Is It Me? What Am I Doing Wrong With My Teenager?

This might be the question I hear most quietly, and most often, in my coaching sessions. A mom will be in the middle of describing something hard with her teen, and almost as an aside, she'll say it. Is it me? What am I doing wrong?

If you've ever asked yourself that, I want to say something first, before anything else. The fact that you're asking it at all tells me you're paying attention, you care deeply, and you want to show up better for your kid. That's not what failure looks like. That's what a good parent trying to get it right looks like.

Reframing the Question

Here's the shift I make with moms the moment this question comes up. Instead of staying stuck in "what am I doing wrong," which is a question with no real answer and a lot of shame attached to it, I ask them to consider a different one. What could we tweak that would actually help.

That small shift matters more than it seems. "What am I doing wrong" keeps you looking backward, judging yourself for things you can't undo. "What could we tweak" points you forward, toward something you actually have influence over, starting today.

When a mom asks me this question, I usually find it falls into one of two categories. Almost always both, actually.

Category One: Becoming a Safe Place

The first thing I look at is whether your teen experiences you as a safe place to bring things to. Not a place that will always agree with them, but a place that won't blow up, shut down, or make them regret being honest.

Here's what that actually looks like in a hard moment. Say your teen comes to you and says something that genuinely shocks you, something like, "I smoked weed at a party the other night." Your instinct might be to react immediately: “What were you thinking!?” “How could you do that?” That reaction is completely human. But in that exact moment, what your teen needs most is for you to stay calm, and honestly, to feel a little grateful, not that it happened, but that they told you at all. That's the hard part. The conversation about what happened can absolutely still happen, and it should. It just needs to happen after the calm, not instead of it.

Becoming a safe place also shows up in smaller, everyday moments. Being curious about what your teen actually cares about, not just asking the questions you want answered. Letting a conversation go somewhere other than where you planned it to go. Those small, repeated moments are what actually build the kind of trust that makes the big moments possible.

Category Two: Your Own Nervous System

The second piece is less about anything you're doing wrong and more about a reality most parents have never been told directly. Your teen's prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for managing big emotions and making sound decisions, isn't finished developing until somewhere around 24 or 25 years old. That means your teen is actively learning how to regulate themselves right now, largely by watching how you do it.

This is why staying regulated yourself matters so much, not because you're supposed to be a perfectly calm, unshakeable parent at all times, nobody is, but because your teen needs something to model themselves after while their own system is still under construction. When you can stay steady, even imperfectly, you're giving them a working example of what regulation actually looks like in real time.

So, Is It You?

Here's my honest answer. It's not that you're doing something wrong. It's that there are usually two concrete, learnable things that make the biggest difference, becoming more of a safe place, and taking care of your own nervous system so you can co-regulate with your teen instead of escalating alongside them. Those aren't character flaws. They're skills, and skills can be built.

This is really the whole foundation of my Safe Place Parenting Model. Notice what's actually happening, in the moment and in the pattern. Regulate yourself first, because you can't offer your teen something you don't have access to yourself. Connect from there, once you're both in a place where connection is actually possible.

Where to Start

If you're not sure whether your teen sees you as a safe place right now, or you want concrete ways to start becoming one, I put together a free guide called "How to Become a Safe Space for Your Teen So They Actually Want to Talk to You." It's ten real, specific things you can start doing, starting today, not a list of everything you've done wrong.

Grab the free guide HERE!

And if this question has been sitting with you too, come find me on Instagram @beckyfunkcoaching. I talk through moments exactly like this one a lot more casually over there.