Reading the room

Perimenopause and Teenagers: Don't Let the House Take Sides

By Phil, The Perimenopause Husband

Mum's a bit off at the moment.

One of the kids said it. I shrugged and said, yeah.

That's the whole moment. A shrug and a yeah. It took about two seconds, and I did it more times than I can count, and looking back it's the thing I regret most out of this entire stretch of our lives.

What does perimenopause look like to a teenager?

Like mum has changed and nobody's saying why.

Teenagers notice everything and explain nothing. They see her go quiet. They cop a spray over something small. They see dad doing more around the house and mum doing less, and they draw the obvious conclusion, because they're kids and the obvious conclusion is the only one on offer.

Four kids in our house. Three of them were teenagers through the thick of it, and one was into the early twenties. Noticing is all a teenager needs.

Her system was running hot, a hormonal, biological change she had no say in, and the kids were in the room for a lot of it. The tone over the shoes is one thing, and that has its own post. This is about what I did with the kids afterwards, and for a long time, what I did was nothing.

What did I get wrong?

I let them take my side.

Not loudly. Not on purpose. When mum was distant, or snapped at something small, or wasn't doing the things she'd normally do, and the kids noticed and said something, I'd agree with them. A shrug. A yeah, mum's a bit off at the moment. Said in a tone that quietly confirmed whatever they were already feeling.

I wasn't defending her. I was going along with the room.

And without ever deciding to, I built a house where the kids saw dad holding everything together and mum withdrawing. I'd put the whole family against her. In her own home. While she was fighting something she didn't understand herself.

What did that cost her?

Home is supposed to be the one place you don't have to perform. The one place that's safe no matter how the rest of the world is treating you.

I'd taken that away. She wasn't just dealing with perimenopause. She was dealing with it in a house where her own kids had quietly gone cold on her, and dad had let them. She had nowhere that wasn't, in some small way, judging her for something she had no control over.

She never said that to me in those words. I worked it out later, and I'd rather you worked it out now.

What do I say when the kids say mum's off?

There are two answers, and it depends where you're up to.

Before I understood what was in the house, the honest answer is I said the shrug. Yeah, she's a bit off, she'll be right. Don't do that one.

Once I'd worked it out, I sat the kids down. The three eldest together, and the youngest on her own, because they needed different conversations. After that I hardly had to say anything when it came up again. They'd read her the same way I'd learned to. The foundation was there.

For the stretch in between, this one. Here's one of the tools. There are plenty.

Something real is going on with mum. It's not her fault. We'll have a proper chat about it tonight.

That's the line for a kid who says mum's off before you've had the sit down. Short, true, and it doesn't leave them hanging. It tells them it's nothing to be scared of, and it tells them it matters enough that the family is going to talk about it. In front of her if she's there, because it tells her the house is with her without making a thing of it.

Then have the chat. The fuller conversation, how I ran it, and what I said to the boys and the girls separately, is in the book. The chapter is called Bringing the Family In. It's the one I'd hand a dad first. The app carries the short version for the night you need it.

Should I explain perimenopause to teenagers?

Yes. Honestly, at whatever level suits their age, and on a Sunshine day, one of the five weather patterns we use in our house, the days she's herself. Not in the middle of it.

Not a clinical lecture. Just enough. This is real. She has no control over it. She is still your mum and she loves every one of you exactly the same as always.

And ask them to be aware and quietly helpful, rather than tiptoeing. Tiptoeing makes her feel like the problem in a different way. The signs that go unnoticed are the ones your kids will have clocked already. They just need the word for them.

If anything about how she is frightens them, or you, that's a doctor or a specialist in this field. Go with her, if she wants you there.

I hear from women who've done this with their teenage boys, and they say the same thing. Their sons are growing up knowing what the women in their lives will go through. Their daughters are growing up with a map for it, and not afraid of it. That's the long game in a ten minute conversation.

Did the house come back?

It did. Not in a day.

Once the kids knew what they were looking at, they stopped reading her as a problem and started reading her as weather, the same way I'd had to learn. A Storm Warning day, one of the five weather patterns we use in our house, the days she's irritable and snapping at things that never used to set her off, stopped being mum being mean and became mum having a Storm Warning day, and the kids moved around it the way you move around rain.

I've told the one line version of this before. This is the whole thing, because a dad reading this probably has a kid saying mum's a bit off this week.

So here's the plain version of what I'm asking. When your kid says it, don't shrug and don't agree. Say something real is going on with mum, it's not her fault, and we'll talk about it tonight. Then sit them down and tell them what it is. Then, when the next hard day comes, you'll find you don't have to say much at all, because the whole house will already be reading the weather with you.

The whole story, and every tool I found along the way, is in Stepping Into the Storm With Her.