Love Her More
My daughter came into the world rebelling. Headstrong from the start, and you couldn't get her to cooperate on anything without a struggle.
So we went to see a psychologist somebody had recommended. An older man, decades of it behind him, families whose kids had gone properly off the rails. He'd helped a lot of them.
We asked him what we should do.
He said: “You need to love her more.”
For God's sake. We'd just paid this man good money and he hands us a very Californian love her more.
So I asked him. Is that really the best you have?
He said yes. And then he said this, which I've never forgotten: “I don't know what's going on in her mind when she does some of this. I'm not sure she knows either. But I do know that if she ever feels you're not on her side, you'll lose her — and you'll never get her back.”
He was right, and there's a study that proves it
I didn't know it at the time, but he was describing one of the best-evidenced findings in adolescent health.
Michael Resnick and colleagues looked at 12,118 American teenagers and published it in JAMA. They were measuring the lot — emotional health, violence, substance use, sexual risk. Then they looked for what protected against it.
One thing came out on top. Parent-family connectedness — simply whether the young person felt close to and cared for by a parent. It was protective against every single risk behavior they measured, bar one.
Not rules. Not supervision. Not the quality of your advice. Whether they feel you're on their side.
The other half of what he said holds up too. Laurence Steinberg's work shows the reward-seeking part of the adolescent brain peaks around 13 to 16, while the part that applies the brakes keeps maturing into the mid-twenties. There's a gap of years in there. So when you ask a sixteen-year-old what on earth were you thinking, the honest answer is often that they weren't, and they can't tell you why.
He didn't have the citations. He'd just seen it a thousand times.
Your job is not to have the answer. Your job is to believe in them until they believe in themselves.
You're not failing. You're forcing.
I hear this from executives I coach more than almost anything else, and it is never about their career. It's a quiet fear that they are failing as a parent, and a low hum of anxiety about how it's all going to turn out.
You're not failing. You're forcing.
The anxiety is real — I'm not dismissing it for a second, I've lived it. But it's yours. It belongs to you, not to them, and projecting your fears and worries onto them doesn't help. Trust them. They are a great deal smarter than you are giving them credit for.
Have a look at yourself while you're at it. I'd wager you didn't have perfect parents either. Most of what you overcame, you overcame because somebody was in your corner — not because somebody handed you the answers.
Which brings me to the part aimed squarely at people like us.
You have spent years being paid to solve problems and drive growth. Somebody brings you a problem, you fix it. You're very good at it.
Then your nineteen-year-old comes to you with something, and you do what you're brilliant at. You diagnose. You advise. You solve. You direct. It's automatic — you're programmed that way. Then you watch them go quiet and leave the room, and you're left wondering what you did wrong.
What you did was take the problem off them. Which tells them, without a word, that you didn't think they could handle it — reinforcing the self-doubt they already had. Do that often enough and they stop bringing you things. Not because they've nothing to say, but because they've learned it doesn't help. But more important, you lost the chance to let them prove themselves to themselves, like you have done for yourself over many years.
Let's be honest about how much we actually know here. I haven't the faintest idea what it's like for a twenty-year-old in 2026 — and with respect, neither do you. We didn't grow up with any of it. We are not the experts in this room, and pretending otherwise is the fastest way to be ignored.
Your relationship with them has to change as they grow. If you talk to a seventeen-year-old the way you talked to them at eight, or twelve, they'll behave like they're eight or twelve — right up until they rebel or shut down.
Love them. Don't rescue them.
Fine, you'll say. But how do you love someone who is turning your life upside down? Never mind love them more.
Practice. That's the honest answer.
In my case I learned to love my daughter but not like or condone what she was doing. To love her and not like her attitude. To love her and not like the ungrateful, selfish approach she had to life at times. And I learned to love her and absolutely not like what she was wearing — OMG!
They are two different accounts. You can be upset or disappointed with the behavior and still be unmistakably on their side. In fact that's the whole trick — it's the only way a boundary lands as care rather than rejection.
Which is why being on their side is not the same as smoothing the road. Let them fail. Let it cost them something. Don't ring the school, don't pay the fine, don't do the assignment at midnight. Every consequence you absorb is a lesson they don't get to have.
Here's the question worth sitting with, because the answer is kinder than you'd expect. When you step in — who are you actually protecting?
It isn't selfishness. It's the opposite. Any pain your child feels, you feel a hundred times over. Watching them struggle is far worse than struggling yourself. So when you reach in and smooth it out, a good part of what you're relieving — or trying to avoid — could be your own pain.
Nobody ever said raising them was going to be a walk in the park. The difficult part isn't the work. It's sitting on your hands while somebody you love so much learns something the hard way.
Let them suffer the small things. Be there while they do. That's your job.
My daughter is twenty-two now. A force to be reckoned with, and extremely impactful already. But more than that, she's a young woman who knows herself deeply — knows what she wants, and has never let fear hold her back. I think that's because we never stopped loving her, we never stopped believing in her, even in the years when it was hard work and sleep was postponed.
The journey is the goal — and it's their journey, not yours. Your job is to walk with them, not to plan their route.
Five things to try this week
Listen for twice as long as feels natural. The urge to fix arrives early. Sit on it. Most of what they need is to say it out loud to someone who isn't panicking.
Ask before you advise. “Do you want my take, or do you just want me to listen?” Then honor the answer, even when it stings.
Separate the two accounts out loud. “I don't like this at all. I'm still on your side.” Say both. They need to hear the second one.
Let one thing go wrong this month. Something small with a real consequence. Don't step in. Be there afterward.
Update the role. Ask yourself what age you're actually talking to. Then talk to the one in front of you.
If they ever feel you're not on their side, you'll lose them. Everything else is detail.
Sources: Resnick, Bearman, Blum et al., “Protecting adolescents from harm: findings from the National Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health,” JAMA (1997) — 12,118 students in grades 7–12; parent-family connectedness was protective against every health risk behavior measured except history of pregnancy. Steinberg and colleagues on the dual systems model — sensation-seeking peaking in mid-adolescence while cognitive control matures into the mid-twenties. These are patterns across populations, not a description of any one young person. Where a teenager is genuinely struggling — not just difficult, but struggling — support from a qualified professional matters, and asking for it is not a failure of parenting. It's what we did.
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