Your teenager isn’t hiding things from you because they’re dishonest. They’re hiding things because at some point, in some conversation, they learned that honesty with you comes at a price they aren’t always willing to pay.
That is not an accusation. It’s information. And it’s the most important thing to understand before you try to rebuild honesty with a teenager, because you can’t fix what you misdiagnose.
Listen to companion podcast episode
The Repair: Why Teenagers Stop Being Honest With You
This week on This Week At Home we are talking about teenagers and honesty. Specifically why teenagers stop bringing their parents the real things, and what the immigrant parent guilt dynamic has to do with it. We talk about the video game before the homework, the weight of sacrifice and opportunity, what it actually means to be a compass rather than a m…
The teenager who stops telling you things isn’t pulling away from you because they don’t love you or respect you. They’re managing you. They’re carefully curating the version of themselves that you see so that the version you see is the one least likely to trigger the conversation they are trying to avoid. The lecture. The comparison. The weight of everything you sacrificed to give them opportunities you never had.
