My teenager won’t talk to me. What do I do?

Dear Momma,

It’s in your drafts. You’ve written it three times. Hey. Want to get breakfast Saturday, just us? The first version ended with miss you, and you took that out because it sounded like a complaint. The second ended with no pressure, and you took that out too, because you knew exactly how much pressure was folded into it. They’re upstairs. You could climb the stairs and ask in person. Instead you’re at the kitchen table, choosing words for someone who lives in your house as carefully as you’d write to someone you barely know.

Here’s what I’d like you to take up to bed tonight. The distance between you is real, and it’s theirs to close. That doesn’t mean you sit back and wait. It means your part of the job has changed. For years it was reaching them. Now it’s being easy to reach, which is a harder skill, because all of you wants to climb those stairs.

One exception, before anything else

Not chasing is for ordinary distance. If anything is frightening you for their safety (something they said, something you saw, a feeling this isn’t the usual quiet), go toward them. Knock and go in, stay with them, and call their doctor this week. If it’s urgent, the safety lines at the end of this letter come first. You don’t need to be sure. If you think they may be in danger in that room, a closed door doesn’t get to stop you. Going after a teenager you’re frightened for isn’t chasing. It’s leading.

Reach, pull back, offer

Every distant stretch puts the same three temptations in front of you, usually in this order. First you reach: the extra question at dinner, the knock that isn’t really about laundry. When that gets you nowhere, you pull back: a shorter goodnight, a sense of fine, then. And when that starts to frighten you, you offer something: a yes that comes easier than it should, because a yes is one way to see them smile at you again.

Each of those comes from love. Each of them can make the way back longer. So here are three refusals instead.

Don’t chase. Be easy to find and easy to approach: around in ordinary ways, offering things with nothing attached, taking what they bring without making it bigger. No following them with questions, messages, or a hurt silence that asks them to fix it.

Don’t leave. Don’t match their distance. The goodnight still gets said, and your face at breakfast is the same face. And the house keeps running. If you stop enforcing the curfew because you can’t face one more frosty exchange, you’ve left as surely as if you’d stopped speaking. It only looks gentler. A consequence you set before the silence started still runs during it.

Don’t trade. No line moves to buy them back. If you’d have said no to the party when they were chatty, you say no now. A yes that’s really a payment teaches them what closeness costs in your house. That doesn’t mean you never reconsider. If something genuinely new comes to light, or their safety calls for it, or the rule simply isn’t fair, change it, and say plainly why: “That’s not because you’ve been quiet. It’s because I was wrong.” Firm is never stubborn.

Put those together and you’re the fixed point in the house: same place, same warmth, same lines, whatever weather comes down the stairs. Warmth is not currency. It’s never withheld to punish, and never spent to buy.

And if you’re holding this on your own, with no other adult, or one who’d rather be the easy one, it’s harder, and it’s not a failure. One steady adult who won’t chase, won’t leave and won’t trade is plenty to come back to.

Use it tonight: the same goodnight

At the time you’d normally say goodnight, say it once, the way you always do. Not warmer than usual, to win them back. Not cooler, to show them how it feels. The same.

• “Goodnight. I’ll see you at breakfast.”
• “Heading to bed. Sleep well.”

If nothing comes back, that’s tonight’s answer, and it’s allowed to be. If the door closed after a no, the no stands. Leave the family meeting, the long message and the scroll through what they’ve posted for daylight.

Then send the short version of that message, or send nothing. Breakfast Saturday, just us? No sign-off. And before you sleep, write one sentence: not what they did, but what you were reaching for tonight.

If you’re afraid for them

• If you believe their life may be in danger, stay with them and call your local emergency number now. Don’t wait until you’re sure.
• If you’re worried about suicide, call or text 988, in the US or Canada, any time, with them or on your own. Lock up or remove medications and any firearms in the house, and make the call.
• If you’re afraid of what you might do, stop, tell them you’re stepping away, and call someone. If you’re worried they might hurt themselves, don’t leave them alone: stay with them and make the call from there.
• For pulling away that has you worried, even if you can’t say why, call their doctor this week.

Then put your phone face down. Whatever comes back, or doesn’t, isn’t a verdict on you.

— Momma

This letter draws on When They Pull Away, the Teens Guide for when they go quiet: for when your teenager goes quiet, how to stay easy to find without chasing them or giving in.