Why does my kid bug me so much?

Kim and Doug came to me in what I can only describe as pretty grave distress. They were looking for some guidance regarding their 16-year-old son Stephen (not their real names). From a parent’s perspective, Stephen was, to say the least, difficult. He was defiant in the classroom, and at home. He rarely if ever completed homework outside of school, and only reluctantly within the classroom. He appeared lazy and sullen and generally presented with a terrible attitude towards virtually everything.

There wasn’t a whole lot of good news they had to offer about Stephen.

Within the family, Stephen was sandwiched age-wise between two sisters, one two years older, one two years younger. They were, as Kim formally described, “really good kids, behaving in accordance with the way they were raised.”

Of course, this comparison made Stephen’s behavior stand out that much more. He had been such a good, compliant, seemingly happy kid when he was younger, and both Kim and Doug were bewildered, embarrassed, even mortified by the way he would act now.

After hearing them out about their initial complaints, I needed some context. Sometimes drawing out the lens provides us clinicians some perspective on the issues we may not possess otherwise.

Effectively, time stood still when I asked Doug to describe his own teenage years:

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe it looking at me now. I was an awful kid to raise. I rejected authority of any kind, got the very worst grades. I ditched school whenever I could. I’d just sit in my room, smoke weed and draw these anti-establishment comic strips. That’s the one thing I did. A little bit of drawing for the student paper. But for a guy who’s in investment banking now, I was quite the delinquent then.”

He laughed at the juxtaposition of his younger self relative to his current self.

After almost three decades doing this job, I think I understood the deal with Stephen pretty quickly. I was already starting to suspect what you probably are: Doug’s younger years sound an awful lot like Stephen’s.

So I asked to meet with Stephen.

As we first sat down, I could sense his discomfort. I asked him initially if he’d ever done anything like this before, therapy, and he said no. Just a reminder to everyone out there that this can be a very intimidating situation for any child, stepping into the therapy room for the first time. They don’t know what to expect. They’re not sure what this person’s agenda is. They’re not sure that the therapist, this stranger, won’t just serve as a mouthpiece for Mom and Dad.

I asked Steven to describe his life for me, and most of what he said jived pretty clearly with what his parents had to say. He told me he didn’t like school, and he wasn’t very good at hiding that fact. He told me he didn’t get along very well with his parents or his sisters, and that often looked like a bad attitude.

“They’re not wrong. I’m honestly not a great kid. I’m not very good at much. I don’t play a bunch of sports or anything. I’m really lazy. You’ve probably already heard that, I’m guessing.”

Yep, Stephen, I had. I told him I didn’t buy the idea of laziness, and asked his opinion of that. He agreed:

“Yeah, my parents definitely think I’m lazy. My teachers do too. Everybody does. But I’m honestly just so bored all day every single day. School for me is like a nightmare.”

Boredom and ‘laziness’ frequently mask intelligence and curiosity, I’ve found.

“That sounds like a lot of built-up anxiety. What do you do to ease that, if anything?”

“Dude, you’re gonna think it’s so stupid.”

“Try me.”

“Okay, I draw these little guys, and I write these stories, like little poems, about them. I have notebooks filled with these things. They’re stupid.”

Side note: for any reader out there who is a parent, a therapist or someone aspiring toward either, this is where the gold is. This is the pivot moment. Most every kid has some specific strength or skill that they downplay, that they might be a little embarrassed about. I strongly urge you to stay with it, encourage it. At the very least, don’t miss it.

I asked if I could see Stephen’s art. And he reluctantly showed me a couple of these notebooks. It was astonishing. He drew people, but they were caricatures of himself, his parents, a teacher, Trump, other politicians, celebrities and athletes. And they were good. I’d never seen anything quite like Stephen’s style before. The poems were deep and often so, so funny and sardonic.

No surprise to me after witnessing this phenomenon again and again, but I quickly learned that Stephen was special, unique and brilliant.

Stephen’s talent was mind-blowing. I knew it would be. I kept paging through, taking in his artwork and poetry and dialogue, kind of forgetting that we’re in the middle of a therapy session.

I told him his work was amazing. He shrugged.

Here’s a crucial thing I’ve seen play out countless times over the years. I realized in this session what I suspected was true well beforehand: sitting across from Stephen, I was effectively talking to a young version of Doug. I was reminded, once again, that it is sometimes that child that reminds you most of yourself that gets under your skin. But instead of relating to our own child in a very direct and understanding way, too often I find that parents expect that child to fall in line and acquiesce, even though we may have struggled mightily to do so ourselves.

Even if we know, nearly precisely, what it feels like to be them. Even if they are us and we are them. It’s as if we didn’t learn from our own experiences at all.

Or we forgot.

And I get it. We too often parent from a place of fear. Like, “Maybe I was able to figure this out, but my kid won’t be able to. And they’ll be stuck with an uncertain future at best. So for his own good, I am going to quash that special quality.”

And I’ll spare myself the lifelong guilt.

But I’ve seen this play out in way too many families. That’s not how it works. Effectively, the less recognition you give your child of their gifts, the less you share your own story, that story that mirrors theirs, the more alone they feel. The more symptomatic they’re likely to become. This is where their path begins to sink into something that looks and feels an awful lot like depression or anxiety or both.

So here’s the thing. I find that it’s the kid that reminds you the most of you that will bring you the most anxiety. And far too often, we are blind to that projection. We forget what our lives were like back then, somewhat conveniently, and we roll our eyes when our kids behave and feel the way that we did when we were their age.

Sometimes it’s such a blind spot that your fear for them drives your anxiety. As a result, you judge them, and even loathe them, for the things you most identify with either consciously or unconsciously. I’d like you to really stop and consider this for a moment. It’s important to recognize where this may play out in your life, in your relationship to your child.

I’ve talked with Doug about this, and with some help, he has begun to recognize his lack of insight in this area. Instead of relating to his son, and those similarities with the way he felt and behaved when he was a teenager, he relates to him as an angry, frustrated investment banker.

The remembering is important. Without it, you end up repeating patterns generation after generation. And just think about Doug and Stephen for a moment. They are so alike that their gifts presented in virtually the same way, and still Doug failed to recognize the degree to which he’s parenting himself. What an opportunity for connection and reframing he nearly missed entirely.

I recently heard the actor Sterling K Brown say, “One of the greatest gifts you can give to someone who has not fully realized their potential at that time is to say yes to them in their current set of circumstances and just believe.”

That applies beautifully here. Especially when your child is your seemingly annoying doppelganger. Couple that with this reminder by Carl Jung (an unlikely coupling but still):

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead to an understanding of ourselves.”

Jung is effectively suggesting that those frustrating traits in your child (or anyone else, for that matter) represent unresolved insecurities in yourself. Addressing it with insight and grace is not easy, and pretty humbling, but this is a solid cue for parents.

So skip the frustration, the anger and the eye roll. Take the time to remember your story, and use it to relate to your child, the one that bugs you most, the one you deep down most relate to, and share your story with them. Don’t reject what’s special about them, even if that was done to you a generation ago. Open the door to collaboration and hope. Shift the narrative. Write a better story than perhaps your own parents did.

Be the parent you needed.