Parenting teens as a Xennial Mom is its own strange little universe. I have a thirteen-year-old and a sixteen-year-old at home, plus four nephews between the ages of eleven and eighteen. The oldest just left for college and now I feel dirty watching his SnapChat stories.

It feels like a full hormonal buffet over here. Someone is always hungry. Someone is always overwhelmed. Someone is always irritated. Someone is always asking where their charger is.

And it is me.
That someone is me.

I like to believe the kids are the unpredictable ones but I am also wandering through the house with a snack in my hand, searching for something I swear I just set down, and feeling personally offended by the state of the laundry. Most days it feels like the entire house is held together by snacks, half finished conversations, and the shared belief that the dishwasher magically loads itself.

While their hormones rise and fall with the enthusiasm of a stock market chart, mine have entered the perimenopause rodeo. Puberty upstairs. Midlife downstairs. The emotional weather patterns are unpredictable and occasionally catastrophic. Add the grief of losing my mom to the mix and the whole thing becomes a real mess of a house with wildly emotional people who cannot find anything.

Somewhere inside that hormonal storm I realized something important. I am parenting teens while trying not to disappear inside everyone else’s becoming.

This season is not only about raising them. It is also about remembering ourselves. Here are five reminders to help navigate the next weather pattern.

1. Remember your teens are becoming and so are you

There is a myth that once your kids hit the teen years, you automatically stop growing. Your life has actually ended because the mother in you kept them alive for more than a decade. They get the milestones and the attention and the big emotional arcs, while you have to shift quietly into the background. Your role becomes the chauffeur, the schedule manager, the late night therapist, and the emergency breakfast maker.

The truth is much softer and much more honest. You are still becoming too. Xennial mothers never stop evolving.

You are navigating your own career shifts and relationship changes. You are working through hormonal swings, new boundaries, new interests, and new versions of yourself. Sometimes their transition wakes up your own.

They are becoming adults.
You are becoming a woman who is ready to reclaim time, space, energy and money (the Four Currencies).

Let this be a shared season of transformation.

2. You do not have to attend every teenage emotional argument

Teenagers feel everything at a ten. A slightly annoying comment can become a dramatic moment. A simple question can turn into a monologue about unfairness. A sneeze can send the most dramatic eye-roll your way.

For years many of us believed we needed to show up for every single emotional moment. We believed it proved we cared. Now we know better.

You can choose not to engage.
You can choose silence.
You can choose a calm reply that holds your boundary and protects your nervous system.

Sometimes the most loving response is a simple:
“I hear you and we can talk later.”

This is not avoidance. It is emotional maturity.
You have it. They don’t.

3. Stop being the household search engine

There is a moment every Xennial mother dreads.
“Mom, where is my …”

The sentence is never finished. It does not need to be. You already know you will be expected to locate whatever mysterious object has vanished into thin air. Shoes. Backpacks. Water bottles. Headphones. Hoodies that were last seen during the prehistoric period.

It is one of my biggest personal pet peeves. Because here is the truth. Most of the time these items are not actually lost. They are simply not where someone wishes they would be. They are often in plain sight. On a chair. On the stairs. Hanging on a hook that has existed for years.

Finding it yourself would be faster.
Easier.
More efficient.
You would be done in ten seconds and the day could move on.

But every time you jump in and locate the thing, you give away a tiny piece of your own energy. You reinforce the belief that you will always fix it. You become the default human search engine even though you never signed up for that subscription.

Sometimes I hear my own mother in the back of my mind.
“I was not the last one to wear them.”
It is the generational cry of women who have spent decades finding things they did not misplace.

So let them look.
Let them search.
Let them experience the natural consequences of not paying attention to their own stuff.

This builds character.
It builds independence.
It builds awareness that the world does not rearrange itself to suit their last minute panic.

And it reminds you that your time is valuable.
You are not the finder of all things.
You are a whole human being with your own life.

This goes for husbands too.

4. Guilt cannot be your teenage parenting strategy

Teenagers need structure. They need love. They also need mothers who take care of themselves.

You are allowed to have boundaries.
You are allowed to have quiet time.
You are allowed to tell them you cannot talk about something in that moment.

This is not selfishness. This is modeling emotional regulation.

You do not owe endless access to your time and energy simply because you love them.

5. You still get to have a life

There is a quiet belief that follows many mothers into the teen years. It whispers that once your children reach this stage, your personal life should shrink to make space for theirs. It suggests that your dreams and interests should politely wait in the background while you focus on their every need, every schedule change, every emotional spike, every plan for the future.

It is subtle. You start turning down invitations. You delay things you were excited about. You tell yourself you will come back to your own goals once the chaos settles. You stop listening to your own inner momentum because everyone else feels louder.

But here is the truth most mothers never hear.
This season is when your identity matters most.

Your teenager is figuring out who they are. You are figuring out who you are becoming. Both journeys deserve attention and intention.

You still get to rediscover hobbies that make you feel creative and alive.
You still get to pursue projects that light you up inside.
You still get to consider new career directions or passion driven work.
You still get to enjoy evenings that belong only to you.
You still get to have laughter filled conversations with friends where no one mentions homework or Snapchat or curfew.
You still get to wake up on a Saturday and savor the rare quietness that fills the house.

Your identity is not something you accidentally left behind during the toddler years. It is begging for you to look at it with curiosity again.

This is not selfish.
This is the example they need.

Xennial Moms…

Parenting teens is not only about surviving the next mood swing or teaching them how to do their own laundry (although, please do that), it is about finding yourself again in the small pockets of calm. It is about remembering who you are when you are not answering group chat questions or searching for missing hoodies.

You do not need to return to who you were before them.
You get to become someone new right alongside them.

And it’s pretty friggin’ cool.

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If you are new here and want a softer landing into midlife, you might love the post that started it all. Read The Xennial Girl Manifesto: Why Midlife Is Our Most Powerful Season Yet, a welcome letter to every Xennial woman who is still becoming. It sets the tone for everything we explore here.