Pro Parenting Tip: Get Out of the Gutter

I’m a terrible bowler 🎳

No matter how hard I try, I always land in the gutter.

First the ball drops into the left gutter.

Then I overcompensate and it drops into the right.

I just can’t seem to find that sweet spot to get my ball to roll down the middle.

Parents often do the same thing with their teens.

First, we attempt to connect with our teens by giving in and letting go of things to avoid unnecessary conflict and make our kids happy.

But eventually, we start getting angry that our teens aren’t making the choices we expect, or we feel like a disrespected doormat.

That’s a sign we’ve dropped into the gutter of permissive parenting.

We attempt to regain authority and get them back on track, often by yelling, criticizing, and enacting punitive consequences. Then we find ourselves embroiled in conflict, resentment, and defiance 😠.

We’ve landed in the gutter of aggressive parenting.

We feel exhausted and guilty.

We throw our hands up and drift back to the permissive side.

This constant jolt from one side to the other is enough to give anyone whiplash.

When the rules and expectations keep changing, our teens feel unsafe—all the time. This puts them in a constant state of anxiety, floods their brains with stress hormones, and makes it harder for them to regulate the responses that keep pushing us into the gutter.

This causes them to lose even more trust and respect in us.

If we’re going to change this pattern, we need to get ourselves out of the gutter and learn to roll down the center.

You can do this by establishing guardrails. Think of them as bumpers to keep them from falling off the sides, but wide enough to give them plenty of room to self-correct.

Here are some examples:

1. How much freedom am I comfortable giving my teen to express themselves? Where do I draw the line?
2. What am I willing and comfortable to do for my teen? What am I not?
3. What am I comfortable letting go of? What am I not?
4. What values, skills, and habits are most important for me to model for my teen? Which are most important NOT to model?
5. How do I want to show up as a parent?

THE BOTTOM LINE

While we can’t completely avoid falling into a parenting gutter from time to time, when we define our guardrails, communicate them clearly to our teens, and stick to them consistently and CALMLY, the easier it becomes to stick to that sweet spot down the middle.