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What's Actually Going On When Our Teenager Changes Around Their Friends.

 




One of the conversations that has become very familiar to me over the summer is how different our teenagers can be when their friends are around. 

Their friends come to stay for a few days and suddenly the house is not good enough, the food is not good enough, where we live is boring. It can come across as ungrateful, or spoiled, which feels really hard when we have put in the effort and the money to give them a good experience.

As a parent it is really easy to take this personally so it helps to know what’s going on underneath it.

Lisa Damour talks about teenagers building a brand. A big part of being a teenager is working out who you are with your friends, separate from who you are with your family. That version of themselves is something they care about and want to protect. So, when their friends are in our house, they start seeing their home life the way their friends might see it, and noticing the bits that don’t fit the version of themselves they want to be. It all becomes something to feel a bit embarrassed about, the house, the food, us.

There is a researcher called Judith Rich Harris who looked at this for years. One of the things she found is that children learn how to fit in separately for each part of their life. They work out how to be at home, and they work out how to be with their friends, and these are often two different jobs. What works in one place does not always carry over to the other.

Most of the time home and friends are kept apart. It can get hard when friends come to stay, particularly ones who are not regular visitors, because now home and friends are in the same place at once.

Fitting in matters a lot at this age. Naomi Eisenberger did a study where people were left out of a simple computer game while their brains were scanned, and the part that reacted was the same part that deals with physical pain. Being left out actually hurts. So, when a teenager is worrying about whether the house is good enough, they are really worrying about fitting in.   

Being watched and judged affects teenagers more than it affects adults. For a teenager, being embarrassed in front of other people, particularly their peers, feels much more intense than it does for us. Small things we would not think twice about, the state of the house, what’s in the fridge, can feel enormous to them.

The reason we get the worst of it is that we are the safe ones. A teenager would never tell their friend the food is rubbish, because they need to keep the friend. They can say it to us because they know we are not going anywhere. Them being difficult with us is actually a sign that they feel safe at home.

None of this means they are pushing us away for good. Dan Siegel points out that turning towards friends is what teenagers are meant to do. It is part of getting ready to leave home one day. They still need us, and the way they are at home with us is still real. It is just not the whole picture any more.

 


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