It’s the million-dollar question: how do I get my teen to stop using substances? Stop drinking, using marijuana, vaping nicotine – anything. If your know your kid doing  something like this, you’ve likely already tried.

Perhaps you’ve discussed it at length (aka – lectured), consequenced or punished, yelled, threatened, drug tested…everything you can think of…but the behavior continues.

What are you missing? Is there a way to motivate your teen to change their substance-using behavior?

That’s what we’ll explore here today on this final episode in my series on teen substance use. To listen to the entire series, back up to episode 175.

But don’t go anywhere right now – this episode stands along.

PODCAST INTRO

Today I want to talk to you about the methods outlined in the book, Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change.

The book, focuses on two of the most powerful and effective tools to help motivate a loved one (not just a teenager) to change their interaction with substances – motivational interviewing and Community Reinforcement and Family Training or CRAFT for short.

The CRAFT method has been rigorously scientifically compared to both the AL-Anon 12-step approach and traditional interventions based on the “Johnson method” where family and friends all get together and confront the loved one with a surprise meeting (you’ll likely seen the television show).

And CRAFT has been consistently shown to be more successful than these other methods in getting loved ones into treatment, improving a teenager’s substance use patterns, improving communication skills, developing behavior management skills, and more.

Many of the strategies used by those other popular methods (such as distancing yourself from your child) can be harmful to the relationship with your teen and cause rebellion.

Interestingly, CRAFT includes many of the basic strategies I include in Parent Camp for strengthening the connection and decreasing conflict with your teen while also improving their behavior.

It all boils down to understanding how their brain works, increasing your empathy, positive communication skills, validating their experiences and emotions, improving emotional regulation and taking care of yourself, while using strategic behavior reinforcement techniques to motivate change in them.

Sounds like a hella lot, I know.

But, as I tell Parent Campers, you can use these proven strategies, which may be a little more challenging for you in the beginning and requires some practice and slows things down a bit, or you can keep lecturing, issuing consequences, yelling and arguing – which is no doubt, taking up a great deal of your time right now and actually decreasing the chances that your teenager will change.

So, I want to jump into some of the things the authors of the book discuss in what they call their “20-minute Guide” for parents of teens. I’ll have the link to everything in the show notes so just listen and them you can grab the transcript and the guide for yourself later.

One of the first things they point out in the Guide is that these strategies take practice and time. Because guess what – changing your mindset and the way you communicate and interact with your teen is not easy – it does take time, energy, patience and lots of internal work on yourself. But, it’s also not rocket science and it’s totally doable – even by the most anxious among us – like me.

So, just understand there’s no quick fix to any problem we have in life, and this is no different. Know going into it that it will be hard – but no harder than what you’re dealing with right now, I can promise you that.

Not just one answer

It’s also important to understand, as they explain, that there’s no one answer as to what path to take if your teen is using substances. They say there are many ways to help your teen change their relationship with substances and that it depends on so many variables and that one size does not fit all.

Things like helping them find new interests, working hard to improve your relationship with them and they family dynamic, and reinforcing healthier habits can all help – as will some treatments and therapies. Get lots of input and advice and then put aside any guilt or self-doubt, look at your child as you know them, and decide the route to take.

As I pointed out in episode 175, it’s critical that you understand WHY your teen uses substances if you want to help. They’re not doing it to get back at you or drive you nuts – their brain has latched onto the substance and is reinforcing the behavior – they are getting a reward from their use or they wouldn’t be doing it. Go back to episode 175 and have a listen.

You need to understand if your teen is drinking to feel less inhibited around people or smoking weed to help his anxiety. Their reason will help guide you towards the solution.

As the authors point out – and this should sound familiar because it’s what I say all the time - when you realize the reason for your teen’s behavior, you can have more empathy for them, take their behavior less personally, be less anxious about it (because it makes sense) – then you’ll be more likely to respond to their behavior in a more productive way.

If you see your kid as your torturer – someone who’s doing this TO you rather than doing things for a damn good reason to them – you react out of fear, anger – and you make terrible decisions because you’re unable to think clearly.

But if you can step back and see that their behavior is serving a purpose for them – it’s helping them deal with boredom or anxiety or depression or socialization – this lets you focus on helping them change their behavior the right way.

Ambivalence

Something else the authors talk about, which is so very helpful (and was a concept I’d never really considered much) – they explain ambivalence. If you’ve ever tried to change something about yourself, you’ve been ambivalent.

Say, you wanted to stop eating sugar, for instance (and those of you who’ve been getting my newsletter for a while know I gave up sugar back in March of this year and it wasn’t easy – Ambivalence is wanting to do something - for example, because you know you’ll be healthier and happier in the long run – but you also dread giving it up because you love it so dang much – it brings you joy or it makes you less depressed or helps your anxiety – whatever it is - and you can’t imagine life without it – but you need to give it up for your health and you know you’ll feel better – but damn that chocolate is calling your name – how do you just stop eating it?!

That, my friend is ambivalence.

Anyone can be ambivalent about any sort of change in their life, from relationships to jobs to exercise or eating healthier. It’s human nature and to be expected.

Ambivalence, as they define it, is “wanting to go in two directions at the same time, often with good (or good enough) reasons to go either way.”

And as a parent, it’s hard to see both directions from your teen’s point of view – but you must. I can remember driving my son back from a 5-day stay at an adolescent psychiatric hospital with him crying and screaming at me about how he wanted to do better but that he just loved everything about smoking marijuana – the people, the culture, the smell, the way it made him feel – all of it but he knew it was getting him in trouble. He was expressing ambivalence. But all I could think was – how can he possibly see anything good in this?! It’s ruining his life – can’t he see that?! It seemed nuts to me.

But because I concentrated so much on his argument for not changing (the authors call this “red light talk”) I couldn’t even hear that he also wanted to change (“green light talk”)

It's so hard for us to understand how they can “love” something that we see as nothing but a problem to solve. We see the trouble they’ve gotten into, the arguments and chaos it’s caused at home, the detentions at school or the arrests, the way it takes over their life…and we think, how it is even possible that they’d want to continue doing this?!

We concentrate so much on “how could they possibly want to do this?” – their red light talk - that we miss their green light talk (when they actually show subtle signs that they’d like to change).

They DO see the benefits of changing –they just also see the downside – they don’t want to give up those benefits.

What’s the one thing that you know is really probably not good for you (specifically, something you eat or drink or a substance you partake in regularly). Maybe it’s caffeine or nicotine or wine or like me, sugar. Have you ever considered changing your relationship with that “thing”? Did you try? How’d you do? How did it make you feel? That’s where your kid is.

So, sometimes your teen may see the benefits in changing and at other times, they absolutely won’t – and that is totally normal, it’s reasonable, and to be expected. Changing that behavior requires a new behavior to replace it – and that’s really difficult work (if you’ve tried it, you know).

Reading at night instead of drinking wine, chewing gum rather than smoking, eating grapes instead of chocolate, snowboarding instead of smoking weed all day.

You can’t argue with ambivalence. The more you argue with your kid that they should stop, the more they’ll defend their reasons for using (even if they do go back and forth and see the potential benefit in stopping). So, if you argue with them every time you hear that red light talk (I like smoking weed!) – the more they’ll defend it, dig in their heels and the less able they’ll be to see the benefits of quitting, the less likely you are to hear their green light talk, showing a desire to change…and, I would add, the more disconnection you’ll have in your relationship which will prevent you from being able to influence them the way you need to.

Instead of arguing and fighting their ambivalence, you can respond in a way that will help guide their behavior.

But learning to communicate better with them requires you to become more emotionally aware and regulated.

Emotional Regulation

I’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast and it’s an entire 25% of the framework I teach in Parent Camp. If you can’t manage your own emotions, you will not be able to respond to your teen the way you need to.

As a quick review here (and I’ll link to other episodes for you) – our thoughts impact our emotions, and our emotions impact our behaviors. For example, not understanding how the adolescent brain’s reward system is super revved up and allows for this reinforcing behavior with substances really easily – and not understanding that their  brain’s emotional center is super sensitive and that the thinking part of the brain is lagging behind – not understanding all this can lead you to believe that your teen is just an irrational, irresponsible, illogical and mean-spirited kid who’s just out to do everything he can to destroy her life and take you down in the process.

And certainly, if you have those thoughts, you can’t possibly have any empathy for their personal dilemma and therefore, your feelings when you hear them discuss their substance or catch them in the act will be anger, fear, dread, panic, fury even…which leads to lecturing, threatening, yelling, punishing, controlling behavior. And none of this will help your teen change – none of it. As a matter of fact, it will just get worse.

This sort of response builds animosity, disconnection, and rebellion.

Instead, you have to learn to manage your emotions, take care of yourself and reduce your stress level as much as possible so you can be less reactive, have compassion for yourself and understand that you can change your own thought patterns and feelings so that you can respond calmly and rationally when your child has such red light talk. They go into this further in the guide and I have several episodes on the same – I’ll give you all the links in the show notes.

Communication

So, let’s assume you get your emotions under control. The authors next talk about communicating with love. And they use LOVE as an acronym for Listening, Offering, Validating and Empathizing.

For the Listening part, this is where they bring in motivational interviewing – which again, is a method for helping people take action to change. And as they say, it’s a way of listening that helps change those reds lights to green lights.

Listening by using motivational interviewing emphasizes four strategies: open-ended questioning, affirming, reflecting or active listening, and summarizing.

Open-ended questions are a way of learning more from your teen – a way to get curious and show your teen you’d like to approach the issue collaboratively, that you’re trying to understand them (which supports their autonomy – a huge factor for your teen). Open-ended questions can’t be answered with one word (like leading questions can be). An open-ended question might be something like, “How did you feel when Jake said that to you?” and a leading or closed question would be, “Are you angry with Jake for saying that to you?”

The next part of motivational interviewing (the Listening they advise using) is Affirmations – this means listening to affirm the positives. They say that listening for things that are going right and calling that out, can change everything.

Affirmation reduce the negativity and defensiveness so you are building that good will to discuss the things that aren’t going so well later. Highlight their strengths, acknowledge what they’re doing well – this helps build connection and your influence. It’s like I talk about all the time – your positive interactions must outweigh your negative. They need to hear more than scolding, nagging, reminding and questioning.

Tell them you appreciate the effort they’ve put in on even the smallest issue, catch them doing something right and acknowledge it, give them a compliment, show that you care about them – even tiny things matter (acknowledge their effort in getting up on time, getting home on time, thank them for putting their dishes away or hanging their wet towel up, tell them to have a good time when they leave, compliment their behavior or appearance or whatever you can). These things go such a long way to build your relationship.

Motivational interviewing also emphasizes reflections or active listening, which means after listening you restate what the person’s said and even the feelings or emotions behind their words. And last you summarize the conversation, helping connect the dots with the other person, without embellishment.

So that’s the L in communicating with love – listening.

Next is the O – Offering. This refers to offering information, which is of course, such an important part of parenting but it gets much harder during adolescence to give information in a way in which it will be well-received. Teens do not like “advice” –giving them advice threatens their autonomy. So, I love this part of their strategy – it’s called the information sandwich, which reminds me of the positive sandwich I use in Parent Camp when holding boundaries. And it’s similar. First, (the first piece of bread) you ask your teen permission to give them some information – just like we generally never give advice unless they ask for it – you can ask for an invitation to give your advice! This preserves their autonomy – they don’t feel dictated to or talked down to.

Can I offer something to consider? Would it be helpful if I tell you about…? Would it be okay if I told you my one concern about your plan?

It may be hard to get used to but boy what a difference this could make. And it gives your teen a chance to opt in and actually listen to you rather than tune you out. Of course, they may also say no - and you need to honor that.

But if they agree, then you give them the meat of the sandwich - what you want to tell them. And here they remind us to remember you’re working with your teen – as collaborators. So, remember you’re offering information, not stuffing it down their throat – provide options, allow that they may say no. There will be much less defensiveness and a lot more opportunity for that green light if you manage things this way.

Then the top piece of bread of your information sandwich is to help them process the information and keep the issue open for discussion. You’re checking in to see how the information was received. Something like, “Does that make sense to you?” or “Let me say that a little more clearly”.

Now the next letter in communicating with Love is the V and here they talk about validating. Again, this is simply one of those positive communication techniques that I talk about all the time. It’s about acknowledging your teen’s emotions and experiences without qualification – without saying “but you shouldn’t feel that way” or “but I want you to stop”. This goes back to understanding your teen’s why and accepting their ambivalence as normal and rational and not treating them like they’re crazy or stupid or a criminal. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with their behavior but you have to validate that this is where they are – how they’re thinking and feeling right now.

The last letter is E for empathizing. You might say things like, “I can see why you’re so anxious about that.” or “I’m sure I would have been just as furious as you were”. You’re showing them that you can step into their shoes and see where they’re coming from.

So, that’s communicating with love. And doesn’t it all make sense? You will remain more connected to your teen, you will have a much better chance of them actually wanting to do what you want them to do.

Now, the authors go on to explain that the CRAFT method includes another 7 elements of positive communication (and this doesn’t necessarily mean all your communication must be upbeat and avoiding conflict – so pay attention here).

These are the elements:

1 Be brief – you know how some of people talk way too much when they’re nervous or angry and don’t have a plan for what to say (I’m raising my hand) – don’t do that with your teen. Anything more than a few sentences to an adolescent is a lecture. They even suggest scripting and rehearsing to keep it concise and to the point.

2 Be specific – for example don’t make vague requests like, “be more responsible” – tell them what you mean. They say being specific means describing something that is measurable, observable and reinforceable. So, “be more responsible” becomes, I need you to remember to put gas in the car before you return it to me.

3 Be positive – again, this doesn’t mean what you think – it merely means describing the behavior you want to see rather than the behavior you don’t want to see. Describe things in the positive. This will help with defensiveness. So instead of “stop going over your screen limits” it’s “please stick to our screen limits”.

4 Label your feelings – describe your emotions regarding the issue you’re discussing in a non-accusatory manner. I’d add that the best way to do this is with “I statements” – I feel really frustrated when you come home so late, rather than “you frustrate the heck out of me by missing curfew every time.” Remember that you cause your own emotions by the way you interpret what’s going on around you – no one else causes your feelings.

5 Offer and understanding statement – similar to validating and empathizing, say something that lets them know you get it, “I know how much you want to be with your friends right now – I get that it’s annoying to have to leave to come home”.

6 Take partial responsibility – this is a biggie and one some people may have a problem with. But as they point out, sharing even just a fraction of the responsibility for an issue does help decrease defensiveness and promotes collaboration. For example, “ I know I can jump to conclusions, I can be a bit of an overreactor, I forget to tell you sometimes

7 Offer to help – this is also similar to the O in communicating with love – when you phrase something in the form of an offer it shows a willingness to help and provide non-judgmental support – like, “would it be helpful if…?” or as they suggest, “how can I help?”

The authors also discuss avoiding conversational traps – and these are extremely helpful – there are 6 of these

1 the information trap – Just trying to shove a ton of information that you feel your teen needs to know to suddenly stop doing what they’re doing…bad idea. Remember to use that information sandwich we discussed a minute ago.

2 the lecture trap – You know this one I’m sure – we all do. If I can just get my point across – even more information and instruction and shaming – that’ll work

3 the labeling trap – If you try and label your child an addict or something similar, all of your conversations will be them defending themselves and telling you they aren’t. As they say, “labels aren’t necessary for change”.

4 the blaming trap – Again, if you start blaming your child for the issue you’ll just end up in a defensive, antagonistic battle that leaves you disconnected and them not wanting to even be around you, much less listen to you.

5 the taking sides trap – conversations with your teen about this needs to be all about “being on their side”, supporting them, “we’re in this together”

6 the question-answer trap – here they’re  talking about those closed (or I call them leading) questions. Those that feel like an interrogation – with only yes or no answers. Ask questions that help keep the conversation going in a productive manner.

 

 

 

Here’s what I want you to walk away with today:

You can’t force or coerce your teen to stop using substances. You have to employ the same and similar tactics that you should be using in parenting them already.

This isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon and it involves lots of patience, self-care and practice.

• You have to view their behavior as serving a purpose for them – it makes sense in their mind – be empathetic about that
• You need to understand and stop arguing with their ambivalence – that they both want to stop and want to keep doing it
• You have to manage your own emotions about this so you can respond to them in a way that will actually help them develop the internal motivation to stop
• You have to learn to communicate with love (to listen reflectively, offer information in a sandwich, validate their experience and empathize with them
• You have to learn to communicate positively (be brief, specific, positive, label your feelings, offer an understanding statement, take partial responsibility, and offer to help

And finally (for today) you have to avoid those conversational traps (giving too much information, lecturing, labeling them, blaming them, taking sides, and asking closed questions.

Alright, that’s it for Speaking of Teens today. Next week I’ll wrap up this entire series by going over several more elements that the authors of Beyond Addiction discuss in their 20-minute guide for parents of teens: positive reinforcement, parental collaboration, and consequences. Don’t forget to hit that follow button and tune in Tuesday.

 

If you made it all the way through – thank you so much. I just can’t tell you how much it means to me to receive your emails, DMs, reviews, and comments about how the podcast has changed things for you and your teen. Words can’t express how proud that makes me – I certainly never felt that way practicing law.

If you’d like to help me help other parents like you, please share the podcast with as many people as possible. I’m so excited to be reaching thousands all over the world, but together, we can make that millions and change other people’s lives for the better. I hope you’ll help.

And if you’d like personal support, please join us in the Facebook group – the link is at the very bottom of the episode description right where you’re listening now.

And, until next time, remember to connect with your teen in some small way, each and every day.