Your teen is neither a child nor an adult. When they were a child, you could determine the rules for your family and insist your child follow them. However, you may be finding that this directive approach is no longer working with your teen. As children, they needed the security and the care you provided. Now, as a teen, they may resist your guidance and be more strongly influenced by their friends than by you.
We often hear teenagers telling parents, “You don’t understand me!” Why do they feel this way? Did they suddenly change from charming children to rebellious adolescents? Why is the conflict between parents and teenagers a seemingly universal problem?
Let’s look at this from a new perspective I would call ontological. That may be a new word for you, but an ontology is a belief we have about the nature of something. In other words, how we understand the thing or a person. It is a method I have been teaching to coaches, parents, educators, and leaders for two decades. Let me explain how this new view can be helpful.
The foundational philosophical belief of ontological learning and coaching is that humans live in interpretive worlds. Each of us sees the world differently and, from our viewpoint, understands the world uniquely. There is not one truth with a capital “T.” We experience ourselves and all that is going on around us and interpret or assign a meaning almost instantaneously and often unconsciously. That meaning is our assessment or interpretation. It is true to us but is not a universal truth. In other words, we are each living a story based on the observer we are when we encounter the world around us. Our understanding of what appears to be reality is a story we’ve created. So, there is a possibility of revising our story when we are dissatisfied with some aspect of our life.
The idea that we are unique observers is intuitive to most of us and is easy to observe. However, it is something that we easily forget or overlook. Imagine that you and your teen go to a movie together. After the movie, you are enthusiastic about what a fantastic movie it was, and your teen says it was one of the worst movies they have ever seen. What is happening? In a world where there is only one right answer, you may argue about who is correct. Looking at this situation through an ontological lens, we can see that the parent and the teen are different observers. Ontologically what is important and most interesting isn’t whether the movie was good or bad. It is about the observers having such different interpretations of the same experience. You may not realize that your conversation with your teen isn’t really about the movie but about the observer each of you is.
You may wonder why we all tend to believe our interpretation of the world is the correct one. Fundamentally, believing that what we experience is reality gives us clarity and a sense of control. Many of the conflicts between parents and teens are essentially a struggle to determine which version of “reality” they will use. If you and your teen want to understand each other, the place to be curious about is the observer each of you is and how you became that observer. This ontological approach is a powerful tool for parents when coaching their teens to become more emotionally intelligent.
