health. The key question then is, how can we decide if our teenager really has a problem, or if they are just dealing with what at times, we can all agree, is a tough gig?

It’s tricky. The current diagnostic system is still largely based on symptoms reported by the patient, in this case already anxious teenagers saturated in the language of mental health from social media. We have (as yet) no blood test, or brain scan, that can say for sure whether we are suffering from a mental health disorder. Although mental health problems are often compared to physical ones – ‘it’s no different to breaking a leg’ – actually, that may not be true when it comes to the complexities of diagnosis.

Diagnosis in mental health is more an art than a science: the doctor is forming impressions, reading nuances, listening to silences.

Psychiatrists are trained to arrive at diagnoses, and are guided by manuals such as the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and The International Classification of Diseases, works that have largely been developed through research and clinical consensus and which change as the research itself changes. Psychiatrists also rely on their own skilled assessments, and ways of asking questions about an individual and how they are functioning, to decide on a diagnosis. However, in the absence of physical diagnostic tests, it remains the case that diagnosis in mental health is always going to be less certain than in other fields of medicine.

One sign of this uncertainty has been an expansion in the number of possible mental health conditions, described by the psychologist Lucy Foulkes as ‘prevalence inflation’17 and by others as ‘diagnosis creep’ – the American DSM now runs to 1,000 pages; the first edition in 1952 was just 100 pages long. Critics say we now pathologize normal human experience. Whereas once a person was shy, now they might be diagnosed with ‘avoidant personality disorder’. There is also a trend in the DSM of lowering the threshold of what it takes to be diagnosed with a given disorder. In earlier editions, someone might need to have shown symptoms of many conditions for six months. Now the duration has been reduced to three.

Saying our child has a mental health condition assumes that there is a precise threshold they have reached, when there is no such clear-cut line when it comes to mental health problems.

Many doctors in the field acknowledge this and find it more helpful to talk about whether a teenager has more severe symptoms and needs more help. This acknowledges the blurred boundaries: some dispute whether most diagnosed conditions are illnesses at all. Even if we can successfully group clusters of symptoms, it doesn’t mean there is any biological basis – which is what diagnosis implies.

Deciding on a diagnosis is trickier still when dealing with sufferers who are naturally volatile, which means sometimes the nature of childhood symptoms (and therefore any diagnosis) will change over time. One minute teenagers are seemingly fine, the next so desperate that we fear we are out of our depth and need specialist help to cope with their distress. More than with adults, their problems can settle down naturally through this process of change, but equally it is easy to miss how bad things can be.

Tim Owen, whose daughter Emily died by suicide in March 2020, says she was on fine form in the days before she died, and indeed suicide is often preceded by a good or better mood than usual. Owen, who with two other bereaved parents has set up the fundraising and campaigning group Three Dads Walking,18 recalls how Emily had visited her grandparents, singing Taylor Swift on the way home, and did a food shop for her parents and three siblings as lockdown loomed. The next day she was agitated, leaving the house and slamming the door behind her. Her parents found her after a quarter of an hour. She was taken to hospital and died five days later.

How to judge if your child needs help

The dangers of over-medicalizing ordinary teenage angst, the difficulties of psychiatric diagnoses, and the volatility and secrecy of teenagers themselves mean that it is challenging for us parents to judge the extent to which a teenager needs professional help. A sensible approach is to ask yourself – and others involved with your child, such as their teacher – a series of questions, while bearing in mind some of the confusion around this topic more broadly: how intense are the symptoms, and how long have they lasted? Does the problem feel overwhelming, to the point where the issue is dominating your teenager’s life? Is it putting your teenager’s physical safety in danger? And: would they like to get some help?

You might also look out for the following warning signs that your teenager might need professional help: changes in school performance (teachers are again relevant here); a drop in grades; changes in sleeping habits; changes in eating habits; excessive worry or anxiety – to the point of refusing to go to school, for example; hyperactivity; persistent nightmares; persistent disobedience or aggression; getting into trouble at school; and showing less interest in the things they used to enjoy.

Sharing parental responsibility

Even if a teenager is showing many of these symptoms, many parents resist getting help. It is hard to accept that our youngsters are suffering. What have we done wrong? Why is our love for them not enough to make them happy? We might resist getting help because it makes us feel like failures wracked by guilt and shame. And we might be wary of stepping into an unknown world of professionals, possible medication, and doctors who might disrupt our relationship with our beloved offspring, or who might suggest an approach with which we disagree. Surely we are enough for our teenagers, as the people who have invested in and loved our children for longest?

But this is about them, not us or our relationship. There’s a problem that needs addressing. It is okay to get help, and many of us need help with our children’s psychological health from time to time. If our child had a physical problem, we would get help rather than blame ourselves. (On which note: we might also book an appointment with the GP in case there is a physical issue affecting our teenager, perhaps low iron levels explaining lassitude, or an off-kilter thyroid explaining mood swings.)

You probably feel it is 100 per cent your responsibility to fix the problem, but others can help.

Try making a pie chart in your head. Who is responsible, for example, if your child is refusing to go to school? Naturally the school’s culture will be relevant, as well as your teenager’s peer group. Your partner? Another chunk. Your teenager themselves? Yes, another bit. Mental health services? Say another part of the pie. Yes, you too are involved, but you are not the only person responsible for your teenager’s welfare or getting them the support they need.

Be gentle on yourself. No one is a perfect parent: we all make mistakes that may or may not have contributed to our teenager’s distress. While you may be able to help your teenager deal with some of the reasons for their psychological misery, other causes of mental health problems may leave less scope for your involvement or ability to help. There is only so much that any parent can have power over. There are times when life can be against us. For all our best intentions, sometimes our teenagers’ lives are affected by something beyond a family’s control, and we need help from others.

[1]
https://www.bmj.com/content/389/bmj.r1351

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Most of the commentary focused on why this is the case. Some said it is because parents feel guilty: in the UK more than half of working families consist of both parents in full-time jobs and parents may feel it's better to let teenagers do what they want than ask them to walk the dog. Others note that there's often an app to help nowadays, be that summoning someone to wash the car or indeed to walk the dog, not to mention automatic mowers.

I think there is something too about the idea that we can cook, do the laundry and make their appointments more quickly and efficiently than them.

There can be something pleasing about showing our competence. Sometimes we do more for our children as we are under pressure ourselves; it is quicker to do so. Or sometimes we keep helping them out as a way of showing our love.

Whatever the reasons for doing stuff ourselves, actually if you can, resist the temptation to do all their chores at home. There is a correlation between those who do the most housework and those who succeed at school. Doing chores teaches skills, teamwork, dependability, the value of money, self-reliance and conscientiousness, and you may be better tempered with some help too.

How then to make this happen? How do we actually get our teenagers to do such things as remembering to buy loo roll, familiarising themselves with car insurance, removing a build-up of lint from the filter of the washing machine, or cleaning the toilet?

At the least do some chores together so that they pick up some basic household skills such as grocery shopping or doing the laundry before they leave home, for their safety apart from anything else. One teenager, on arriving at university, put her jumper in the oven to warm it up before she put it on. Another put her knickers in the microwave, thinking it was a washing machine, and they set on fire.

We get more of the behaviour we take notice of

If we regularly complain about freshly laundered clothes on the floor which our teenager hasn’t put away, or crusted cereal bowls under the bed, then counter-intuitively we are likely to get more of the same. A teenager is getting the message that they’ve done wrong and are bad and lazy.

They will internalise this message and will have no incentive to change. By contrast, if we notice examples of helpful behaviour – ‘I really appreciate you taking the rubbish out’ or ‘I noticed you tidied up the kitchen and emptied the dishwasher’ – teenagers will be more likely to help. The trick is to be specific about exactly what they’ve done, rather than any generalities about being helpful, which are vague and could be annoying.

Be specific

You could also be specific about sharing with your teenagers the true effort that goes into household chores. I remember writing a list of what exactly goes into making a meal, from its real start to its real finish. This means meal planning, writing down the ingredients on a shopping list, doing the grocery shop, cleaning the kitchen in preparation for cooking (this may include unloading the dishwasher or clearing the draining board), cooking the meal, setting the table, serving the meal, fetching all the things you forgot to put on the table, clearing the table, cleaning, scrubbing, rinsing, sweeping, and wiping until all evidence of the meal that was cooked and eaten has disappeared.

It was the level of detail that struck them, a level which in turn made them more willing to help, as they knew how much work others were doing on their behalf.

Appeal to their autonomy

We want them to learn that cleaning up after themselves is part of being a functioning adult, and that housework and chores can and must be part of ordinary life. The more we give them responsibility for such goals, without overly supervising them beyond a broad framework like ‘Can you sort this by Monday?’, the more they are likely to respond.

We can present household chores as times when teenagers are allowed and able to zone out and tilt into a different state, away from the usual pressures of friends and homework. Suggest they let their thoughts and moods calm down when they hoover or walk the dog. Household duties give them a break while nurturing new skills. There’s an easy satisfaction to sweeping the back garden or folding laundry, which can be pleasing antidotes to a challenging piece of coursework.

Treat them like a lodger

One shift in mindset that helped me is to ‘treat them more like a lodger’. If you wouldn’t routinely do it for a lodger, don’t do it for them. Don’t infantilise them by always cleaning their football boots, or doing their washing and ironing, or repeatedly taking their dirty mugs downstairs. Here’s a simple way to put this approach into practice: every time they ask you to do something for them, see if you can be happy with them doing the task on their own.

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To its advocates, gentle parenting means raising your children in the way you wished your parents had raised you, with empathy, respect and boundaries.

The term was coined by Sarah Ockwell-Smith who has written several books with gentle in the title and lives in Saffron Walden in Essex. She says gentle parenting doesn’t mean never saying no, nor does it mean allowing siblings to hit each other. But it does mean avoiding punishments and consequences.

To its critics, this less authoritative approach has led to trouble. Yes, children now have more emotional intelligence, therapy is normalised, and young people know how to name their feelings. But those like Supernanny Jo Frost says that alongside such shifts, children also are more anxious, emotionally fragile, entitled and tend to over-think things.

Parents too have suffered, says Frost. They are overly focussed on feelings and believe correcting children is shaming, and any rules and consequences can be traumatic for their offspring. They tend to overshare with their children, discussing their adult concerns in an inappropriate way. The result is children who worry more and play less.

What then is the answer? My own view is that we need to strike a middle, more nuanced course between these extremes. If we try too hard to sympathise and empathise with our teenagers, placating them at every turn, we will exhaust ourselves. It might sound selfish, but putting our own needs first can make more sense. Otherwise we can become resentful if we don’t sometimes say no and fail to establish rules and boundaries.

Doing our best to discover who our teenager is, and validating and understanding them as far as possible, needs to be balanced with teaching them to respect and appreciate others, including us. It’s about talking about our life together, and acknowledging that we have needs too; it’s about being authoritative, not authoritarian.

One mother told me the most useful phrase she employed with her teenagers was, ‘Here are my limits, because I care for myself, as well as caring for you. The two go together.’ We can be compassionate by being firm and drawing boundaries, and in my case, not letting my need to be liked overcome my need to sometimes disagree.

Boundaries may generally work better than rules

How do you share space in your family home? What expectations do you have about everyday challenges and interactions, such as what they wear or eat, and generally how they behave around the house? Many believe that communicating rules in such spheres give children security and a safe space to develop, letting them taste their autonomy without becoming overwhelmed. But having a lot of family rules to govern personal behaviour and for more minor matters has never worked that well for me.

A rule seems made to be broken. The only game everyone wants to play is the one that is forbidden, and it is exhausting trying to defend rules. As parents we may try to control them (often because we think their bad behaviour reflects badly on us). But of course, as we’ve seen, no-one likes to be bossed around or told what to do.

I’ve found that teenagers respond best to rough guidelines, or family conventions for everyday issues around sharing space, such as doing the washing up or tidying their room. Others prefer to use the word ‘boundaries’, which are not synonymous with rules and imply some flexibility. All these are gentler and less judgemental than the word ‘rule’. After breaking a rule, we feel guilty, a feeling that rarely helps because it is so unpleasant. We can’t break a guideline in quite the same way. We need to focus on the behaviour we would like to see, and be an example of it ourselves, rather than focusing on what they are not to do.

This is never truer than when it comes to considerate behaviour. It is more likely to ensue if we are considerate to our teenagers ourselves. For example, if we do not check our phones at mealtimes (guilty M’Lud) then they are less likely to do so themselves.

Children stick to the established conventions of their family if they realise the conventions have a purpose, that they are not just arbitrary but are about sharing space in a civilised way and behaving sensibly.

Say you would prefer your teenagers not to eat takeaway pizzas or burgers at home. Instead of having a rule that this is always forbidden – the very word makes the prospect exciting! – you might discuss the topic with them, and jointly come up with some guidelines. For example, ‘I prefer us to eat healthy, home-cooked food, and we should both try to cook healthy food. But sometimes a takeaway is okay. How does that sound?’

This is a guideline, one that allows for some flexibility and wriggle room for both of you (who doesn’t crave a takeaway from time to time?) and, crucially, one that lets your teenager have agency in how they choose to interpret your guideline. The more they are involved, and the more they feel that this is not something you are imposing on them, the more they are likely to acquiesce.

But sometimes only a rule will do…

There are a few times, though, when only a rule will do, chiefly when it comes to teenage safety, whether that’s physical safety (travelling late at night) or biological safety (not taking noxious substances). Rules are especially needed for younger teenagers, whom we cannot always trust to make good choices about their own welfare. Good rules are about caring for them, rather than trying to control them.

A useful phrase could be, ‘I have to be honest about my concerns.’ And it’s about them understanding that their behaviour has repercussions on others – including us parents.

The best approach I found to setting rules was to believe in my own legitimate authority as a parent and as an adult in their lives who cared about them much, and who worked hard at staying connected to them. Rules work when combined with warmth, a combination typical of a style of parenting known as ‘authoritative’.

Authority is built on closeness. While we can all suffer from impostor syndrome, the truth was I did know best, and clear rules were needed when safety was concerned. This was not the same as being needlessly authoritarian about topics that didn’t matter, like how they dressed.

Of course, part of setting rules was accepting that I would not always be popular. My own people-pleasing tendency had to be put to one side, as did a lingering attraction to child-centred parenting. But as Dr Riviere put it to me, ‘I would be concerned if my teenagers always thought I was great.’ She added, ‘Children don’t follow rules so much as follow relationships.’ Even if they seem to disagree with you, if your relationship is close, your teenagers will naturally have a core of respect for you, one that is not earned through appeasement.

My teenagers knew they must call if they were staying out longer than an agreed curfew time. Another rule was that they must have discussed with us how they were planning to get home safely, and they had to keep their phones on.

As my teenagers got older, there were fewer and fewer rules. I had to trust them to make their own choices within broad parameters. Yes, of course they were going to make mistakes, but that was how they were going to learn. It is okay for teenagers to have their own views. Who are we to say what are the right and wrong choices for them? Working that out for themselves is a big part of establishing themselves as individuals and forging their own path.

Do sanctions work when things go wrong?

Often when things go wrong, whether that is a teenager being rude to us, or getting drunk, or breaking a rule, it is because the teenager has been overwhelmed by strong feelings. There is always an emotion underpinning the behaviour, and ideally we want to know what that emotion is and try to help them with it.

By contrast, sanctions are often about trying to apply logic to a system run by emotion: but this logic can’t always overpower the emotion in question. The next time your teenager is overwhelmed by their emotions, are they really going to be able to pause and think, ‘Wait a second, if I do this, I’ll be punished’.

The immediate gratification of punishment may make a parent feel good, but it is unlikely to lead to any change, and it will just make the teenager feel more like a bad child. Studies by neuroscientists confirm that teenagers are less likely to learn from punishment than reward.

In fact, a teenager may already feel bad from making a mistake – whether that was waking us in the middle of the night, or throwing up over the sofa. They may not need anything that adds more blame, shame or pain that they are naturally experiencing from their actions.

Every generation is keen to raise their children differently to the way their parents raised them. There’s much to be said for treating teenagers with empathy and respectfully and the rise of ‘gentle parenting’. But we need adolescents to be gentle and respectful to us in turn.

My own approach having raised five teenagers

I’m not quite sure how I would sum up my own approach. Yes, it has aspects of gentle parenting, and authoritative parenting too. But I don’t really like such phrases. The very word ‘parenting’ implies a bossiness and as if raising adolescents is hard work. Instead, this time can be about building a relationship with our adolescents, in all the messy glory that the word implies. And there’s no catch-all phrase which does justice to the complexity of the process.

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Why teens resist change and ways to help

Teenagers can be surprisingly resistant to change: like most of us they fear the unknown. Even this simple awareness can be helpful. We might help them reflect on the end of one stage and consider the new beginning in an optimistic frame of mind: what else could be possible? Only by emptying their hands of one thing can they receive something new: an end is simultaneously the beginning of a space for something new. They have a chance to re-invent themselves, away from familiar expectations as September beckons.

Reflecting on endings and new beginnings

Yet more often than not they are plucked out of one pool and thrown into the deep end of another. Instead this can be a time together to consider their strengths and achievements as one phase of their life closes, and discuss the challenges and opportunities of the upcoming new situation and how they might handle them.

Practical ways to ground them

They might write themselves a comforting letter talking about how they are feeling, and how their future selves would reassure them. Remind them how they have handled other transitions. Or suggest a quick series of columns – a list of changes, how they feel about them, and then ways they might cope. Mindfulness? Exercise? Early nights? A wall chart? Google calendar? This can help to ground young people, lessen anxiety and foster a sense of preparedness.

Rebuilding focus after the summer

After several months away from the classroom, it’s a time in particular to re-build skills of concentration. I like using the ‘Pomodoro technique’ to help with focus. This is named after a red tomato-shaped kitchen timer (buy one for your teen) which lets off an almighty ring after a set time, thus breaking down study time into short bursts of concentrated activity. The science of learning has found that focus is helped by spreading out study sessions over time, followed by testing – hence the Pomodoro. It has also been found that motivation follows achievement, rather than the other way round (so if in doubt attempt the easier work first), and that multi-tasking is best avoided. Each time the brain adjusts its focus, there is a small cognitive cost.

Tapping into teenage drivers

To encourage educational engagement, we can also hitch a ride on the passions of the teenage brain and make the most of some of them (as well as nourishing their minds with enough rest, wholesome food, and plenty of exercise ahead of academic life). As we have seen, teenagers’ brains have a set of drivers unique to them. Among these drivers are the desire for novelty and autonomy, being social and conscious of their peers (less helpful!), and being highly emotional.

Novelty helps motivation

To appeal to their love of novelty, suggest they change where they study from time to time and mix it up in their new work environment: maybe go out to a café to study, or to the local library. Rote-learn in the bath rather than their desk! Memorise while walking – exercise is good as it introduces more oxygenated blood to the brain. Movement stimulates the hippocampus for good evolutionary reasons. If we leave our camp on the savannah, we’ve got to know how to get back, so our memory systems are stimulated by exercise.

The need for autonomy

As for their need for autonomy, play a consultative role, rather than telling them what to do. Ask them what they think they should do to motivate themselves for a new school term? What distractions, such as their phone or Xbox, might they remove? How might they reward themselves if they stick to the plan? Ask what you can do to make this plan go smoothly. You are a support system. You are not in control: they are. Your suggestions can come across as criticisms. See if they can come up with their own. As one 16-year-old boy who was preparing for a new term put it:

‘I don’t want to be told to “tick off my syllabus”, “work work work” . . . I want to be trusted that I am doing my best to get back to work.’

Linking passions to learning

Linking their passions with study can deepen this desire for autonomy: perhaps a teenager who loves running could listen to something educational on headphones as they run, an adolescent who enjoys cooking could cook while listening to an audiobook of the Shakespeare play they are studying. This is about developing their internal motivation and agency. Studies show that when patients have some agency over their healthcare, and get involved with their treatment, their outcomes improve. The same is true for our work-shy teenagers.

Harnessing the social brain

There may be ways we can harness the social, collaborative bit of the teenage brain to encourage study. We want to avoid the competitiveness that can accompany it. My teenage daughter talked about the stimulus and comfort of connecting with others while working, but not in a competitive way.

‘It’s really easy to assume that everyone else has got a grip and is sorted on their work. For the most part, everyone else is trying to get by. When I talk to my friends or someone I’m close with, it’s quite bonding. They really understand my position: they’re going through the same thing. Sometimes it helps all to go to the library together and enjoy their company in study breaks.’

Pick your moment

Given how emotional teenagers are, timing is key to any of our conversations with them. ‘I can only have these kinds of chats if I’m in a good mood,’ said one of my daughters. ‘If you are in a bad mood, you’re just going to delete in your head any advice from your parents about getting back to school. You don’t want the parent in your face.

“Pick your moment, and adopt a gentle voice to suggest ideas; best of all, of course, is wait until you’re asked.”

Helping them build good habits

Even if the results don’t follow, these strategies mean it is more likely that teenagers will have re-adopt disciplined habits on their return to the classroom.

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First, we want them to trust their own feelings

To believe that most of the time they know best. They have their own intuition, and they can build their own emotional awareness. One of the greatest gifts we can give them is the confidence to believe in their own voice, and their own solutions to their own psychological problems.

Encouraging them in turn will be a reminder that the same is true for us: as parents and people we should learn to trust our own guidance systems. By teaching them, we teach ourselves too.

Part of this is learning that we are all responsible for our own feelings. It’s easy to blame others if we are miserable – especially our own parents (not something, clearly, that we want to encourage!) – and it’s true that of course others do affect how we feel. But as much as we want to deliver calm and contentment to them, this is not in our gift.

We are not in control of what happens to them

As obvious as it sounds.

I have five children, and it is impossible for them all to be content all the time. Of course I desire their wellbeing, and I ache when one of them is sad. However it’s not for us to deliver happiness: we may at best be responsible for only moments of joy – the time we remember their laptop when they set off without it, or remember the right brand of trainers.

Whenever the opportunity arises, see if you can stop yourself from jumping in with the answer, at least initially. We can say a lot by saying nothing at all. We may communicate our support more effectively by holding them or stroking their arm.

Studies of the brain show that just being in the same room, keeping quiet, decreases distress and anxiety. We can see ourselves more as a sounding board. My default answer to any dilemma they are facing is to ask what they are feeling, and where they think the answer might lie.

Show empathy for their predicament and learn to listen

For example, we could say, ‘You seem to be really bothered by this’ and then help them work out what they might feel. It’s about them, not us. Sometimes sitting with them, asking them to close their eyes and try out different statements can help. What feels true, to them?

Just as speaking less can be helpful in this process of encouraging their independence, so too can doing less, so they build their own competence.

Teach your teenagers how to look after themselves properly

However, many parents – myself included – enjoy looking after our offspring and try to do so for much longer than our own parents did.

It may be partly because we can cook, do the laundry and make their appointments more quickly and efficiently than them. There can be something pleasing about showing our competence. Sometimes we do more for our children as we are under pressure ourselves; it is quicker to do so. Or sometimes we keep helping them out as a way of showing our love.

But if you can, resist the temptation to do all their chores at home, or at the least do some chores together so that they pick up some basic household skills such as grocery shopping or doing the laundry before they leave home, for their safety apart from anything else.

One teenager, on arriving at university, put her jumper in the oven to warm it up before she put it on. Another put her knickers in the microwave, thinking it was a washing machine, and they set on fire.

But how do we actually get our teenagers to do such things as remembering to buy loo roll, familiarising themselves with car insurance, removing a build- up of lint from the filter of the washing machine, or cleaning the toilet?

We get more of the behaviour we take notice of

If we regularly complain about freshly laundered clothes on the floor which our teenager hasn’t put away, or crusted cereal bowls under the bed, then counter-intuitively we are likely to get more of the same. A teenager is getting the message that they’ve done wrong and are bad and lazy. They will internalise this message and will have no incentive to change.

By contrast, if we notice examples of helpful behaviour – ‘I really appreciate you taking the rubbish out’ or ‘I noticed you tidied up the kitchen and emptied the dishwasher’ – teenagers will be more likely to help. The trick is to be specific about exactly what they’ve done, rather than any generalities about being helpful, which are vague and could be annoying.

You could also be specific about sharing with your teenagers the true effort that goes into household chores. I remember writing a list of what exactly goes into making a meal, from its real start to its real finish. This means meal planning, writing down the ingredients on a shopping list, doing the grocery shop, cleaning the kitchen in preparation for cooking (this may include unloading the dishwasher or clearing the draining board), cooking the meal, setting the table, serving the meal, fetching all the things you forgot to put on the table, clearing the table, cleaning, scrubbing, rinsing, sweeping, and wiping until all evidence of the meal that was cooked and eaten has disappeared. It was the level of detail that struck them, a level which in turn made them more willing to help, as they knew how much work others were doing on their behalf.

We want them to learn that cleaning up after themselves is part of being a functioning adult, and that housework and chores can and must be part of ordinary life. The more we give them responsibility for such goals, without overly supervising them beyond a broad framework like ‘Can you sort this by Monday?’, the more they are likely to respond.

We can present household chores as times when teenagers are allowed and able to zone out and tilt into a different state, away from the usual pressures of friends and homework.

Suggest they let their thoughts and moods calm down when they hoover or walk the dog. Household duties give them a break while nurturing new skills. There’s an easy satisfaction to sweeping the back garden or folding laundry, which can be pleasing antidotes to a challenging piece of coursework.

Independence starts at home, as teenagers learn to cope with their emotions and do the dishes. But it also is about discovering the big bad world, which is on the whole safer than we risk-averse parents imagine it. Perhaps they can walk the neighbours’ dog, or offer to babysit their children. Remind yourself of your own childhood. Maybe you didn’t grow up playing independently on bombsites like our grandparents, but chances are you had a less supervised and structured childhood than your offspring. The likelihood is you were not under adult supervision all the time, or even most of the time, nor were you being ferried to activities.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy

Letting teenagers roam free goes against the understandable desire to insulate our children from literal knocks and scrapes. One answer is to turn around the ‘What ifs’ when you’re wracked by fear of what might happen if your teenager is let loose in the local shopping centre. Instead of ‘What if she gets mugged?’ or ‘What if she doesn’t get home?’, try ‘What if her journey goes to plan and she gains in confidence?’

Hold your nerve. Some psychologists have suggested that mental health problems have risen among this generation of teenagers as we are overprotective and have with good intentions made teenagers fragile.

Peter Gray, a professor at Boston College in the US, argues that the primary cause of the recent rise in mental health problems is a ‘decline over decades in opportunities for children and teenagers to play, roam and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults’. College students whose parents were most overprotective or controlling in their day-to-day lives reported higher levels of anxiety and depression.

Mothers may be particularly risk-averse. We only have to observe how fathers encourage more adventurous play in any playground to see the differences between the sexes. Yet taking risks, and stretching limits, yields benefits. If you shield muscles too much they atrophy; if you protect bones, and don’t use them, you are vulnerable to osteoporosis. A similar approach applies to our teenagers: we must not treat them as Ming vases.

The crux of it

Encouraging independence in our children can be challenging, because as their parents we would prefer them not to suffer. It involves them managing their own feelings, making mistakes, and us not rescuing them when things go wrong. It means letting them discover the world this holidays.

While it seems that we are doing our best by protecting our children from setbacks and mistakes, by shielding them from difficulties when they are adolescents, we parents, with the best intentions, may be depriving them of the skills needed to deal with difficulties as adults.

Like a seedling that has only ever been on a sunny windowsill and handled with great love and care, they will be cut down by the first real frost.

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The antidote is to change that narrative in a realistic way; the world offers other possibilities. The American psychologist Adam Grant talks of the importance of ‘equifinality’: there are multiple routes to the same end.

He argues that the only thing we have to do for sure to be successful is to be open to different ways of achieving success. Even if our teenagers don’t get the exact grades they want, that doesn’t mean life will end. There are opportunities open to them.

Some will be determinedly set on a ­non-­graduate career, due to aptitude and passion (as opposed to low ambition). This is not about dismissing their fears as ridiculous, or saying, ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be fine,’ but about redefining failure. There’s no such thing.

We can embed this approach by using supportive statements, or affirmations. These might include, ‘You may not have done as well as you want to, but you will be able to move on and learn from that experience.’ We could encourage them to have some of their own affirmations to hand too. These could include, ‘There will be problems to solve if it hasn't gone well this time, but there are people to help with that.’

‘I know it sounds a bit culty to have these kinds of affirmations,’ said one 19-­ year-­ old girl who found them helpful on results day. ‘But I want my parent to say something like, “Whatever happens, it’s going to be okay.” Weirdly that’s what I keep repeating to myself.’ Parting lines of wisdom can have more impact than we think.

We can also reinforce this notion that the world is replete with options by discussing what they would like to do after getting their results today. Suggest they make a list. You could do this together. This is a subtle way of reminding them of all the things in life they want that don’t involve exams.

Yes, today is a big day, but life extends beyond exam results.

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Only today I received an email from a friend about her daughter, let’s call her Jenny. She had been to Oxford, had got A stars in all her exams, and was doing a graduate law degree sponsored by a Magic Circle law firm. Yet Jenny also struggled with insomnia and had periods of acute procrastination which ‘rattled her’ as a person who always set herself high standards, her mother explained. Did I know a therapist who might help?

Then there’s the case of Laura Delano, author of the recently published How The Mental Health Industry Took Over My Life – And My Fight to Get It Back. Reflecting on her life now, Laura says:

“I remember thinking: why is life all about getting good grades, being a good athlete, having good manners, being thin, and all these superficial elements? I became obsessed with achieving to the point where I developed an eating disorder and was exercising six hours per day. As the eldest of three siblings, I felt pressure to be a role model.”

And finally, along comes Dr Tara Porter, a child psychologist who has worked with adolescents for more than 25 years in the NHS and has just written Good Enough: A Framework for Parents. She realised that all her patients had something in common. “Whatever their diagnosis,” she writes “the kids weren’t feeling good enough.”

The dangers of perfectionism among young people and indeed their parents have been preoccupying me too for a while. It’s something I’ve written about in my own new book The Gift of Teenagers. Because it matters. Trying to be perfect can damage us, as well as our teenagers. Not only does it engender this miserable feeling of being unworthy, it can also hold us back. Neither we, nor our teenagers, take risks, for fear of exacerbating those unpleasant feelings of failure even more.

This drive for perfectionism was identified by the British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott as early as the 1950s. He specialised in relationships between parents and children. In his clinical practice, he often met parents who felt like failures: parental shortcomings came with shame and fear of social judgement. Psychologists developed a model for measuring perfectionism in 1991, and gradually as a society we have gravitated further and further towards an ideal of flawlessness, even as the challenges we are facing as parents have become more complex.

One reason may be society’s fixation on economic growth. In our capitalist system, companies and marketeers encourage us to be dissatisfied with how we are, in the quest for greater sales. A second reason may be the rise of social media and its images of perfect individuals and idealised family life, which have exacerbated our tendency to compare ourselves to others.

How then can we dial down this drive to be the best? Not just in general, but when it comes to being parents? Because if we parents can be less perfectionist, this in turn is the best way to help our teenagers. And most importantly, how can we reduce some of the shame and disappointment in ourselves for not managing this? How can we instead believe we are good enough? And make this attitude an essential part of our parental thinking? And in turn share these ideas with our troubled teenagers, and be models for them of a different approach?

Four strategies have helped me avoid the trap of perfectionism: believing in the virtues of imperfection, adopting a less goal-oriented approach, focusing on my inner worth, and becoming less judgemental of myself and others.

Strategy One

Let’s return to Winnicott. He coined the phrase ‘the good enough mother’ in his 1971 book Playing and Reality, a collection of papers published during his career. He acknowledged the inevitability of imperfect parenting, believing that the good enough mother starts with an ‘almost complete adaption to her infant’s needs’. But over time she allows the baby to experience small moments of frustration. She is not perfect, but ‘good enough’.

It is not just that we don’t need to be perfect, but that we should avoid it for the sake of our children. We need to fail our children on a regular basis so they can learn to live in an imperfect world. There is no such thing as a mistake, only chances to learn. We flourish because of self-repair and so do our teenagers.

Strategy Two

The second way to feel good enough is to look at activities, and our approach to them, as either ‘telic’ or ‘atelic’ pursuits. Telic activities – from the Greek telos, meaning goal or purpose – dominate our lives. Give the presentation, pass the exam, write the book. The value of each is perceived in terms of the completion of the goal. The more goals we complete, the closer we edge to feeling perfect.

The immediate problem with telic activities, of course, is that finishing the task throws up a new dilemma: if the purpose was to finish the task, what is the purpose now the project is completed? What next? The answer is often to take on another project. Life, and our children, are then in danger of being seen as a series of projects – both personal in the case of parenting, and professional. Our sense of fulfilment is only temporary, during the brief window when a project is completed. The pressure is then on to complete the next project. It is a natural breeding ground for perfectionists.

Contrast this with atelic (non-goal-based) activities. The value of these pursuits does not lie solely in their completion. To find such activities, ask yourself why you are doing something. Is it for the result? Or because you find it fulfilling? It might be walking for walking’s sake, especially circular trips rather than A-to-B walks. Baking for baking’s sake, and not necessarily to produce a cake for someone’s birthday. Reading a book not because it will deepen your knowledge, but because the subject just interests you.

Strategy Three

This brings me to my third strategy for feeling good enough: focusing on inner worth. Our inner calm comes from feeling connected with ourselves. True confidence comes from focusing on our innate qualities as a human being: the gifts with which we were born. These qualities stand, whatever else we do and whatever boxes we tick that are recognised as valuable by others.

Strategy Four

Try and be less judgemental. The more we judge others, the more we judge ourselves. It is counterproductive: it puts us back on the validation treadmill. The less we engage in these kinds of judgemental comments about other parents, the less we engage in these same judgemental conversations about ourselves. By not judging others we allow ourselves a more open and curious approach, outside the dynamic of winning or losing, of being right or wrong. Or perfect or imperfect.

Thus armed, my hope is you yourself might defeat the scourge of perfectionism, and become a role model to your children of how to do so too. And in the future there just maybe fewer Jennies and Lauras.

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The science behind teen risk-taking

Their executive decision-making function is still developing through this period. The still-maturing ‘brake’ circuitry in the front part of the brain may be particularly overwhelmed by the ‘accelerator’ region, compromising their ability to make thoughtful decisions. This is why young men are prepared to sign up as soldiers, a commitment that becomes less likely as people become more risk-averse as their brains mature. Neuroscientists have found that risk-taking peaks when teenagers are 14.

Research suggests adolescent risk-taking is more subtle than stereotypes suggest. Risky behaviour is in fact often premeditated and calculated. Teenagers balance ‘social risk’ – whether they will be thrown out of their peer group – against the consequence of doing something we might think dumb. The cost of being excluded by their friends can outweigh any concerns, making risky behaviour a rational choice.

Brain imagery shows that for teenagers, physical danger is less frightening than the fear of losing face or the respect of their peers. This means teenagers take more chances, and seek out pleasure and excitement in front of their friends. Risk-taking doubles for boys when their friends are around but reduces if they are with their girlfriends.

The difference in boys and girls

Risky behaviour varies according to gender: boys are more likely to fight and skip school, while girls are slightly more likely to smoke. Overall, boys take more risks and there may be an evolutionary explanation for this. In our distant past, boys hunted and defended the village, both of which could be dangerous. Rash conduct is also more likely when teenagers are in a good mood: they may feel less inhibited and more likely to take risks to help sustain the ‘high’, overlooking outward signs that suggest that gains are unlikely or that there are dangers in this heightened ‘happiness overdrive’ mode.

What to do as a parent

It can feel nerve-wracking as a parent to know that the teenage brain is drawn to thrilling new experiences and is less good at executive decision-making. We naturally worry that they will turn to drink or drugs. But seeking out new sensations promotes learning. By doing new things, our teenagers are expanding their knowledge and becoming more mature.

The answer therefore is to help guide our teenagers towards thrills that will help them grow, and away from those that may harm them, especially in their early teens. This could mean encouraging them to join a boxing club, audition for a school play, or run a marathon. Perhaps they could dive from the top diving board or try out rock-climbing. It could even mean supporting them to write a film script or take part in a poetry slam, experiment with some charity shop buys and a sewing machine.

All these new experiences will fulfil their neurobiological development, and mean they are less likely to seek thrills elsewhere, especially online.

One of my own teenage sons took up indoor rock-climbing at 18. He would return from his sessions in a sunnier and more philosophical mood, much chattier than when he left and reflective about the risks involved and how he enjoyed dealing with them in a safe way on the climbing wall.

By the same token, we can be alert to risk-taking. When my teenager got in a car with a friend who had been drinking, for example, I could see this as a case when their judgement was impaired, and they were drawn to risk. I needed to help them think through situations much more carefully, especially those in which their peers are involved.

I tried to get to know their friends and their friends’ parents to try to set common rules around risky behaviour. And to talk to them ahead about risky situations, emphasising my trust in them. By treating them more like adults, they became likely to act in kind, and plenty of studies attest to the strong links between parental expectations and risk-taking.

Don’t take it personally

Scary stuff, I agree, but I hope knowing a bit more about teenage brain development and the lure of risk-taking can make you feel more relaxed yourself over the next few holiday months, because you at least know what’s going on. It means you can take their behaviour less personally, and less seriously – which also means you can have more fun with your adolescents and, yes, enjoy the gift that they are.

Loosen up! The adolescent brain is still under construction. It’s not about you! It’s all about them. You don’t need to intervene or panic; their emotions and brains are unfolding just as they should. For the time being they are just different to us adults. They will not always feel this deeply or suffer so much.

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A friend found sticking up a poster in their family kitchen helpful. It showed two plants: one a weed, the other a flower. Another person may see the weed as a flower, even if we don’t. Differing opinions about the same thing are okay. The poster was a useful reminder of this principle.

Naturally it follows that curiosity about their experience, and sharing how you felt, are in order if there’s to be anything fruitful about a row. A better row is about exploring and widening the possibilities of how to do things differently in the future, so that it need not be repeated.

Know when to leave the room

First of all, if you can feel a row brewing, you might want to step out of trouble’s way by going into a different room. You could say something like, ‘This isn’t the conversation I meant to have’ or, instead of giving an immediate response, ‘Can I have a minute to think?’. By which you really mean some time and not just one minute. These phrases can discharge the row’s fierceness.

Vent privately before you talk to your teenager – things like going upstairs and punching a pillow can disrupt anger mechanisms. You might return in a calmer frame of mind, able to think and express yourself more clearly. No one can access their highest level of thinking when they are in ‘threat’ mode. You might even leave the house altogether. Allow your teenager to do the same.

Associating what should be the haven of home with aggression and conflict is unhelpful. Suggest that you will talk about the issue later when you are both calmer, and that it is hard for anyone to hear each other in an overheated state. That is something on which you are at least likely to agree. The psychotherapist Julia Bueno also likes the idea of ‘naming your process’, or explaining what you are experiencing and why you are behaving as you are.

You might say, ‘I am sorry but I’m so angry right now I can’t think clearly so I’m going to leave the room so as to not say something I don’t mean. I wish I could be calmer, I promise we are going to come back to this later.’ This is preferable to storming out the room and slamming the door – though sometimes that’s the best we can do when feelings are so big.

Go to sleep on an argument

Bueno even argues that going to sleep on a row is a good idea! ‘Strike while the iron is cold’ is her fabulous phrase. ‘It’s so important to gauge when you are ready to talk, when you aren’t clinging on with fury,’ she says. ‘If you feel a fire simmering, give it more time to peter out, and flag to your teen “I’d really like to talk about this soon” – maybe even name a day.’ This is an approach the psychotherapist Esther Perel also adopts in couples’ therapy.

Accepting and formalising time apart can make life together less provocative for both of you. You may find, as I have, that you too benefit from time alone in which you can replenish your own resources. I have tried to make a virtue of this extra space, taking time to walk at the weekend. Finding time to read. Maybe you can close your own door for awhile. And of course, always remember to knock on theirs.

Leave the kitchen sink out of it

If a row is unavoidable, see if you can focus on only the matter in hand. Don’t throw in everything but the kitchen sink. If the row is about how late they returned last night, don’t also complain about how they never listen, leave their rooms in a mess, and spend too much time on their phones. This is all too common a temptation given that our minds naturally make connections and write negative stories. But by doing so we give attention to the behaviour we don’t want, rather than focusing on what we would like.

Our aim is to solve a problem rather than expand the reasons for arguing. Two techniques help me de-escalate. First, at the end of every sentence, I add a ‘power pause’. During this pause, I stop, breathe and notice any escalation. Second, I list any points of agreement or appreciation instead of adding other grievances: a sort of positive escalation. In the case of a late-returning teenager I might say I appreciated the fact that they had kept their phone switched on and that they had been apologetic.

It’s also important to be aware of any difficulties that may be coming up for you personally that are nothing to do with your teenager. Remember your own ‘shark music’ and that you may be experiencing an emotional response that is less about your teen and more something you should address yourself. And mind your language.

Helpful language

The exact words and the tone in which you use them matter, especially when having an argument. Research suggests harsh words and excessive yelling are as damaging as physical abuse. Imagine you are speaking French when you have a row – it will remind you to be careful with the phrases you use.

One magic trick is to begin sentences with ‘I’. Let’s imagine the argument is about a teenager staying out late, and you didn’t know where they were. Start with, ‘I might be wrong and maybe you tried to tell me your whereabouts . . .’ Focus on your undeniable feelings rather than on what may be disputed facts. Instead of saying, ‘You were out until four and behaving in an unacceptable way’, say, ‘I don’t feel comfortable with not knowing where you are’.

Your teenager cannot dismiss the truth of your feelings, whereas they could disagree with your timings. Equally, instead of saying, ‘You need to let me know your movements’, you might say, ‘I worry about your safety and we’ve agreed on a rule that you let me know if you are running late so I know you’re okay.’ The focus is on you, and how their behaviour affects you, rather than labelling the teenager in a personal and critical way.

It can be surprising how well teenagers take it when you tell the truth about your own feelings with sentences beginning with that magical ‘I’. I’ve found they appreciate that we are being honest, and as we have seen, owning our feelings means our child is more likely to own and be open with theirs too. We do not have to be silent martyrs or emotionless robots.

It can also be helpful to use ‘we’ from time to time, as in, ‘When we don’t listen to each other…’ or, ‘When we talk over each other…’ which suggests we are all in this discussion together. Using ‘we’ also suggests a common humanity and that on some level you are alike.

Keep asking questions, which perhaps shows your willingness to see the bigger picture. What was going on for them, that they stayed out so late? Was it peer pressure? Did they feel it would be uncool if they didn’t stay out as late as their friends? It’s worth taking some time to tease out any feelings that underlie their behaviour. If they reveal them, you might want to repeat back what your teenager has said, and then add, ‘It seems like you are feeling X or Y. Is that right?’ Give your teenager the opportunity to correct your assessment: in doing so, they will feel you really care and want to understand their point of view.

You can also focus on your teenager’s positive intentions instead of identifying them with their impulses, actions or failures. You might say, ‘I know this isn’t what you wanted to happen’ or ‘It’s okay, you’ll get there, we all make mistakes’. The more we notice positive behaviour, as we’ve seen, the more of that behaviour we are likely to get.

Coming to some sort of resolution

Once you and your teenagers have expressed your thoughts, which of course may take some time, emotions should settle down again. You might want to agree on how you would both like to behave in the future and be clear about what you need out of the row. Remember that something good can come out of a difficult situation; no experience is ever without some value. Stress what you like about your teenager, or about anything productive that has happened, not what you dislike.

Counter-intuitively, this is a time to increase your presence in their lives, whether that’s by sending an encouraging text message, or amusing meme, or making a gesture such as a hot water bottle in their bed, or their favourite food in the fridge. One father said to me, ‘When things have been hard is the time to suggest you go out and grab a burger. Step in, not away. You can acknowledge you’ve had a bad time together, but few teenagers refuse free food.’ The message is that their behaviour was not okay, but we still want to spend time with them. We won’t be forced out by anything they do.

Crucially, resolution can be encouraged by a simple ‘I’m sorry’. It is not our mistakes that matter so much as putting them right with an apology – the notion of rupture and repair I touched on earlier. We can always make amends. We can affirm the validity of our feelings, while acknowledging that the way we communicated them was unhelpful and our own fault. Helpful phrases include ‘I was not in a great place’, ‘I regret that’ and ‘It was nothing to do with you’.

Rows can be positive

Good can come from a row. If you think of arguments as discussions that result in something productive, they can feel less damaging and frightening. This allows for the possibility of change. It follows that we do well to avoid expressions such as ‘You never’ or ‘You always’ or ‘You are’, which imply your teenager has a fixed personality and can’t change, rather than the possibility of new behaviours.

Sometimes, having an argument leads to discovering a new way of behaving, or a new rule you need to establish. Take one example. I will never forget the agony of the time one of my teenagers went to a festival. Of course, as she set off on a sunny July morning, I asked if she had her phone. And would she ring me when she was leaving the festival to come back to London? And what train would she be getting back? These were all the rules we had agreed on, about letting me know she was safe. As she skipped off to the station with a cheery ‘Don’t worry mum!’, I had little inkling of the dramas ahead.

All started well; she did text me when they arrived. But then for the next six hours all communication went dead. Despite my own understanding of the need not to catastrophise, and to check my own spiralling thoughts, by the time it got to 10pm and I had heard nothing, in my mind she had been murdered in some West Country field.

Eventually, she limped back into the house at around 1am, having just caught the last train home. Her phone battery had died. We had a row. But something productive came out of argument. We agreed that next time, things would be different. A new rule to add to our list was that if her phone ran out of power, she would borrow one. We both understood each other a little more after our row, which also made it productive. My teenager realised more deeply that her behaviour had an effect on me. And we both saw that a few practical small shifts in her behaviour in certain situations would have a big emotional impact on me.

Or a second example. We had organised a family dinner. One of our teenagers had made other plans. The row was about forcing him to attend the dinner. He didn’t want to join us: I felt rejected, he felt bossed about. We were both trying to force certain behaviour onto the other person – I wanted him to stay, he wanted me to allow him not to attend. Again, the answer to the problem was partly practical. We agreed to move the date so the teenager could come.

I’ll leave you with this

On one level, the stories I’ve shared about my own teens are an obvious example of compromising. On another level, though, it was about both of us understanding the emotions we were experiencing. The breakthrough – for both of us – was feeling understood. He understood that I could feel upset; I understood that his independence mattered to him. Again, this was not about who was in charge, but about understanding. Subsequent discussions about turning up to family dinners became easier.

If this resonates with you, leave a comment or share with a friend who’s struggling with teenage rows.

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P.S. If this resonated with you, my new book The Gift of Teenagers has more thoughts on how to become a calmer parent.

While summer holidays can be stressful, there are ways to make them less so – chiefly by connecting more and worrying less about your adolescents. Here are my own golden rules.

1. Avoid power struggles as much as you can

They’re younger and more stubborn than us and we almost always will come off the worse for wear. Especially avoid fighting about what time they get up. Teenagers need more sleep, especially in the morning, due to different circadian rhythms. Let them lie in.

2. Meals do not need to be a battleground

My own early efforts failed. I felt pressurised to cook perfect family meals, knowing their importance. I would take trouble cooking what I thought my children would like and would make a fuss about us all sitting down together, repeatedly shouting up the stairs for the children to come to meals. I was not the best company: I was resentful about all the effort I had made and the fact that no-one came when asked or seemed appreciative. It was time for a different approach.

I decided to cook what I wanted (on the whole it just wasn’t realistic to expect them to cook), texted on the family WhatsApp rather than shouted when it was ready, and began eating with a notebook for company, even if the children hadn’t come downstairs.

Though my desire was that we would eat together, I was no longer trying to force anyone to join me. The less I tried to force the outcome, the less there was for my teenagers to push back against, and the more readily they joined family meals. Shared mealtimes were not always sunshine and roses, but thanks to my own better mood and more relaxed approach, we had a good time on holiday.

3. Have ‘sandwich suppers’ at least once a week

Buy nice bread, have a pile of ham, cheese, tomatoes and avocados on the table, with mayonnaise and mustard and pickles, and get everyone to make their own.

4. Support the thrill-seeking

It can feel nerve-wracking as a parent to know that the teenage brain is drawn to thrilling new experiences, never more so than when on holiday, and is less good at executive decision-making. We naturally worry that they will turn to drink or drugs. But seeking out new sensations promotes learning. By doing new things, our teenagers are expanding their knowledge and becoming more mature.

The answer therefore is to help guide our teenagers towards thrills that will help them grow, and away from those that may harm them, especially in their early teens (neuroscientists have found that risk-taking peaks when teenagers are 14). This could mean encouraging them to join a boxing club, or run a marathon as the long summer holiday weeks unfurl. Perhaps they could dive from the top diving board or try out rock-climbing.

It could even mean supporting them to write a film script or take part in a poetry slam, experiment with some charity shop buys and a sewing machine. these new experiences will fulfil their neurobiological development, and mean they are less likely to seek thrills elsewhere.

5. Treat them like you would an adult (within reason)

By the same token, we can be alert to risk-taking when on holiday. When my teenager got in a car with a friend who had been drinking, for example, I could see this as a case when their judgement was impaired, and they were drawn to risk. I needed to help them think through situations much more carefully, especially those in which their peers are involved.

I tried to get to know their friends and their friends’ parents to try to set common rules around risky behaviour. And to talk to them ahead about risky situations, emphasising my trust in them. By treating them more like adults, they became likely to act in kind, and plenty of studies attest to the strong links between parental expectations and risk-taking.

As our teenagers grow, so too must we – adapting our expectations, loosening our grip, and finding joy in smaller, quieter moments of connection. Family holidays won’t always look like the picture-perfect memories we imagined, but with a bit of flexibility and trust, they can become something even better: real, evolving relationships with the young adults our children are becoming.

If this resonates with you, leave a comment or share with a friend who’s heading on holiday with a teenager in tow.

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