Recently, during one of our online parenting discussions, a mother admitted something that made several other parents immediately nod in recognition: “I miss the little girl she used to be.”
There was no criticism in the way she said it, and no suggestion that she didn’t love the teenager her daughter had become. It was simply an honest acknowledgement of something many parents experience, but perhaps feel uncomfortable admitting. Sometimes, we miss them.
We miss the child who climbed into our bed in the morning, the one who wanted to tell us every tiny detail of their day before they had even taken their coat off. We miss the child who reached automatically for our hand, who thought we knew the answer to almost everything, and who wanted us to watch every cartwheel, drawing, football trick or slightly questionable dance performance.
And then, almost without noticing exactly when it happened, something changes. The bedroom door closes more often and the answers become shorter. “How was school?” “Fine.” “What did you do?” “Nothing.” The child who once narrated their entire existence suddenly seems to have developed a highly classified private life.
Affection can change too. The hug at the school gate becomes embarrassing, the kiss goodbye must happen before anyone is looking, and sometimes even being seen in public with a parent appears to require careful risk assessment.
It can be funny, of course. Adolescence gives families plenty of moments that become stories later. But underneath the humour, there can also be a surprisingly real sense of loss.
We talk a great deal about the changes teenagers experience during adolescence, but perhaps not enough about what this developmental stage asks of parents. Because adolescence requires parents to change too.
For years, parenting is largely about moving closer. We feed, carry, comfort, protect, organise and supervise. We know where our children are, who they are with and what they are doing. When something goes wrong, they usually come looking for us.
Then adolescence begins asking us to do something that can feel completely unnatural. It asks us to step back. Not disappear, stop parenting or become indifferent, but loosen our grip enough for another person to begin emerging. And that can be difficult.
When parents say, “She used to tell me everything,” what I often hear underneath is, “I used to know how to reach her.” When they say, “He never wants to spend time with us anymore,” sometimes what sits underneath is, “I’m not sure where I fit in his life now.” And when a parent says, “They’ve changed so much,” there can be an unspoken question beneath it: will we still be close when all of this is over?
It is understandable that parents sometimes respond to this uncertainty by trying harder to get the old relationship back. We ask more questions. We insist on family time. We become frustrated by closed doors and one-word answers. We remind them that they “used to love” doing certain things with us.
But perhaps the task isn’t to get the old relationship back. Perhaps it is to build a new one.
Adolescence is not simply childhood with more attitude and a later bedtime. It is a period of enormous psychological development. Teenagers are beginning to ask questions they could not have asked in quite the same way as children: Who am I when I am not simply somebody’s son or daughter? What do I believe? Where do I belong? What do other people think of me? What parts of my family do I want to carry with me, and what parts might I do differently?
To answer those questions, teenagers need some distance from us. That distance can look like rejection when we are standing on the other side of it. But often, it isn’t.
The teenager who no longer tells you everything may still desperately need to know that you are available. The teenager who pulls away from your hug in front of their friends may still want one in the kitchen later that evening. The teenager who says, “I know!” before you have finished your sentence may still be quietly absorbing far more of what you say than they will ever admit.
Our role however hasn’t disappeared. It is merely changing.
Perhaps one of the hardest parts of parenting teenagers is learning not to measure connection using the same signs we used when they were younger. Connection at fifteen may not look like connection at seven.
It might be your teenager appearing in the kitchen at 10.30pm at night while you are trying to go to bed and suddenly deciding that this is the perfect moment to discuss something important. It might be a lift in the car where neither of you looks directly at the other, yet somehow a conversation begins. It might be sending you a ridiculous video instead of saying, “I was thinking about you.” It might simply be sitting in the same room without speaking very much at all.
Sometimes we miss these moments because we are looking for the child who used to come running towards us.
There is another challenge too. As our children grow, they begin showing us parts of themselves that we may not recognise. They develop opinions we don’t share. They choose clothes we wouldn’t choose. Their humour changes. Their friendships become incredibly important. Their interests may take them into worlds we know nothing about.
There is a temptation to keep reminding them who they used to be. “You were always so outgoing.” “You used to love school.” “You were never like this before.”
Usually, these words come from concern. But imagine what they might sound like to a teenager who is still trying to work out who they are. Perhaps they hear: I preferred the old version of you.
There is a beautiful opportunity hidden inside this uncomfortable stage of parenting. We get to become curious about our children again.
Not curious in the investigative sense of checking phones, interrogating friendships or trying to extract information, but curious in the way we might be when getting to know someone we genuinely find interesting. What makes you laugh now? What matters to you? What do you think about things? What feels difficult about being your age? What are you discovering about yourself?
And sometimes, rather than asking anything at all, curiosity simply means leaving enough space for them to show us.
Because the little child we remember has not disappeared. They are still there in countless small ways: in a familiar expression, in the way they laugh when something really catches them off guard, in the foods they still ask us to make when they need comfort, or in those moments when the teenage armour slips and, just briefly, we see the child we have known all along.
But alongside that child, someone new is appearing. Someone we haven’t met before.
Perhaps that is one of the bittersweet privileges of parenting: loving every version of our children while knowing we cannot keep any of them forever. The toddler becomes the schoolchild. The schoolchild becomes the teenager. The teenager eventually becomes an adult.
Our job was never to stop that from happening.
So, if you sometimes look at your teenager and quietly miss the child they used to be, you are certainly not alone. Keep the memories. Miss those years when you need to.
But keep looking at the person standing in front of you too.
You are not losing your child. You are meeting them again.
