Connecting with your Teenage Daughter
By: Beth Swiger
Tags: Parenting Tips, Parenting Teenagers, Parenting Teens, Parenting Advice, Family

When our baby is first born, we want to do everything right, and we’re nervous that we won’t. We read all the books, we go to birthing and parenting classes, we ask our parents questions about how they did things.

After a few years, though, we start to get pretty comfortable that we know what we’re doing. “I’ve been doing this for 7 years now, so I think I have a pretty good handle on this whole parenting thing.”… which may be true.

What is ALSO true, however, is that the entire landscape of the matter changes during our child’s next growth stage and they become a pubescent darling who only vaguely resembles that chubby toddler who smeared chocolate on you when she hugged you.

How do we go from the rainbows and unicorns of childhood into a more mature relationship with our maturing daughter?

Love, of course, is the answer.

But what does “love” LOOK LIKE in the teen years?

When we’re talking about reaching our teen daughter, I believe that the conversation needs to include these 3 elements: connection, communication, and considering her personhood.

Maintain (or Establish!) a Heart-to-Heart Connection

What is a heart-to-heart connection? It’s one that’s based on internal motivation and closeness rather than external control. We want our daughters to WANT to love us, connect with us, and do what’s right because she desires to do so from her heart, not because we forced her.

This is counter to the typical idea of power struggles for dominance where Mothers and Daughters, like two Tasmanian Devils warily circle each other before they erupt in a violent altercation for pack control.

Love is about trust and openness.

If our daughter trusts that our desire is for her good and that we have her best interest at heart (and not our own selfishness), then she feels safe to honor our guidelines and “protect my heart” by her choices. She can grow her own trustworthiness because she won’t have to act out in defiance to get your attention or to regain the power in the relationship.

A connected love draws close to each other on good days and on bad.

We can keep the Love Valve of our heart turned fully open even though we have the potential to get hurt.

Fear is the Great Disconnector. Don’t fear that she’s turning into somebody you don’t know and don’t like. You don’t have to push her away to be safe. We can stay vulnerable and open.

Choose to minimize the distance between the two of you — actively be aware of your connection so that you can close the gap if you start to feel any offense or a disconnection occurring.

Healthy communication.

Healthy communication involves honor. HOW we approach our daughter matters.

Teens need our wise advice, but they also need a safe place to process ideas without judgment.

For several months I was really struggling with this. When I was cooking a meal and my daughter would come in to talk, sometimes she would bring up a subject that she didn’t know was a hot-button issue for me, and because of fear I would shut down the conversation by going into a finger-pointing lecture mode. I would watch my daughter’s face shutdown, and I knew it was ineffective communication, and that I would have to change in order to be heard.

I chose to start having self-control when that topic was raised instead. Instead of immediately spinning out, I started asking her questions about why she thought those things, where the ideas generated, what was the end result of that thought process. I led her through a series of questions (conversationally, not like an interrogator) and helped her think about the long-term effects of those choices.

As she had to start doing the thinking for herself, she corrected her own faulty thought processes and I was able to be there to support her.

We started working WITH each other on these topics rather than AGAINST each other, and she made a stronger association with this decision instead of my attempt at coercing her to choose what I thought was right for her.