Parenting Lessons from the Barbie Movie

We’ve got another Barbie movie post: this one about the relationship between the teenage daughter and her mom, who works at Mattel. Their relationship is pretty typical of many mother-teen daughter relationships.

What’s with these sullen teens????

The daughter is trying to establish herself as her own person, and in doing so, pushes her mom away. The mom misses the closeness of their relationship when the daughter was younger and the mom was a more central figure in the daughter’s life.

Separation is the teen’s developmental task…

One of my high school friends gave me a heads up about this when my daughter was young. Speaking about her own daughters who were then in their early twenties, she said, “It’s amazing how much I knew when they were little. When they got into middle school, I didn’t know anything. Now they ask me about lots of things and honestly want to know my thoughts and opinions. Amazing that I’m smart again!”

…and the parents’s task, as well

In the Barbie movie, the mom feels hurt and rejected by her daughter’s dismissive and rude actions when the mom tries to connect with her. I wanted to give her a hug and tell her to hang in and things will get better, that the daughter’s actions have much more to do with the daughter’s developmental stage than anything about the mom.

It can be painful as a parent to experience our teen’s embarrassment of us and not take it personally. Knowing it’s a necessary developmental stage can help with the feelings. It’s our kids’s “job” to explore the world beyond parents.

They start that early in life as they first crawl away from us to explore the larger world. Our job as parents is to encourage that safe exploration from the beginning. That doesn’t mean that we let go of our responsibility to take care of our kids and to keep them safe, using age-appropriate reasonable precautions. Hovering and guilting them into staying by our side throughout their lives is not what we’re going for here, whether they are toddlers or teens.

Authenticity is a gift to our children—and to ourselves!

In the movie, the daughter eventually confronts the mom about the mom’s conformity, of not accepting herself and not living authentically. The daughter embraces the mom’s quirkiness and encourages the mom to live out loud more.

When we as parents are true to ourselves and model that for our kids, they are more likely to eventually become comfortable being themselves, which is an important gift to them. Will that happen as quickly in real life as in the movie? Well, no. But most things in life don’t happen as quickly as they do in a movie!

The mom is much too dependent on her daughter’s acceptance of her than is healthy and would benefit from therapy to make a more satisfying life for herself.

Many parents fall into seeing their kids as an extension of themselves and fail to make the transition from hands-on parenting to the next phase of parenting life. That next phase is about enjoying your kids as their own individual selves, rather than trying to shape them into who you think they should be. It means cheering for them as they flap their wings to strengthen them before leaving the nest. Even if in their wing flapping, we get a little bruised. Here’s some more information about parenting counseling.

Parenting help is invaluable

If you’d like help navigating the challenges of parenting so you can experience more of the joys of parenting, please contact me. I’m happy to help!