Moody... Cranky... Emotional... adolescent rollercoasters!

Picture this:

One moment your daughter is laughing happily along with you and her siblings, participating in a fun family conversation around the dinner table as you all retell a hilarious story from the kids’ childhood that’s become family legend.

A few minutes later, without you realizing what’s happened, she’s furious about something. Her smile has dropped, her eyebrows are frozen in a sarcastic arch, her arms are folded, and she is making it clear to all that she’s NOT amused. Her dad jokingly tries to cheer her up, and she snaps. So fast you almost miss it, there’s a back and forth, and by the time it dawns on you that wow, she is seriously mad, she’s already stomped away from the table and slammed the door to her room. You can hear her crying all the way from the dinner table.

Ah, mood swings.

We’re talking about handling teen moodiness over on the Ashlyn Lee blog today. Read our post here.

Topics we cover include:

• Why living with a teen can be like an emotional rollercoaster

• Suggestions for how to cope with your teen’s mood swings, inspired by Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

• How to start by noticing your own distress

• Strategies for getting out of “emotion mind”

• Focusing on what’s in your control

• How to validate (plus why you’d want to, and what this really means)

• Helping your teen with problem-solving