Reconnecting with Resistant Teenagers

Years ago I helped teens work through their inner turmoil through horse-assisted therapy. The teens learned that horses are incredible animals in every sense of the word - they were incredibly large, intelligent, and sensitive. The teens quickly realized that they could not push the horses around, commanding them to go where they wanted like they might be able to do with a sibling, a parent, or an animal of a smaller size. Instead, they had to build a relationship on mutual trust, respect, flexibility, and emotional attunement. The kids could, eventually, learn to move the horses where they needed them to go, but it often took a lot of work upfront - especially if the horses had a history of trauma, like all of the horses at this particular ranch did. Because of their trauma backgrounds, and their natural-born temperaments, the horses were hypersensitive to cues of danger, such as sudden movement, moderately loud sounds, aggressive touch or tone, or subtle changes in facial expressions. They usually picked up on threats before their owners could.

Teenagers are like Horses

Our teenagers can sometimes be like these horses - stubborn, intelligent, and sensitive. While some of the teens I see struggle because they have experienced abuse or neglect, the vast majority of the teens I see in therapy struggle simply because of the normal hardships of life - break-ups, developmental or medical challenges, difficulty integrating with their peers, moving around a lot, parents working long hours, moving away from a close friend, the loss of a family member, too much comfort, or financial or living space challenges. Sometimes their hurt comes from good parents who made mistakes because of their own difficult childhood or simply because life does not give us a parenting manual.  What do we do as parents, then, when we have a teenager, like these horses, who will not simply listen to us because we asked? Who dig their heels at simple requests or have a tendency to shut down when things get hard? What can we do when our teenager is larger than us, such as a horse, and we lose the ability to physically move them where we want them to go?

Deeply Observe

As a therapist of teens for over 13 years, the first thing I would recommend would be to take the time to deeply observe your child. Pretend you have never met your child and have been given a school assignment to pick a child and study them for a few weeks. Observe what they are like in the mornings, what food they eat, how they interact with friends, technology, or siblings, and what they are like before they go to bed. Notice both the content (what time they go to bed, for example) and the process (how they go about winding down at the end of the day). When we introduce the kids to horses, before we even have the kids go near them, we  ask them to pick a horse and observe it, along with the context with which they live. They quickly would notice many interesting things about the horses and their herd - how often they ate, how often they moved, if they were aggressive or passive, if they were hurt or sick, if they stayed in the center of the corral or on the outskirts, and with which other horses they seemed to feel the most or least comfortable.

Curiously Question

The second thing I would recommend would be to interview your child, again, as if you are just getting to know them for the first time. Like horses, teenagers are often sensitive to threats that the adults around them are unable to detect. Unlike horses, however, we can simply ask our kids to explain what is happening to them, keeping in mind that they may not initially understand what threats they are detecting - only that something feels “off.” This interview is an opportunity to fill in the gaps with information that you were not not able to obtain through observation alone (like how their relationship with friends at school are going) or to clarify what you can observe (why they are up at 1am in the morning). During this part of the assessment, it is not about trying to find out whether your child is lying to you or not, but to try to seek understanding from their point of view, as if we are interviewing someone you met for the first time. You can also use this time to observe their facial expressions, speech, and body language.

Formulate a Hypothesis

Third, I would recommend formulating a couple of hypotheses, based on your observation and your interview, as to why they might be exhibiting resistant behavior. There can be many reasons why a kid might be exhibiting this type of behavior. Before moving on, I want to recognize that my use of the words defiant and resistant can make us think that our child is somehow defective or bad. When we are struggling with our own issues as parents, we may, for a time, see our kids in this way. But the truth is that our kids, like horses, are not inherently bad and if we see our kids in this way, then our lens is skewed. Sometimes when we don’t know what to do, it can be tempting to write others off as defective or bad. However, what we might see as defiant or resistant, is usually them detecting a threat that we are unable to perceive ourselves. What are some of the threats that our defiant or resistant kids might be detecting? Below is a list of threats that I have seen in the kids I have worked with over the years. It is, by no means, exhaustive, but it may help you identify some of the struggles your kid might be going through. As you will notice, most of these threats are emotional, rather than physical. These challenges might be compounded when you have a kid who struggles with a slow-to-warm-up temperament, developmental delays, or medical challenges.

What the Resistance may really be about:

1. Hold negative core beliefs about themselves (such as “I’m unattractive” or “I’m incompetent.”)

2. Disconnected from their parents or peers

3. Grieving the loss of a close friend, partner, or family member

4. Feel like they don’t measure up to others, such as friends or a sibling

5. Worried about the stability of their parent’s relationship or a sibling who is struggling

6. Experienced a “life altering” event which shattered their worldview or identity

7. Entangled in addictive or compulsive behaviors

8. They have high anxiety about their ability to compete physically, socially, or academically

9. High levels of stress over financial difficulties within the family

10. High levels of stress due to being constantly attuned to world events or social movements

Testing the Hypothesis

Finally, I would pick my top 3 hypotheses and test them out. Remember, the real problem might not be so obvious at first. For example, if they are not getting enough sleep, the easy solution might be to give them some sort of sleep aid. But, the problem might be, and usually is, deeper than that. For example, maybe they struggle to sleep at night because they replay all the things they did wrong at the end of the day or because the thought of time for themselves at the end of the day is the only thing that gets them through their day. Perhaps the problem is that you and your spouse have been fighting a lot lately and your kids are picking up on the tension. Sometimes symptoms that come up for our kids are their ways of crying for help. I once met someone who experienced gender dysphoria because they needed to experience more affection from their parents. Once a secure attachment with the parents was re-established, the dysphoria dissipated.

Our kids can sometimes be like horses - stubborn, powerful, and sensitive. They often think they know better than us. But these characteristics might be the exact things that are helping our kids to survive. And they may require us to make some fundamental changes in how we approach them. We cannot run out and demand that horses listen to us and then get frustrated when they don’t. Their symptoms are an invitation for us to get to know them on a deeper level. Teenagers are experiencing many, complicated emotions, and they need our help in navigating the many changes that lie ahead of them. They require us to develop a new skill set - of being able to step back and see our kids from the outside looking in - the relational, developmental, cultural, familial, medical, and spiritual context with which they are embedded. Once we know what we are seeing, we can then formulate a plan on how to move forward. Sometimes reaching out to a trusted friend, family member, or therapist may help us to see our child more clearly and to find solutions we have not yet thought of. But the first step is to take a step back, observe, and listen deeply to what they are telling us. When we attune ourselves to our kid’s frequencies, we can pick up the same threats as them, such as the threat of not measuring up or being unlovable. Once we know what the threat is, the path forward becomes a lot more clear.

Dr. David M Haralson is a marriage and family therapist in private practice at Oasis Family Therapy in South Ogden, Utah. He specializes in relationship work - between parent and child, partners, and siblings. He works from an emotionally-focused and narrative therapy lens. He has taught at many national and statewide conferences on topics such as family therapy, attachment, trauma, and gender.