18 hours ago
8
I have a 15-year-old son and he is at that typical dreadful teenager stage filled with attitude, disrespectful behaviour and is just horrid. Despite being his mother, I hate him. I can’t stand to be around him and because of this I’m suffering from depression. Being his mother is the absolute worst experience.
How can I cope with the disgusting feelings I’m having about being a mother?
Eleanor says: Step one is not calling it disgusting. Nobody says loving your kids is any guarantee of always liking them, especially not during adolescence when their brains are hormone soup. Many parents have periods – even months at a time – of feeling angry, annoyed, disrespected, or like they just prefer it when the kid’s not home.
I don’t know the details of his behaviour, nor anything about your dynamic, so I want to be cautious. I can’t rule out that he’s acting in violent ways from what you’ve said. If that is the case your responses will need to be different, especially if you fear for your safety. But if his behaviour is broadly standard adolescence, remember this period can be extraordinarily difficult. Big hormonal changes can mess you up; they make lots of us act in wildly uncharacteristic ways. He may not be strictly morally responsible for the ways he’s behaving right now.
Still, you don’t need to feel wretched shame for having negative emotions in response to that behaviour. Shame might even make those feelings more intense. Sometimes negative feelings get stronger and more venomous if we can’t allow them in their milder form. It’s one thing to think “he’s driving me nuts right now”. But when that feels too shameful to articulate and we push it away, it can come back stronger. You can get caught in a loop that ultimately intensifies the feeling: I don’t like him right now / I can’t feel that / I hate him / I can’t feel that / I really hate him.
Can you make room for a version of this feeling that’s neither total hatred nor total shame? Something like, “I don’t like the way he’s been treating me”, or “I feel worse when he acts like this in the house”, rather than “he’s bad”.
That might be better for you, if it makes you feel less like a bad mother. You say you can’t stand to be around him. I wonder if it’s also feeling hard to be around the version of yourself that emerges in response to him? Letting go of some of this shame may also make it easier to seek professional help for the depression you say you are feeling.
If you just try to push resentment away, you risk it leaping out in ways that confuse you both. That won’t help whatever’s going on for him. Although his adolescence is causing you a lot of suffering, he may well be suffering too.
I know that’s hard to countenance. I know adolescents can be sophisticated in their cruelty. But it’s not necessarily representative of his character, or more importantly what his character will be, since it’s still under construction.
Part of what will construct his future character is how people react to him now.
Lots of people are able to learn from the patterns of pain they caused in adolescence – if there’s enough patience and support around them. Lots of parent-child relationships have a reunion of liking each other in adulthood – if the way you treat each other now leaves that possibility open.
It is OK that motherhood does not feel at all pleasant right now. Being a good parent can coexist with anger, frustration, resentment, even the wish to have your kid out of your hair. It might be better for you both if you can allow yourself to feel some of those feelings as responses to temporary behaviour, so they don’t turn into full-blown hatred for him as a person.
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In Australia, Lifeline offers 24/7 crisis support available on 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.
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In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233); in the UK, visit https://www.nationaldahelpline.org.uk/ or call 0808 2000 247 (24 hours), or visit womansaid.co.uk
