Tell me if you’ve ever had these thoughts about your teen or tween:

“If they would just listen to me, everything would be so much better!”

“I don’t understand why they have to act like this.”

“Why do they have to be so dang disagreeable?”

Well, as I said last week in the first episode in this 3-part series, a lot of your teen’s undesirable behavior is a direct result of your behavior.

Yep, I know – that’s not only hard to hear but it sounds downright accusatory. But stay with me and let me explain.

And be sure and go back to episode 151 to hear the first part of the series.

PODCAST INTRO

If we only had a mentor assigned to us as soon as our children were born – someone to guide us through all the developmental stages - to show us how to do this with the least amount of friction with the best outcomes for our kids. Wouldn’t that be great?

Maybe you’ve had that – but I certainly didn’t. And I feel like I held my own all the up until around my son’s 16^th year when all hell broke loose.

And you know why it broke loose? Because I didn’t know how to parent a teenager. I certainly didn’t know how to parent a teenager who had ADHD, anxiety, depression and was using substances.

Now, 5 years after beginning to immerse myself in the science of parenting adolescents, I know exactly where things went wrong.

And I know we can lay blame at the feet of our kids all day long, but no matter what their issues (whether they’re a typical teen or have additional struggles like my son), it’s our behavior, our parenting, that does indeed make the biggest difference in their behavior, their mental and emotional health, even their physical health.

Each of our kids comes with their own temperament and genetic predispositions but the way we handle their emotions, their misbehavior, their mistakes, our own emotions – it can truly mean the difference in who they ultimately become.

I hate to think of where my son would be today if I hadn’t corrected course by the time he was 18, gotten a grip on my own emotions and learned how to help him with his. I certainly don’t believe he’d be living the life he is – independent, happy, and looking forward to a great future.

Today, I’m going to talk about another couple of mistakes that we make that can cause our teens to behave even worse: 1) we remind and question them constantly, and 2) we invalidate their feelings.

We’ll start with reminding and questioning. Have you ever heard me talk about your teenager’s amygdala? I mentioned it briefly in the previous episode, but I’ve mentioned it in many different episodes including episode 131 in my fundamentals series. So, go back and listen to learn more.

But in a nutshell your teen’s amygdala – the part of the brain that deals with emotions – mainly it watches out for threats in the environment. And it’s on high alert all during adolescence.

What this means is that it makes a lot of mistakes and thinks things are threatening when they’re not. And this sends your teen or tween into fight or flight mode over really nothing.

Fight or flight is the response we have when we feel threatened – so when a stranger on the street lunges toward us or we see a mouse run across the floor. Our heart beats fast, we might shake or feel flush depending on the situation and we’ll either get out of the way or stand our ground and deal with the issue straight on.

And what that means for our emotions is, we either feel some form of fear or nervousness or anger.

This is why teens seem to be in a perpetual state of emotional unrest – either annoyed, angry, anxious, frustrated, or just grumpy and negative – it’s their brain causing this.

Now, most adults can deal with their not-so-sensitive amygdala pretty well when it makes a mistake. We can calm down, use sound judgment, tell ourselves it’s all going to be fine.

But the part of the brain that helps with this – the prefrontal cortex – is still programming in the adolescent brain and it’s basically not a lot of help. So, when they get upset or grumpy, they don’t have the ability to get a handle on things without some outside help.

So, when you ask your kid, “Hey, did Ms. Taylor give you a massive amount of homework today?” you’re teen’s amygdala quite often registers this as a threat and something to get angry or nervous about. They may answer nicely if they’re able to muster it, or they may snap your head off – it can depend on the circumstances (are they tired, stressed, sleepy, already nervous or angry about something, etc.)

The same thing can happen with almost anything you say to your teen but asking questions and reminders are the two simple things that we tend to do a lot during the day that really threaten that amygdala.

And this is because the amygdala is most sensitive to facial expressions and interactions with other people during adolescence and even more significantly, research suggests that adolescents regularly misinterpret neutral or ambiguous facial expressions as negative – and some studies even report that it will misinterpret tone of voice as well.

Additionally, in case you feel you have to say things multiple times just to get them to hear you – you’re not off there. Research shows that adolescents brains tune into other people’s voices more than their mom’s. This is evolutionary – at this age, teens must begin paying attention to new people to start moving away and becoming more independent.

Other research has shown that criticism from mom will also shut their brain down:

In one study the researchers play 30-second clips of the particular adolescent’s mom saying something like, “One thing that bothers me about you is that you get upset over minor issues. I could tell you to take your shoes from downstairs. You’ll get mad that you have to pick them up and actually walk upstairs and put them in your room.”

Now, that sounds like something you might say, right? Well, this study showed that the amygdala is highly activated by mom’s criticism and they’re less able to engage their prefrontal cortex to calm themselves down and there’s also reduced activity in the area of the brain that helps them with taking another person’s point of view – which explains a lot, doesn’t it?

Also, as I mentioned, stress in your teen’s life is one factor in their emotional reactivity. It’s likely that stress makes the amygdala even more reactive, and it also further diminishes their ability to engage their prefrontal cortex to calm themselves down.

Think about how much stress your teen is under from every direction: academic pressures, maybe pressure at home to do better in school, boyfriends, girlfriends, sports, regular friendship issues, social media. They live in a pressure cooker.

Not only is their actual stress high but they also subjectively feel they’re under a great amount of stress and in this case, that perception is their reality, no matter how you look at it.

 

So, bottom line – you’re teen has a hard time listening to you anyway and they appear to be more reactive to criticism at the very least, but because their amygdala is so reactive, the also misinterpret totally neutral things you say or neutral facial expressions and may react to just about anything that comes out of your mouth.

What does this mean for all those reminders and questions – yeah, you need to limit them – at least the vocal kind.

Before we even get into how to remedy this situation, let’s look at why you feel the need to constantly remind and question them.

How many times a day do you think you honestly say something like, “don’t forget your money”, “is your homework finished?”, “is your uniform clean?”, “you need to go ahead and empty the dishwasher”

And ask yourself now, why is it that you do this. Why remind them not to forget their money or ask them if they’re homework is finished?

Because you don’t want them to forget their money or forget to do their homework, or whatever – I get it. But why do you not want them to forget their money or forget to do their homework?

Because you’re afraid. You’re afraid of what will happen if they don’t do what they need to do or don’t learn how to do what they need to do.

So, this fear of the terrible thing that will happen if they don’t do whatever it is they need to do…that fear causes you to constantly remind and question. You’re afraid  - you don’t want them to fail or mess up or make a mistake. I get it. You might think, what kind of parent am I to just stand back and watch them fail?

It may be that you don’t want them to prove what you may already think (that they’re lazy or unmotivated, or will never learn, or they’re irresponsible – or whatever it is you’ve decided they are).

Seeing our kids mess up is even worse that when we mess up. We’re too emotionally invested in their performance. We’re too focused on the outcome rather than the learning process. Our expectations are way up here when, in reality, should be a bit more reasonable.

Alright, so we get it – you’re concerned about them not doing what they need to do. Let’s take an example then.

Let’s talk about lunch money. You constantly remind them not to forget their lunch money and they snap back at you every time – sometimes it even causes an argument.

So, what happens if they forget that money? They call you to bring it? What happens if you can’t or won’t take it to them? They borrow money maybe, or possibly someone shares a sandwich with them, or maybe they go hungry.

And if the worst thing happens, they don’t have lunch, will they die? No.

Will they possibly remember their money next time? Maybe, maybe not. But if they forget it several times and find themselves without food all day, on about that 3^rd or 4^th time what do you think’s going to happen? They are going to miraculously figure out a way to remember to take their money to school. It’s crazy how this happens but it does.

Teens (and the rest of us) learn by making mistakes. Humans learn how to do things by making mistakes first. Trial and error, just error…rarely do we learn how to do something (like a new skill) on the very first try.

Of course, we’re there to guide them and help them learn.

But your teen certainly won’t learn a thing if you hold their hand by reminding them constantly of what they need to do and when - or rescuing them from non-life-threatening situations all the time (taking that lunch money to school).

Of course there are exceptions – if your kid never forgets anything and this is something important – sure.

So, not only are all your reminders and questions likely causing them to be reactive, but it’s also doing them a disservice in the long run.

Adolescence is the time when they have to learn these skills because they’re approaching the point when we’re not going to be there to remind them every day of everything they need to do.

We send way too many kids off to college that can’t think for themselves, can’t do anything without texting a parent and they don’t do well.

So, find another way to help your kid remember what they need to do. Help them create a system or make themselves a list, set a reminder on their phone…and then back up and see what happens. Let them learn from their mistakes as long as they’re not dangerous, unhealthy, unethical, illegal or likely to close some door better left open. If you haven’t heard me talk about that criteria you can listen to episode 136.

Alright – the other thing that we parents do that amps up your teen’s emotions and causes arguments or just chaos in general is invalidating their feelings. And you may be thinking, oh my goodness, here we go again with the feelings stuff. Yes, “feelings stuff” can feel a bit woo woo when you’re not used to it or have never really considered it. It can be very uncomfortable even, for some of us. And for very good reason. Your parents likely weren’t big on talking about your feelings, may not have even noticed them or cared about them. So, it’s difficult to even realize that feelings matter a great deal in parenting. And as we just discussed, your teens feelings are very real and raw and out there on their sleeve for all to see. If you don’t deal with them properly, you’ll be bombarded with them a lot more!

Any time you’re teen is upset or angry about something, or you need to have a discussion with them about something that’s happened, they’ve asked you to do something or go somewhere, or they’ve gotten in trouble, or you need to discuss a rule with them – whatever it is, you need to recognize, acknowledge, or validate their feelings (whatever you want to call it).

It’s extremely important that however your teen feels about something, that you show them that their feelings matter to you. They need to feel that you hear and understand them, that you get it. And you really need to do this verbally.

If you dismiss or sweep aside or invalidate their feelings, you’ll only intensify them and cause a real stink.

Let’s say they’re really pissed off that you’ve said you’re not going to buy them that new hoodie they so desperately need and that they’ll need to save up their own money. So, they’re being whiny and generally acting like an ass in the store.

If you’re like me, your first instinct (and I’ve been here specifically, many times) my first instinct is to probably say something like “stop it” “calm down” “please don’t do this”.

But guess what? By telling them to stop or calm down or anything else like, it’s not a big deal, you’ll have birthday money next week, it’s just a hoodie, for God’s sake – all of that is invalidating how they feel in that moment – which is what? What are they feeling when you say no, sorry, you’ll have to get it later?

Frustration, annoyance, disappointment, anger…pick one and say something like, “I know you’re frustrated that you can’t get the hoodie today and I get that you’re angry with me. It’s super disappointing to want something right now and have to wait.”

Now, notice, I didn’t add a but to the end of that…”but I just can’t get it for you today” or “but you’ll just have to wait” or “but you’re being unreasonable” or “but you’re going to have to stop being an ass in this store right this minute” – none of that.

And when your teen’s obviously upset about something and they voluntarily tell you what’s going on, again, avoid invalidating their feelings. When they’re having a really hard time controlling their anger or sadness or fear, it can be natural to say something like, “cheer up, it’s all work out” or “there’s no reason to be so upset” or “just chill out” or “this too shall pass” – anything like that is like pouring salt on the wound because they know they can’t help how they feel. They know in that moment; they do have a reason to be upset, they cannot chill out and they know it’s not going to just pass.

You’re in effect, telling them they should absolutely not be feeling what they know they do feel.

Likewise, it’s just as invalidating to run in and start making suggestions for how they can resolve whatever it is: “why don’t you just give them a call” or “what if you say this or do that”. You’re telling them you have no faith in their own ability to solve their problem or take care of the situation themselves.

And another way we invalidate someone’s feelings is taking the other person’s or the situation’s side. For example, “well, I’m sure they didn’t mean it that way” or “you probably misunderstood”

So, when you’ve shown them, you think they’re being silly or stupid for feeling the way they feel or that you have no faith in them to resolve it, or that they’re likely just concocting something from nothing, what do you think they’re response will be?

They’re just going to work harder to try and convince you that they absolutely do have a right to feel this way, that they can figure it out and don’t need your help or that they most certainly have not misunderstood. So, they’re going to get even more upset, louder, angrier, etc. You’re going backwards.

Think about this; if you were upset because someone at work had said something very degrading to you that bordered on abusive and you told your told your best friend about it through your tears, and they said, “oh my gosh, I’m sure you just misunderstood” or “let’s go shopping, you’ll forget it about” or “I’m sure they didn’t mean it that way”.

How would that make you feel? What do you think you’d do or say? That doesn’t sound very supportive of your friend, does it?

Instead, wouldn’t you rather hear something like, “Wow, that’s horrible, no wonder you’re so upset” or “I’m so sorry that happened to you, I know you must be devasted with now. What can I do to support you?”

Talk to your teen the way you’d want a friend to talk to you. Let them know you get it, you’re there for them and they have every right to feel the way they feel. As soon as you do that, you’ll give them a big sigh of relief, they’ll begin to calm down and you can continue the conversation.

This is part of emotion coaching, which is a key skill I teach in Parent Camp – you can learn more in episode 135.

As I said in the last episode, parenting teens is about collaboration and connection and when you provide them with emotional validation, you’re strengthening your connection and increasing the possibility that they will come to you even more when they need your support, share things with you, ask you for your advice.

Use your adult brain to provide the calm and nurturing parenting they need – especially when their emotions have taken hold.

If you haven’t figured out how to get these interactions right with your teen, if you’re struggling to be empathetic, to understand why they act the way they do towards you, or to regulate your own emotions or use discipline the right way to change their behavior, you should really consider joining the next cohort of Parent Camp. If you’re listening to this in July 2024, the next Parent Camp launches in September and it’s going to be even better than before.

You can do this. No matter what’s going on with you and your teen, whether you just have the typical teen stuff or you’re dealing with more, you can get through it and learning how to interact with them to build their trust and respect and strengthen that connection is where you have to start.

If you’re interested in Parent Camp you can check it out and add your name to the waiting list for September 2024 through the link at the bottom of the episode description where you’re listening right now.

Alright, that wraps up another Speaking of teens, I’m so glad you were here with me today and I would be ever so grateful if you’d go into your Apple app and rate and review the show. It really does help other potential listeners to decide whether to give it a try. I would really appreciate your support.

So, remember, until next time, a little change goes a long way!