Sneaky ways fear-based parenting shows up in everyday life with our teens

Hi, I'm Ashley Chandler, here to guide you to the soul-to-system support you both need to thrive from the inside out. This is The Teenage Guide Podcast. Welcome back to The Teenage Guide Podcast. I wanna set a scene to start off. It's the end of June and your house that's been reasonably kept all school year long somehow now looks like there's a small civilization living inside of it, you know, with one cracker left inside a package and the milk left out on the counter without its lid and crumbs everywhere, shoes everywhere. Really interesting options for decor, mold growing science experiments, right? And what starts to happen inside our brains is at first we're looking at a dirty dish and then we start building resentment and spiraling. And suddenly that dirty dish, that one dirty dish is turning into a lecture and it's turning into, well, Why can't you just do anything? It's catastrophizing because that one single dish is also our brain spiraling out of control and predicting their work ethic as a 35-year-old who's unable to get a job and unable to have a good relationship. We immediately go to doom and gloom. That right there is fear-based parenting. And for most of us, it creeps in in these sneaky little ways before we even recognize it. When people, like maybe even when you first heard this episode, you may have assumed like, well, I'm not that harsh or controlling or punishing, right? I'm not afraid all the time. But that's not actually what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the sneaky ways when we're well-intentioned and we're super loving, but the sneaky ways that our fear creeps into the daily moments that we share with our teenager. It can look like reminding them 5 times about something because you're all afraid they'll forget, or it can look like checking every grade because you're afraid they're falling behind, turning a simple chore into a 20-minute lecture because you can see the dominoes in a way that they can't, and you're catastrophizing what this means for their adult life. You push, And it's coming what you think is from love. You push because you care, but it causes major resistance on the other end because you're afraid they don't care. And so none of that makes you weird or wrong. It's actually just proof that you're a human being and you're wired to keep your kid alive. You are wired to make sure they survive this reality that we call the world, right? But you're not necessarily wired to help them thrive. Here's what I mean. All this worry, all this fear gets tangled up. It comes from love, right? It actually comes from love, but it's tangled up with worry. And to them, it's tangled up with control and nagging, and it's not good enough. And so that's what they hear. Because your brain perceives a risk and urgency. There is clearly a fire here. We must put it out. And then it's like Mission Impossible, must stop this. before it gets worse. And we become really reactive and controlling and fearful about the worst-case scenario, even when the evidence for the worst-case scenario is simply a cereal bowl that was left out on the counter. Is it irritating? Yes. Is it a catastrophe? No. You know this, you hear me say this, but I'm gonna say it again. Your teen does not hear the words They hear your energy. They feel your energy. They won't even necessarily call it that. And their brains perceive threat. In fact, there was this really interesting study that showed that even when parents have a neutral, what they think is a neutral tone and a neutral face, they will still assume that you're mad. They automatically can look at that and think, what's wrong? Right? They perceive threat. So it's important to remember that your teen is not just hearing the words you say, they're really internalizing the feeling of those words, the tone, the energy behind the words. This is something that I wish every parent on the planet would pause and internalize. It is not so much what you do, but it's the way in which you do it. And so when we say something like, all I'm asking you to do is pick up your room, what they hear is, my parents trying to control me, push them away. I don't wanna do that. Nothing I did just clean my room and it's still not good enough. Nothing I ever do is good enough. They have a very different narrative. Now, I'm not saying that they're right and you're wrong, okay? That's not what I'm saying. In fact, sometimes their interpretation is not always accurate. Right? Like we might be smiling and they think we're mad. Obviously not accurate. We might think that we're coming off in a real nice way, but their perception is that we're mad or we're angry or we're stressed when actually we're not. We're just moving through the day. So this is not an invitation to somehow feel like you have to walk on eggshells in your own home. No, absolutely not. What The point is that I really want you to remember is that they are internalizing the energy underneath your words. Maybe there is a little bit of an emotional charge. Maybe it's not about them. Maybe it's about your partner. Maybe it's about the traffic you were just in. Maybe it's about your snarky colleague or the headline you just saw. They don't automatically see that. They feel the tightness from you or the stress or the urgency or the emotion. That's what they feel. And when they feel that energy, they automatically protect themselves. They might shut down because their autonomy is queen or king 100% of the time. So they might shut down or they resist or they defend or they argue or they disappear in their room and they put on their headphones. And this is really important. Not to disappoint you. It's not to be difficult. It's to, in emotional regulation terms, self-regulation terms, it's to regulate because that's the tool that they have. They immediately go into their own version of must survive and get out underneath the weight of feeling like they're disappointing you. So this is where you come in, where you understand the behavior is information. It's not the problem itself. And what makes fear-based parenting so relatable and so sneaky is that it creates the exact dynamic that we're trying to avoid. It creates more stress. It creates more fear, less connection. It creates more distance between you. Afraid they will never become responsible, we take over and then they never practice it. So then they're not becoming responsible. Afraid they're gonna fail. We rescue, we say it's the other person's fault, we keep them from failing. They never experience failure. They never build resilience. Afraid that something's going on and we push and we push because we want them to talk to us, and then they retreat more and more and more. Afraid that they're unmotivated and they're lazy and they're never gonna amount to anything, and so we micromanage and we control, and then they retreat and they shut down. Because their inner narrative is full of shame. So again, I call these out because I see these a lot and there's nothing that makes your family weird and all hope is lost. It is simply a pattern and patterns can change. Habits, new habits can be rebuilt. In my teenage tree framework that I use with all of my clients in my private practice and my parent membership, I talk a lot about what we can see, what is tangible for us of the experience that we're having. Those are the leaves. Maybe it's the attitude or the screen time or the dirty dishes in the sink or the closed door to their bedroom, or, you know, waiting until the last minute to make a plan and then expecting you to help them with it. And what we do as parents is we fixate on those. We fixate on that experience. That experience has to change, and it has to change yesterday. And so we go online and we try to find something that's going to solve that problem, that challenge. And what really is going to solve it is what the leaves are connected to the branches, and the branches are connected to the roots, and the roots are their relationships, the relationship that you have with them, the relationship that they have with you. So when fear is driving, we skip and we go more reminders, more consequences, more boundaries, more fixing without actually tending to the relationship. So your teen may need all of those things, but they also need an energy from you and a way that you're communicating with them where those structures actually work, those boundaries work, those tools work. They need to feel like they are safe with you. They need to feel like you aren't shaming them, you aren't blaming them, you aren't catastrophizing long-term for them. And so that process starts within you, which is the soil, the relationship with yourself. So when you feel yourself tightening up and stressing up and catastrophizing that cereal bowl in the sink or the crumbs all over the place of the shoes, then you wanna pause and you wanna ask yourself, what am I making this mean right now? What am I afraid of will actually happen if I don't control this? If I don't step in right now to solve this immediately? And then you're gonna name the fear to yourself. Name the fear, call it out, make it visible. Make what's invisible visible, poke holes in it. Is that actually true? That's so funny. I'm catastrophizing that they're gonna be a couch potato at 35 because they left their shoes in the bathroom randomly when they're 15 or 16, right? We can create a regulated response in ourselves by bringing more self-awareness to the moment. And then once we are regulated, we can meet them where they are. It's not that you wanna just be permissive about you know, the clutter that they have everywhere or poor grades, it's not like you're just like, well, I have no control. Quite the opposite. It's that your approach in these times is what makes the biggest impact and has the greatest influence. And when you come from that regulated place, the energy shifts between you. You might say the exact same thing, But the energy is different. Your tone is different, and it's not coming from fear. It's coming from love. And that is what they remember. That is what they feel. And that is ultimately what gets them to buy in to whatever it is that you want for them to do, to listen, to build trust, to make good decisions, to work hard, to feel good about themselves. It's coming from love. So as always, thank you so much for being here and never underestimate the power that you have as the parent. I know you have limited time and energy, so thank you for being here and kudos to you for investing this time in yourself and your team. If you enjoyed this episode, please continue the ripple effect and like, subscribe, review, and/or share with a fellow parent who could benefit so more people can find my content. Remember, the number one way that you have influence in your teen or your young adult's life is in your relationships with yourself and them. So never doubt how much power you have because you are the teenage guide too.