Calling all mums, do you feel like you’re the referee in your house?

Calling all mums, do you feel like you’re the referee in your house?

You know the scenario; your daughter has left her dirty plates stacked up at the sink. Your son is 10 minutes late home. Dad/step dad wants to leave the house on time and teenage daughter is taking more than the imagined 10 minutes to get ready to join dad for the lift.

Dad tries to deal with it, but he’s a bit bad tempered and short on patience so he reacts like something from a 1970’s parenting manual. Teenager mutters something and before you know it, you two are arguing and teenager has gone upstairs, out the way listening to headphones on iPhone oblivious to frayed tempers and accusations of bad parenting.

Dad/other parent: “you know what the problem is don’t you, your soft, that is why her bedroom looks like it does and she speaks to me in that s****y way.

Mum: “no she speaks to you in that s****y way because you are always on at her”

Dad/other parent: “what, because I ask her to clean her plates away, what a joke”

And so, it goes on.

This can be soul destroying for mums, who can’t quite convey to their husband/partner what it is they offer to the teenager that brings a different result than theirs. It is true that mums do lose their temper as well, but they do something different in the more quieter moments.

My teenage clients report that mums tune in, they also report they do have meaningful conversations with dad, just less often than mum.  

So, because of this, mum becomes the referee. The referee between dad/partner/stepdad and teenager, the referee between siblings etc. This over time starts to have an effect on a partnership.

How can this be prevented?

1)      In your quieter moments, agree that the arguments usually are over parenting and that the partnership overall is healthy (only if it is healthy obviously)

2)      Have a code word that you can say that indicates to you both that this is purely about different parenting styles, these differences need a discussion afterwards.

3)      Try and arrange that dad spends time with the teenager on his own (it doesn’t matter what the activity is, its about open discussion away from the home)

4)      Both parents need to remember that they were not saints as teenagers and even if they were brought up in a strict household, they probably resented this and felt misunderstood.

5)      An obvious one… do stuff without the teenagers/children, even if its buying a bag of chips and going for a walk.

6)      Have family meetings where everyone gets 7 minutes each to put their point across without anybody butting in. Everyone should try to stick to ‘when you do this, I feel like this’ instead of ‘YOU make me feel like this’

7)      Remember that this stage will pass and that looking after yourself is needed more in this stage than some of the others. Even if this is allowing yourself to listen to music or read fiction, this is nurturing in itself.

I wish I had other suggestions, but parenting differences are difficult at any age, but parenting a teenager who ‘has the answers’ and rolls their eyes at the slightest annoyance is difficult not to comment on.

Maybe its about widening our window of patience.