Why Mothers and Teenage Daughters Fight by Elizabeth Bernstein The Wall Street Journal6/29/2015 Hurled accusations. Slamming doors. The silent treatment.So goes a classic exchange between a mother and her teenage daughter.
The most consistently fraught relationship among relatives is the mother-teenage daughter bond, therapists and family-dynamic experts say. The crux of the problem: A mother often sees her daughter as an extension of herself, while the teen is trying to develop her own independence and individuality.
A mother sometimes identifies much more closely with a daughter than a son, both physically and emotionally, experts say. She wants to protect her daughter from making the same mistakes she’s made. She wants to give her daughter opportunities she never had. She wants her daughter to like—and to be like—her.
Typically, an adolescent daughter wants none of this. She’s trying to separate from her mom, and she sees the protection as controlling. And she may view her mom’s attempted guidance as criticism or disapproval.
“Mom is putting her own expectations on her daughter,” says Roni Cohen-Sandler, a clinical psychologist in Weston, Conn., who counsels mother-daughter pairs in her practice, and is the author of “I’m Not Mad, I Just Hate You: A New Understanding of Mother-Daughter Conflict.” “And the daughter feels she has to gratify her mother’s needs or else she is a disappointment.”
Michelle Skeen and her 19-year-old daughter, Kelly Skeen, have always been close. When Kelly was in junior high school, the two would take road trips together. Many Friday nights, mother and daughter stopped by their favorite candy store to stock up on Sour Patch Kids and chocolate, then went home and got in their pajamas, ordered a pizza and watched “Project Runway.”
If Kelly wanted to hang out with friends, she asked her mom for permission well in advance. That changed when she entered high school. She and her friends often made plans at the last minute. Sometimes, while she and her mom were together, her mom says, Kelly would get a call on her cell and announce that she was heading out.
Ms. Skeen objected. “I would say, ‘I thought we were going to a movie,’” says the 53-year-old psychologist in San Francisco. “And she would reply, ‘Well, I haven’t seen Joanna in awhile, so I’m going.”
And sometimes, Kelly says, she would cancel plans with friends because she felt anxious about leaving her mom alone. “Then I would feel really bummed and a little resentful,” she says.
More often, Ms. Skeen felt angry and put-upon. She and Kelly lived alone because her two older sons were already out of the house and she and Kelly’s father were divorced. She would snap at her daughter, saying she wished Kelly would let her know plans in advance so she could make her own.
“I don’t like conflict and Kelly doesn’t like to feel like she’s disappointed anyone, so we avoided a conversation,” Ms. Skeen says. “She would mumble a quick apology and it would all be over—except that it wasn’t.”
The mother-daughter conflict is starting earlier than ever these days—often when daughters are as young as 10 or 11, experts say. Girls are starting to go through puberty, and can be exposed to social pressures at a younger age. Moms are sometimes going through hormonal shifts of their own in perimenopause or menopause.
Social media plays a part, too. “Teens can be connected with everyone in their world in a moment,” says Lisa Brateman, a clinical social worker in New York who sees mothers and daughters in her practice. Because of this, she says, moms feel they need to monitor their daughters even more closely now.
Girls are more verbal about their emotions, and thus more likely than boys to speak up when they are upset, says Ms. Brateman. “Teenage girls find their voices,” she says.
To set out on a less combative course, moms need to be self-aware and not push their agenda onto their child, experts say. “I always tell moms: ‘You are the adult here,’ ” says Dr. Cohen-Sandler, the Weston, Conn., psychologist. “Your daughter can push all sorts of buttons, but you are responsible for understanding the feelings that are being aroused in you and for not reacting in ways that are not in your daughter’s best interest.”
It’s important to reframe the argument. In a typical quarrel, a mother may tell her daughter not to see a certain boy; the girl will feel criticized and become defensive and the quarrel will escalate. Ms. Brateman suggests the mother ask the daughter how she feels instead of telling her what to do.It can help to talk about patterns of fighting—then agree to do it differently. If an argument is escalating, moms should suggest putting the discussion aside and coming back when emotions are less heated.
And mom should be sure to compliment their daughter’s successes, such as telling a child it was great she came home when she said she would.“It takes about five compliments to counterbalance every criticism,” says Lisa Fedder, a clinical social worker with offices in Englewood Cliffs and Maplewood, N.J.
And moms and daughters should start to negotiate solutions to their problems together. “Mothers and daughters state their expectations and reach a compromise that is workable,”says Ms. Fedder.
Ms. Skeen did some soul searching and realized she was feeling marginalized by her daughter. “We would argue about surface stuff: ‘You are messing up my schedule again.’ But the anger was just masking the hurt,” she says.Ms. Skeen told her daughter that she wanted her to see her friends but still felt sad when their time together fell through.
And Kelly explained to her mom that teens tend to make plans at the last minute and that if she had a chance, she wanted to be with her friends. “It was important to me for my mom to know about the changes going on in my life, but sometimes those changes were hard for her to accept,” says Kelly, a college student in Washington, D.C.
Now, mother and daughter discuss feelings when they are making plans. Recently, Kelly told her mom that homecoming weekend might not be the best time for her to visit because she would feel guilty when she wanted to be with her friends. Ms. Skeen decided to visit another weekend.“The love and emotion that are so deep in the relationship aren’t changing, but things are playing out differently,” says Ms. Skeen. “It’s time to let go.” ------
Discussion: 1. In what way can you relate to this article? Do you find this to be the case in your family or other families you know? 2. What can you infer is the meaning/message of each of these comics? Can you relate to them? How?
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B) Write out and complete this sentence: The central idea of this article is …
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2. Connect to the real world or your experience. Complete one of these sentence frames: For example... This reminds me of...
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3. Write a metaphor or draw pictures or symbols to represent the central idea/themeofthisarticle.
CCSS: Reading 2 - Determine central idea or theme of a text. Language 1 – Vocab acquisition