The Second Arrival—When A Family Goes Through Adolescence:
March 4, 2026: The arrival of a newborn shakes up a family significantly. We know this, and we know it’s normal. In spite of the shakeup, there is delight, hope, joy. We track each milestone into toddlerhood, exclaim with pride, wonder, and sometimes sadness at how quickly the child grows. It is a celebration and even when it’s difficult, many of us can look back at those few short years as one of our most precious times as a family.
When that child comes into their adolescent years, undergoing many of the same developmental tasks as the toddler, for some families in our western culture it is not a time of celebration. Instead, there is bewilderment, frustration, overwhelm, and eventually a great deal of suffering within the family system.
The adults forget or perhaps never knew that their child, as they step over that threshold between childhood and adolescence, is also a new arrival. In my experience, this arrival is not really met with delight, hope, and joy. Nor do we exclaim in pride and wonder nearly as much as we did when they were toddlers. Our sadness at how quickly the child grows can morph into, How much longer do we have to deal with this?
The family with the adolescent(s)
Infants and toddlers are hard work, no question. But what I see in my work is that teens are harder to parent. Granted, I have a selective demographic given that folks come to therapy not because things are going well. Parents are equally unsure and at a loss as they were when their children were very young, but there is a different quality to their lack of surety, their floundering. There seems to be more fear and more conflict.
Raising teenagers is hard but it doesn’t have to be bad. That adolescent energy not only resides in the teenager, it permeates the family system bringing drama, emotional intensity, and massive shifts in the dynamics between siblings and the adolescent, and between parents and the adolescent. The finger of blame is often directed toward the teenager, however, this is a systemic dynamic. The whole family adolesces. It doesn’t have to be bad. This period of time in the family’s development is rich with opportunities for members of the family to grow, stretch, and continue to move through their journey of becoming.
The opportunity for conflict to transform
In 1904 the American psychologist G. Stanley Hall told us that adolescence was rife with Sturm und Drang. This perspective that teenagers bring ‘storm and stress’ has stuck like cement for over a century—because there is an element of truth to it. The risk taking behaviors, conflict with parents, and moodiness that are markers of a person undergoing the transformative processes that take them from childhood to adulthood tend to bring that storm and stress into a family. Of these three, conflict with parents can deeply impact the family.
The problem, however, isn’t the conflict itself but how each person perceives conflict. And let’s face it, many of us don’t know how to navigate conflict effectively. I’ve written elsewhere that when transformation is occurring often there will be conflict. Conflict is the alchemical agent that brings what simmers to a full boil. It is ‘the force that through the green fuse drives the flower’, as Dylan Thomas so beautifully puts it. We need conflict to get through the long in-between from there (childhood) to here (adulthood). Some research ‘suggested that the day-to-day conflicts
over mundane matters that psychologists had dismissed as unimportant were in fact unimportant to teenagers but were a significant source of distress for parents.’ (Journal of Adolescent Health) The speculation is that parents often see issues through the lens of moral codes or social conventions whereas the adolescent experiences it as a matter of personal choice. How wonderful is that?! If the parent can hit the ‘pause’ button for a moment and consider that perhaps it really is a matter of personal choice and not some unwritten law, there is an opportunity to closely review longheld and perhaps outdated rules. Not always. But it is an opportunity to review what has become stale, rote, and unquestioned.
The opportunity to confront our parenting and our mental health
From the article cited above, the author reports that parents are highly impacted by the adolescing child. Roughly 40% of the parents in the study went through at least two of the following during their child’s transition into adolescence: a drop in self-esteem, reduced satisfaction with life, heightened anxiety and depression, and more frequent reflection on midlife concerns. Many parents also find it particularly challenging when their adolescent begins to see them in a less idealized way. Authoritarian parenting, ‘ruling with an iron thumb’, has shown to be strongly contraindicated and associated with a plethora of negative consequences ranging from high anxiety and depression to rigidity and emotion suppression to increased defiance and hostility.
When the volatile and seething energies of adolescence enter the household, it is natural that the parents’ protector parts will come to the fore in attempts to control. Believe me, I’ve been there. To navigate this requires self-awareness but even more than this it requires a change in perspective, perhaps even a full-fledge paradigm shift about what it means to be a teenager, a parent, and a family. Warmth, firmness, validation, and the ongoing negotiation of autonomy for our children are deterrents for problematic risk taking in teens, such as drug and alcohol use.
As the study points out, many parents begin to contemplate midlife, existential questions about their lives. This inward reflective turn is an opportunity to engage in meaning-making, finding or supporting a purpose-driven life, to hit the reset button on complacent or unconscious patterns in our life. There can be a parallel experience between the parents and their adolescent children which then can generate rich philosophical, spiritual, and meandering conversations—something that adolescents thrive on.
Conclusion
Adolescence is not just something that happens to a teenager — it is something that happens to a family. Just as infancy reorganizes roles, identities, and rhythms, so too does this second arrival reshape the emotional and relational landscape of the home. What often feels like disruption can instead be understood as an invitation: to loosen outdated rules, to grow alongside our children, and to meet conflict not as failure but as movement.
If we can shift from control to curiosity, from fear to reflection, adolescence becomes less of a storm to survive and more of a passage to walk together. In this shared transition, parents are not losing their children — they are being asked to meet them again, differently. And in doing so, they may rediscover themselves as well.
The family that recognizes this moment not as an ending, but as a transformation, can move through adolescence not only intact — but deepened.
Starting Saturday, March 21, 2026, I am facilitating Validated Families: A 6-Month Group for Strengthening Teen–Parent Dynamics, designed to support families impacted by adolescence. We won’t be pointing the finger at the kids or the parents but approaching the family as a system. We’ll find our way with resources, education, therapeutic support, and communication skills to a family that feels more balanced, more harmonious, and safer for everyone. Find more information and the registration link here.
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