What To Do When You Feel Messed Up As Your Kid Enters The Teen Years
Last Tuesday, I stood in my kitchen folding mismatched athletic socks, waiting for my 13-year-old to get home from middle school. A plate of his favorite chocolate chip cookies cooled on the counter—he’d texted 10 minutes earlier that he “hated everything today” so I’d pulled the batch together between work meetings. When the front door creaked open, I wiped flour off my hands and smiled. His backpack bulged, the hole in the side still gaping where his skateboard sticks out, something I’d been meaning to sew for two weeks. I held up a cookie and said I was here if he wanted to talk. He just grunted, dragged his backpack past me, and closed his bedroom door so quietly the frame didn’t even rattle.
I stood there holding that cookie for a full minute before I realized my cheeks were wet. Not the ugly, snotty crying I do after a bad fight, just quiet, unexpected tears. Three years ago, that same kid would’ve thrown himself into my arms the second he walked in, spilling every detail about the mean kid on the bus or the too-hard math quiz. Now I’m just the person who buys his extra-strong deodorant and remembers to restock the fruit punch soda he likes. I felt completely messed up—like I’d done something wrong, like I was already losing him before he even really hit high school.
Last weekend, it got worse. We’ve gone hiking at the state park every Saturday since he was 8, ever since he got that first pair of little kid hiking boots and insisted we “explore the woods” every weekend. When I asked if he was ready to go, he rolled over on the couch and said he’d rather stay home and play Roblox with his friends from school. I got defensive before I even thought about it. I said he never spent time with our family anymore, that he was just wasting his days staring at a screen. He yelled back that I never let him do anything he wanted, and slammed his door hard enough that the painting above the stairs shifted. I sat on the couch after that scrolling through baby photos for 20 minutes, mad at him and mad at myself for holding onto that silly “close mother-son” fantasy I’d built for so long.
I called my sister that night, who’s a 7th grade counselor, and I expected her to say the vague stuff everyone says—“it’s just a phase, give him space, he still loves you.” Instead, she gave me a few small, specific things to try that I never would’ve thought of on my own.
First, she told me to stop waiting for him to come to me with big conversations, and stop pushing him to open up on my timeline. Instead of standing outside his door waiting for a response when I ask how his day was, I just leave a low-stakes opening and walk away. Now, if he’s shut in his room after a bad day, I set a snack (usually that extra cookie) on a paper plate on the floor outside his door, add a sticky note that just says “here if you want it” and I don’t knock, I don’t wait for a reply. Half the time he doesn’t say anything, but the plate’s always empty by morning.
Second, I stopped asking “how was school” the second he walks in the door. That question is impossible for a 13-year-old to answer, she said—their days are a blur of tiny annoying moments and big messy feelings they can’t even put into words themselves. Now I ask one specific, silly, low-stakes question instead. Things like “what’s the dumbest rule your teacher enforced this week” or “did anyone bring a good snack to lunch that you stole a bite of”. It doesn’t demand a big speech, just a quick answer. Last week, he stopped halfway to his room and told me his teacher made a kid throw away an entire bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos because it was “outside food not from the cafeteria”, and that turned into a 5-minute rant about how stupid middle school rules are, no pushing required.
I also started giving myself 10 minutes a day to be messed up about it, instead of taking my sadness out on him. When I miss the little kid who used to hold my hand everywhere, I go sit on the back porch, pull up my folder of old photos on my phone, and look through them for 10 minutes. Then I close the app and go back to whatever I was doing. I don’t bring it up to him, I don’t make him feel guilty for growing up. He didn’t ask to be a teen, right? It’s just what happens.
It’s not perfect. Some days I still get defensive when he turns down a family dinner, some days I still cry a little into the cookie dough. I used to think we’d be the kind of pair that tells each other everything, that goes on fun adventures every weekend, and that’s just not where we are right now. That’s okay, even if it still stings sometimes.
Last week, I sat on the couch next to him while he played his game, working on my laptop, and we didn’t talk for 45 minutes. Halfway through, he just mumbled that he was scared he’d trip over his own feet at the first school dance next month, and that was that. He went back to the game, I just said “that makes sense, most people will be tripping too” and didn’t push for more. That’s more than I got two months ago.
I walked past his room last night, door cracked, and heard him laughing with his friend over the mic about the new skate park they want to hit next weekend. I remembered when I was 13, I slammed my door on my mom all the time, thought she had no clue what I was going through. I bet she stood in the kitchen holding a cookie too, feeling just as messed up as I do right now. This isn’t the close mother-son relationship I imagined when he was little, but it’s the one we have right now. It’s messy, it’s quiet a lot of the time, but the sticky notes work more often than not. And that’s enough for me, for now.
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