Are you sick of dealing with difficulty and conflict between you and your teens when it comes to doing chores or anything deemed as hard? I am. If I had a dime for every gaslighting comment about what a terrible mom I am, I’d be rich. In this blog post, I will address how you have to deal with the difficulty of your teen’s resistance so they have skills for dealing with it for the rest of their lives.
I had only ten minutes to for TEDxWilmington talk: Calm Anxious Kids with Simple Chores on Sept 27th, 2018 at Tedx Wilmington. I have hours more to add so I am doing a series of blog post for all the ideas that ending up on the cutting room floor to make the talk concise. First, though, here is the video of the talk. Please watch it and pass it along on social media or send it to your parent, and teacher, friends!
Click here to read the transcript of the talk.
Dealing with Difficulty
Being a parent today is no walk in the park. Especially with anxious kids.
Commercialism has made our job so difficult. Every advertisement music apps, in podcasts, movies, TV, billboards, game apps, and on social media, benches, walls, packaging (on practically every surface we see) touts the message that we deserve things, just because we are us.
This message gets under the skin, we like it, it makes us feel good and important. We want the product, so we can have the good, deserving feeling the product promises. We feel entitled to have it. Because they say we are entitled to it.
“We should be able to have it.”
This is a big reason why anxiety is so rampant. Kids today are contact accessible to marketing. Even if you restrict your children’s TV, they are everywhere (even in schools) growing a sense of entitlement to huge proportions. Kids want what they want, they feel like they deserve it whether they work for it or not, simply because they are them. Generally, kids have lost their work ethic. (Not every kid, many kids are incredibly hard working.) Read more in my book You 1, Anxiety 0.
When our children are born, we hold our little bundles and think that we will make the world perfect for them, protecting them from all harm and trouble. Our love overflows, and we try to do this to the best of our abilities. But we can become like Merlin, the dad in Finding Nemo. He didn’t want anything to happen to his son, and Dory said, “What do you mean you don’t want anything to happen to him? Then, nothing would happen to him!”
The worst problem is that they won’t gain skills in dealing with difficulty. When people have a perfect, safe childhood getting everything they want, a world that isn’t predictable and doesn’t always have their best interests at heart, is quite dangerous for them.
Eventually, they will have a challenge and won’t know what to do. They will freeze and have trouble wading out of it. This can have a worse effect on them than someone who has been allowed to fail and work through something hard. They have done it and know they can do it.
Watch this video clip of an interview of Will Smith talks about chores he did and how they grew his sense of belief in himself to do anything he set his mind to:
Anxious Kids
Our kids expect their lives to be perfect, safe, easy – CONTROLLED – and we desire to make it so for them. (Mostly because that helps us be in control, too!) However, if they are slightly uncomfortable and dealing with difficulty in their friend groups, academically or wherever they AKA, they feel out of control, and they begin to panic. As you heard from my TEDx talk, life feels very uncertain when you haven’t learned that you can take action towards your goals.
Dealing with Difficulty in their future.
A desperate mom left this comment on my old Anxiety-Schmanxiety on Healthyplace.com.
My 19-year-old son has severe depression and anxiety. He refuses counseling and will only take his medication when he is rock bottom. He has only one friend. One of my biggest problems right now is that in order for me to keep things on an even keel, I give in to him constantly. I am starting to see (I think) that his need to control me and his younger brother may stem from his inability to control anything else in his life. I need to break this cycle. And I am at a loss. It is scary and painful.
This young man feels the need to get control because he feels so out of control in his life. No matter how much he controls a situation, he may use the excuse that he is out of control. This is a tactic of power, playing on his parents inherent guilt that he is struggling.
Skills in doing hard things
Sometimes, in protecting them, we take away our children’s tenacity to do what they don’t want to do. They don’t develop skills or confidence in doing hard things. (See more on Benefits of Chores.) You can ease them in to get them used to doing hard things. Start small and be consistent. Help them see the positive results and talk through them so they become more visible and can intrinsically motivate them the next time.
Help them see the good results instead of the annoying effort that goes into the task. They think they have to feel good before they can do things, but it is the opposite. They have to do things to feel good gradually. Up until now, they have been convinced that “they can’t.” But you know that is not true, so tell them that.
To survive in this physical world, we need skills in doing hard things. And to do that, we need to have confidence in ourselves that we can. They may try to convince you that it is not “worth it,” but it is so worth it.
These skills will help them their whole lives. But mostly, it’ll help them not to be anxious kids.
It is one of the most important gifts that we can give our children– the ability to work through a hard time.
Did you know I have a live-streamed talk show every Monday at 8 PM E on YouTube @doctorjodi? When you attend Live, you can ask me your questions. Get on the list to get reminders about the show, including the topic for the week, PLUS, receive my Gen Z Mental Health Resource Guide here:
Do you have anxious kids? How grateful were you to have the skills to overcome a hard time in your life?