Skip to main content

When Presence is the Intervention

 


Parenting teenagers is a paradox. They desperately want independence but still need us close by.   They long for connection but often push it away. For so many of us, this stage feels like walking a tightrope — we try to be close without crowding, to be supportive without smothering.

It’s confusing. The teen years bring rapid brain development: emotional centres like the amygdala and limbic system are highly active, while the prefrontal cortex — responsible for planning, impulse control, and perspective-taking — is still developing. So, our teenagers feel their feelings so intensely but don’t yet have the full capacity to manage them.  And while this makes for many hard moments, it’s important because this is what pushes our teens to test boundaries, take risks, and practice independence — all crucial steps in becoming capable, self-reliant adults.

So where does that leave us, apart from feeling discombobulated.  This leaves us with presence.    Our kids need us to lend them a steady nervous system — adults who can stay calm when they can’t. Dan Siegel calls this “co-regulation”: when our grounded presence helps our teen’s body and brain return to balance. Even when our teens act like they don’t need anyone, it is this emotional steadiness that anchors them. 

But presence doesn’t always come easily. When we are met with slammed doors, eye rolls, or silence, it can be hard to stay open. Yet in these moments, often the only thing we can do is simply be there, emotionally as well as physically. Sometimes that looks like just sitting in the same room without saying anything; sometimes it’s letting them know you’re downstairs if they need you. And sometimes it’s simply resisting the urge to walk away. It’s these small, steady gestures that let our teens know they’re not alone — and it is from this place that regulation can return.

Lisa Damour reminds us that our teen’s emotional turbulence isn’t a sign of something going wrong — it’s evidence that development is happening. Their emotional world is changing, and slowly they’re learning to regulate within it. When we remain steady, our teens begin to borrow that calm and eventually build it for themselves.

There is no possibility that we will manage to do this every time.  Things will go wrong, we will respond in ways we wish we didn’t, that is being human.  What matters is what we do next.  When we can dig deep and say “I wish I handled that differently” or “I’m sorry I lost my temper” this restores connection — and connection is crucial, because without it, we have very little influence over our teen’s choices or behaviour.

None of this means we need to be endlessly available. It means being intentional with the moments that matter.  Parenting through adolescence asks us for courage — the courage to stay steady in uncertainty, the courage to offer warmth when all we feel is distance, the courage to remember that presence itself is the intervention.

 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why do we suddenly feel about 12 when we arrive home for Christmas

  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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Parenting: Looking Back on a Tricky Christmas with Teens.

  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...
Post a Comment
Read more