Kerry: Hey Palmer, do you remember when you were 15 and 16 and in a rough place… when I would respond to you with empathy or ask anything that had to do with feelings, you’d say, “Don’t therapize me!” You despised anything that had to do with therapy. You even walked out of a therapy session that I made you attend and got yourself home on the bus! I never could have imagined that 10 years later, you’d be nearing the end of your master’s degree to be a therapist, specializing in working with teens and families. How did you get from there to here?
Palmer’: Haha well ask me something harder, would you? 😅That is quite the question…and it’s something that still leaves me in awe.
First is getting to a place where I believed that I was able to affect where my life was headed. The second was believing that there was a purpose for my life. I made a conscious decision to put myself in positions to discover and pursue that purpose. Discovering my purpose became my ‘why’.
There were many years after I found this sense of ownership of my life where I still didn’t know what I wanted to do but I practiced saying “yes” to the opportunities life sent my way. Saying ‘yes’ became my ‘how’…how I was going to live my life. Building that habit of saying “yes” is what allowed me to step into my purpose when it came across my path. It was unsettling because I never knew when one of those “life-defining moments” was going to come. I had to live as if they could happen at any moment. For you adults, I imagine if you were to reflect on when your defining life moments happened (career, spouse, moving, family, etc) some came from the most random and seemingly coincidental events.
Mom, I’m not sure if you were thinking about it at the moment, but you were a big part of me getting to that point of taking ownership over my life. What did you do that you think is important for other parents to know?
Kerry: Thanks, Palmer! Even though we spend a lot of time together I didn’t know your answer to that question!
From my perspective, when things were so out of control with you at age 15 and 16… your mindset and your disdain for me, I just had to surrender. As you became a teenager, I had to recognize that even though I’m your mom and had poured my heart and soul into raising you, I didn’t get to determine how you saw the world or how you interacted with it. It was very humbling for me to have such a challenging kid who didn’t operate the way I thought was best. I had to accept that your soul was on its own journey. It would have limited you if I had tried to make you tick the way I tick. At a profound level, I handed your life to you. Funny, because it was never “mine” in the first place.
To parents, I’d say we need to honor the souls of our children and remind them that they are not projects of ours; rather, they are the ones in charge of finding their meaning in this life. In a research project I ran where we interviewed teens about what they wish their parents knew, many said that they did not want to feel like a project of their parents. They wanted their parents to give them space to have and express their own thoughts and feelings.
Palmer, back to you: If you could say one thing to a parent who is feeling worn down by their snarky teen who doesn’t want much to do with them, what would it be?
Palmer: Parents, having been the kid who gave my mom every reason to give up, I’m asking you, please do not quit. That doesn’t mean staying stuck or accepting harmful actions from your kids. But it does mean staying committed to your pillars of being a parent. I promise you it will mean so much to your kids if you hang in there and keep loving them no matter what. I have a lot of friends who are in disbelief that their parents didn’t give up and now in their 20’s, it’s the foundation of their positive relationship.
Quick last thing as far as parenting goes: to make sure your kid is being prepped for the future, help them build the muscle of saying “yes” to life. Life gets messy when you stop saying “yes” to engaging with it. When I was growing up, my mom would tell us that we were expected to participate in sports, music, and something faith-related. It could be anything, but it had to be something. She found options and then let us pick. Doing this gave my brothers and me a sense of autonomy while also teaching us that life is something we say “yes” to. Of course, like any good strong-willed kid, I still threw fits about getting involved…I didn’t want to play the saxophone even if it was my best option. But it ingrained that vital message of trying new things and saying “yes” to being involved and “yes” to life.
