When my daughter was just a baby, I went ALL IN on alternative (some might say radical) parenting strategies. I moved my family to an off-the-grid cabin in the woods, did a three-year Waldorf teacher training, became a homeschooling parent, and took nonviolent communication courses. It was all in an effort to bond me and my daughter in what I saw clearly as our inextricable growth.

So, when it came to my daughter’s tween and teen years, I thought we were all ready for the challenges of adolescence. I saw the shift coming, as I'd been working with children most of my life, studied human development in college, and became a Waldorf teacher before she turned five. Yet I still had so much to learn about having a tween at home, and I learned a lot from my mistakes.

Surprise! I’m Not Perfect

What I hadn’t anticipated was that her need for independence would coincide so exactly with my own intense needs to do the same. In a series of just 3 years, I went back to work, got divorced, re-partnered, and then I gave birth to my son. And with all of that happening, understandably, the threads of our mother-daughter relationship started to fray. I had not anticipated the blocks in communication that began to creep in.

I tried different ways to connect with my daughter as she was budding into womanhood, but I was a little distracted. (To put it mildly). She was distancing herself, which I thought (or rationalized?) was expected behavior at her age. But, in truth, neither of us understood the rules of our new relationship dynamic.

Things Got Real

There was so much I deeply wanted to share with her – about her emerging place in the world as a young woman instead of as a child. I had real doubts about whether I was passing on enough of my feminine knowledge for her to navigate the world safely and wisely.

My own doubts and discomfort with our exchanges were only compounded in our most difficult moments (with her yelling “You ruined my life!”). Then, after one wrenching back-and-forth between us, we hit an impasse that lead us to not speaking to one another for almost 4 weeks.

This Was My Aha! Moment

As I struggled with how to mend the holes between us, I tried going back to our old playbook of nonviolent communication practices, and I really tried to empathize with her. Her response: “How come you only use this stuff when there’s a problem?”

I had thought my good intentions were enough, but I realized I needed to be more pro-active instead of reactive.

I began to synthesize all the training and knowledge I had, focusing on the spiritual-psychological view of human development and how I could apply it to healing my relationship with my daughter.

Calling back to what I knew intuitively when she was just a baby: my personal growth was not separate from hers.

With that reaffirmed intentionality, our relationship healed and grew strong again. We even successfully navigated a mother-daughter trip to Europe! Most importantly, though, as she grew up and my life expanded (I wrote a book, had a wedding, and moved to Hawai’i!) we had practiced the communication patterns we needed to continue our co-evolution and mother-daughter partnership into adulthood.

Opening the lines of communication for you, too.
On the other side of those years, I began to see a framework for how our teens natural striving for individuation can become an opportunity for our own growth. And I realized how much easier it could be with the regular a support of likeminded parents.
I’ve been helping parents connect more meaningfully with their children for over a decade now, and actively applying my teaching with my youngest son. (That’s its own unique and marvelous experience.) And I’m on a quest to make sure that my life lessons can be of use to others.