Your teenager has gone quiet and you don't know how to reach them

Come sit down. First, the thing that might ease your heart a little: a teenager pulling away is usually doing exactly what they're supposed to — separating, becoming their own person — and it's not proof they've stopped loving you or that you've failed. It's also genuinely hard to be on the other side of, missing a child who's still in your house. Now, if your worry is real — if you fear they're in trouble, depressed, unsafe — that's not a reach-them problem, that's a get-help problem, and you go get it. But for the ordinary quiet: you don't reach a teenager by pushing on the closed door. You reach them by being reliably, un-anxiously there, in the small sideways moments, until they come out. Let me show you how.