My daughter and her friends drive me crazy, they are always arguing about one thing or another.  I am always telling them to grow up and stop bickering.

This is a time when friends play an increasingly important role in their lives. Teens have developed friendships that are more intimate, exclusive, and more constant than in their earlier years. These friendships are an essential component of development. They provide a venue where your teen can explore their identities.

These interactions are very normal for teens.  This is how they learn to problem solve with individuals and in groups.  These interactions give teens a place to practice and learned how to foster the social skills necessary for future success.

Even though this behavior seems extreme and immature to you, realize that they are not adults; they are still learning how to communicate and develop healthy boundaries.  I know many adults that have yet to develop the social skills they needs to have successful interactions with their adult friends.

As a parent, you should look at two things: one- why is their behavior bothering you so badly?  Did your parents bicker? Look at what your wounding around this behavior might be. If you are triggered by her behavior, the only way you are going to be able to show up for her is to react through your own fears. If you are reacting to her, she is going to shut down and not hear any words of wisdom you might have around this subject. So, first do your inner child work around her behavior. Second, lets look at how you might be able to show up for your daughter in a different way.

The best thing you can do while they are arguing is, just allow them the freedom to do it, as long as they aren’t physically hurting each other, let them be.  If things seem to be going no-where you might let them know your available if they need you, if they say okay, you need to make sure you are not bringing your agenda into their arena.  Do not try to solve this problem for them, that’s not what they need or want. You want to ask a lot of questions and if they are not letting each other talk, ask them if they are okay with setting up a format to express their concerns.  This will be where each of them will have an opportunity to discuss their feelings around the issue, uninterrupted.

During this time you need to remain open. Do not take sides, or judge the situation, you are simply a mediator.  Let each of them express their concerns, and maybe you just keep asking questions.  All this does is help them get to the bottom of the problem with an easier format. That’s what you have provided them with, a safe place to explore their feelings and shown them a different way to communicate, by allowing others to express and be heard.

When our teens are working through their issues and we come in and judge them, maybe by saying or thinking that this is an extreme situation and they are being immature, they will shut down to us.  If they shut down to us, we are no longer able to offer assistance when they need it; we just add more emotional upset to the situation.

What we want to do for them is help them through there upset by holding a safe place for them to explore their feelings.  If we aren’t helping them, we need to know that they will be okay, and not judge they them for the way they want to work through it.

Our judgments only put more distance between our teens and us.  If we want to be available for them we have to be willing to not fix things for them and not judge the way the want to fix it.

Remember, this is normal teenage behavior and if this behavior keeps upsetting you, you have work to do.

This is a question to be answered for all ages. It’s not just a teen problem, it seems to be a problem with women of all ages.  When we have low self-esteem, we seem to hang on to those bad relationships a bit to long. It’s even a problem with guys!  I was just talking to a guy friend of mine and he hasn’t been in a relationship for quite a while and his old girlfriend contacted him and he is considering going back into a dysfunctional relationship because he is lonely.

Weather you are 15-years-old or 40-years-old, male or female, the question of the hour is: when is it time to dump a bad relationship?  My immediate answer would be now, but maybe there is a lesson in here for you, and we also have to judge how bad is the relationship.  If the relationship is really bad, he is abusing you verbally or physical, NOW is the answer. Find support and get out, and start doing your work around your sense of self.  We always know where we are in our lives by looking at the relationships we allow in.  We never want to stay in relationships that are potentially dangerous.

They are so many level of abuse, and we don’t want to over look what seems to be something small like a little cut down. We have to get finite with how we allow people to treat us.  If a boyfriend is criticizing us about anything, our hair, our body, our personality, they way we do things, they way we say, things this is a red flag.  Constructive criticism looks different and feels different as well. If someone is saying something to help you, you usually won’t contract and feel hurt. They way you know the difference is to see how you feel after. Are you upset and hurt, or maybe your just saying “Wow, you have a good point there”.

If your body contracts, and you have feelings of anger, hurt, sadness, or fear it’s a good indicator that something is off and you need to look deeply into the relationship you are having.  When we stay in relationships that are abusive, it’s because we don’t feel good about ourselves.  If we felt good about ourselves, it would be easy to say “No Thank You”.

Now, what if your boyfriend apologizes? Well, lets look at this. If he comes to you with real sorrow and he understands what he has done and is working on himself to not do it again, then give him another shot. But if apologizing becomes his way of being in the relationship, meaning every time  he does something wrong, he knows all he has to do is apologize and everything is okay, then forget it. We want to build healthy relationships in our life because when we let people in our lives that don’t treat us good, it damages our self esteem even more. The more we say No to things that aren’t good for us, the more empowered we become. The more empowered we become, the more we say No. The easier it is to say No. It’s the power circle I talk about in my book.

So, start paying attention to those relationships in your life, are they healthy, are they good for you?  If you had a child would you want them to be in those relationship? That’s always a good question to ask. If not, it’s time to walk away.  Walking away from things or people that aren’t good for us develops our self esteem.

Is it time to dump your boyfriends, maybe, maybe not. Maybe you have a daughter that needs help with this decision, I hope this helps, let me know.

“Listen to me, don’t talk back, what’s the matter with you? You’re grounded” Who is this Father talking to? It appears that he is talking to his daughter, but his daughter is clearly not there. His daughter is so shut down that she is no longer able to hear what her father is saying.

I felt like my parents didn’t see me, couldn’t see me, because of their own wounds that they had not worked through. Now, I don’t blame them, I know they did the best they could. All I am saying is that because they were unable to do their inner work, they were not able to show up for me.

When I first started working with teens, I noticed that for them to really shift their behaviors, I had to shift the parents behaviors too. If you as a parent are only reacting to your teen and not responding, your teen will never open up to you and allow your guidance.

When we are in our own childhood wounds, we cannot be available for our teens, because we are looking to meet our own needs.  We can only step into their reality if our wounded child has been taken care of. This is the premise of my new book “Connecting to your Teen in a Disconnected World”. taking care of our self. It is virtually impossible to be present for someone else if we are not

If you get to know your childhood wounds and how they could show up for you, you will see how it is affecting you, and your reacting to your teen through them.

If your teen does something, lets say she stays out later than her curfew and immediately you go into panic mode, and slip into your fears.  She comes home and you start in right away with “Where were you, what were you doing, your thirty minutes past your curfew, your grounded”. Geez, she didn’t even have a moment to tell her mother what happened. So the daughter gets upset and starts yelling and it goes back and forth and ends with the mother saying you’re grounded and walking out. Total Reaction.

The mother was clearly triggered by her daughter coming in late because she has an unresolved childhood wound, maybe her own mother not respecting her and not following through on things she said she would do. If this is the case, she would react to her teen instead of respond.

If the mother would have responded instead of reacted, this is what it might have looked like. Mother says “Are you okay, I noticed you are thirty minutes late?” “Yes, mom I am okay, Jeannie saw Mr. Walker her English teacher at the concert and they were talking”.  “I totally understand that things like this happen and what I would like you to do in the future is call me and see if it’s okay if you stay out later. This is our agreement and for your father and I to continue to trust you, you have to make sure your actions are trustworthy”.

This is your opportunity to explain integrity, and trust and its importance. If we react, the learning is missed because they are thinking about how unreasonable you are instead of learning a deeper level of integrity. Reacting has no purpose and only does damage.  We have to learn to move through our own woundedness so we can show up for our teens with compassion and clarity. It’s hard to respond to our teens is we are in reaction mode. So, it’s time to do your work around your childhood wounds and do some healing, so you can start showing up for your teen in a whole new way.

Lets me know if you have a situation that you have dealt with regarding responding or reacting and what you did. It’s a tough journey to be working on your childhood wounds and still be showing up for your teens.