Roxane Lehmann, Ph.D.

Modern Family: Season 6, Episode 2, Do Not Push

The Parents’ Pushes Feel More Like Shoves

The Framework
A lot of buttons get pushed on Modern Family tonight. There is a literal button in one of the storylines. But a lot of “getting under the skin” kind of button pushing happens tonight too – with parents and kids alike getting in on the action.

The Dunphys all tag along with Alex on a campus tour at Caltech. But Claire has her mind made up even before the tour begins.
Claire: Caltech is the perfect school.
Phil: For Claire.
Claire: And Alex! Come on we’re talking about one of the best schools in the country. Yes, it happens to be 45 minutes from our house … But with Alex the important thing is keeping her close for the next four years. After that I’m never going to see her unless she Skypes me from Neptune where she’s living in a bio-dome she invented.

Once on campus, Claire tries to sell Alex on the school – pushing buttons and getting pushed back in the process.
Claire: Wow! This place screams “Alex”… And check this out – a reflecting pool.
Alex: Great. Maybe you can see how crazy you’re being right now … You need to calm down. This is a college tour – not Oprah’s favorite things.
Claire: I’m just so impressed by this place. Aren’t you?
Alex: Of course, I am … But if you must know, I don’t like everything about it. Honestly, the only reason I took this tour today is so you won’t accuse me of not giving it a fair shot.
Claire: Why wouldn’t you want to go here?
Alex: I can’t believe you’re making me say this! It’s too close to home. I need to get away from you guys a little bit. Okay?

Meanwhile, Lily pushes a few buttons too when she draws a picture of herself and pastes it between her two dads in a photo that’s been on their mantel for years. As Cam explains: We are taking a new photo for above our mantel. Lily is not in the one up there now. And we started to get the impression that it was bothering her.

Now if they can just fix Lily’s smile.
Cam (looking at the first shot): Not bad. Let’s shakeout our faces.
Mitch (taking a peek): Why is she doing that with her face?
Cam: I don’t know. I’ve never seen such a weird, forced smile … I’m going to talk to her. I’ve been photographing her for years. We have a relationship … I’ll tell her that her smile is forced. It looks unnatural. And we’re not going home until we get what we need.
Mitch: A couple things: We are home. And that’s mean.
Cam: What’s your suggestion?
Mitch: We show her the photo and let her discover her weird smile on her own … Let’s do this gently. Okay?

But after looking at the umpteenth shot, Cam confides to Mitch: She looks like Pepper’s Pomeranian. We have to say something. And with that things go from bad to worse. The photo shoot ends with this exchange.
Lily: You mean I’m not beautiful?
Dads (in unison): No. That’s not what we’re saying. No.
Lily (stomping her foot): Just forget it. I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m an ugly monster, and I’m never coming out of my room again.

Flipping the Frame: My Notes
All of us have buttons that get pushed. And if you have a kid, you have at least one button pusher in your life. Our kids seem to instinctively know how to exasperate and worry us like nobody else can.

Moms today have more buttons for pushing than ever before. Because over the generations, we’ve assumed new responsibilities and become more and more psychologically invested in our kids. We tend to hold ourselves responsible for our kids’ physical well being – which, historically, is what parents have always worried about. But we also tend to hold ourselves responsible for our kids’ emotional health, their current happiness, and their future success.

On top of all this responsibility is our longing to feel connected and close to our kids. At some level most of us fear not being liked by them. Add to this the fact that many of the things we feel responsible for are outside of our control – especially once our kids become teens. In short, we moms have a lot of buttons. And they’re often hot.

BottomLine
After the photo shoot, Mitchell calls Claire who, of course, has some advice at the ready.
Claire: Mitchell, I say this with love … But when you became a parent, I knew this was going to become a problem for you because you like to control everything … Bottom line: It’s all going to work itself out. But if you [say something] and push her on it, she’s just going to push you away.

Children have buttons too, and kids of all ages are attuned to indications of disapproval from their parents. But teens’ buttons are especially hot. Picture the emotional centers of their brains as a whole bunch of exposed nerves. Like an exposed tooth root, even the slightest sensation gets exaggerated. Just a hint of disapproval can trigger a defensive response that looks nothing short of irrational.

Most of us have learned the hard way that our efforts to advise and protect often angers our teens. We know we’re treading on dangerous ground, so we try to tread lightly. Like Mitchell and Cam tonight, rather than coming right out and saying directly what’s on our mind, we try to be gentle.

But our gentleness often makes our teens even angrier. Because a big part of their job in growing-up is to prove to themselves (and to us) that they can make their own decisions. They see our advice as criticism of their ability to do their new job. And they feel compelled to show us that we – or at least our direction and advice – are often wrong.

Our teens don’t want our advice. They want our approval.

But what if we don’t approve? It’s our job to guide our teens.

What’s a Mom to Do?
There’s some truth in Claire’s advice to Mitchell tonight. Speaking up can be costly. We risk hurting our teen’s feelings in a way we didn’t intend. Or we might cause an argument, widening the distance that has been growing between the two of us.

Yet if we stay silent, who will help our teens learn how to make good decisions and do the right thing?

Below are some questions to help you determine if you’re staying silent when you should be speaking up.

Are health and safety at issue? If it involves your teen’s health or safety, it must be addressed.

Does it threaten respect, trust, or smooth family functioning? This includes issues about your teen staying in contact – calling to let you know when their plans have changed and answering when you call them.

Am I acting out my concerns by using subtext? When our intuition is telling us to say something but we know we’re treading on dangerous ground, it’s tempting to send indirect messages to our teens. Tonight’s photo-shoot with Lily and her dads provided some great illustrations of this. Sometimes we use indirect jokes and off-hand comments like Mitchell and Cam did to get our messages across. But more often we use body language and questions we already know the answer to

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you probably should be speaking up. But saying something to your teen doesn’t have to begin with offering advice. When we begin that way, we’re telling our teens we know what’s best for them – that we’ve got everything figured out before they’ve had a chance to think things through for themselves.

Instead, consider beginning by asking questions. Don’t make it an interrogation. Try to make the tone conversational. And as you listen, try to show genuine curiosity about how your teen sees things.

Sometimes this small change in the way we approach conversations with our teens can improve both our communication and our relationship with them. But if you try this and your teen still doesn’t respond the way you’d hoped, rest assured. Your opinion still matters to your teen. Their extreme reaction is proof of that.

For further reassurance, make an extra effort to notice what your teen is doing well and acknowledge it on a regular basis. This kind of specific and genuine praise is bound to add to the goodwill between you and your teen. And seeing how important your praise is to your teen is more evidence of just how much your opinion means to them.

Your Parenting Experiences
Seeing something in our child that reminds us of a “flaw” in ourselves is often one of our hottest buttons. Click here to see an example of this from tonight’s show. Have you ever had that button pushed?

---

I'd love to have you become a regular reader. Join my mailing list to be notified by email of new blog posts here. And if you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it on Facebook below.

Modern Family: Season 5, Episode 23, The Wedding, Part I

The Teens Save the Day

The Framework
The wedding day gets off to a smooth start with Cam’s sunny greeting to Mitch: Good morning, my almost husband. But things get bumpier as the day goes on.

The first bump comes when Cam discovers that his perfectly tailored tux is not in the bag he’d picked up from the cleaners. The two almost husbands hurry to the cleaners (with Lily in tow) only to find the place closed. A call to 911 ends with this.
Cam (to dispatcher): Well, I guess we have different definitions of emergency. (And then to Mitch while looking at the cleaner’s express drop-off slot cut into the front of the building): There’s no way I can fit there.
But Lily comes through for her dads. After sighing, You two exhaust me, she climbs into the drop slot to retrieve Cam’s tux.

Over at the Dunphys, Claire tells Phil that they’re not going to the wedding without a very specific, turquoise, Italian glass bowl as a gift and asks him to pick it up after his eye exam. Alex is enlisted to do the driving because drops used during the exam will temporarily impair Phil’s vision. Later when buying the bowl and facing a long line at the checkout counter, Phil uses his impairment to his advantage.

Phil (grabbing a bamboo stick from a store display): I’m blind; follow me. Although
Alex insists, I’m not doing that, those waiting let Phil and his stick move to the front of the line.
Phil (to salesman while checking out the bowl and continuing his blind act): Yeah, that doesn’t feel like turquoise.
Salesman: You can feel color?! You gotta be kidding!!
Phil: When you lose one sense, all your other senses become heightened. That’s why you sound so loud and judgy to me.
Salesman: I don’t think [you’re] really blind.
Alex (coming to Phil’s rescue): Excuse me; my father suffered methanol poisoning on a humanitarian mission in Honduras, resulting in permanent neurological dysfunction and irreversible blindness … If he feels it’s not the bowl, it’s not the bowl.

Meanwhile, Claire picks up Luke from wilderness camp.
Claire: I feel bad you have to leave early. What are you missing today?
Luke: Boating.
Claire: Ohhh … I mean, we have a little time.
Luke: You don’t mind waiting in the car?!
The next thing you know, the two are in the middle of the lake in a motorboat going nowhere.
Luke (yanking on the pullchord): Not working.
Claire: And there’s no oar. We are literally up a creek without a paddle … We are never going to get [to the wedding] on time. And I’m the best person.
Minutes later, Luke, with a flash of insight, uses his fishing pole to snag a tree and reel the boat to shore.

Flipping the Frame: My Notes
As much as we parents might like to maintain the relationships that seemed to work so well during the first twelve years of their lives, our teens insist that things be different. In the spirit of growing up and developing their own identity, our teens demand more say, more privacy, and less physical closeness. Their moodiness and heightened sensitivity can be particularly tough to deal with during early adolescence.

Case in point is this conversation between Claire and Luke as she picks him up from camp.
Claire: There’s my guy.
Luke: I thought Dad was picking me up.
Claire (looking hurt): Ohh, I missed you too. Come here. (trying to give him a hug) … I wanted to spend some time with you. You’ve been pushing me away so much lately … So did you have fun?
Luke: Yeah.
Claire: What was your favorite thing?
Luke: I don’t remember.
Claire: It was yesterday.
Luke: Hotdogs. Can we go now?

And there’s this from Phil and Alex just after Claire announces that she is picking Luke up from wilderness camp and that Alex can take Phil to his eye exam.
Phil: That’s a bummer.
Alex (hurt after overhearing): Ahh, Dad, I’m touched.
Phil: No, not because of you. I’d just rather pick-up Luke … than go to the eye doctor. I love spending time with you … Honey, don’t be like that. You’re super fun.

BottomLine
Andy (to Haley): I’ve been in this relationship off-and-on for eight years. So I kinda know what I’m doing.

As moms of teens, we can relate to this sentiment. We’ve been in a steady relationship with our teens for over twelve years. So it feels like we should know what we’re doing. But staying connected with our teens in a way that we (and they) welcome and value, is not as easy as the connections we had with them when they were younger.

Yet our connection with our teens is our most important asset as a parent. Because now that our kids have become teens, most of our parental power is in our influence. And our influence over our teens can be no stronger than our connection with them.

What’s a Mom to Do?
It helps if we remember that the diminished feeling of closeness is likely not rooted in a serious loss of love or respect between our teens and us. In fact, the distancing effect of adolescence is temporary and our relationships often become less strained during late adolescence.

In the meantime, needing your teen’s help can build connectedness. Tonight we saw Lily (acting like a six-year-old going on sixteen), Alex, and Luke all save the day by doing something that their parents could not have done as well.

Needing your teen’s help builds connectedness because interdependence is at the heart of parent-teen relationships. Your teen needs to be able to count on you, and you need to be able to count on your teen. Asking your teen for help with a task at which they are more talented or skilled than you are can foster this kind of interdependent connectedness.

My Parenting Experience
My daughter gave me first-hand proof of this when, one summer during her middle school years, I asked for her help with a task with which I’d been struggling for years: organizing the clothes in my closet in a way that would last. Using her artistry and logic she arranged everything in my closet by color like the crayons in a brand new box. She put all the tan items together, then whites, ivories, greens, blues, reds, and browns. Besides being an organizational scheme that helped me find my clothes, it was one that I could easily maintain.

I would not have come up with this idea on my own, and I was thrilled with the arrangement. My daughter delighted in knowing both these things. And, by needing her help, I was building an interdependent connectedness with her.

Your Parenting Experiences
When you have an interdependent connectedness with your teen, it makes everything on your parent to do list – things like making and enforcing rules, helping them learn from their mistakes, and coaxing them to reach their potential – a whole lot more doable and fun. Over the summer while your teen is on vacation and free from homework is a perfect time to need their help with some of your work. What task could your teen do with more talent or skill than you?

---

I'd love to have you become a regular reader. Join my mailing list to be notified by email of new blog posts here. And if you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it on Facebook below.