“My teenager won't talk to me anymore”
A child who used to chat all the way home now answers in single words and disappears into their room. For the parent, the silence can feel like rejection or like a warning sign. Pulling away from parents is part of normal adolescence, and it can also cover trouble a teen doesn't want to share. What matters most is whether the teen has pulled back from everyone or mainly from the parent, and what changed around the time the talking stopped.
What to check first
It helps to check whether the teen is still seeing friends, sleeping, eating and getting to school. Withdrawal from everyone, a sharp fall in grades, signs of self-harm or talk of hopelessness call for getting help soon, whatever else is going on. A recent change such as a breakup, bullying, a move or a family split is worth looking at too.
What could be going on
Adolescent individuation: Fits if your teen is pulling away from you but still talks to friends, eats and keeps up with school.
Psychological reactance: Check whether questions or rules make them shut down more, as if talking means giving up ground.
Overparenting (helicopter parenting): Could be that the more you ask and check, the less they tell, to keep some part of life their own.
Rupture and repair: Check whether a fight or a punishment came just before the silence and was never talked through.
Parental reflective functioning (Slade): Fits if you find yourself guessing what is going on in their head and getting it wrong.
Major depression: Check whether the silence goes with pulling away from friends too, poor sleep, falling grades or giving up things they loved.
Telling them apart
Adolescent individuation: Teens pull away from parents as they work out who they are apart from them. They may still talk to friends, keep up with school and turn up for meals. Moments of closeness may come at odd times, late at night or in the car.
Psychological reactance: Questions and rules may feel like a push on their freedom, so they push back with silence. The harder the parent presses, the further they may withdraw. Talk may open up when they get more say.
Overparenting (helicopter parenting): A parent who asks a lot, checks a phone or solves problems for them may find the teen guards what little privacy is left. Silence may be a way to keep a life of their own. Studies of college students link overparenting with more anxiety and depression and lower confidence, though these studies can't show which came first.
Rupture and repair: The silence may date from a fight, a punishment or a moment the teen felt humiliated. If it was never talked through, distance may have set in around it. Going back to that moment may open more than general invitations to talk.
Parental reflective functioning (Slade): The parent may find they can't picture what the teen is feeling or why, and their guesses keep missing. Reflective functioning is the ability to think about a child's inner world, and in research with parents of young children it has been linked with secure attachment. Curiosity about the teen's view may draw more talk than questions about the facts.
Major depression: If the teen has withdrawn from friends as well as family, sleeps a lot or very little, and has dropped things they loved, depression may be part of it. In teens it often shows as irritability more than sadness. It calls for getting help, whatever else is happening.
Questions to carry
- The last time I tried to talk with my teen, what did I open with?
- What do I most fear the silence means?
Also said as
- my teen won't talk to me
- my 14 year old ignores me
- teenage son shuts me out
- my daughter only gives one word answers
- how to get my teenager to open up
- my teen spends all day in her room