Growing Pains: Surviving the Tumultuous Teen Years

This father shared how he was able to rekindle his relationship with his daughter as she navigated through being a teenager.
 

We call her The Lodger. She sleeps in our house and eats our food, but sometimes we don’t see her for days. The bedroom door is shut. Music is playing. She may or may not emerge for hours. When she does, she is pale and blinking, like she’s just come out of a dark movie theater during the day and can’t adjust to the light. She’s becoming downright vampiric. Are her canine teeth getting longer? Are there an unusual number of cats missing from the neighborhood? 

It started a few years ago, when she didn’t want to hug or be tucked in at night. She got cranky and aloof. We argued. She didn’t want me to play in the parent-child soccer match. (FYI: I’m wicked good.). She rolled her eyes. She debated everything. She became pathologically defensive. She turned monosyllabic, irrational, judgmental. And that’s on a good day.

I’m exaggerating a bit, but the point is, we got used to it. We understood why she stayed in her room. She wanted space to be herself, or to become herself. She wanted to escape all the prying eyes and chattering tongues, of the world. She didn’t want to be rude and difficult. But certain things were beyond her control. Teenagerdom, for instance. The chemical coup d’état raging in her endocrine system.

She was doing us a favor, actually. She helped us avert arguments, punishments, more arguments about the punishment, threats, and recriminations. Staying in the bedroom was a great idea, come to think of it. Maybe she was being perfectly rational.

I missed the hugs and kisses, the cuddling, the requests to take her to the playground or kick around the soccer ball, the piggyback rides. But I learned to leave her alone. I didn’t react to every barb and scowl, every sullen face. I didn’t nag. (Okay, I tried not to nag.) I let her make her own mistakes and avoided saying “I told you so” when she made them. I didn’t force conversation or try too hard. I wanted to hang out, every day, but I didn’t ask. I restrained myself, most of the time, because when I did ask she invariably said no. I let a few months go by. She asked me to go running. That’s more like it. I let her come to me, in her own time. 

I let her grow up and become more independent. I didn’t want to. I was terrified when she started going out with friends at night, even though it was only to the movies with nice kids. (I interrogated her on the movie plots—she really did go, it wasn’t a ruse to meet boys at a party.) I stared out the window like the family dog waiting for Master to come back home. I didn’t cry, but I did pace, wring my hands forcefully, and fret.