Practicing Radical Acceptance with Teens

Teen behavior can be confounding: one day they are more kid-like, sneaking a peak at the new Raja movie, and the next day, they begging you to sign off on a wrist tattoo. In their hardest stages, they are raging against the authorities in their lives, trying to assert their own identity in ways big and small. Although they wouldn’t like to hear it, teenagers are more similar to toddlers, who have suddenly learned the word, “no,” except they have the mouth of a sailors and a license.

As parents, we can nostalgically wish for the days when they would hold our hands, want to do errands with us, or watch movies next to us on the couch. We grieve, in some ways, the closeness we may have had at earlier stages. Or we may be angry that our relationship has been hijacked by this new, prickly person who is now taller than us. How do we make peace with the fact that this new version will be living with us for a few years, and adapt accordingly?

One practice that can set us up for success is the idea of radical acceptance. The concept comes from Dialectic Behavioral Therapy, which asks clients to look at a situation more objectively, without emotion. The idea behind radical acceptance is that you pay attention to your thoughts around a situation. Are you resisting it? Are you wishing it were different? Are you comparing it to other less difficult situations? When you start to have a thought that resists your current reality, you becomes aware of it, and you work on letting it go.

So how does this work with teens? If your teen has a room filled with smelly sports clothes, sheets that haven’t been washed in months, and old food containers, the natural reaction might be to wish they would clean up. Instead, radical acceptance tells us to completely embrace our teen as a slovenly mess. Instead of wondering how to change them, we would fully accept this is who they are. This doesn’t mean we can’t set boundaries. Maybe we set the expectation that the trash be taken out on Wednesdays and Saturdays before leaving to go anywhere. But we don’t exert mental energy wishing it were different or assigning negative characteristics to our teen (“He’s so lazy!” or “God, she’s disgusting!”).

If your teen has become a back-talking, argumentative pain, radical acceptance can help reduce your own stress around it. Instead of comparing your child’s actions to how he or she used to be, or how you want him or her to be, seeing them as you would a coworker can be helpful. (“George argues a lot. That’s just George.”) You know that you have no influence over changing a coworker, so you easily accept who the person is and work around it. This is radical acceptance in motion. No fighting against it, just accepting the way things are, setting your boundaries, and moving on.

Although perhaps a small mental shift, this perspective can save us a lot of anguish where teens are concerned. Letting go of all of the mental noise we create around behavior is the first step towards peace. After all, acceptance is the root of love.