validation & growth

[incadove]

hi friends, I had a good experience last night that could have gone south, was one of those same conversations we'd had before in some ways, except dd is older and has more insight/meta understanding now so we could head it off by saying things like 'yeah, this kind of conversation hasn't worked for us, because it makes you feel like X and me feel like Y'.  My dd has a lot of self-understanding, which really helps.  Part of the time I remembered to validate, and part of the time not which made her feel worse, but she was able to open up and share some really awful feelings of failure, self-blame, suicidal thoughts.  And the key validation statement that I think helped is just that its normal to grow.  Its normal to have things that don't work the way you want and to learn from them, and to change as a result.  So kind of combining validation with growth mindset.

Anyway very grateful to this forum, I think without the skills I learned here I would have done a lot worse handling it.  I used to feel I had to choose between being 'real' or 'agreeing' - and I often chose the former, which tended to blow up - but validation is real, and can be done authentically, which I really like. 

For all parents with teens and late teens, I think there is probably light at the end of the tunnel.  Two, three and four years ago if I look at my diaries there is so much more pain there.  Now there is some, but proportionally much more positive, warm and happy feelings, and just more stability.  I think keeping that long view and especially acting on principles when your feelings are really negative, and asking dd and ds to act on principles regardless of _their_ feelings, may just work in the long run. 

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[incadove]

Ok, so maybe I spoke too soon!  Next day, when I brought up an issue, cleaning something and said I'd been bothered about it, it triggered my dd, who did stuff that triggered me, and we had a fight.  Accusations, I ranted at her, the whole thing.  But, even with that we were able to keep doing what we needed to be doing (we had a deadline) and afterwards we made up over text.  So I think its still progress, but definitely not there yet.  I have to take a break when I get triggered so I can go back to using skills correctly, the thing is we couldn't because we had a deadline.   It worked out all right but I want to try not to repeat that again.