Trust Doesn’t Start in the Teen Years

My teenage daughters tell me a lot. Probably not everything, but a lot. They often remark that their friends don’t tell their moms things. In fact, it made me sad recently when I ran into an old friend and she said she has no idea what’s going on in her college daughter’s life. She never tells her anything.

Lately I’ve been asking myself: what did I do to make my teen daughters feel comfortable telling me so much?

If you’ve been following along with this Substack, I’ve been thinking a lot about the way I mothered in those little years. Looking back, would I still do things the same way?

The more I reflect, the more convinced that what we do in the early years quietly sets the tone for the relationship we’ll have with our teens and college-aged children later on. And when it comes to trust, it does’t just suddenly appear 16. It’s built much earlier.

So here are are three things I have been pondering that I think really laid a foundation for the openness I have with my teen daughters.

When I was a young mother, there was a lot of talk about quality time being just as meaningful as quantity time, the belief that short bursts of intentional connection could replace the need to simply be with your children.

But I never fully believed that.

Because presence matters. I knew it from my own childhood when my mother was a steady presence.

For my own children, I found it was in the everyday moments - the unscripted, in-between times - when they would open up and asks questions. Often it was after I picked them up in carpool line, in the kitchen making after school snacks or dinner, and at bedtime (when worries often tend to spill out.)

I didn’t feel like I had to hover constantly, but I think being available for a question, a conversation, a moment of connection sent the message: I’m here if you need me. And opportunities to teach and guide in the moment.

I’ve written before about being protective of your influence as a mother, especially when they are young, and not giving big chunks of it away too easily. I know it looks different for every family, but I just never wanted everyone to to be so busy that we missed those organic moments of bonding and building trust.

I believe that because I was the main, steady, and trusted voice in their younger years, I naturally became their safe space when my teens got older.

As parent, we want our children to come to us with the hard questions. The Birds and the Bees does a wonderful job equipping parents for talking to children about sex. And I found that their approach about being “the expert” in your children’s eyes works beyond just the sex talk.

I wanted my children to come to me with all questions, whether silly to profound. If my child asked me something hard (like “How do you know God is real?”) I didn’t brush her off. I either stopped what I was doing to talk through it or told her “let’s talk about that more later tonight” (and would make sure to bring it back up).

I think now shooing away the deep and hard questions when they were little kept them coming when they were older. I saw it when my oldest daughter when she started sharing with me things teens from her high school were doing (whew, some of it was shocking!). I tried not to fall off the bed in disbelief. Don’t overreact, I would tell myself. When she saw I could handle the conversations, she kept talking. Throughout high school we could discuss what she was seeing, how to handle peer pressure, and how to navigate tricky situations.

When I started DoSayGive, my oldest was around seven. At the time, I didn’t think too much about posting photos of my children. It felt like I was just sharing with friends.

But around 7th or 8th grade she expressed discomfort with being shared online during and I listened. Since then, I’ve only shared photos a few photos with her permission - like her eighth grade graduation - and I don’t think I’ve posted a photo of her since. And she’s now in college.

But you don’t have to be a content creator to pause and consider the trust you’re building (or breaking) with what you share online about your children. I think many of us underestimate how much teens notice what we share about them in Facebook groups or on Instagram, sometimes sharing things I’m not sure their child would want shared. Things like friend drama, personal struggles, medical issues. It may seem harmless, but trust is built (or broken) in the little things.

If your child says, “Mom, why did you share my homecoming ask photo on Instagram?,” and then do it again next dance, that chips away at trust. They may not say much about it, but they feel it.

The online thing is just one area of trust but the same goes for what you share with your friends and extended family, too. If they think what they share with you in confidence will be shared with others they will stop sharing. It’s that simple.

Bottom line: trust isn’t earned in one moment. It’s built through small moments over time.

There’s more to be said but one thing I didn’t do to gain my daughters’ trust? I didn’t try to be their best friend when they were young.

I’ve always believed that mother/child boundaries don’t push children away but instead they anchor them. And in our home, those boundaries didn’t close conversation with my teens. If anything, they created the safety that allowed it.