Not Connecting with Your Teen? Listen to This

Have you ever felt completely shut out by your teenager — like no matter what you say, they just don’t want to hear it?

As kids grow into teens, the connection we used to rely on can suddenly feel strained or even non-existent. It’s easy to take it personally or feel like we’ve lost our chance to stay close.

Coming up next, we’re sharing a personal story — including the time my teenage son told me I wasn’t allowed to speak to him unless he gave me permission — and what we learned about staying connected, even when your teen is pushing you away.

Here’s what you’ll hear this episode: 

• A real life example from our house, that may have happened in your house.
• What is your responsibility in connecting with your teen, and what isn’t.
• Some no regret parenting tips - teen addition.
• A happy ending for our family, and hopefully yours, too.

So if your teen is shutting you out, or your child’s not quite there yet but you want to be ready, listen in.

00:00 Introduction: A Shocking Teen Moment
00:27 Understanding Teen Behavior
01:06 Managing Parental Stress
02:44 Effective Communication Strategies
04:26 Creating Connection Rituals
05:37 Adapting to Changing Phases
07:40 Final Thoughts and Resources

When you finish listening, we’d love for you to connect with us on social media!

Follow us on Instagram and like our page on Facebook to keep the conversation going. It’s the best way to get quick tips, encouragement, and resources to help you make time for what matters most—your family.

Get our FREE resource, "30-Second Micro Moments of Intention with Your Kids", by going to: parentsmakingtime.com/freeresource

Parenting is hard. Intentional parenting can seem even harder. Motherhood, fatherhood, marriage, and all that goes with those important aspects of life can make it difficult to prioritize tasks, embrace intentional living, focus on present parenting, and build family bonds. We're here to help ease your parenting anxiety so that you can stop feeling overwhelmed, find joy in your parenting journey, and build family bonds that last for generations. Here at Parents Making Time, we are all about that parent-child connection, self-care for parents, and helping you overcome mom guilt and dad guilt. If you have a question or would like to share an experience about your own parenting, please feel free to reach out to one of us! Please note, we may use your question and/or comments as a part of a Q&A Parenting Advice segment on one of our episodes.

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Transcript

Jennifer: [00:00:00] Can you believe that my teenage son once told me that I wasn't allowed to speak to him unless he gave me permission. Coming up next, we're sharing the rest of that story and how to handle times when you're not connecting with your teen.

Anthony: This is parents making time. The show that helps busy parents put family first without burning out. We are Anthony and Jennifer Craiker. We don't just give parenting tips. We help you become the parent you want to be.

Jennifer: So yes, it's true. My son actually told me that one night when we were getting ready for family prayer.

It'd been a rough night, but the next day he woke up and he acted like nothing had ever happened. I, on the other hand, had spent the entire night totally upset about it. 

Anthony: It was one of those teenage moments where as a parent you're just like, did you really just say that? It was, 

Jennifer: it was crazy. Yeah, 

Anthony: it was a little frustrating, to say the least, 

Jennifer: and it's totally stressed me out and I think that was on me.

I mean, he was 16 or [00:01:00] 15, one of the two at the time, and I just let his attitude totally derail my whole evening. 

Anthony: Yeah, and that's, I think where we get into trouble with parenting sometimes is we're so worried about how our teen is acting or, or should be reacting to what we say, that we allow ourselves to get stressed out about individual moments instead of looking at the big picture of raising teenagers.

Jennifer: Well, we think that there's gonna be something that we can do that completely changes it all. Yeah. And that's just not true. 

Anthony: Yeah. As if there were some magic words we could have said in that moment that would've made him say, oh, I apologize Mom, for being disrespectful. 

Jennifer: Yeah. That's laughable. 

Anthony: Yeah. And like you said it creates other problems or other symptoms, if you will, for the parent. Like you were losing sleep that night. Sometimes it results in us losing our temper with our teenagers and getting like, kind of sucked into their own erratic emotional state. 

Jennifer: Well, like the next morning I woke up, I'm still mad, [00:02:00] right?

I've not slept much. I'm still stuck on what happened. I'm ready for a fight the next morning and he was just like, Hey mom how are you? 

Anthony: Right. Unbelievable. 

Jennifer: So I think what was happening there is I was making it more about me than anything else. I was just upset. I had. I had been wronged.

I, you know, some retribution needed to be happening, and I thought there had to be some magic way that I was gonna solve this to get my kid to change, to apologize, to connect with me. I don't know. It was rough. 

Anthony: Yeah. That's the mistake that a lot of times we make, that we need to kind of recognize as parents is we, we get our feelings hurt.

We get offended with, with a, a teenager who's just being a teenager and we make it all about us. 

Jennifer: Yeah, but that doesn't mean there aren't tips and tricks that actually do help, but maybe those tips and tricks are something completely different. It's not so much about what we can do, but how we can react in the end.

Anthony: Yeah. There's not gonna be some kind of magical solution that you can find to just get your [00:03:00] kids to open up and connect with you. You know? I mean, there's a. A myriad of books and podcasts and things like that that a lot of, and there's a lot of good information out there, a lot of helpful ideas. But recognizing that those kinds of tips and tactics and strategies aren't going to work overnight.

Uh, this, this is something that you do over a period of time., And part of it, frankly, is learning to just be patient with your kid, patient with yourself, give a little grace to both sides and recognize that the teenage years are just kind of tough and you just have to kind of power through it.

Jennifer: Well, and throughout those teenage years, there's phases, right? Yeah. There's phases where you're like, oh, my teen's great. There's other phases you're that you're like, oh, my teen comes from another planet and I don't know where all this is coming from. Sometimes or actually honestly, teens just don't wanna talk to you all the time.

Yeah. And that's okay, right? I don't wanna talk to everybody else all the time either, but we're like, oh, I'm your parent. You need to talk to me. But when we can recognize and [00:04:00] realize that in, instead of just getting angry that maybe this is just a phase, maybe that was just a bad night. And then you're there when they.

Do want to connect. That's where the magic happens. 

Anthony: Yeah. And I think recognizing that the moments where they are going to wanna connect with you are not necessarily in, in all likelihood, probably not going to be the moments where you want to connect with them. You have to be flexible, you have to be willing to recognize the moment.

So like in our family with our son for whatever reason we kinda have this tradition or ritual of watching a show together at night before we go to bed, it's usually a 30 minute sitcom of some sort. And for whatever reason, as soon as that show's over, he wants to talk.

We're talking about all sorts of things. Not always deep conversations, but just, he's opening up in ways that from, you know, 7:00 AM in the morning to 9:00 PM at night, he doesn't open up to us and wanna talk to us. 

Jennifer: Yeah. And and I should, we should mention that that's a [00:05:00] somewhat new ritual. That's a phase we've now entered.

Yeah. Whereas, you know, the story we led with was also at that same time of night, but at that phase of teenager hood, for him it was a no go. Yeah. But now we've entered into this phase, like you said, we kind of have this ritual. Magic like clockwork, 9:30 PM whatever he's doing. He comes out of his room, he gets a bowl of ice cream.

That's his thing. Um, and we watch a show together. And, and I think there's a bit of, I don't wanna go to bed, so I'm gonna talk to mom and dad, but we've experienced that with our other teenagers too. Yeah. The late night, I want to tell it all too. And you're exhausted, but you're like, okay. Let's talk now.

Anthony: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And we've had some of our best conversations with our kids at that time and that moment that we have right now that's seems to work well and give us an opportunity to connect with our son pretty much on a daily basis that might change. Right? For sure. And we have to be sure willing for sure to change with it.

As he continues, and he's almost an adult. , He's 17 now. , So the relationship, the dynamic will change [00:06:00] somewhat when he goes to college or whatever it is he ends up doing. But not making it about you, the parent not getting your feelings hurt and saying, okay, I understand this is a teenager, this is like a different.

Animal species. Right. Uh, in, in, in the teenager's natural habitat. It's, you know, we're, we're just observing. We're, 

Jennifer: we're just a part of their world. Right. 

Anthony: Very small part at times. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes a very small part. And recognizing that there is light at the end of the tunnel, right? Because we have our two older children who, they enjoy talking to us and they'll call us.

We've got one at college. We've got another who's doing missionary service for our church right now. And so they're both away from home, but they enjoy talking to us and, and we have great conversations with them, but it's just recognizing that those teenage years are just a, a different phase of life.

Uh, so give yourself some grace. That's, that's really the tip, is give yourself some grace and then be [00:07:00] open to those moments where your teen does indicate that he or she is willing to engage in a conversation and embrace those moments. 

Jennifer: And let's be just real here for a second, lest you think that all is a bed of roses now.

There are still nights, still moments where our teenage son is not excited to talk to us. Oh, sure. And that those nightly rituals aren't. A bed of roses, but that he's done with the day and tired just like I am at times. Yeah, right. Like there are times I'm just, I just need to go to sleep. So remembering not to take those moments personally and don't lose your own sleep over it.

Just keep moving and looking for those moments of connection. 

Anthony: Absolutely.

 You know, as we've been talking about this today, it reminds me that one of the reasons we started this podcast is because we know how busy life gets as a parent. Sometimes it just feels impossible to slow down and create those big, memorable moments. That's why we created a free guide called 30-second Micro Moments of Intention [00:08:00] with your Kids.

It's filled with quick, simple ideas that you can do anytime in 30 seconds or less to strengthen your connection with your kids without adding more to your plate. Now, some of these ideas may seem basic or like no-brainers, but when you do them intentionally, they can make a real difference in your relationship with your child.

So just go to parentsmakingtime.com/freeresource, enter your email and we'll send it right to you. You can print it out to keep it where you'll see it. Or save it on your phone to reference whenever you need a little inspiration so that you can start building lasting memories one micro moment at a time.

Jennifer: So if you like what we talked about today, please take a moment to leave a rating or review on Apple or Spotify, wherever you've listened to us, and bonus points if you share it with a friend. 

Anthony: And in our next episode, we're gonna be talking about parent burnout, which goes right along with this, right?

Especially if you're raising teens. We've all felt it. You know, we've all been there. Parenting can be exhausting, and we're gonna share the secret weapon to beat parent burnout. [00:09:00] You're not gonna wanna miss that episode. But until then make time to become the parent you want to be.