Roxane Lehmann, Ph.D.

The “C” in Claire Stands for Control

Season 4, Episode 19

The Framework

When parents worry, they respond. That’s what knotted the storylines on “Modern Family” together tonight. Mitch and Cam worry that Lily doesn’t have a female role model. And Gloria worries that Manny is losing his cultural heritage. But the storyline that best captured parental worry (and response) was the one that took place in the Dunphy household.

The morning started with Claire in full-on control.

Claire: Luke, please stop taking appliances apart.
Luke: I’m making something.
Claire: You’re unmaking something!

Haley: I’m giving my notice today.
Claire: Wait. What? … What do you mean that you’re quitting?! Your manager just started letting you open and close the store.
Haley: It’s boring…
Claire: Honey, you need to learn to stick with things. And you just got the big keys.

Alex: I need caffeine today.
Claire: How late were you at that party last night?
Haley: She snuck in at 10:00 and spent all night reading under the covers with a flashlight.
Claire: Alex, what have I told you about staying out after your curfew?
Alex: I need to do it more often.
Claire: Exactly! You need to learn to have some fun. You’re going on that spring break trip with Nicole.
Alex: No! I can’t! I have to study for the PSATs.

And that’s when Claire turns to Phil for backup. Instead she got this:

Phil: All right, everybody, listen up. Haley, you’re not quitting; you’re resigning. It sounds better. Alex, you have all of spring break to lock yourself in your room and study. And, Luke, “coffeebots” is a nonstarter. But I do like the idea of popcorn kernels in pancake batter so they self-flip.

Perhaps Claire’s over-the-top efforts to control were due to her fears about the angiogram she had scheduled for later that day. When worried, we moms instinctually tend to hold on to our kids tighter.

Though, as it turns out, Claire’s worries were just beginning. Because while she and Phil are at the hospital waiting for Claire to be wheeled away for the procedure, the older fellow in the bed next to Claire gets a visit from his three kids who look like grown-up versions of the Dunphy brood. And Claire and Phil do not like what they see.

With this unsettling vision of their future kids dancing in their heads, they switch parenting roles – each taking the typical style of the other in phone calls made to their kids.

Claire: Haley, I love you. If you don’t want to work in that store, I’ll help you find something you like better. Alex, you don’t have to go on that trip with Nicole. You can study as much as you want. Just know that I love you.

Phil: Haley, you’re not quitting your job. … Listen to me. You are dangerously close to getting on a path that you can’t get off of. Alex, book down. Run a brush through your hair. You’re going on that trip with your friend.

Flipping the Frame: My Notes

So much of parenting teens is about control. And Claire and Phil are at opposite ends of the control spectrum.

Claire is hands-on. She believes she owns the controls. Under this micromanaging regime, teens often superficially comply with their parents’ demands and then dedicate much of their energy to sneaking and lying in order to do what they want.

Phil is hand-off. He often relinquishes control entirely. This permissive parenting style gives most teens less structure than they need and more freedom than they’re ready for.

The sweet spot for parenting teens is in the middle of the control spectrum. From this spot, parents believe it’s their job to help manage the controls – neither owning the controls nor relinquishing them completely. Below is a short list of tips that will help you get to this spot:

• Think of control as a swinging pendulum. We’re at our most influential when the pendulum is at the midpoint – when we’re guiding our teens rather than being too hands-on or too hands-off. Parenting from this midpoint means striking the right balance between restrictiveness and autonomy.

• Help your teen explore both sides of the situation. Rather than giving ultimatums like Claire and Phil did (You’re not quitting your job!), it’s better to encourage teens to explore both sides of the situation. For example, “Haley, I’d like to hear what’s going on with your job. Please help me understand what’s working for you and what’s not.” Then listen.

• Don’t push your point of view. How we say what we say can make a huge difference. So when it’s your turn to share your ideas, don’t make the mistake that Claire and Phil made when they pushed their point of view on Haley: Honey, you need to learn to stick with things. … You are dangerously close to getting on a path that you can’t get off of. Statements like these can force teens to take the other side.

You’ll have a much better chance of getting your ideas across if you think of it as floating them by your teen and if you can offer some information that your teen might not know. For example, Claire and Phil might have gently but firmly reminded Haley that while she’s not in college, she needs a job to cover rent and other personal expenses. And they might have encouraged her to consider securing a new job before quitting her current one, relaying that it’s almost always easier to get a new job when you already have one.

• Know where the line is. Know where “guiding” is on the control spectrum and be ready to step back over the line if you find yourself going too far in one direction or the other.

Even when our teens don’t immediately respond as we’d hoped, they are listening. And if we respect their right to have an opinion different than ours and give them some time and space to think about the situation, they’re more likely to see us as someone who can be trusted, to be open to our influence, and to seek us out when they need help.

The BottomLine

Phil: Look, all we can do is give Haley time to find out who she is.
Claire: Or I can save that time, and I can tell her who she is.

We’re determined to do what is right for our kids. But often our deepest desire to do what is right causes us to act like Claire and Phil and lean too far in one direction or the other.

Yet the evidence overwhelmingly links parenting from the midpoint of the control spectrum with healthy adolescent development. By staying connected with our teens and helping to manage the controls, we are:
• Giving our teens self-assurance and adding to their ability to withstand stress and negative influences.
• Helping them develop reasoning skills.
• Making them more open to our influence and more likely to have similar values and attitudes.

So instead of thinking of control as something we say or do to teens or giving up on them (hoping that time will do what we can’t), we’re at our best when we look for ways to stay connected and work with our teens.

Flipping the Frame: Your Parenting Experiences

Think of the various topics you communicate with your teen about – topics such as grades, curfew, clothes, friends, attitude, alcohol, drugs, music, chores, sex, and driving.
• Where do you think you are on the control spectrum (controlling, guiding, hands-off) for each of these topics?
• Where do you think your teen would say you are?
• Are you purposefully more hands-on about some things and more hands-off about others?

---

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.

Haley Still Cares What Her Parents Think

Season 4, Episode 12

The Framework

The headline of tonight’s episode “Party Crasher,” announcing the birth of the Pritchett baby in the middle of Manny’s birthday party was no big surprise. Anyone who’s seen Gloria lately knew this long-awaited baby was due anytime. Nevertheless, the episode had its share of surprises. And these weren’t just your run-of-the-mill surprises. As Luke put it, these were the kind in which the surprised becomes the surpriser. And these were the kind of surprises that tested the connection between parent and child and left the relationship a bit stronger in the end.

There’s five-year-old Lily who has been favoring Mitch over Cam lately. But when the surprised Lily gets accidently dumped in the pool by Cam, she surprises him by calling out for him instead of Mitch:

Lily: Daddy!

Cam: Oh, look at this. I’m coming! Daddy’s coming!

What’s wrong with me, Mitchell? When she fell in the pool, she screamed for “Daddy.” She calls you “Dad.” She calls me “Daddy.” She got scared, and she called out for me.

Mitchell: See?

And later we see this playful exchange between father and daughter.

Cam: I guess Daddy was worrying about nothing. But, you know, I can be silly sometimes.

Lily: You’re always silly.

Cam: No, you’re silly.

Lily: No, you’re always silly.

Cam: No, you’re always silly.

There’s Manny who turned fourteen tonight. What with all the preparation for the new baby, he’s been a bit neglected lately. That’s why Gloria has planned a surprise birthday party for him. But Manny comes home early to his party, bringing his girlfriend with him. And in the pre-party darkness, she gives Manny his first kiss ever – a kiss witnessed by the surprised party guests who’d come to surprise him. Humiliated, Manny takes off for his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

Gloria – now obviously in labor and doing all that she can to hold the baby in place for one more day so that Manny won’t have to share his birthday with a sibling for the rest of his life – tries to console him from the other side of his bedroom door:

Gloria: Manny, we’re so sorry. We didn’t mean to…

Manny: What? Ruin the greatest moment of my life? Thanks again, Mom!

But then later in the episode there’s this between mother and son:

Gloria: You know I love you no matter what.

Manny: You’re trying to hold another person inside of you to spare my feelings. Message received.

And then there’s Haley who, as a way of rebelling, introduces her parents to her new “boyfriend” Kenny: a ponytailed, fortyish jeans designer with a knack for coming up with creepy double entendres – things like I’m trying to get into girls’ jeans.

Claire is not just surprised, she’s disgusted, summing the situation up this way: He’s old. She’s young. It’s gross. And she begins hatching her own surprise for Haley – a surprise that involves a game of chicken. Now all she has to do is sell Phil on the idea:

Claire: Phil, you can’t say anything to Kenny… I know why Haley is doing this. She’s doing this to get back at you for being so hard on her. I did the same thing to my dad.

Phil: First of all, I’m not your dad. And do you think I’m just going to let this happen?

Claire: Trust me. The more it bothers you, the longer he stays. The more we ignore it … the sooner Willie Nelson is on the road again.

So when Haley surprises her parents again – this time with her plans to spend the night in a hotel with Kenny, Claire is ready. And to Haley’s surprise (and horror) she gets not only her parents’ permission but their credit card to boot.

Flipping the Frame: My Notes

Should Claire and Phil have been able to see Haley’s rebellion coming? Probably.

Early in tonight’s episode when Haley hands Phil an envelope with her hard-earned money inside, we see some evidence of the sarcasm that has crept into Phil’s interactions with her:

Haley: This is everything I made at the boutique last week. I’m not going to have any money left for me.

Phil: Should’ve thought of that before you got thrown out of school. You live here, you pay rent.

Haley: You used to be fun.

Phil: You used to be… What? Oh, yeah, at college.

Now, I don’t have any problem with Haley being charged rent. (Click here to read an earlier post on that.) It’s the way that Phil talks to Haley about it that I object to. Here’s why: There’s a good chance that Haley isn’t feeling very good about herself after being asked to leave college. And when teens don’t feel good about themselves, they sometimes project their negative feelings on to us. Phil’s words, tone of voice, and body language added fuel to the fire, giving Haley reason to doubt his respect for her. And because respect is like air to teens, when we take it away, they can’t think about anything else. They dedicate all their energy to rebelling and getting revenge.

When kids are younger and they’re in need, our interactions with them are so much more straightforward. When Lily was dumped in the pool and needed rescuing, she called out for help, yelling Daddy! and Cam jumped right in and pulled her to safety. But as evidenced by the way things went with Manny and Haley tonight, getting the recuse right gets decidedly more complicated when it involves teens. And as we saw, the older the teen, the more complicated things can get.

Granted, teens use a variety of strategies to make our interactions with them more complicated – complications that include evading, omitting, distorting, and even fabricating. But something happens to us parents too when our kids become teens.

Before our kids became teens, if their behavior told us that something wasn’t quite right – even if we weren’t exactly sure what it was, we spoke up. Without hesitation we calmly confronted them with what our intuition was telling us. This sent our child a message about our sturdy presence, reminding them that we cared about them, that we noticed their behavior, and that we weren’t afraid to say something about it.

However, when those same kids become teens and our intuition is telling us that something is amiss, instead of speaking up, we’re tempted to say nothing. Especially if we don’t have clear evidence for concern or if we think that addressing the problem will cause more trouble. But no matter how awful their response can be – and a teen’s sulking silence and raging anger can be pretty awful – our teens need to be able to trust that we’ll speak up and guide them through adolescence.

The BottomLine

Bad things can happen when we’re worried and should speak up but don’t. Our silence can have long-term consequences for our relationship with our teens.

When we say nothing, our worry about our teen can turn into anger. Then our feelings fester. And although we don’t deal directly with the issue, we act out our concerns through our tone of voice and offhanded comments – as Claire and Phil (especially Phil) have been doing lately with Haley. And as the exchange below between mother and daughter shows, our acting out can damage our connection with our teen:

Haley: What’s the matter with you?! You’ve been acting so weird ever since I left college.

Claire: For the record, you didn’t leave college. You were asked to leave.

Haley: Of which you guys never let me forget – especially Dad.

Claire: Honey, your father…

Haley: Oh, you don’t have to tell me what he thinks. Okay?! I’m a huge disappointment to him. And I see it on his face everyday. He acts as if he doesn’t even want me around.

Because teens are desperate to feel independent, they’ll often go to great lengths to demonstrate that they don’t need our advice or direction any more. In truth, though, as we saw with Haley tonight, they care deeply about our opinions of them and fear seeing a diminished view of themselves reflected in our eyes. They desperately want our respect.

At the very end of the episode, Phil confronts Claire about the plan she hatched up:

Phil: This little chicken game may work for your dad, but it doesn’t work for me. That’s my little girl. I need her to know that no guy on earth is good enough for her – let alone some slimy, middle-aged jean salesman!

Then Phil sees that Haley too is in the room. And the next minute she is in his arms.

Phil: What’s this?

Claire: Just enjoy it.

This is more than just a feel good ending for a made-up TV show. There’s a vital message here for you and me: Although our teens may insist on changing the terms of our involvement, they still want us involved in their lives.

Flipping the Frame: Your Parenting Experiences

• Tonight we see that Haley still cares about what her parents think about her. I’m not sure we ever outgrow that. What do you think?

• Teens do care deeply about their parents’ opinions. But we have to look closely to see evidence of this because they’ll almost never tell us this directly. Have you seen evidence of this in your teen? What does it look or sound like?

---

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.