Setting Your Kids (and Your Relationship With Them) Up For Success in the New School Year
With the school year getting underway — in-person after what might have been a very long wait – our adolescents are probably more driven than ever to connect with friends in sports and clubs and just socially. That’s entirely appropriate from a developmental perspective: teen brains are “wired” for connection with peers. At the same time, while kids are taking on increasingly busy schedules and doubling down on activities, it’s essential for us parents to maintain a consistent and mostly positive presence in their lives (i.e., not just “nagging”).
Why focus on being a steady, supportive influence? Experts tells us that adolescents thrive when they’re confident that their parents are close at hand, care deeply about them, and uphold reasonable limits for their behavior. Research has demonstrated a connection between affectionate support from parents and resilience, academic achievement and other positive outcomes for adolescents. Along the same lines, multiple studies have found that parent-teen time—one-on-one and all together as a family—can contribute to better stress management among kids.
On the flip side, micromanaging our teens encourages rebelliousness in some kids, and in others, quiet resistance even to reasonable advice. If we want our adolescents to be motivated and self-disciplined, research says that they need a strong sense of agency: control over how they conduct themselves and real input into decisions that matter in their lives.
This is a difficult balancing act: we need to hand over some control to let teens learn from their own successes and failures; meanwhile, we need to uphold our values and enforce limits to help them manage more and more autonomy. There’s no easy recipe for pulling that off (though we offer workshops on this). However, strengthening or reinforcing the bond with your adolescent child is essential. And rewarding! Here are some suggestions for staying positively involved in their lives as we head into the new school year.
1. Maintain some family traditions…or start new ones. Many of us allowed our kids to withdraw to their rooms more than we liked since the pandemic began and during the summer, but if you found ways to draw them out, keep using those and look for new ones now that they’re back in school. If you feel like nothing worked, adjust your expectations: just a little family or 1-on-1 time is better than none at all. And if you have multiple kids, conspire with them separately to help you create an experience for the family.
Close the deal on family dinner by making or carrying out favorite foods a few times a week.
Queue up a favorite family movie—even just a few scenes…even during dinner. (Screen-free interaction is ideal, but a shared screen experience is a decent replacement for private screen time.)
Have a “spontaneous” picnic—possibly in your own yard—and end it with a food fight! (My friend did this once, impulsively, and his kids made it an obligatory end-of summer tradition.)
Make a date to play a game you haven’t played together in a long time. Maybe have it set out at the dinner table and play a round while you eat.
When school stress grows and family time is scarce, set out fixings ice cream sundaes, or any other treat that can bring you together for a few minutes.
Turn a required chore into an opportunity to connect. Rather than nagging a child to do a job they’re avoiding, acknowledge that they’re busy and offer sometimes to help out (not do it for them). Consider it an opportunity to connect.
2. Increase contact. Little things can add up to a big difference in being a loving presence. Research has shown that moments of eye contact and welcome touches soothe adolescents’ nervous systems. In humans of all ages, physical contact from a loved one releases oxytocin, a hormone that fosters trust and compassion, reinforcing connection. If hugs aren’t welcome in your relationship, small touches—fist bumps or a hand on the arm or shoulder—cumulatively strengthen bonds and communicate caring.
3. Surprise them with what you don’t ask about. Adolescents feel judged even when nobody’s judging them, so they withdraw from conversations with parents in part because they don’t want to answer questions about homework, tests, applications, etc. Of course, there are times when we need to get updates and might need to help them manage their time, but we also need to give them breaks from these topics. If we don’t, they think that’s all we care about.
To help our teens to feel at ease with us and to reassure them that we love them for who they are, we can restrict discussion of grades and other stressful topics to specific times each week. Think of it like a routine 1-on-1 between a manager and an employee. Who wants to be asked for progress reports about a difficult project at any moment? That feels like micromanaging. You can help your kids to feel respected – and more at ease when you really want to connect – by setting clear expectations about when you’ll check in about those things that are weighing on both of you.
If you create enough of these times for connection—and leave space for them to talk—you’ll probably hear what they wouldn’t otherwise have said and have more insight into their experience. Teens want to be seen and heard, but on their own terms. It’s up to us to make space for that and, through our presence and supportive gestures, to keep inviting them to show up. They might never thank you for it, but you’ll be giving them a relationship that supports them in becoming a flourishing adult.