Musing: It's not that deep (not everything, anyway)

The other night, after Ivy had done the dinner dishes and wiped the kitchen benches clean (🙏🏼), I walked past the kitchen and spotted, out of the corner of my eye, the ugly green kitchen spray left out by the sink. I know there are so many more important things to be irked about, but things like this just get under my skin. It’s the same with cupboard doors left open or damp dish towels left scrunched up on the bench. My poor teens, I know.

Leaving the cleaning spray next to the sink is a signature Ivy move and I had been meaning to say something to her about it for a while. So I casually walked into the bathroom where she was doing her nighttime routine, and brought it up. I said to her, “You know, Ives…I really don’t love seeing that kitchen spray left out like that. When you’re finished doing dishes, do you mind putting it back into the cupboard under the sink?”

And she looked at me with a smirk on her face and said, “You know, mama. It’s just not that deep.”

I think this might be one of those trendy teenage phrases — something she says with her girlfriends, like ‘spilling the tea’ instead of gossiping or ‘glazing’ instead of giving compliments, but it made me chuckle, and I feel like it’s the perfect response in this situation. She was right, of course. The kitchen spray being left out is really not that deep. I made a joke about how deep it feels to me, and we had a little laugh about my funny quirks and expectations.

As a joke, a few days later, I said the phrase back to her. She was complaining about a situation at school with a teacher who had annoyed her (nothing major, just irritating), and as she was getting all worked up, I reminded her that it’s not that deep. She laughed at my use of Gen-Z lingo and then admitted I was right, and she went back to being her cheerful self.

These two teenage encounters reminded me of one of my favourite teen parenting strategies, which is to use humour to de-escalate a situation. It almost always works. There is often a pause between what your teen says or does and how you reply, and in this moment you have the power to ease the tension or escalate it.

Of course, humour doesn’t work when they’re really upset and they just want you to listen, or if they’re being really vulnerable with you and you need to show compassion. But if they’ve done something annoying or said something rude or are being grumpy and overreactive, you can inject humour, say something silly, or even say something like ‘surely you didn’t mean that’ to let them off the hook. Sometimes you can even just pretend you didn’t hear it. We don’t have to treat every situation like it’s an opportunity to teach a life lesson — we can just shrug it off and trust that our child already knows better. They often do.

I wish I had learned this years ago when Easton, our eldest, was in his grizzly teenage phase. Back then, I took his grumpiness personally and I reacted to his negativity with my own indignation, which only added fuel to the angsty fire. I wish I could go back and just be more relaxed around him without needing to correct him or react to every snarky comment.

Three teenagers later, I think this is the parenting skill I have honed the most. I’ve learned not to take things personally, I’ve (mostly) accepted I don’t need to prove my point all the time, and I’ve even gotten better at injecting humour when the mood needs lightening, even if it means being the butt of the joke. (With four teenagers, I am often the butt of the joke.)

To use Ivy’s teenage lingo, it’s just not that deep. Not always, anyway. Some things can be shrugged off. In my experience, even the snarkiest teen grows out of that phase, and the goal is to get through it together and not at odds with one another.

Courtney x

p.s. My favourite expert on teens, Dr. Lisa Damour, also gives this wonderful advice when teens are snarky, which is helpful too.