When Your Heart Starts Talking Back: The Emotional Shift of Parenting Teens

There’s this saying that ‘having a child is like letting your heart walk around outside of your body.’
I used to think I understood what that meant, back when my kids were little, when I could hold them close, fix their problems with a snack or a snuggle, and know where they were every second of the day.

But now that I’m raising a tween and a teen, that phrase hits different.
It’s more like my heart is walking around outside of my body, with earbuds in, rolling its eyes, and telling me I don’t understand anything anymore.

It’s funny and heartbreaking all at once.

This stage, this strange middle ground between childhood and adulthood, comes with a level of emotional twits and turns nobody really prepares you for. There are books and podcasts for new moms, toddler moms, even gentle parenting guides for preschoolers. But when it comes to the midlife mom parenting teens, the conversation gets quiet.

Or maybe it’s not quiet. Maybe we just weren’t really listening before, because when our kids were little, this stage felt miles away.
We thought we’d have more time. More influence. More control.

And then, seemingly overnight, it all changes.

They start to pull away, not because they don’t love us, but because they’re trying to figure out who they are outside of us. They agree with us less. They want our advice even less. Their choices suddenly feel bigger, scarier, and further out of our hands.

And there’s this constant ache between wanting to protect them and knowing we have to let them live.

Nobody really tells you how hard that part is, the emotional whiplash of watching them grow up while you’re simultaneously learning how to loosen your grip.

It’s not that we stop being needed; it’s that the way we’re needed changes.
We go from being their manager to being their mentor.
From steering the ship to sitting in the passenger seat (literally and figuratively) hoping they remember everything we tried to teach them before they hit the gas.

This season demands a new kind of parenting. One that’s less about control and more about connection.
Less about fixing, more about trusting.
And maybe, more about us—because midlife has a way of holding up its own mirror, too.

Maybe this is the season where both we and our kids are learning how to let go of who we used to be and step into what’s next with grace, and a whole lot of deep breaths.

So if you’re in the thick of it standing in that weird space between wanting to guide and needing to let go, just know you’re not alone.
We may not talk about this stage enough, but maybe it’s time we start. Because this, right here, is where motherhood gets real.