Reasons Why I Stopped Fighting with My Teen
Photo Courtesy: Laci Hoyt
BY LACI HOYT
I stopped fighting with my kid. I stopped yelling. I stopped demanding. I stopped threatening. I stopped arguing. I stopped correcting. I stopped all of it.
His room is a giant mess – dirty clothes piled in front of dirty sheets. Dirty cups, plates, and empty electrolyte water bottles on every surface. His bed is never made. There’s layered dust on everything. The floor hasn’t been vacuumed in I-don’t-know-how-long. You can’t even see much of the floor. The closet looks like it’s been through a natural disaster – drawers partially open, half off their track, clothes spilling out everywhere.
My father-in-law took two steps into his room the other day. He looked around briefly and returned with the exact facial expression I had anticipated. I felt embarrassed. I’m aware of the parenting recommendations. I know it seems like I’m not teaching him discipline.
“Next time,” I said. “Turn your head in the other direction when you walk past.”
That’s what I do. Otherwise, I’m flooded with stress hormones. It looks like chaos in there. When I look, my stomach clenches. My jaw gets so tense it gives me a headache. My teeth start to hurt. Then I start imagining him as an adult, surrounded by a horde of trash. Maybe he’ll die in his apartment due to dust and grime and no one will know because the smell won’t be a surprise. Maybe he’ll have someone special over and they’ll be horrified and he’ll lose them forever.
These are just a couple of the stories I’ve told myself.
But I still won’t make a big deal out of this. I’ll ask again today for him to bring me his dirty glasses and empty bottles. He’ll say no, and I’ll say, “Please just bring them.” And I won’t say anything else about it. And maybe he’ll bring the glasses and bottles out but probably he won’t. The next day, I’ll ask for the garbage and we’ll repeat the whole thing. But no one will yell. No one will make threats. There won’t be any fighting.
It wasn’t always like this. In the before, most of the day was spent in conflict. Me yelling. Him yelling. Me arguing my point. Him needing the last word. Me losing my composure over perceived disrespect. Then Dad’s voice thundering over both of us. Everyone was miserable. Home felt like the last place any of us wanted to be.
Now, we live in a relatively peaceful house. There’s not a lot of yelling or anger between us. There’s very little arguing. Sometimes he comes out of his garbage den, sits with us in the fresh-smelling living room, and has adult-ish conversations. This was growing rarer and rarer before. But last night, he sat with us, by choice, for over an hour talking about soccer and life.
Cool. Calm. Collected.
Dare I say, mature.
So this was a strategic decision we made, on purpose. But I had to adjust my thinking to get here.
This is what I remind myself as often as necessary: Messy is an option. It may not be the option I would choose. It may not be the option I want him to choose. But it is an option.
And I remind myself of these facts: being messy isn’t a moral failing. It doesn’t make him a bad person. It doesn’t mean he’s lazy. It isn’t a definer that indicates something unworthy about him. It just means he’s messy. And strong-willed. And hates being told what to do.
(I also remind myself that his being messy is not a moral failing on my part. It does not make me a bad mom. It doesn’t mean I didn’t do my job. And it isn’t a definer that indicates something unworthy about me, either.)
So, I’ve been carrying this let-it-be philosophy into as many interactions with him as I can.
I don’t force him to do his homework anymore. I don’t ask to see completed assignments. I don’t write his teachers. I don’t oversee anything and I don’t force anything. Not chores. Not eating with the family. Nothing. And I’m aware that everyone thinks we’re doing this wrong. Even his sibling is fond of telling us that according to modern psychology and every parenting book in the history of parenting, we’re doing it wrong.
But this kid is a little bit like me. And when I was growing up, there were a lot of rules. My parents did all the right and recommended parenting things, but it turned out that some of those strategies weren’t right for me. Some of them drove a wedge into my relationship with my parents that I am still struggling to get past today.
I don’t want that for my son. So I had to ask myself, what didn’t work for me? What might have?
I’m fully aware that I have already done so many things wrong. There are plenty of points of contention that either of our children could use as reasons to cut us out of their lives. But standing here in the final year of my having any say whatsoever about his life, all I want is for him to want to come back, for him to want to stay in a relationship with us.
I’ve finally come to understand that forcing him to be the way I want, just means I’m forcing him to live a lie. But he shouldn’t be afraid to be himself in front of me.
He is a strong-willed young man. Trying to force or threaten him into conforming to my preferences only stretches the distance between us. It forces us further apart.
And a clean room isn’t worth it to me. So I allow the mess. I close the door so I don’t have to see. I don’t say a word when he cusses. I try not to care when he bends the rules or pushes against my boundaries (within reason). I don’t harass him about his schoolwork. I listen when he explains his position. And even when I disagree, I try not to let my disagreement turn into disapproval of who he is and what he thinks.
And I’m finding that the less I try to control him, the less he pulls away.
The more I make space for him to be who he is, the easier it becomes to make space for the real me as well. So neither one of us has to hide.
LACI HOYT is a sensitive, creative person who is driven by a desire to make the world a little softer through her writing and creative projects. She writes from her home near Ithaca, NY where she lives with her family. She writes both essays and poetry about living with chronic illness, love, relationships, and all the other things she can’t stop thinking about. Her essays and poetry have been published in The Kindred Voice and Motherscope. When she’s not writing, she can be found making various projects with fabric or yarn. You can find her on Instagram @liviatree.