3 Things to Remember With Your Drama Queen Daughter

Do you have a teen or pre-teen daughter at home? Ever gotten frustrated at her “drama queen” episodes? Maybe she got furious about that bad grade when the teacher was so unfair! Maybe she sobbed about the mean girls at school. Maybe she starts furiously texting you every upset emoji in the list about how your rules are ruining her life!

I’ve had so many moms and dads ask me what to do in those situations since, they say, they don’t want to be manipulated, enabling, or escalate an already bad trend. One woman described how her teenage daughter begged to play volleyball – but then (when she didn’t want to go to practices) cried about the fact that none of the girls liked her. Not long afterward she came home from a sleepover in tears because her friends played Manhunt, forgot she was still hiding outside and went in to make cookies without her. She couldn’t bear the thought of facing them at school on Monday. This mom told her daughter that “drama queen stuff” wouldn’t work and she still must go to volleyball and school. Enough was enough!

But—you guessed it—that created yet more drama.

Before you give up and assume the next few years are simply doomed to drama, remember three important things. They will change how you deal with your daughter—and you’ll see the drama a lot less often!

Before you give up and assume that the teen years are simply doomed to drama, remember these three important things. Share on X

Remember what that incident would have felt like at her age. 

Stop assuming your daughter’s feelings and tears aren’t legitimate.

The next time you hear something that seems so “dramatic” and you’re tempted to roll your own eyes, pause before responding and remember what it was like to be in her shoes. (Note: this will be easier for women than men, since some things bother girls more than boys. So dads…ask your wife how they would have felt as a teenage girl.)

Think about it: When you were her age and upset about something would you have wanted your parents to derisively assume you were being a drama queen, and were “overreacting” to something? Wouldn’t that have made your feelings (and the drama) far worse? Remember what it was like to be a teenage girl and how all the stuff you are waving off now really mattered to you back then.

Remember what it was like to be a teenage girl and how all the stuff you are waving off now really mattered to you back then. Share on X

Maybe you’re made of sterner stuff than I am, but I would have been devastated if I was hiding outside in the dark, waiting for my friends to find me, only to realize that they didn’t even remember I was at the sleepover. Think of the humiliation. Think of the courage it would take to walk into that house and pretend that you weren’t fazed by it. Or the embarrassment you would feel if you broke down crying and said something like “you guys don’t care about me at all!” Think about what it would be like to face that pack of girls at school on Monday. And then think about what it would feel like to have your parents – the people who you most want to depend on to care about you – totally dismiss your feelings as “drama.” Ouch. I would have been devastated.

Expect and require respect—but don’t assume any disrespect is intentional

Have you noticed that those “drama” moments are also those that carry the most risk of our daughter’s rolling their eyes at us…. and then of us as parents escalating to DEFCON 1?

In the For Parents Only research, one of my greatest surprises was how often the teens and pre-teens truly didn’t realize that their tone and body language were conveying serious disrespect toward the person they were talking to. They might in fact be exasperated and think their parents are being totally stupid—but they rarely intended to directly say so!!

Developmental experts have found that many teens and younger children haven’t fully developed the situational and self-awareness that allows us as adults to realize (for example) “My tone is getting very frustrated as I’m talking to my boss: maybe I should back off a bit.”

Part of our job as parents, after all, is to help our children learn this awareness and this skill.  And the only way of doing that is through practice. Which means, by definition, that emotional conflicts will likely be our primary training ground! But for that to work, we must be the trainer, not the one who makes the drama worse. To both enforce our child’s respect in communication and help them learn, calmly tell your daughter, “You may not realize that your arms are crossed, your voice is raised and your tone is implying that I’m an idiot. Let’s have you say that again, using a different tone, please.” Calmly doing that each and every time, expecting the best of your daughter, will usually bring about a very good result over time.

Emotional conflicts with a teenager are a training ground for life. Share on X

Listening to her feelings will lessen them. Avoiding or diminishing her feelings will make them worse. 

Here’s the crux of diminishing the drama: in my research, I’ve found that teenagers’ feelings only get more and more complex and intense if they couldn’t be shared and heard.

in my research, I’ve found that teenagers’ feelings only get more and more complex and intense if they couldn’t be shared and heard. Share on X

Believe it or not, this mattered equally to both boys and girls! Teens and younger kids are often a jumble of emotions, and when those situations occur both boys and girls desperately need to be able to share those emotions, get them out, and (most importantly) know that you have heard them. Not just that the issue had been heard, but that their feelings had been heard.

What we discovered is that as the teenager had a chance to talk through all their jangling emotions, and get them all out, they would find their emotions calming down a bit. The issue was still there, but the feelings were more manageable. And thus the “drama” would be more manageable and would (often) go away much more quickly.

Since you truly do care about your daughter, learn how to listen to her feelings instead of dismissing them. Draw out her emotions about the events that seem to be tying her in knots and ask questions about them and dig deeper into how she’s feeling. (“Oh honey, that must have been so embarrassing.  I’m so sorry.  What did they say when you came inside the house?  And then what?  Then how did you feel?”) You may recoil and think that pulling out more feelings is like throwing gasoline on an open flame and will make the “drama” worse, but just try it. Instead, you’ll see that it is more like drawing poison out of a wound.  The tears will flow, but you’ll see the tenseness leave, and the drama diminishing much more quickly than you would otherwise. And most importantly, your daughter will feel cared for.

So, try it. Next time you see an attitude or a degree of tears that seems out of all proportion, dig deeper instead of trying to get out of the conversation as quickly as possible. Remember what it feels like to be in her shoes. Sure, there’s always the possibility it is purely hormonal or purely an attempt to play you for a fool. But unless you know for a fact that the latter is what is happening, err on the side of proving to your daughter, as often as you need to, that while the whole world may seem against her at times, that you are firmly on her side.

The next time you see an attitude or a degree of tears that seems out of all proportion, dig deeper instead of trying to get out of the conversation as quickly as possible. Share on X

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Shaunti Feldhahn loves sharing eye-opening information that helps people thrive in life and relationships. She herself started out with a Harvard graduate degree and Wall Street credentials but no clue about life. After an unexpected shift into relationship research for average people like her, she now is a popular speaker and author of best-selling books about men, women and relationships. (Including For Women Only, For Men Only, and the groundbreaking The Good News About Marriage).

Her newest book, The Kindness Challenge demonstrates that kindness is the answer to pretty much every life problem, and is sparking a much-needed movement of kindness across the country. Visit www.shaunti.com for more.
This article was first published at Patheos.