My son was in ninth grade when he told me some of the guys had been drinking at poker night.
We were driving home.
I called another mom so we could make the next one safer. When the boys found out he’d told me, he barely spoke to me for weeks.
I don’t regret taking it seriously.
They were fourteen.
I thought calling another mom was the responsible thing to do.
But I keep coming back to that drive.
He’d just told me something he could have kept to himself.
And before we even pulled into the driveway, I was thinking:
Okay. Who do I call?
I didn’t ask him if it bothered him.
I didn’t ask what he wanted me to do.
I knew what the boys had done.
I had no idea what my son thought about it.
Maybe he was uncomfortable and didn’t know how to get out of it.
Maybe he thought it was no big deal.
Either way, that’s what I needed to know.
I thought taking it seriously meant figuring out what to do. Fast.
I hadn’t even figured out what I was dealing with.
You can take something seriously without deciding right away what to do about it.
I might still have talked to the other parents.
But I could have talked with him first about what I was thinking of doing, and what it might mean for him.
And I think there’s a cost when this happens again and again.
Your teenager tells you something worrying, and it turns straight into a plan.
So the next time, he might leave out the part that would worry you.
“How was the party?”
“Fine.”
You have less to go on, so you worry more.
And when he does tell you something, you’re even quicker to step in.
But in the moment, it’s so hard to tell.
When your kid tells you something scary, how do you know whether to keep listening or step in?
That's what we can work through on a Parenting Breakthrough Call. We'll talk about something your teenager told you, or something you're worried he isn't telling you, and how to know when to keep listening and when it's time to step in.
So when your teenager trusts you with something that scares you, you can take it seriously and still be the person he comes to.
🧡 Jeanine
