Parents: You Don’t Need Your Teen’s Approval!

Parents today often have a hard time when they set a limit with their teen. They want their teen to be okay with it. And ideally, if a collaborative boundary can be set you the best of all worlds.

However, there are times when your teen simply will not want to do what you want them to.

Much of this depends on the family culture, but in a family culture, for example, where grandma’s birthday is a family affair and your teen has a party she/he would rather go to, you have every right to insist that they forfeit that. Missing one party won’t be the end of the world, although it may feel like that to them, but grandma has only so many birthdays left (this is assuming a healthy relationship with a grandma who is not toxic). 

Teens want to be independent, they want to pull away to some degree from family, from parents, from extended gatherings, and that’s okay in some situations. Other situations involve obligations. And that’s not just family obligations. If teens want to grow up, they need to learn that part of being an adult is doing things they don’t like, seeing and being nice to people they don’t care for and being in situations that are not necessarily fun or relaxing. It is not a parent’s obligation to always please their teen.

As a therapist, I see the tendency to want your child’s approval, interfering with good parenting. It is becoming a tendency that is rapidly growing and is not helping to prepare our teens for adulthood. They may cite school stress, anxiety, depression, as overwhelming factors that