Should I stay or should I go?

Should I stay or should I go, may be the line of a song, but it is also a question parents ask of themselves when their teens tell them that they want to be left alone. Most parents, if not all have experienced that time when it seems the main goal of the adolescent is to get rid of the parent. All the messages seem to indicate that they no longer have use for the rules, advice or even comfort of their parent. They separate from family appearing to choose the relationships they have formed with friends or a romantic other. Parents are only human and over time the rejection can begin to hurt, so they wonder should they listen to the adolescent and get out of the way or should they persist and continue to try influence their child.

We recently went to see Nanny McPhee Returns with our DOVES (Daughters of Virtue Excellence and Standards) group. This is a mentoring group for young girls. The girls in the group were middle and high school age. I feared the movie may be a bit childish for them, but as I and another mentor sat behind them in the theatre, we observed them laughing and being engaged in the story plot. Nanny McPhee states in the movie “When you don’t want me but need me I must stay, when you want me but don’t need me, I must go”. When one of the kids asks her about this odd rule, declaring that he would never want her she quietly acknowledges him but insists that that is the rule she lives by and therefore so must he.

I thought about that rule as it applies to parenting adolescents. The parenting of an adolescent is very difficult and a parent will hear or receive in various other ways the message over and over again “I don’t want you here, I don’t want you in my room, I don’t want you talking to my friends, I don’t want you asking me questions about my life away from you, I don’t want you…fill in the blank” If we believe these messages we will pull back and allow the child to live their life and make their mistakes and perhaps learn from them. However the secondary message also needs to be heard by parents of adolescents. That message is sent by their behaviors, and their emotional instability. That message says “I need you because I am not sure of what I am doing, I need you because the world is still mysterious to me, I need you because there is danger out there that I can’t see.” This message is not heard with the ear, it’s heard with the heart of the parent. It’s quiet and can be drowned out by the screaming of the first message, but a parent needs to tune into that message.

As parents of adolescents, we can take a page out of Nanny McPhee’s book and state that “When you don’t want me but need me I must stay. When you want me but don’t need me I must go.” We do have a time when our active parenting is no longer required and for the health and future independence of our children we should stop that aspect of parenting at that time. However the time to stop is not when they tell you to. It’s when you can see through their behaviors, their choices and the way they problems solve, that they no longer need you to monitor or direct them, that is when you must stop and let them enjoy the self determination that you have raised them to experience. Parent’s of adolescent, be encouraged, your children will declare that you are not needed, and unwanted, but ride out the storm and quietly see them safely to the shore of adulthood.

Proverbs 23:15-16 (The Message) – Dear child, if you become wise, I’ll be one happy parent. My heart will dance and sing to the tuneful truth you’ll speak.