As a ‘lame duck’ parent, there’s still important work to do

My household hit a milestone this year: My youngest child started high school.

I’ve been a mother for more than 25 years, and in that quarter-century of parenthood, I’ve seen a lot of change, including my oldest three graduating from high school and starting their own adult adventures. Now, 17-year-old Owen and 14-year-old Clara are the only children still under my roof, which means I have just four more years of parenting a minor.

With only a few years of active child-rearing left, I’m finding myself in what I now refer to as the “lame duck” stage of parenting: I’m still technically in charge, but my constituents are already looking ahead to the future. I’m still trying to govern, but they’ve got one foot out the door. Sure, this is what should happen as we teach our children how to become more independent. But the transition for parents from all-important to more of an obstacle is often overlooked.

Owen and Clara now inhabit their own small teenage club, complete with inside jokes, gestures, references and a vocabulary I don’t fully understand. They still like me (I hope, anyway) but I’m not quite as essential to their sense of selves as I once was. They tend to look to each other and their friends first for approval, and even when they ask for my input, I get the sense that I’m far down a long list. “Bruh,” they’ll respond when I give a piece of advice, and I’m not sure, but it doesn’t seem like that means “Great idea!” It’s enough to make a mom feel more than a little irrelevant.

This new indifference may be hurtful, but it’s totally normal, says Kenneth Ginsburg, pediatrician and author of “Congrats – You’re Having a Teen!” “In the journey toward independence, teens have to feel like they could do it on their own. So they may temporarily push their parents away to imagine what it would be like if they didn’t need them,” he says. “I try to reassure parents that their children do this precisely because they do love them and know deep inside that they continue to need them.”

As Lisa Damour, author of “The Emotional Lives of Teenagers,” says, teens shifting their focus from parents to peers is normal – and that’s what makes it possible for them to take steps toward independence, like moving out, enrolling in college, getting a job or enlisting in the military.

“This is the endgame we’ve been shooting for, and we need to remember that,” says Damour, who points out that living with teenagers is part of a “vast renegotiation” between the relationship your child had with you when they were little and the one they have with you as a teenager.

And all that eye-rolling and deep sighing? It isn’t necessarily a sign that your kids hate your guts – it’s more that they’re learning to express their own opinions, says Laurence Steinberg, author of “You and Your Adult Child.” To do this, teens start to put some emotional distance between themselves and their parents, which often manifests in “kind of knocking the parents off a pedestal.”

The self-protective urge to pull away at this stage of parenting can be strong. After all, they don’t seem to need me or want me around, right? It would be so easy, so effortless, to phone in the rest of my term and retreat to a safe and comfortable place in the past or jump ahead to an exciting new future. But as powerless as any parent at this stage may feel – ready to just let their teens figure it out, lest we battle too hard – maybe this is a time to be more hands-on, just in a different way.

Here’s how to consider this next term.

Stand back and remember that this is not personal. “In development, we want and expect kids to start to loosen ties to their parents,” Damour says. “First there’s the relationship they had with you as a kid, then the relationship they have with you as a teenager, and they’re trying to figure out what their relationship with you as an adult will look like.” She advises parents to remind themselves that their child is working this all out. Trust that over time, you will “get to the next shore” together.

“They’re trying to figure out what their relationship with you as an adult is going to look like,” she explains. “It’s all very much in flux, and part of why it’s in flux is that they are very much in flux.”

As normal and even desirable as this stage is, Damour says, it can be surprisingly hurtful for parents. “It’s really painful to parents who are savoring every last moment with their teen under their roof to have their teenager bristle at any overture that the parent is using to try to pull them close,” she says, adding: “Nobody’s doing anything wrong. This is normal development!”

Be a lighthouse. Instead of thinking of yourself as a benched player waiting it out on the sidelines, try different imagery: a beacon on the shoreline. “I call the ideal balance ‘lighthouse parenting,’” says Ginsburg. “You should be a stable force for your children to measure themselves against and always return to.” The adolescent years are a unique opportunity to support and influence our kids, he says, if we can see past their apparent lack of interest in us and recognize how important we really are. “As they’re growing, adolescents have a big job – to try to answer this fundamental question, ‘Who am I?’ And part of the answer is: ‘I am someone distinct and separate from my parents,’” Ginsburg explains. As our teens struggle to imagine themselves without us, they will sometimes actively push us away or give us the silent treatment. But we shouldn’t take that outward expression of their struggle toward independence as evidence that we’re no longer needed.

“The answer to the question ‘Do I still matter?’ is definitely, and without question, yes” – possibly more than at any other time of a child’s development, Ginsburg says.

Remember that the lame-duck experience will be temporary. “Once teens are a bit more confident they can stand on their own, most come back to us and choose healthy interdependence,” says Ginsburg. And, Steinberg reminds us, that interdependence often looks like once again living under one roof – something that’s increasingly common today.

So I suppose I shouldn’t start counting down the days to that perfectly clean home just yet. And even though I may feel the way a politician does in their lame-duck years, as I dream about the projects I’ll be able to pull off without having to play chauffeur, cook and financier to barely grateful adolescents, I know this is no time to back out of parenting.

I also know, from my own parenting mistakes, that beneath my teenagers’ too-cool-for-this exterior, there are soft spots that occasionally show themselves – and part of my job is to wait patiently and nonjudgmentally for them to appear. It’s what I have to keep showing up for.

Meagan Francis is co-host of “The Mom Hour” and writes the Reinventing substack. She is the mother of five.