In my clinic, in the weeks after Christmas, a familiar pattern often emerges in conversations with parents of teenagers. There is disappointment that time together felt tense rather than warm, or that connection seemed harder to reach. Many of us find ourselves wondering whether this is simply how things are now, or whether something has gone wrong. For families with teenagers, a difficult Christmas is not a sign of failure. Christmas amplifies everything. Routines fall away, sleep patterns change, social demands increase, and private space shrinks. At the same time, expectations rise. As parents, we desperately want closeness, fun, and shared moments. For our teens — who are already managing heightened emotions and a growing need for independence — this combination can feel overwhelming. Developmental psychology helps make sense of this. We know our teens experience emotions more intensely than we do, and we know the brain systems responsible for emotional regulation, impulse co...
If we are lucky, we had pretty good childhoods — some messy bits, some lovely bits — and yet heading back to our family home can still bring up a lot of tricky feelings. We walk through the door, smell something familiar, hear the same old jokes, and suddenly we feel a bit different. A bit younger. A bit touchier. A bit more sensitive. If that happens to you, it doesn’t mean anything is wrong. It’s simply how our brains work. When we return to places where we learned, grew, argued, and at least partially became who we are, our bodies remember the emotional atmosphere of those years. Psychologists call this “state-dependent memory,” and what it means is that certain rooms, voices, and routines wake up old emotional patterns — even if our adult lives feel stable and healthy. Our families also have a way of nudging us back into our old roles without meaning to. Maybe we were the bossy one, or the peacemaker, or the “easy” child who didn’t make waves. We might not play those role...