Millennial Says Gen Z Daughter Has Emotional Tools She Didn’t

My 14-year-old daughter looked at me calmly and said, “I don’t like how you talk to me sometimes.” I froze. As a millennial, I never questioned how my parents spoke to me. Emotions weren’t something we talked about, so I usually buried mine deep and kept going.

Her words were not disrespectful. They were clear, intentional, and grounded. They broke me in a good way.

I’ll admit, at first, I wanted to assert my authority. After all, I wasn’t expecting my daughter to teach me an emotional language I had never learned. I tried to remind her I was the parent. In my mind, I thought if I endured this in my childhood and came out okay, why can’t she?

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was raising someone who belonged to a completely different generation. This generation understands things differently and does things differently. Somewhere in my heart, I was envious of my child. She’s displaying skills that I never had.

At her age, I kept my emotions to myself

Growing up, expressing my emotions was often thought to be a show of weakness or rebellion, and calling out my mother on something certainly wasn’t an option I ever considered. If I had done so, I would have been met with a harsh punishment or a lecture. So I swallowed my feelings, even when they hurt the most.

My daughter, on the other hand, will speak out if her needs aren’t being met.

One night during a conversation, she said, “You don’t have to fix everything, just listen.” I let her words sink in.

Breaking the cycle

I’ve learned that breaking a generational cycle means not yelling when my daughter does things that upset me. But it’s so much more than that. It’s about learning that if I do happen to raise my voice, then explaining why I raised it, and being able to say, “I’m sorry. I was wrong.”

Although this approach to parenting is still unfamiliar to me, I’m committed to it because I know it’s how I’ll raise an empathetic and grounded child. We both deserve that.

I’m healing myself, too

This generation has found its emotional tools and seems to know how to use them. My daughter and her peers are outright honest about their feelings, sometimes to a fault.

I know she doesn’t have it all figured out, but I’m in awe of how she advocates for herself. As her mother, I owe it to her to prioritize my own healing so I can support her emotional needs.

Our kids can teach us a great deal, if we allow it. At times, I see my daughter and wish I had been brave enough at her age to say what she is saying.