By Ashley Lanier-Pszczola LMFT

*Content warning: brief mentions of teen suicidality and self-harm*

One of the most common questions I get from parents of my teen clients is “How do I talk to my teen when they just shut down?“. Parents can often feel at a loss about what to say to teens and how to connect with them, especially in moments of conflict or high emotional intensity.

The answer to that question (TL;DR) is validation. I’ll say more about that below, but first I want to share a story about how I learned about the importance of validation in communicating with teens.

Earlier in my career, I worked as the family therapist & family services coordinator at an adolescent residential treatment program. I came in when the program was brand new and I got to develop all the adolescent family programming. It’s difficult for MFTs (marriage and family therapists) to find jobs where we get to exclusively do family systems work. Often MFTs who are early in their careers work jobs doing mostly individual therapy, and we are chomping at the bit to get in there and do some relational family work! So, I was excited to be there, and eager to learn and grow.

Working with teens in residential treatment is unique and intense. This was my first experience working at this level of care and in a lot of ways I didn’t really know what I was in for. To put it plainly, no teen ends up in residential mental health treatment for no reason. Many of the teens in our program had attempted suicide, had severe depression or anxiety, or had very low levels of functioning in their daily life due to the severity of their mental health struggles. This obviously puts an immense amount of strain on the family system, and I started to notice patterns in what the parents/families of these teens were experiencing. Even when the teens were struggling with very different mental health symptoms, the family patterns and dynamics were similar.

“Parents had no idea how to talk to their teen for fear of making things worse, and the teens had no idea how to share with their parents what they were experiencing.”

Especially amongst the teens who had severe depression, had attempted suicide, or experienced self-harming behaviors, I noticed a very clear and consistent family dynamic – Parents had no idea how to talk to their teen for fear of making things worse, and the teens had no idea how to share with their parents what they were experiencing. This puzzled me – many of the parents appeared loving, supportive, and like they truly wanted the best for their child (as most parents do). I got curious about this, and started asking the teens without their parents present what this was about. What I found was a clear and consistent answer from the teens – they would often say something like “I know I should have told my parents I was struggling before it got so bad, but I wasn’t sure they could handle it. So, I just kept it to myself.”

“I know I should have told my parents I was struggling before it got so bad, but I wasn’t sure they could handle it. So, I just kept it to myself.”

Woah. That hit me like a ton of bricks the first time a teen said that to me. And it hit me even harder when teen after teen kept saying it to me. My family therapy training kicked in and told me I needed to zoom out and get to the heart of this – why did these teens feel like they couldn’t share such important and serious information with their parents? Parents who, when the teen wasn’t in the room, were telling me they wanted nothing more than to know and understand what was going on with their teen and how to help them.

After working with many of these families, something began to become clearer. These parents were problem solvers. Many of them were high achievers themselves – successful in many aspects of their lives. These parents were providing their families with everything they needed in life financially. Many of the teens we saw in the program attended the best private schools in the area, lived in great neighborhoods, had travelled internationally, and were on track to attend college.

“I noticed that these highly successful parents often responded to their teens and their struggles the same way they probably responded to problems in their professional lives.“

I’m not trying to make the point that these kids should have been happy because of their parents’ successes. What occured to me is that parents who are successful and high achieving didn’t get where they are by accident, and they are usually pretty good problem solvers. I noticed is that these highly successful parents often responded to their teens and their struggles the same way they probably responded to problems in their professional lives – by facing it head on and trying to fix it. This probably works well in situations where they might be dealing with something frustrating or complicated at work. However, it doesn’t translate to communicating effectively with teenagers. Their teen might tell them they were feeling down or upset, and the parent would respond by trying to solve that for them – giving advice or suggestions on what to do to to stop the feeling or change it to something else. This is not inherently a bad thing, but it’s also not what teens need when they’re struggling. And I get it – I understand why parents are hesitant to acknowledge their teen’s emotional experience. They’re fearful that acknowledging or sitting with them in the feeling will keep them stuck in the feeling and make things worse. But that’s a myth I want to bust – acknowledging someone’s emotional experience does not keep them stuck in that feeling. In fact, validation can actually give them psychological safety to move through the emotion effectively.

As parents, we want our kids to feel good, and out of our own discomfort we try to pluck them out of intense or uncomfortable feelings to make them feel better. This works more often when they’re little, but as they become teens the acknowledgement of their emotional experience becomes the most important factor. Validation leads teens to feel heard, loved, and understood, and provides them the space and sense of safety they need handle hard things.

The Vicious Cycle of Invalidation

To sum it up, here’s what I learned was happening a lot of the time in these families:

• The teen would be struggling and show it or express it somehow.
• The parent(s) would jump right into problem solving, glossing over the emotional experience of the teen in order to try to make the teen feel better, and to manage their own discomfort with the teen’s pain
• The teen then feels invalidated, and also learns that their parent(s) can’t handle having conversations about their emotions, so they withhold emotional information moving forward
• The teen still desires to be validated and understood, so their behaviors may escalate in order to show how much they are struggling (i.e. depression gets worse, self-harming or other self-destructive behavior starts, they refuse to go to school, etc)

When feelings are invalidated, they don’t disappear. By attempting to problem solve without validation, the feelings may actually get more intense. I think this seems counterintuitive to parents, when they just love their teen and want them to feel better.

So, here’s how I recommend to break the cycle.

Validation – The Antidote to “My Parents Don’t Understand”

Validation is the tool that conveys “I can understand what you’re feeling.” It is really as simple as it sounds – letting someone know that you can understand what they’re feeling. That’s it.

Here are some tips on how to validate your teen:

1. Emotions are ALWAYS valid, behaviors are not.

When we talk about validation we are talking about validating feelings – not behaviors. Sometimes it is necessary to address a behavior and a feeling at the same time, but we try to reserve that for when the behavior is dangerous or destructive. Here’s an example – “I can tell you’re feeling angry right now, and it’s not okay to slam doors.” We are not saying “I can understand why you slammed the door” if you don’t want them to keep slamming doors.

2. Say a validating statement and then STOP TALKING!

When you’re not addressing a specific dangerous or destructive behavior, it’s important to learn how to just validate the emotion and leave it at that. Often when I have coached parents of teens to do more validating I see them hit the same roadblock – they add in a validating statement, but they don’t stop trying to problem solve the emotion. Sometimes parents do this all in the same sentence. For example “It makes sense that you’re feeling upset about that, but let’s try to go do something to get your mind off of it.” All the teen hears in this is everything that comes after the word “but”, which is the invalidation. This can leave the teen noticing the parent’s discomfort, and again, could lead to the teen withholding emotional information in the future.

So, slow it down. Say a validating statement and then STOP TALKING! Just let it land and absorb. Maybe your teen will respond and maybe they won’t. Trust that the validation still lands even if you don’t get the response you expected. If you want to offer something, you can say something like “I can tell you’re really upset right now, and that makes sense. Let me know when you’re ready to hear some ideas on what we can do, but right now it’s okay to just feel what this feels like. I’m here for you.”

3. Consider validation as a daily practice in building a relationship with your teen

Teens are experiencing a lot of emotional ups and downs and changes information on a daily basis. Without the life experience or brain development yet to know things will change or get better, this can leave them feeling overwhelmed and lost. A little validation can go a long way here – “That sounds like it was really nerve-wracking to find out you had a quiz you weren’t expecting today!” or “Phew, yeah, I also remember feeling really tired at the end of the school day. It makes sense you just want to put in your headphones for a few minutes and zone out.”

You don’t have to wait until things are intense or difficult to validate. Validate whenever you can things that are valid and make sense to you.

4. Remember there is always time later for the lesson or the parenting moment.

One more time for the people in the back – we are not talking about letting teens do whatever they want with no consequences or boundaries. In fact, validation without boundaries doesn’t work either! When teens feel validated and understood, they are more open to hearing what comes next, even if they don’t like it. Let’s look at the same example from above – “That sounds like it was really nerve-wracking to find out you had a quiz you weren’t expecting today!” What if instead of this, the parent said something like “What?! What do you mean you didn’t know about a quiz?! I’ve told you before you need to use a planner and write down your assignments! You know you’re expected to make good grades! This might hurt your GPA if you make a bad grade in this class!”

Now, ask yourself, if you were the teen in that situation, what did your parent just convey to you about what they can and can’t handle? Does this reaction make it likely that you will share with them again in the future? How might it feel to have your parent say things to you that you may have already been saying to yourself (should have used a planner, going to get a bad grade, won’t get into college, etc)?

Conclusion and Resources

In conclusion, I hope you take away from this that we can all be more validating of the emotions of teens in our lives. For parents, I recommend checking out the book “Parenting a Teen Who Has Intense Emotions” by Harvey and Rathbone. It has a great section on validation.

Ashley Lanier-Pszczola LMFT is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and owner of the practice Evergreen Therapy, which is located in Georgia.