The other day, my husband asked me to text our son from his phone. When I opened their text chain, I burst out laughing. It was almost entirely photos of things our son hadn’t done: dirty dishes piled in the sink, leaves needing to be raked, garbage left out. Apparently, my husband’s system for communicating with our teenager is to document household infractions and send the evidence directly to the accused.
I found it hilarious, and the photos told such a familiar story. My husband wasn’t asking for anything unreasonable. He just wanted our son to do his chores without being reminded 17 times. But I held up the long scroll of dirty-dish pictures and asked him, “How’s this working out for you?”
It reminded me of something Megan Saxelby, a parenting expert who works with families at College Prep 360, wrote recently. She explained that nagging a teenager is like pushing on a pull door. The harder you push, the more resistance you meet. And yet, when the door doesn’t open, our instinct is to push harder.
So what should parents do instead? Rather than pointing out every task left undone, we can involve our kids in deciding how they’ll contribute to the household, agree on clear expectations, and then trust them to follow through. The goal isn’t to win the argument about the dishes. It’s to raise someone who eventually notices the dishes and washes them without being asked.
We also need to keep our relationships with our children from becoming one long conversation about what they haven’t done. They need to know that we enjoy spending time with them, that we’re curious about their lives, and that our connection is about much more than a chore list.
Of course, it’s one thing to stay quiet about dirty dishes and quite another when college admissions are at stake. I know how tempting it is to step in when I see something my son could or should be doing. I’ve spent more than 20 years helping students through this process. But I also know that teenagers are often far more willing to listen to someone who isn’t their parent, which is why my son has a college counselor who isn’t his mother.
Having other adults in his corner has made a real difference. The essay coach who helped him with an internship application encouraged him to keep working on his poetry (something I never would have thought to suggest); it’s become one of the things he loves most. His innovation coach has helped him turn his interest in arts education into projects he cares about, and I can hardly believe how ambitious he has become about launching them into the world.
Other adults can help when things get challenging, too. When he’s overwhelmed or wondering how he can lighten his workload without sacrificing his goals, he talks through the trade-offs with his counselor and finds solutions that feel right for him. He leaves those meetings more confident about his decisions and optimistic about his future. And I get to be his mom, sharing in his excitement instead of managing every decision.
Recently, I took him to an information session at a highly selective university. At one point, the admissions officer put up a slide with the school’s statistics that would make even the most confident teenager (and their parents!) question their chances. I worried he’d walk out discouraged. But when we left and I asked what he thought, he said, “I feel really prepared for this process.”
Sometimes the best way to help our children become responsible, independent adults is to give them a little more room to get there on their own. Even when the dishes are still in the sink.
More soon,
Joie Jager-Hyman, Ed.D.
