Three Common Parenting Mistakes When Raising an Emotionally Dysregulated Teen (and What to Do Instead)
Quick Review: What is a Dialectic?
Dialectics come from western philosophy. From a DBT perspective, a dialectic is the idea that two seemingly opposing things can both be true at the same time, and indeed, can be combined to create a new, greater truth. For example, the central dialectic in DBT is that of acceptance and change.
Idea 1 (aka the “thesis”): Acceptance – everybody is doing the best they can.
Idea 2 (aka the “antithesis”): Change – everybody needs to do better, try harder, and be more motivated to change.
At first glance, these ideas seem to be clearly in contrast with one another. Which is it? Is everyone doing the best they can? Or does everyone need to do better?
Dialectics let us hold that both things are true at the same time in a way that enhances our understanding of both.
Idea 3 – the new, greater truth (aka the “synthesis”): Everyone is doing the best they can with what they have available right in this moment, and they can and must do better, try harder, and be more motivated for change if we give them new skills and supports.
In DBT, we’re big on dialectics because big emotions so commonly lead to big (i.e., extreme) experiences. Extremes beget more extremes, and suddenly, you can find yourself on an emotional pendulum swing between contrasting emotional extremes. Dialectics allow us to synthesize, find balance, and get unstuck from emotional extremes.
In DBT, dialectics pervade everything we do, including parenting. Dialectical parenting means combining a strong foundation of validation, support, and a strong relationship, with effective change strategies (e.g., limits, behaviorism, interpersonal effectiveness).
Dialectical Dilemmas: In developing DBT, Marsha Linehan recognized that clients tended to get stuck between particular sets of emotional extremes. She called these extreme emotional patterns, “dialectical dilemmas.” See our post on the dialectical dilemmas for more on those patterns (or, if you want to go really deep, check out this full paper on the topic).
The Parenting Dilemmas
In adapting DBT for adolescents, Jill Rathus and Alec Miller (2014) added a set of dialectical dilemmas for parents and caregivers of teens with emotional dysregulation. This set of three parenting dilemmas outlines common extremes parents may get stuck on when they are parenting someone who is chronically dysregulated. Note: Although Rathus and Miller focused their work on adolescents, most of this week’s content applies equally to parents of young adults who are still in the stage of emerging adulthood (i.e., emotionally and/or financially dependent on parents).
A caveat before we dive in: In DBT, we are deeply committed to nonjudgment. This applies to parents, as well as teens. This means that when we discuss the parenting dilemmas, we don’t judge parents or teens for the patterns that naturally result between them. If you’re not ready to be nonjudgmental of yourself and your child, you might want to consider holding off on the parenting dilemmas for now. If you’re up for doing your best to be nonjudgmental, keep reading.
Typical adolescent development: Under the best of circumstances, parenting a teenager can be challenging for all involved. A major task (arguably, the major task) of adolescence is developing increased independence. This requires teens to manage more and more on their own and parents to back off more and more. For most parents (and teens!) allowing this increased independence can be scary. From the day their children were born, parents were responsible for their safety, and now, fairly suddenly, teens are taking over big parts of that role.
The role of emotion dysregulation: Now, if we add chronic and severe emotion dysregulation into the mix, in the form of suicidality, self-harm, impulsivity, substance use, and any number of other “target behaviors,” things get complicated quickly. Parents are likely to experience their own extreme emotions in response to these concerns. Teens are of course having big emotions. And, as we learned with the transactional model, everyone impacts each other. In relationships, big emotions tend to lead to polarization between people.
Parenting Dilemma 1: Too Loose vs. Too Strict
Too strict: When safety concerns come up, parents often try to increase monitoring and control in order to help keep their kids safe. In practice, this often looks like inappropriate, unhelpful, or excessive limits, demands, and monitoring. While understandable, this kind of fear-based control is not actually effective for increasing safety, and paradoxically, can actually increase risk, especially in the long run. It also tends to be inflexible, which is especially challenging for highly sensitive teens.
Too loose: When too strict doesn’t work, parents can flip the other direction, and suddenly become too loose. More commonly, parents can be too strict in some ways and too loose in others. I find that the best way to describe this is that parents who are fearful because of safety concerns may be fearful of holding limits or having demands/expectations because of the concern that holding a limit or expectation will result in dysregulation, and ultimately, unsafe behavior (see also: coercive family process). In other words, fear of dangerous or severely dysregulated behavior can lead quickly to walking on eggshells. This can lead to it feeling very big and intolerable when there are consequences, because clients aren’t used to them. In the long-run, this can also lead to clients feeling unsafe and/or uncared for, because teens need clear limits to help them explore their independence safely and confidently.
Synthesis: The synthesis of the dilemma of too loose vs. too strict is to be firm, yet flexible. Specifically, it’s important for parents to set clear, age-appropriate limits. In general, we want limits to be held consistently (otherwise you end up with a parent who “cried wolf” situation, where the teen doesn’t believe you really mean a limit when you say it). However, it’s also important to be willing to flex limits when everyone is wise mind (i.e., not when the teen or the parent is dysregulated).
Parenting Dilemma 2: Normalizing Pathological vs. Pathologizing Normal
This dilemma is about under- vs. overreacting. When your child has chronic and/or severe safety concerns, it can really throw off your meter for what is/is not dangerous. It’s sort of like if you left a thermometer in boiling water for a long time, it would probably affect its ability to accurately read the temperature after a while.
Normalizing pathological behavior: When you’ve been around a lot of safety concerns, you can habituate to them. This can result in underreacting to significant safety concerns or target behaviors (e.g., suicidal actions, recurrent or severe self-harm, selling substances).
Pathologizing normal behaviors: On the flip side, when your child has a history of significant safety concerns, many things can seem dangerous, that actually aren’t. For example, many (most?) of the parents we work with in DBT have come to associate their child being alone in their room with imminent safety concerns. It’s generally age appropriate and normative for teens to spend some time alone in their rooms. When teens come to the program and are working on maintaining a commitment to keeping suicide and self-harm off the table and to using skills to manage their emotions differently, we try to support parents in noticing that their child being in their room is not in itself a cause for concern. But, disentangling this kind of association can be challenging, because fear-based conditioning is very powerful (and, of course, nothing is more scary than a threat to your child’s safety or well-being).
Synthesis: The synthesis for this dilemma is in recognizing (in wise mind, and ideally with the support of a DBT provider) when behaviors do and do not cross the line from typical to cause for concern.
Dilemma 3: Forcing Independence vs. Fostering Dependence
As noted above, chronic dysregulation can really complicate the normative adolescent task of increasing independence. It can make parents very afraid to let go, or lead to asking a lot of a teen who isn’t ready to take on so much independently.
Fostering dependence: Fostering dependence involves holding a teen back from becoming independent, either by doing things for them, preventing them from doing age-appropriate things on their own, or protecting them from learning important (but potentially challenging) lessons. One of the most common ways we see this is when parents are afraid to let their teens experience the “natural consequences” of their actions, out of concern that if they experience the consequences (e.g., failing a class if they don’t complete the work, missing a field trip if they don’t get the forms signed) it will lead to dysregulation, which will either be disruptive or dangerous. This concern makes a ton of sense, and often requires some collaboration with the teen and their clinician (or a parent coach) to effectively address. While the concern of increased dysregulation is real and important, having opportunities to learn from your environment and experiences is also incredibly important. Alan Fruzzetti has been known to call the fostering dependence behaviors that lead parents to protect teens from important learning, “curling parenting,” referring to parents “sweeping” the ice clear in front of their teens in the hope that they will have a completely smooth ride. Recently, i also heard it described as “lawn mowing” behavior, clearing the ground in front of kids so they won’t encounter any bumps or tall grass. Unfortunately, this behavior also leads teens to expect that others will sweep the bumps away for them and that life will be bump-free.
Forcing independence: When teens have been protected from natural learning, it can interfere significantly with progress towards independence and lead to an over-reliance on parents. This over-reliance can quickly burn parents out, leading parents to expect (or at least hope for) teens to be completely independent. We call this, “forcing independence.”
Forcing independence refers to expecting a teen to do more than they are developmentally ready to do independently. Often, it involves making the mistake of assuming that doing things “independently” means “without help.” For example, it might mean expecting a teen to take on multiple roles and responsibilities at once, or expecting them to be able to do new tasks without parental support. I’ve seen this as parents being reluctant to participate in treatment, because they are so exhausted and burnt out from years of doing things on their kids’ behalf.
Synthesis: The synthesis for this dilemma is to both support independence and allow dependence. It means allowing teens to make moves towards independence, make mistakes, and learn lessons (even painful ones) on their own, and being prepared to help, support, and yes, even catch them when they fall.
TLDR; The transition to increased independence requires a tricky balance of holding on and letting go for parents and teens alike. Chronic and severe dysregulation (and especially safety issues) make this even more complicated. As a result, parents of dysregulated teens often find themselves vacillating between extremes in their parenting. Dialectics give us a way to acknowledge the extreme experiences and move towards more balanced approaches to parenting.