We’ve all been there, right? One minute our sweet teenage daughter is enjoying Christmas prep with us and decorating the house joyfully, then in a split second turns on a dime and becomes the most negative Nelly on the planet. You quickly wrack your brain trying to think of what you did or said to set her off, but honestly can’t think of a thing. It’s just another day on the emotional roller coaster of raising a teenage kid. One day it’s Fa La La La la la the next it’s “Don’t talk to me you disgust me.“ It’s hard to keep a merry spirit for the holidays, but here are some tips that work for our family to cope with that attitude during the holidays.
My number one tip is to throw all expectations out the window. I know you want the Hallmark movie-themed holiday with your family, but it’s just not gonna happen. And if you let go of the expectations at the start, you can begin to enjoy the holidays with your teen in their special way. She might want to retreat to her room for a while, but that’s OK. Give her some space. She might not wanna hang out with the family and watch movies, but that’s OK. She might not want to go drive around looking at holiday lights, but that’s OK too.
What’s not OK is if you let her dictate the mood of the rest of the family. Don’t give her that power. Acknowledge her feelings, let her know you respect them, but don’t change your plans. Just go about your activities without her.
My second bit of advice is don’t force anything. If you do, chances are she’ll just push back more and she’ll probably resent you even more. Don’t force her to make the gingerbread house or hang the lights on the tree, that could get ugly. Just be and I’ll just bet she’ll come down on her own in her own time. See, I think teens struggle between the place of wanting to remain a kid and celebrating the holidays how they always have been and making it magical. Yet, maybe also trying to grow up and pull away. They are just conflicted, which makes them, in my opinion, act like real pains in the butt. It’s like you think to yourself, “They know how to ruin a good time.”
The third tip is just to take the special moments when you can get them and be grateful when you do. They are few and far between. Cherish the fact they want to go to the grocery store with you for 15 minutes, or they offer to wrap some presents with you until they get bored. Take the fact they’ll watch 10 minutes of a holiday movie with you as a win. They are offering little nuggets of themselves, and that is definitely something to be grateful for.
My fourth and final piece of advice to help you endure the holidays with a moody teen is just leave the door open, proverbially speaking. Keep showing up for them. Don’t give up on them just yet. They get frustrated with themselves. They want to have fun and enjoy themselves . They just put too much pressure on themselves. It would be nice if we could just hit them, upside the head and say snap out of it, but that doesn’t work plus you don’t wanna spend the holidays with DFACS . Let them know you love them and you are there to share in the holidays whenever they are ready.
Who knows, one day you’ll look around and this phase will be over and they will be coming home from college and greet you with the biggest hug and tell you they couldn’t wait to come home. I guarantee it. Happy holidays!