How to Survive the Teen Years Without Taking Everything Personally, According to ‘SHE MD’

If raising a teen feels like living with a tiny litigator who slams doors, questions every rule, and changes friend groups weekly, Dr. Lisa Damour wants you to know one thing—it’s not about you.

On SHE MD, Dr. Thais Aliabadi and Mary Alice Haney sit down with the psychologist and author of Untangled to walk through the seven “jobs” every adolescent has to do: parting with childhood, joining a new pack, harnessing emotions, contending with adult authority, planning for the future, entering the romantic world, and learning to care for themselves. 

‘SHE MD’: ​​Dr. Lisa Damour Explains the 7 ‘Jobs’ of Teens

Below are the biggest insights from the episode as Damour unpacks each stage and why naming them makes the teen years a lot less chaotic.

#1. Parting with childhood

For most kids, the first job of adolescence shows up quietly—usually with a bedroom door that suddenly stays closed. As Damour explains, “there comes this day where suddenly like, they go in their rooms and they close their door and it feels like a personal rejection.”

But what’s actually happening is rehearsal for adulthood. Around age 11 or 12, it “dawns on the kid that [they’re] not going to live with us forever,” so they start treating their room “like their apartment.” When parents knock, teens react as if “the landlord [is] suddenly showing up.” It’s jarring, yes, but it’s also healthy. Privacy becomes the training ground for independence. 

#2. Joining a new pack

Once teens loosen their grip on home, the next job is finding their people. Damour says this phase can be “really complicated and fraught,” especially because kids often think they need a giant friend group to be doing it right. In reality, “the happiest kids have a couple of really good buddies and stay in sort of smaller, circles.” The bigger concern isn’t whether they’re popular—it’s whether they’re connected. A teen with zero peer relationships is a red flag, but a kid with one solid friend is on track.

And if a teen is struggling to click? Sometimes it’s not a personality issue but the environment. “You don’t make friends, you find friends,” Damour says, which means some kids need “new traffic patterns”—new clubs, new groups, new places to meet someone who fits.

#3. Harnessing emotions

Teen feelings are neurologically intense, and they can unsettle everyone in the house. Damour explains that “teenage feelings are really big and really powerful and really deregulating for the teenager.” None of this means something is wrong. “This is normal. This is challenging. This is scary for the kid. This is sometimes scary for the adults.”

The real focus isn’t eliminating distress but making sure teens cope in ways that don’t cause harm. “The great divide is whether they cope in ways that are destructive or constructive,” Damour notes.

But here’s the thing: coping doesn’t need to look mature to be healthy. Teens might “cuddle the dog,” “force cuddle the cat,” distract themselves with games, or lean on music. Adults don’t need to force their own methods onto them—they just need to make sure whatever they choose “bring[s] relief and do[es] no harm.”

#4. Contending with adult authority

If there’s ever a phase that convinces parents their teen has it out for them, it’s this one. But Damour loves this developmental job precisely because of how misunderstood it is. “So often this is cast as like, ‘oh, and then they get naughty,’” she says. In reality, “it’s their job. It is their job to push off against us, to question us, to point out our hypocrisies.”

This pushback isn’t rebellion—it’s radar. Teens are testing limits, finding boundaries, and figuring out what kind of adult they want to become. Most kids keep it together in the outside world and save the spice for home. As Damour explains, “What is typical is that at home, your kid is rolling her eyes at you…but at school, they…get along well with the adults.”

On the flip side, a teen who never pushes back is actually more concerning. 

#5. Planning for the future

Some teens are hyper-focused on their futures. Others look like they’re floating through high school on a pool noodle. Damour says both ends of the spectrum can be normal—what matters is momentum. Teens “got to make a plan,” even if that plan shifts or looks unconventional. By the end of high school, they need to be able to “enroll or enlist or get a job,” because moving toward independence is the whole point of this stage.

Parents, meanwhile, often carry their own anxieties—especially around college. But trying to make a teen do something won’t work. “It’s really a failing game to try to make a teenager do anything,” Damour notes. Instead, she suggests honesty. “I can’t make you do this. This is a choice you have to make…I hope that 18-year-old you isn’t going to be annoyed with 15-year-old you.”

#6. Entering the romantic world

This developmental job shows up on wildly different timelines. Damour notes that “there are fifth graders who are like, you know, in relationships…and then there are kids who…[it’s]just not interesting to them until very late in adolescence.” Both are normal. What matters is helping teens understand what healthy romantic experiences look like.

For girls especially, Damour says it’s crucial to center their own wants. “Girls are very much often responsive or asked to be responsive to the demands of people around them, even in their romantic lives,” she says. Talking only about risks—“don’t get pregnant, don’t get yourself in a bad position”—is incomplete. Teens need to hear “here’s what a healthy romantic life looks like.” 

There are red flags, though. Being “way ahead of the game,” relying on romance as a “main source of self-esteem,” or dating someone with a large age gap, since “two or three years is actually more worrisome in adolescence.” 

And if a teen is filling their worth through dating? “Everyone needs a way to feel good about themselves,” Damour states. The fix is helping them build self-esteem somewhere else—through work, hobbies, or volunteering—so romance isn’t their entire value system.

#7. Learning to care for themselves

The final job of adolescence is handing the basics of daily life over to the teen. Parents start out doing “all the care,” but what we want to see is “a gradual handing off of those responsibilities.” That includes everything from hygiene to safety to making good choices when adults aren’t around.

Some of it is simple, other parts are bigger. When it comes to parties, driving, sex, and substances, Damour says these are “safety questions,” not moral ones. The message becomes, “I have kept you safe all this time, now it is your job to keep yourself safe.”

If a kid wants access to higher-risk situations—late nights out, houses where “things are kind of out of control”—the parent’s leverage is to show responsibility in the areas we can see. “By the time you get to that party, I’m counting on you to take good care of yourself.”

Together, these seven jobs give parents a roadmap for understanding adolescence without taking every slammed door or sharp comment to heart.

To hear Dr. Lisa Damour’s full conversation, listen to SHE MD wherever you get your podcasts.

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