If we had met a month ago, I’d look at you with a zen-like twinkle in my eye — and I would tell you quite proudly that I’ve evolved past that crazy control freak version of me. I’d tell you how I’ve arrived in a new place, one of trust and surrender. Ha. Life has the best sense of humor! Lord was I humbled. It all started when we gave our teenage son an iPhone. We were quite wary about the whole thing but knew he needed this device to stay in touch with us on the commute to school and home (and be a normal teen in the world today). We discussed and agreed on limits for app usage and time.

All was well and good until the app we were using to monitor usage started showing crazy high usage for one of his apps. I would ask him about it, and he would show me what the screentime app was showing for his usage — which seemed way more normal and within our agreed-upon limits. The disparity was off by about an hour each day. It irked me because the data didn’t line up and I didn’t understand why.

Slowly, my mind started to meander into thoughts that maybe he was trying to pull a fast one. My repressed memories of myself as a cunning teenager came back to haunt me and convince me that my son was deceiving me somehow, some way and it was going to be my job to figure out how and bust him on it. I started to research how to lock things down and monitor things. I started researching hacks people use to get around monitoring apps. I went deep, y’all.

As I was readying to confront my son and start the lockdown talks, it hit me like 25 pounds of spicy buffalo wings: You are turning into your mother… do you really want to go there?

Remember how it felt when she would invade your privacy, and accuse you of things that weren’t even true? Remember how you stopped feeling like you could trust her… because she didn’t trust you?

Whew. I had to sit with all of that for a minute (aka 2 days).

I had arrived at a place where I trusted an app over my own kid’s word. Why?

I realized that this was so much bigger than the stupid app usage. It’s about the end of an era: my son finishing 8th grade and graduating from where he’s been since kindergarten! It’s about the new era about to begin: high school (remember all the crazy stuff that happened in high school?!?). I don’t feel ready for that, but I have to accept that’s where we are. The era of getting to control all the things is coming to a close and a new era is about to begin. It’s up to me to help set the tone of this new era — are we going to kick off with power struggles and implied distrust? Or will we kick off in something that feels more harmonious?

I want my kids to trust themselves, always. So it’s my responsibility to show them I trust them, by releasing control (even when I am itching to take control and assert my power).

Listen, parenting teens isn’t easy my friends — but I’m learning. Here’s what I’m committing to doing with my son:

Giving us grace to be a work in progress — and telling him that!

It went like this: “I’ve never parented a teen before, and I’m doing my best, ok?”

He said, “I’m doing my best too, Mom.. ok?”. (Duh, he’s never been a teen before, either!).

We agreed to just keep the conversation going.

Being open to not being the one with all the answers.

My son came to me with an idea of how we can monitor and set limits in ways that work for him. I liked his ideas, so we are giving them a try now.

Practice letting go in the face of wanting to control and seeing what happens. Let it be an experiment.

This is so freaking hard sometimes. I can so clearly see my urge to wield power and do what feels easiest for me at the moment. Then I remember the consequences of that: my kids will remember how I made them feel and it will affect them, so I need to use that power consciously and cautiously.

My son is an incredibly smart, kind, responsible kid who has never shown me any reason not to trust him, and that’s now my baseline for trusting him. Trust him until he proves otherwise.

So here’s my TLDR: In those hard moments when you just don’t know what to do: try releasing those reigns and letting go of control. You might surprise yourself with what happens.