Hi, I’m Ilia Jones, licensed professional counselor in Suwanee, Georgia. And I want to talk to parents of teenagers who have anxiety. And I mean the parents might have anxiety about the teenager or maybe even about the teenager’s anxiety.​

One of the things I do with a lot of my clients that have anxiety about parenting a teenager is remind them that they can’t know how things are going to turn out with their child until the child’s brain is fully formed, which happens after age 25. So sometime the anxiety that parents feel is impatience because we want to know whether everything we are doing is going to turn out right and if we are doing a good enough job as parents.​

However, our teenager cannot reassure us and cannot provide a guaranteed positive outcome report at this time. They can’t do it when they’re teenagers. We’re going to have to wait until they’re adults and see how that all happened. And also, we’re putting ingredients into our child, but they do get to make some of their own choices. And some of their choices they’re making as teenagers are not permanent.​

So, it’s going to be really important for parents to manage their own anxiety and realize that some of it is impatience – wanting to know what the outcome is going to be – and make sure we don’t burden our teenager with the responsibility of reassuring us or providing us guarantees or acting the way they’re going to act when they’re adults at the age of 16. So, that’s a pretty tough ask for parents, but is one of the things I work with parents on learning and tolerating and managing their own symptoms in order to help them feel better. Hope this helps. Please like or subscribe if you want to see more of my content.​