 How can we maintain a close relationship with a child who is emotionally distant? That's what we're going to explore in this week's episode of Pookey Ponders. Let's dive straight in. So the first thing to note here is that things change. It's normal and natural for adolescents in particular to become closer to their peers and more distant from their parents. This is just a normal and healthy part of growing up as they begin to explore the world, begin to develop other relationships. That can feel tricky for us as the parents, as the carers, as the ones who've always been there and been some of the most important relationships in their lives. But we also just need to bear in mind that this isn't just about us, it's about them and what's healthy for them and their development too. When we've been really intensively parents in caring for many years, we can lose a bit of our identity as they begin to develop theirs. And we just need to hold that in our minds as we think about the issues that we're exploring today. As well as developing closer relationship with their peers, we'll often find that as the tough stuff starts to come up, as we enter those more turbulent, tricky, challenging, explorative, exciting years, that sometimes our children will find it a little bit easier to open up and explore the tough stuff with people that they feel slightly more emotionally distant from. They can be worried about worrying, angering or otherwise distressing their parents and their carers. Those that we love the most are sometimes the hardest people to talk to about things that might feel a little bit challenging. So our role here can sometimes change a little bit and become one of noticing who might be a good person to try and facilitate the kinds of discussions that need to happen for our child. If right now we're not that person, what might we be able to do to help to facilitate that? It's it's really important that children do have that closeness with someone. So do notice and just think what could be my role here? How can I help to build bridges with that relationship? Are there other people that my child could be connecting with? It doesn't always have to be us as strange and sad sometimes as that might feel. But this doesn't mean that you shouldn't keep full on loving them as you always, always have. Your love will run really, really deep and you will be and remain the safe base that they will always eventually come back to. This relationship is going to change. That's OK. That's normal. That's expected. It will go through bits which feel less good. Less like what you're used to, but it will move through this. It will evolve. It will change. And you may find actually that it's even better once you come out the other end if we try to do a few things to kind of maintain a really stable baseline throughout. So let's have a think about what that's going to look like. So one thing here is that we really need to focus as the adult in the relationship on connecting with ourselves as our children grow and they begin to explore and their developing relationships elsewhere. And we're no longer the centre of their world. That can feel incredibly tough. Our identity has all been about being someone's mum or dad or carer. For several years now, we put our everything into it. And suddenly they kind of don't need us so much. And that's pretty tough. So this is a time when we need to connect with ourselves. When we're thinking about children and their self esteem, I often talk about the pillars of self esteem. And how our kids need to have multiple pillars of self esteem. If everything is all on one thing, if they're all about football all the time, then the moment they get an injury, a temple of self esteem crumbles. But if they've got football and friends and they're funny and they're great at maths, then actually there's loads of pillars supporting that temple of self esteem. And so it doesn't crumble when one of these gets shaky. It's kind of like us the same. So we need multiple pillars of our self esteem too. And if we see ourselves primarily and only as parents to child X, then when child X begins to push us away, everything crumbles. So what are the other pillars of our self esteem? What are the things that we can connect back with that? Perhaps we used to really enjoy in the past facets of our personality, our character, our achievements, the things that we enjoy, that used to really matter to us that perhaps we kind of put to one side because for a while there, quite a while perhaps, parenting has been the number one thing. The ironic thing here is if you try to reconnect with yourself and who you are beyond that role of parent and carer, you actually likely to become someone who your child is more likely to want to spend time with that closeness, that smothering. They might begin to feel as they want to begin to explore the world that comes from you being parent, carer all the time. They don't feel that so much if actually you've become this person who, I don't know, plays guitar or goes for long country hikes or really enjoys going to the football or has started painting again or hangs out with your friends or whatever it might be. There's no right and wrong way to do life. But when you start doing life your way, focused on your needs, your wants, your wishes, your passions, rather than solely around your role as parent as carer, you become a much more interesting, inviting person that your child might choose to connect with a little bit more in a different way than they have done in the past. But it shouldn't be about that. This isn't about trying to make yourself into someone cool that your kid wants to connect with. That might be too much to hope for right now and that's OK. This is about you being comfortable in yourself, you discovering yourself beyond that role as parent and carer so that we've got space for both our future selves and our current and future relationship with our child here. You kind of, I guess, need to need them a little bit less. They're not going to need you so much. Sure, they will. And they'll need you in big ways sometimes. But as they begin to develop, we need to be able to give them space. And that means needing not to cleave holy to this role of parent and carer all the time, having other things that matter to us too. As well as kind of connecting with ourselves, rediscovering who we are, or perhaps becoming a bit of a new person, exploring and doing things that we hadn't done before that interested us. But whatever, as we do that, that kind of self discovery bit and trying to broaden our horizons a little bit, we also can be thinking about our other relationships beyond those in our role as parent and carer. Because again, this is something that can kind of fall by the wayside a little bit when our children are younger. They become our whole world for many of us. And things other things sort of shrink away. Other relationships maybe are a bit neglected and we haven't got lots of relationships going on. And this is one of the reasons why as our children begin to sort of push us away or pull towards other people a bit, it can feel really challenging for us because our other relationships have been on hold and we kind of maybe don't have lots of other people there that we can draw on and connect to and feel that sense of belonging with. So just taking a moment to think, well, who would I like to reconnect with? Are there friendships, relationships that I can kind of rekindle here? So it's not just all about me and my child. Are there new relationships that I'd like to grow? Are there other places where I can imagine myself belonging? Doing a bit of work on yourself here, too. And your other relationships, again, is really, really crucial. So as you work on your other relationships, you're going to do so, but always just making sure there's enough space for your child when they're ready to reconnect with you in a way that works for them now. But this might just be a moment where both of you just begin to spread your wings a little bit. Things are changing. That's OK. The next thing to bear in mind here is the importance of just being there. So we're going to do other things. We're going to pick up our other activities, hobbies, rekindle passions, go back to relationships that we have allowed to dry up and fizzle out a little bit. We're going to explore all those things. But we are going to consistently also be there, be emotionally and physically available for our child, because they might look quite grown up now. They might act quite grown up now. They might actively be pushing us away and looking to become more and more independent. But children of all ages, and this will be true through the life course. They need our consistent love and care. Even really big children, 30, 40, 50 year old children look to their parents, to their carers for love, for care, for reassurance, for pride, for all those things that we need from our parents and carers. Maybe you're fortunate enough to still have a good, positive relationship with parents or carers or other important adults from your childhood who are still around. And I bet you still love to see acknowledgement from them. I bet you still love to know that they care. And I bet when there's a problem, these are the kinds of people that you find yourself either turning to or thinking about what would they advise here. So children, they still, despite how they might be acting, despite what we might be seeing, they need to know on some level that we consistently there, that we consistently care, that we love them unconditionally and without any judgment at all. There's nothing that they could do that would make us love them less. They need to know this as they begin to explore things. And that door to this relationship, it might feel like they're firmly slamming it shut, but we've got to make sure that we're always keeping it open, that we always leave it, that when they're ready, they can walk back through that door. And this might mean things like visiting where there are ruptures in that relationship and looking to repair. This might mean just quietly being there open to the time when they do come and show an interest and not making too big a deal of it. Not going, woohoo, you want to hang out with me today, but just quietly, calmly, coolly allowing it to happen. Our children also need to feel heard. One of the things that teenagers in particular will often say is that they don't really feel that anybody listens to them. So showing up for them, being present, hearing what they have to say, noticing them, doing our absolute best listening skills, not doing the talking, not doing advising necessarily, unless we're asked for advice, which we generally won't be, but listening, hearing what they have to say, allowing them to feel noticed by someone and like they matter to someone. One thing to be aware of here is this listening, this noticing, this actively engaging with your child that you might be quietly doing many times a day through the week, through the months might not necessarily be rewarded with their thanks or gratitude, but it doesn't go unnoticed on that kind of deeper level. They know when we keep showing up for them, when we keep listening to them, when we keep noticing them, when we keep hearing them, that we're consistently there and they will come back to this relationship. And often they're also just generally getting more out of it now than we might realise or that they might show. Being seen, being heard, being noticed, knowing that we matter to someone is kind of fundamental to our self esteem. And it's this kind of this safe base knowing that you've got their back, that will enable them to go off, to explore, to begin to spread their wings and become more independent. This next stage in their life, it might look like they're pushing you away, but you are sometimes actually the really firm foundations that gives them what they need in order to be able to take those leaps. So just be there, keep the door open. Your child needs to know that on the day that they want you, that they need you, that you're still going to be there waiting for them, ready for them, welcoming them. Try really hard not to close any doors in this relationship. Another thing we can explore is how we can kind of quietly maintain the relationship. So we can do this by things like doing alongside our child. So rather than kind of like big, deep conversations or like full on activities that we might have enjoyed together in the past, it might look a little bit quieter now and that's OK. Just simply being in the presence of your child. There's lots of really interesting evidence around things like quietly walking alongside another person and how when strangers do this, when strangers walk together in silence, saying nothing, they will fall into step with each other and they will report more liking of each other after just a few minutes of quiet walking together. And it doesn't involve any conversation. It doesn't involve any of the things that we think need to happen for a connection to happen in order for that connection, that liking to begin to take place, which I think is really fascinating. But we can use that to our advantage. It means we don't have to always be able to make exactly the right kind of conversation that our child is looking for, just being there, being alongside them, allowing our breath to fall in time with theirs, allowing our step to fall in time with them, thinking about how we can just be by their side when they might need us. This might mean things like being the taxi. So many of us will begrudge that. We feel like we've become a taxi to our children as we ferry them to different places. But what about if we flip that and we reverse it and we think about how those little commutes that we might provide for our child are actually small moments when perhaps we might connect. And that doesn't mean that the minute you get your child in the car that we're going to start doing a whole bunch of life admin or jumping into the deeper meaning falls. It just might mean that we let them choose what music they want to listen to and we're just there quietly by their side, being there, connecting, just being there. It can just bridge the gap a little bit, just being by their side, walking places together, riding places together. Are the really simple stuff like being the person who provides the snacks again. This is something that many of our kids will really appreciate. Just the little things where we notice what we need and we're there by their side, providing, caring, being kind, finding ways to just do alongside kind of sometimes just be in their presence can help. Nothing I wanted to think about with you here is how sometimes this bit where it feels like our children are pushing us away, where they've become quite emotionally distant, will often really coincide with the time when they've become almost like emotionally distant, not just from us, but perhaps from themselves as well. And it can be a time when self-esteem is kind of plummeting, when they feel quite uncertain about the place that they hold in the world. And they might not be feeling really great about things. It's quite common for our children to go through this sort of time of uncertainty. And it can be a time of sort of self loathing, I suppose. And so one thing we can do as the parent, as the carer, as the adult in this relationship is to try to do enough loving for both them and us. So we're going to love them enough for both of us, essentially, and this is easy because we do love them. But as they're going through this bit when they're pushing us away, it can be a little bit hard sometimes to kind of stay connected to that love and not feel a bit of resentment, I've invested all these years and now you're pushing me away. And maybe they are sometimes being angry or rude or a bit more challenging or distant or other things that feel not great for us. But they're still the same kid. What we need to do is to look for the bits that we still love about them, to remind ourselves about the stuff that we still love about them, to keep connecting that, to keep looking for it, to keep reminding ourselves how much we love them. This does not mean that we have to be very out there in our praise and love and sharing them with kindness all the time, because this might not go down really well. We might write them the occasional post it note or drop them a text or something, but they probably don't want like big showers of adoration. But just on our own terms, quietly, continuously connecting with the things that we love about our child, continuing to notice the parts of their character, their traits, their skills, all the different things about them that we kind of admire and love and think are brilliant. Just keep noticing them. It's interesting how when we do this and we connect with the bits that we love and we consciously look for the good in our child, how this kind of shines through in all of our interactions, even the micro interactions, the tiny, tiny, tiny stuff in our child. And actually that helps to consistently continue to have that nice, nice stable base for this relationship, which then is ready when the child is ready to flourish and grow again should they need it or want it. So I guess the thing to remember here is that how you feel about your child, they do pick up on that, maybe not consciously but on some level. So if you dwell on the sadness or resentment or anger or challenge that you're feeling about this relationship right now, then that is going to impact on your relationship going forwards. Whereas if you're able instead to remove yourself a little from the right here and the right now and to look a little bit deeper and to dig for the stuff that you love about your child and consciously go there, write about it, think about it, talk about it, go for a walk and talk to your dog about the things that you love about your child and keep connecting with those bits of them, really loving them, then this is what your child will feel in every little bit of that relationship with you. And remembering that maybe right now they've not got a lot of love for themselves. So feeling just those little micro doses of love from you in an acceptable way can really help. Things like using tech to help us can help too. So it might be that we're not having lots of great face to face conversations with our child but maybe they'll hear us more if we message them over WhatsApp or connect with them in an online world that they might have allowed us to join them in. Try to think about where they do their connecting with their friends and think about if this is a platform that you're comfortable connecting via. I have found that with my daughters who are teenagers now that the language of TikTok is one that they understand and they get and that actually we can share videos with each other over TikTok, either ones that we've made or ones from other people that kind of makes sense to us and the kind of the private messaging on TikTok is where some of our great conversations will sometimes happen. So have a look and see where your child does show up and consider where this is somewhere that you could show up for them too. And it can be just as simple as a text message. The other good thing about that is that we can look at messages again and again and again and again whereas our spoken words are said only once and if our child isn't ready to hear them at the time then they're gone. Whereas if we write it down somehow and share it via technology, they can revisit it if they want to. Finally, I think an important thing to think about is that we need to make space for the good moment. So even if it feels like your child is completely emotionally distant, they're totally pushing you away. There's no closeness in this relationship anymore. It all feels doom and gloom. Actually, it's not going to be unremittingly like that 24 hours a day or at least it's very unlikely. There will just occasionally be little glimmers, little moments when things feel just a little bit nicer and that might be tiny moments where you just, I don't know, sat together on the sofa and it feels kind of calm and okay and no one's shouting, no one's crying. You're just in each other's company. When those tiny moments happen, when things feel a little bit nicer, first of all, notice them, cleave to them, write them down if you need to, remind yourself that there are moments when this relationship feels good because our perception of this relationship will impact on how it changes and grows over time. So just notice them. But then also just think about whether you can make space for those moments to grow. So where they do happen, where there are these brief moments of connection, can you give that moment just a little bit of space to flourish, to grow? Can you give it a bit more time rather than the busy, busy, busy that we always find ourselves doing? If it's a good moment, lean into it, enjoy it, allow it to flourish and then perhaps reflect on what was going on there? Where were we? What were we doing? Who were we with? What had happened before? And are we able to learn anything from that and create any future such moments because those tiny moments that feel good, sometimes that's just enough to keep us going? So things are gonna change in our relationship with our children as they grow. Our relationship with our children will grow many, many times through the course of their life and our life. We need to just keep showing up for them. We might not feel their love all the time but they need to feel ours. They need to know that we love them, that we care for them, that we are unconditional in that love, that care, that respect and that we are never, ever judging them. We've got to keep showing up both physically and emotionally for our children and over time that relationship will change again and for the better. You might be feeling unloved, you might be feeling pushed away, you might be feeling underappreciated and wondering how this has happened when you've invested so much time, effort and energy into this relationship. But, but keep doing what you've always done so well when it comes to showing up for your child. Light up in their presence, let them know that you like them, let them know that you care, let them know that you are there when they are ready. And in those moments when they are there, give them your whole self, put your screens away and do your best listening. The moments when you have them, be a hundred percent there. Make them, even if it's just for a minute, your absolute whole world, it will make a difference. Even if it doesn't feel like it right now, you consider this an investment in your future. I hope that some of the ideas that I shared today resonated with you a little bit, made you feel like you had some things that you could try or maybe just reassured you that this journey through parenting life is kind of bumpy. It feels sometimes like we've just got the hang of one stage and then the next one comes along and we've got to start all over again. But hold tight, be kind to yourself, be open to the fact that this relationship will change. But remember, it will change again. And many people talk about how once they've gone through that bumpy bit, how their next bit is so, so brilliant. So hold tight, keep your eyes on the horizon, keep the faith, it will be okay. Keep loving yourself, keep loving your children and all will be okay. If you liked what you heard today, please like, subscribe and share my work. That's the most helpful way that you can support me is to share my work far and wide. You can also support my work by joining me over on Patreon where you get early access to everything I do and the chance to influence what topics I choose to explore and create about. Today's topic was asked for by one of my patrons. In fact, they generally are. Or if you wanna support my work even further, you can invite me to speak at your setting or your next event, either online or face to face. I travel everywhere. Thank you so much for listening and thank you for all that you are doing for the children and young people in your care. Until next time, over and out.