When your kids don't share your values

Historically, over time and despite the natural drift of adolescence, kids have tended to fall in line with the values of their parents, whether they involve politics, religion, money, democracy, race, or the importance of family. Most of us have likely adopted the lion’s share of the value pillars of the family within which we grew up.

However, I’ve noticed that, over the past several years, this eventuality bears itself out with far less frequency. Kids are drifting away from their parents’ values, not just momentarily, but sometimes well into adulthood, with no end in sight.

A lot of the parents I’ve worked with are dismayed with the way their kids look at the world or their place in it. I’ve coached parents who conduct an exhaustive post-mortem, desperately seeking to identify where their parenting went awry, where they failed to deliver clear messaging or were so heavy-handed that their kids pushed back hard in the opposite direction.

Not long ago, I worked with a couple, very conservative in most ways. They were regular church-goers, their voting records leaned far right, and they valued family above virtually all else. They have a son and daughter, 20- and 17-years-old respectively, neither of whom appears to share much of what they value at all. They argue at the dinner table regularly about politics and LGBTQ rights, immigration policy and religion. It appears as if they agree on very little.

“I don’t think my kids even believe in God, or certainly not the Church. They don’t seem to value family. I don’t even think they want marriage and family in their lives at all. And what’s worse, they feel we’re backwards in our thinking, so I think we’re losing their respect. Is this a generational thing?”

Well, yeah partially. There has been some research conducted recently suggesting kids are less married to the idea of marriage, that they are less connected to a church, and that many of them lean further left than their parents. Not a rule at all. There’s a lot of variability there, but generally speaking, this proves to be true.

“But these young people, including my own kids, don’t seem to care about or value anything! They only care about themselves and whatever they’re looking at on their damn phones!”

This, I believe, is where a lot of parents are missing the point. I’ve known so many young people over the years, and these kids care. They care about others, a lot. In fact, sometimes I think they care too much. Adolescence is typically marked by a requisite degree of egocentrism, providing space for a child to establish an identity for himself or herself aside and apart from their parents.

Now, because they hold so much information in their young, yet-to-be fully developed brains, some of this progress is sidelined by their concerns about climate change, the war in Ukraine, the divisiveness of US politics, and so on. They don’t spend as much time as many of us may have thinking about themselves, who they are and where their place is.

Here’s the thing I want all parents to know and fully understand about their kids. They think things through more than they appear to. They come by their points of view honestly. They want to create a better world, though they may feel unclear, even dismayed, not knowing exactly how. They HAVE values, and those values run deep.

And listen, if your child thinks and processes differently than you, I would reconfigure your thinking and recognize that as the parenting win it truly is. Think about it for a moment. You’ve raised a kind, intelligent human being. And if he or she thinks differently, perhaps that’s because you parented the right way. Maybe you created the space they’ve needed to think for themselves, and develop their own points of view. Maybe you allowed them to be curious instead of prescriptive. Maybe you’ve shown the curiosity they’ve needed to have their ideas and opinions validated, heard, even challenged a bit.

You’ve also allowed space for a child to have a perspective and will of their own. And if that’s all you have in common, isn’t that just THE greatest thing?

Sure, all of that might create a little debate around the dinner table, a questioning of our thinking, or a shakeup of the status quo. But isn’t that what we want? Doesn’t that make things interesting? Wouldn’t life be dull if we shaped our children to think and behave exactly like we do? If our children were simply replicating ourselves? Or have we done our jobs with far greater facility, with more dots on the graph, more points of view, more ideas to consolidate and consider?

I think so.

But please don’t assume that, because your child thinks differently than you, that he or she is lazy in her opinion, or is simply wrong. Hear them out, please. This is one of the great honors of my job, listening to and challenging young people and their perspectives, and opening the door for them to challenge mine. This is good stuff, believe me. It’ll keep you young and sharp. And remember that there’s no growth, for either generation, in full-on agreement and compliance.

If we’re just controlling our kids to create clones of ourselves, that’s when I think we’re doing it wrong. That’s when we as parents become closed-minded, and rob our kids of the respect they deserve for their opinions, as well as our potential to serve as the foils for honest, perhaps even playful, debate and challenge.

If we allow for that, I think we’re opening up the possibility that our kids’ development is not so arrested by all of the data they carry around in their minds, that they continue to freely establish an identity throughout adolescence and young adulthood. We’re providing the safe space they need to integrate all of the myriad data bouncing around in their heads, and helping them to make sense of the world, their way.

It’s a new way to parent for sure, parenting in recognition that the world is different for our kids than it was for us, and for any other generation preceding them. It’s a way to create space for identity development, growth and discernment, something kids regularly tell me they need.

And this openness may even change their minds. Or not. Or it might change your mind. Or not. Either way, in my humble opinion, it’s parenting done well

.