The pandemic turned Tiffany Lee’s home into a
battlefield.
Wary of illness, Lee started taking precautions back in
March 2020. She asked her 15-year-old son, Bowen Deal, known as Bo, to practice
social distancing. She insisted he wear masks. But that didn’t sit well with
him, because many people in their rural town didn’t follow such rules, she
said.
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“He would see all of his classmates having pool parties and
going bowling and he’s angry at me because I won’t let him go,” she said of Bo,
a freshman in high school in Metter, Georgia, outside of Savannah. “He thinks I’m
the bad parent because Mom is standing between me and my friends.”
Normally, the teenage years are when children separate from
their parents, but today’s teens have been spending more time at home than
ever. Adolescents who yearn to rove in packs found themselves confined to their
bedrooms, chatting with the pixelated images on their screens.
“The group that is suffering the most” in terms of isolation
“is 13- to 24-year-olds,” said Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz, president and medical
director of the Child Mind Institute in New York City. “They are losing out on
being allowed to separate. They’re having trouble with their academic goals.
Many of the things they have been working for are gone.”
But as hard as it is to be a teen today, it’s draining being
the parent of one. A national poll of parents of teens, released in March by
C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, found parents toggling between different
tactics, trying to keep their children’s mental health afloat. About half of
those surveyed said their teen’s mental health had changed or worsened in the
pandemic. In response, half of these parents tried relaxing family COVID-19
rules, or social media rules. One-third spoke to a teacher or school counselor
about their child; nearly 30 percent reported seeking formal mental health
help.
“There’s been no prep for this,” said
Julie Lythcott-Haims,
the former dean of freshmen at Stanford University and the author of “How to
Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid For
Adulthood.”
“Most of us haven’t had anything remotely resembling
practice” with a pandemic, she said, “so we’ve had to flail, while
simultaneously performing the part of a parent who kids can rely on for
emotional support.”
“It’s no wonder,” she said, “that we are at the end of our
ropes.”
The availability of effective vaccines, while welcome,
introduces new uncertainties, she said. Will normal return? When will it come?
What even is normal now?
“We’re just in a state of suspended animation,” she said.
“We are in limbo, quite literally. That really creates some existential
worries: Am I going to be all right? Is my family going to be all right?”
Trust your kids
For Lee, 43, conflict with her son came to a head in
January. Lee had just spent a holiday season dodging profanities flung at her
by customers who didn’t want to wear masks in her clothing boutique. Meanwhile,
Bo demanded that he be allowed to return to school in person.
“I was at my wits’ end, and I couldn’t fight him anymore,”
she said. She said she told him that if he got COVID-19 and brought it home to
the family, “this is on you. You understand this, right?”
A certain level of autonomy is important to teens, but in
the pandemic they’ve had very little, said Jennifer Kolari, author of
“Connected Parenting: How to Raise a Great Kid” and a San Diego-based therapist
and parenting coach who leads workshops on parenting. For some, during the
pandemic, their own messy bedrooms may be the only place they feel they have
control, she said.
She suggests making an appointment with your teen, for later
in the day or during the week, to discuss whatever issue keeps drawing the two
of you into a fight.
“You can say, ‘Later tonight, we’re going to have a
sit-down, and I want to hear your plan,’” she said. “‘I trust that you have a plan,
and if you could let me in on that plan, that would really help.’”
Grapple with racism
Amid racial tension and hate crimes, including the wave of
anti-Asian violence this spring, many parents of color have tried to help their
children process racism and civic unrest.
Thea Monyeé, a therapist in Los Angeles, watched her three
Black teenage daughters getting into social media battles while she and her
husband struggled to figure out how to best support them. The couple “didn’t
want to police that process,” she said. “They needed to be angry for a while.”
On the other hand, if one of the girls needed a place to vent frustration or
rage, “we had to provide that, and then when they were sad or disappointed or
hurt, we had to have those conversations.”
Meanwhile, Monyeé juggled her own work — including starting
a business and hosting a podcast — with her daughters’ issues with remote
school, all while people close to her struggled with
COVID-19 and loss of
income. She and her husband had to constantly remind each other, she said, “to
make space for ourselves.”
Ragin Johnson finds she’s more terrified than ever for her
17-year-old son, a tall young Black man who has autism. “He’s a very friendly
kid,” said Johnson, 43, a fifth-grade teacher in Columbia, South Carolina, “and
I don’t want anybody to get the wrong impression, thinking he’s aggressive when
he’s just very playful.”
Create different paths for connection
If every conversation ends in a fight — or if your sullen
teen won’t even start a conversation with you — try a different tactic. Offer
to go on a drive with your child, but under specific conditions. “Let them be
the DJ,” Kolari said. “And you, you zip it. Do not use this moment to lecture
them. Let your kids talk.”
If they do open up, then or later, try not to fix their
problems. “You listen, and listen hard,” Koplewicz said. “You validate what
they’re saying. Then, when they’re ready, you say, ‘OK, what’s next?’”
Ask for help
If your child seems unusually blue or emotionally fragile,
don’t be afraid to reach out for help. Koplewicz was not a fan of teletherapy
prepandemic, but the successes he’s seen with it over the last year have made
him a convert, he said. Lee found an online therapist at BetterHelp.com, who
helped her and Bo navigate this rocky time. “This past year,” she said,
“therapy has kept me from going off the deep end.”
But therapy is not the only kind of support. Johnson leaned
on a tight-knit group of girlfriends. “As a society we are trained to worry and
try to control things,” said Patrick Possel, director of Cardinal Success
Program, which provides free mental health services for uninsured and
underinsured people in Louisville, Kentucky. Many of the program’s clients are
dealing with multiple crises, from job and housing insecurity to abuse and
their own mental health struggles. When a teenager in the house starts to
struggle, parents may say they are out of resources to tackle this problem as
well. But Possel and his colleagues urge them to look around. They ask clients,
“Is there a network, a friend, a professional, who can help you?” he said.
Take care of yourself
Liz Lindholm supervises the remote schooling of her
12-year-old twin girls and 18-year-old son at their home in Federal Way,
Washington, a suburb of Seattle, while working in health care administration.
What’s been most challenging this year “is the work-life
balance,” she said, “where work doesn’t end and school doesn’t really end and
everything just kind of blends together.”
Trying something new — returning to school in January —
turned out to be the key for Lee and her son.
To Lee’s happy surprise, Bo is one of very few students
wearing a mask when she picks him up from school. One day, on the way home in
the car, he told her he was startled to discover his friends didn’t understand
how vaccines work. She’s since noticed a shift in his friend group, and she
says that the tension at home has noticeably lessened.
“I think our relationship is stronger now, especially since
I’ve had to trust him to go off and make his own decisions,” she said. “I’m not
the evil mom he thought I was. And I’m gaining new respect for him.”
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