Does your emotionally heightened teen constantly find you embarrassing, assert their independence, and make you feel like you’re getting it all wrong? Many parents feel that way – particularly adoptive parents navigating additional challenges related to connection and identity. Rachel Staff explores what can help. Rachel is a Beacon Family Services Associate and author of Parenting Adopted Teenagers: Advice for the Adolescent Years.

The teenage years are a challenging time for parents! This is a developmental stage of significant changes in relationships, parental influence, boundaries and expectations. Even the most confident parents can feel blown off course by the maelstrom of adolescence that can leave them struggling to find an anchor in often stormy waters. For adoptive parents, this period can be a particularly challenging time. This blog explores some of themes that can leave parents feeling adrift, what lies beneath these feelings and approaches/strategies that parents have utilised that can help.

Your teen finds you embarrassing.

Most parents are familiar with the experience of their teenager finding them if not mortifyingly embarrassing then, at least, mildly cringeworthy. The behaviours of the guilty parents that induce such embarrassment can range from: breathing, to wardrobe choices, to saying the wrong thing, telling jokes, watching ‘old people’ TV, listening to ‘old people’ music, driving the wrong car, picking their child up in the car, living in the wrong house, daring to speak to the teenagers friends, any type of approach to parenting, generally existing and so on and so on……..

The rather critical analysis of parents that takes place in adolescence can be a jarring experience for parents, but it is part of the developmental drive to individuate and separate that takes place during these years. Changes in the teenage brain are preparing the young person for adulthood, towards their own developing individual identity, separation from parents and emerging adult identity. A new capacity for conceptual thinking and abstract thought allows for questioning/analysis of who they are in relation to the world. This includes the sphere of their family and parents. This period requires the attachment relationship to stretch/flex and find a new anchoring. It can feel brutal and this can be particularly acute for adoptive parents as their children are going through this process with additional layers to navigate. Earlier insecurities can re-emerge and the ‘figuring out’ of identity – who am I in relation to my parents/my birth parents/my experiences can be very complex and be felt in expressions of rejection and derision for many parents.

These feelings of embarrassment are often heightened when teenagers are with their friends. Adolescents are acutely tuned in to how they are perceived by others, particularly their peer group. Concern about how others may perceive their parents is often behind the ‘drop me off round the corner please’ request for example. In contrast they may eulogise the qualities of their friend’s parents and other adults.

“I’m actually starting to feel jealous of J’s parents, according to S they really are God’s gift. Meanwhile I’m too embarrassed to be seen in public with…”

Adoptive teens are acutely tuned into how they are perceived by others

Feeling embarrassed generally (and not just in relation to parents) is a natural part of teenage years. Young people are particularly attuned to how their peers perceive them because of the brain is primed to engage with others. As attachment relationships change with parents, peers take on a particular importance. Even the most outwardly confident teenager will experience anxiety about peer relationships. For adopted teenagers though, who are highly vulnerable to experiencing shame [a debilitating and overwhelming emotional state] when embarrassed, they can feel this much more intensely than their peers.

What can help?

• Try to hold in mind that it’s not really about you. It’s a part of the parenting role at this stage to be the embarrassing parent, to experience [often] unfair criticism. As painful as it is, it’s developmentally appropriate.
• Be with other adults who don’t find you embarrassing… Speak to other adopters/parents of teenagers, it helps to be reminded that this is a shared experience and to be able to see it in perspective.
• Giving yourself and your child the message that it’s ok for them to feel like this and that you understand it. This is particularly important for adopted teenagers who may feel that their discomfort is only because they are adopted. It’s important that they understand that it’s a healthy developmental process whilst also more complex because they are adopted.

Your teenager makes you feel like you are getting it wrong.

“There is no one on this earth who is as confident as my (14 year old(son that I know absolutely nothing of value about anything…”

Parenting teenagers is full of mistakes; it’s uncharted territory for parents and even those with previous experience will come across challenges for which they have no map. Adolescence today is a different landscape to that of parents’ own teenage years. We do not yet fully understand the impact of the experience of teenagers’ dual existences in both the concrete and virtual/online worlds but there is no doubt that managing this presents dilemma’s which don’t always have easy answers.

Adoptive parents have a particular challenge in ‘getting it right’ as they are having to try to understand and respond to their child’s needs through a trauma and adoption lens as well as the adolescence lens. Figuring out what is ‘usual’ teenage years stuff, what is trauma, what is adoption, is complicated and neither parents or professionals can always be sure of how these different factors are impacting on the young person all of the time.

Teenagers can also be hypervigilant to mis- attunement and perceived injustice, and this is particularly the case for adopted teenagers who are often having to process their own earlier experiences of this. When parents do get it wrong teenagers can remain focused on this and communicate this vigorously to parents. Often underlying this focus and expressed resentment are feelings of a lack of safety – perhaps that parents didn’t understand them, that a decision was not fair, but when parents are feeling at their most wobbly this can undermine confidence in the parenting role further.

Additionally, adoptive parents are often parenting young people who are lower in trust because they have experienced adults who could not meet their needs or keep them safe. These children do find it harder to trust and as adolescence brings a natural questioning and challenging of authority/of adults understanding, the combination of these factors can lead to a higher level of pushback and trust in the relationship with parents. An additional factor that can leave parents feeling deskilled and lacking in confidence is the mis- attuned response of professionals who don’t understand the complexities of parenting adopted teenagers and consequently take a position of questioning [and most damagingly, blaming] parents for difficulties they may be experiencing.

What can help?

Parents are going to make mistakes. Being able to recognise when they do, apologise and explain what happened and why can be very valuable in a number of ways. This approach helps teenagers to understand that parents can be trusted, that ruptures can be repaired and that it’s ok to make mistakes. It can reduce shame and reinforce the message that relationships can weather mistakes.

Finding professionals and support services who understand the particular challenges of parenting adopted teenagers is important if parents are to receive non-blaming and appropriately informed support. The Potato Group has a helpful website and community Parenting Adopted Teenagers | The Potato Group .Some Regional Adoption Agencies also provide ‘in person’ support groups for parents of adopted teenagers. My experience of setting up and running one of these groups was that it was an invaluable resource to parents.

“To know other parents with teenagers are going through similar experiences has been absolutely invaluable.”

Parent, in person support group

Parents can contact their local Post Adoption Support Service to find resources in their local area. You can also explore what Beacon Family Services offer families by way of fully funded programmes and therapeutic support.

The am I needed or not conundrum

Most parents will experience this with their teenagers. Teenagers no longer need the same type of parenting they needed in early and mid-childhood. Of course, they still need to be parented but the balance of what they need changes and fluctuates.

The pathway to adulthood relationships with parents is a process that moves towards interdependence. It’s a tightrope of separation and connection and the ‘leave me alone/ but can you give me some money for the cinema’ is an example of the teenagers ongoing dependence and need for desire for separateness.

We need are teenagers to grow up and leave home but not to sever the relationship with parents entirely. Whilst this can feel like a confusing process for most families it can be particularly challenging for adoptive families because teenagers may enter adolescence with a vulnerability within their attachment relationships. Although they may have developed more secure attachment relationships throughout childhood the process of separation and individuation in adolescence can evoke earlier, less secure behaviours. Ther expression of their attachment needs may not be clear. An example of this may be that teenagers who, as young children, learnt to be self-sufficient/to minimise emotional needs may revert to these patterns in adolescence. They may need you to notice and interpret when you recognise that they need you.

Another area that can make parents feel that they are not needed or wanted is the more intense focus that teenagers can have in either seeking or increasing contact with birth family. Often driven by needs in relation to identity, trauma resolution and loss, this can feel like rejection.

What can help?

• Relationships are complex in adolescence. It’s important to understand that this is a transitional process which will settle into a different but equally important relationship in time., Not all of the relational progress of earlier years is lost. You are still needed, even if it doesn’t feel like it at times.
• When understanding attachment behaviours, it can help to play the role of emotional detective. Are earlier, less secure, attachment behaviours emerging under the stress of adolescence? What helped in your approach when they were younger? Are there elements of this can be adapted?
• Even if your teenagers’ invitations for connection feels transactional at times [a common experience for parents which can feel inauthentic]– take the moments when you are needed to find moments of connection – a lift can become a conversation, a shopping trip an opportunity to have some light-hearted connection.
• Teenagers often seek connection at a time when parents are feeling at their most tired – approaching for a conversation late at night is not uncommon for a variety of reasons. It’s not always possible, but if these moments can be taken advantage of it can support connection.
• Whilst the focus on birth family may feel worrying and uncomfortable for some parents it’s important to understand that this is not a rejection of you but rather an important process that many adopted teenagers do need to go through. This does need your understanding and will also need professional support. Sometimes this support will need to focus on safety but also include elements of therapeutic life story work which help the young person [and you] to make meaning of early experiences, relationships and hopes for the future.
• Emotionally resourcing yourself and recognising what feelings of rejection bring up for you can reduce stress for you. How does it feel when your child doesn’t want your support? What meaning do you attach to this? Be kind to yourself, your teenager may be dealing with the big life themes of loss and change but so are you.

It’s ok to mourn the early childhood part of your parenting journey, for most adopters that will feel that it came far too fast

The impact of your teenager’s heightened and intense emotional states

Emotional intensity is a part of adolescence. Teenagers need to engage in life and new relationships in preparation for moving out into the world. The emotional lower brain is more readily activated and emotional responses are not filtered by cortical reasoning. This intensity of felt emotion can be a wonderful when the feelings are good feelings but very difficult when the more challenging emotions such as sadness and anxiety are to the fore.

Parents who are experiencing this heightened emotional intensity and trying to respond to it will also be impacted by the emotions that their child is experiencing. Adoptive parents will often be experiencing this ‘with bells on’ because teenagers who struggled with emotional regulation in pre-adolescence will feel this in a particularly intense way. Emotional overwhelm is not isolated in the teenager’s experience. Parents too can become emotionally overwhelmed. The lack of access to help via mental health services often further compounds parents’ sense of overwhelm and helplessness when their child is really struggling emotionally.

What can help?

Self-care is particularly important for parents if they are to maintain their own emotional health. Parents can feel that they aren’t doing a good job when they struggle to help their child to feel better. There is a risk that parents can be overwhelmed by the same feelings that their child is struggling with. Finding ways to take a psychological break from the stress does help. Separate time for activities and relationships that nourish you wherever possible is important.

“Joining a choir was my salvation during that horrible time. Switching off from everything and singing and spending time with other adults was a break, it kept me sane.”

Parentd

Connection with other parents who are experiencing or have experienced this is also crucial. Emotional difficulties often express themselves in very challenging behaviour. Beacon Family Service’s peer support group is a service that parents may find helpful –

Walking with Families Facebook Peer Support Group: Adoptive Parents Living with Challenging Behaviour

Parenting a child with experience of early adversity that has travelled through the care system can be difficult. Many families experience challenging, violent and aggressive behaviour from their children and this experience leaves many adoptive parents isolated and struggling.

This is a weekly online support group on Facebook for adoptive parents. Join a peer community where you can share lived experience, challenges, strategies and mutual support. Hosted by Al Coates MBE, the group looks at topics that matter to adoptive families in a frank and forthright manner as well as identifying strategies to help. Al draws on his experience and training as a social worker and NVR practitioner to lead through the sessions.

You can email Al Coates to find out more: a.coates@beaconservices.org.uk

This group has been funded by Adoption England.

Fighting for help and services can often add to parents overwhelm and there are no easy answers to the lack of funding and resources for mental health support but reaching out to your local post adoption support team can be helpful. The role of social workers in these teams is to assess your child and family’s needs and help access services for you.

And finally…

This blog has touched on a few of the themes that are present within the experience of parents who are often left feeling inadequate in the face of parenting teenagers and, particularly, adopted teenagers. There is of course, so much more to say and many more complexities to be explored. I hope that the blog does resonate with parents’ experiences and conveys the crucial message that this is a challenging time for parents who need to receive empathy and understanding if they are to support their children during this period of development.

Support for parents

If you or someone you know is struggling with family relationships, Beacon Family Services can help. We provide a range of therapies and resources to support parents, children and families.

For further support, and to see our latest parent events and services, please visit the Families hub for all families, or our Adoptive Parents hub where you’ll find peer support, school strategies, play-based therapeutic services and much more.

You can also explore our resources for instant support and read further insights and tips from qualified therapists and professionals on our blog. In addition, you can try the lumin&us® app for parent/child connection.

Support for professionals

We work with organisations, professionals, schools, and charities.

We provide professional training to use our resources with families and in schools. We partner with support for families, support and supervision, and virtual workshop facilitation.