When they were tiny, we were their everything – their world revolved around us – they counted on us for their mere survival. They lit up when we were near them, and they cried for us when we weren’t. They hung on our words and longed for more. They gave their hugs and kisses freely and accepted as many as we wanted to give.

AND we managed their entire life – from what they ate to what they wore and even who they played with. And they went along with it all, without too much fuss most of the time.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by our more limited involvement with them in this new developmental stage. Once they hit puberty, we can really feel cast aside. And because it’s much harder work to maintain our connection to them now, we can lose it if we’re not careful.

Stay with me as we discuss how you can build an even deeper emotional connection with your child during adolescence – and why it’s so important that you do.

Hi, if you’re new here, I’m Ann Coleman and this is Speaking of Teens. I’m here every Tuesday with a new episode sharing science-based insight into parenting your teen or tween. My teenage son went through a couple of really difficult years, and I really made a mess of it. After our family got back on track, I decided to learn everything I could about the science of parenting adolescents so I could help you learn what I really wish I’d known.

So, let’s talk about the why first – why do we need to maintain a deep emotional connection with our teenager? Of course, maintaining a deep connection with each of our kids is important to us because we love them and want to have a good relationship with them from now on. Connection is important for connection’s sake.

But there’s an even more important reason. That connection with our child will keep them mentally healthy and physically safe. Here’s why: as they get older, our direct influence over them necessarily wanes. We can’t pick them up and put them in the car seat and take them where we want them to go. We can’t pick them up and put them in the bed, we can’t tell them no and watch them back away from the dangerous object. At this point, all of our influence with them lies in our connection. The amount of credence they give our words, whether or not they take the advice they asked for, whether they want to please us or make us proud or trust our views and opinions.

We can’t bully our way into their brain. We can’t force them to do much of anything really. The days we could control everything they did, are long gone. So, if we want to have any influence in how they think, feel, or behave, we have to concentrate on having a strong emotional connection with them. That’s our way in – it’s our only way in. If we focus on external controls (lectures, punishment, nagging) then we not only lose our connection with them, but we fail at influencing them in any meaningful way. We fail every single time…and we lose our connection to our child, their behavior will be worse, and life will be miserable for everyone.

In other words, the connection with your teen or tween is everything – if you lose it, you lose your influence with them and things can get out of control.

Now, let’s talk about a few of the most important ways you can strengthen the connection with your teen. Some of which we’ve talked about in other episodes and some we haven’t so hang in there with me.

Accept your new role as their consultant rather than their manager. Back in episode 15 we talked about how kids begin the individuation process during early adolescence. They start seeing themselves separate and apart from us. Their world begins revolving around friends and seeking acceptance from their peers. We get shoved to the side a bit, which is just part of the process.

There are a few things to remember here that will help you as your relationship evolves.

They’re not detaching themselves from you. They just no longer need the physical closeness to you that they once did – they can leave you and go out with friends or hole up in their room and still feel secure in their relationship with you – as long as we are still there emotionally for them. Emotional closeness now takes the place of physical closeness, which is why we need to be especially on top of our emotional game.

Another thing to remember as you take on this new consultant role - They feel every bit as “adult” and you and I and they want to be treated that way. They want to be appreciated as the mature person they are, they want to be seen and heard and make their own decisions – they want their autonomy. This means talking to them and discussing rules and consequences and negotiating and coming to an agreement. Showing them their opinions matter and that this is a two-way relationship now.

As they push for more and more autonomy and we try to decide how much freedom to give them to make their own decisions, there will be conflict. The key to maintaining your connection is how you handle that conflict, which leads me to the next thing to be aware of if you want to maintain your connection - relatedness.

Relatedness, which we also discussed in episode 15, simply means that when you have any sort of conflict (when you want one thing and your teen wants another) that your teen feels totally confidant and free to state their opinion, share information - their viewpoint – their emotions –

without feeling that their relationship with you is threatened in any way - that you’ll freak out or they’ll get in trouble, be punished, be instantly shut down or brushed off or made fun of…and that you’ll be empathetic and validate their opinions, views or emotions.

If they feel perfectly comfortable to say what they need to say, you’re supporting their autonomy, your supporting their secure attachment and their connection to you.

On the other hand, if you get mad, walk away, make negative comments when they’re talking, interrupt them to correct their behavior (like don’t talk to me that way), ignore what they’re saying, dominate the conversation – all of these responses are the antithesis of relatedness and will cause a major fracture in your connection.

Related to relatedness is your ability to listen to them anytime – not just during a conflict but to listen to them when they talk to you…listen with the intent to truly understand them, listen to show them you respect them, you care, you want to understand, and  that what they have to say is more important than looking at your phone, running out the door or anything else in the world.

And, perhaps most importantly, show them that you will never, ever shut them down or punish them or be mad at them for telling you something – even if they’ve done something they shouldn’t have. This is one the THE most important things you can do to maintain your connection with them and to greatly increase the chances your kid will stay safe.

Your goal is to make sure they feel safe in confiding anything to you. That they never have to think “I can’t call at midnight tell them I’m drunk and can’t get home” “I can’t tell them my friend just took a pill and doesn’t look so good” “I can’t tell them I got stoned and I think someone sexually assaulted me”.

If you want to keep them safe, then you want them to feel safe talking to you about anything. Remember that. Simply telling them they can talk to you about anything will not prove that. If you are constantly concerned with consequences or you’re helicoptering or parenting them in an authoritarian way, they will not believe you if you tell them they can talk to you – they will KNOW they can’t talk to you without getting in trouble.

Which leads me to the next way to maintain your connection – practicing emotion coaching. We talked about emotion coaching back in episode 6. Emotion coaching is a way of allowing your kid to experience their unpleasant emotions in a safe and validating environment while teaching them how to recognize and regulate their emotions and problem solve.

Emotion coaching is a way of responding to their unpleasant emotions like anger, fear, sadness, without causing an argument, punishing them for the emotion, or trying to shut it down.

It’s a way of looking at these emotional moments as an opportunity to deepen your connection with them (rather than dreading it or wanting it to stop). You’re helping them build emotional awareness and regulation by strengthening the synapses in their frontal lobe to be calmer in the face of these unpleasant emotions.

The mantra we talked about in episode 6 when we discussed emotion coaching, is connection before correction.

You want to help them calm down so if you do need to address a behavior, you can do that afterwards. And to help them calm down, you need to stay calm as well, listen to them, try to figure out and understand what’s going on - you may need to ask what we call curiosity questions to do that. Not, “why did you do that?” or “why do you feel this way?” but questions that will help you figure that out. And you acknowledge or validate their emotions by reflecting back with your own words, once you get it (“I understand how hurt you must feel right now. It sucks when a friend leaves you out.”). And you help them solve their own problem, give them guidance, or nudge them without giving them unsolicited advice or fixing the problem for them.

Now, all of this takes a lot of patience and practice and possibly a big shift in your mindset. But it’s absolutely amazing how much more connected you and your child will be and how much calmer your home will be. So go back and listen to episode 6 and I’ll link to a couple of books in the show notes that you may want to check out as well.

And while we’re on the subject of communication, something else that will help you strengthen your connection is to make opportunities for them to open up and talk to you. In Michael Riera’s book, Staying Connected to Your Teenager, he brings up a point that many of us have never considered; teens are more open and willing to talk late at night.

If you haven’t downloaded my e-book about teen sleep, you should – I’ll link to it in the show notes. But, in a nutshell, teens are programmed not to get sleepy for a couple of hours later than they did as kids. That’s one reason they’re up until all hours, wide awake. And what Dr. Riera has realized is that teens and tweens are much more likely to open up, talk to us, ask us questions

He says there are 3 reasons for this: first, they’ve had time to think about their day, mull things over in their mind and now they have time to talk about it

Second, their defenses are down late at night – they’re not so hypervigilant so they’re more likely to share things they wouldn’t dare talk about in the morning or after school or any other time.

And third, there’s no competition for their time late at night – they’re not as likely to be Snapchatting, friends aren’t dropping by and they’re not getting ready to go out somewhere.

So, during these late-night hours when they’re not sleeping, and when we usually are, that’s when they’re primed to talk.

He tells of one mom who would set her clock to 1 am (after going to bed at 10), drag herself out of bed and pretend to be unable to sleep. She’d sit down with her daughter on the sofa and watch whatever she’s watch and then maybe ask a question during the commercials like “how’s it going with you?” and then she would sit and wait for the potential flood. And I’m sure sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t but if you give it time and don’t push, I think you’ll be surprised.

Remember relatedness and emotion coaching when this does happen – in other words, listen, don’t react, use your empathy, don’t dive in with advise or lots of questions, just be with them and soak it up, acknowledging and validating, letting them know you get it and want to be nowhere else but right there with them in that moment.

The key is to make them feel comfortable to keep on sharing with you. If you make a wrong move here, you won’t get any more of the good stuff. Don’t act shocked, don’t try to get details they haven’t shared, don’t ask names or dates, don’t make them sorry they opened up.

Dr. Riera reminds us that this is a time when teens are better able to reflect and think and that we should plan accordingly to make ourselves available late at night if we want them to talk to us – if we want to be close to them. And I think that’s excellent advice. I’m a night owl anyway, so I was always up late when my son couldn’t sleep. And thinking back, I do know that’s when we had the best talks. That’s when he opened up about his anxiety and depression, and before that, it was when he opened up about anything and everything going on in his life. If I’d been an early-to-bed person, I would have missed those moments with him.

I actually, somewhat selfishly, took him on midnight Krispy Kreme Donut runs on many occasions. And it was just far enough from the house to get in a good 20-minute conversation. We also were known to visit Wendy’s for a Frosty now and then as well. So, I whole-heartedly endorse this idea of being available when it’s best for them – it’s worth losing a little sleep for.

But, as Dr. Riera emphasizes in his book, your teenager will probably regret sharing so much when they realize what they’ve done the next day. This is when it’s so important to make sure you show them that it was a good idea – that you’re not going to make a move on them to talk about the issue more or try to rehash it or start another big emotional dump tonight.

In other words, again, don’t make them regret opening up to you. Don’t push it. Accept what you got and keep your mouth shut about it. Don’t gush on them about it, don’t remind them of it, don’t bring it up. If you’re chill about it, it will happen again but if you’re not – forget it – it was one and done.

Similar to the late-night talk, Dr. Riera suggests – a night out at a fancy restaurant. He says there’s something about getting dressed up and being out of their element and being expected to act more like an adult that, before the night is over, it helps them open up like just another mature adult.

Along these same lines, he says life transitions are always a time to watch out for as well. Like maybe graduation from 8^th grade or high school or beginning and end of the school year, start or end of a holiday or a family trip. Just keep an open mind and make yourself available for these transition times.

Another great time to talk is in the car – and I’ve mentioned this several times. In the car you’re usually sitting side by side, which is great because teens talk more when they don’t have to look you in the eye. And if you volunteer to carpool, you’ll also overhear some great conversations – that’s one really good reason to be the mom that hauls the kids around. You can find out all sorts of things in the car. And after the other kids jump out, the conversation between you and your teen can continue if you play your cards right and let them take the lead.

Speaking of the car, I cannot remember who it was I was listening to recently on a podcast, but it was a lady who said she had a rule (and I think this is brilliant) – her kids could say anything to her in the car and she would never bring it back up or prod them about it or get mad or punish them. She said it made the time in the car on the way to school and back home magical. She said she has learned so much about them and that they treasure these car rides now. And she sticks to it.

Once they leave the safety of the vehicle, she never speaks of it again. So, this gives an opportunity for that relatedness we talked about – they have a guarantee that she won’t get mad, they won’t be punished or judged, and they don’t have to talk about it again if they don’t want to. Now that’s a smart mom.

Another way to make sure you stay connected is to “Fill their emotional bank account”. In his book, Parenting the New Teen in the Age of Anxiety, Dr. John Duffy talks about what he calls, the emotional bank account, which he feels is the key to effective parenting. He says the balance in the emotional bank account indicates how much good will has been accumulated in a relationship.

For instance, when you have a solidly positive balance in your emotional bank account – it’s in the black - you and your teen both feel good about your relationship and things don’t easily throw it off course.

However, if your emotional bank account has a negative balance - it’s in the red - it’s likely you or your child is feeling unheard, misunderstood, or disconnected, and there will be more conflict in the relationship.

Of course, the balance in your emotional bank account changes with deposits and withdrawals – that is, positive and negative interactions – positive interactions fill the account and negative deplete it.

This is basically the same premise as the magic ratio that John Gottman and Robert Levenson discovered from their study of married couples decades ago. They discovered that in a happy and stable marriage there are 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative interaction.

This magic ratio is presumed to be applicable to all relationships including parents and children. So, in other words, we can assume that between parents and kids, it takes 5 positive interactions to every one negative interaction to tip the scales in the positive direction (or, to put the emotional bank account in the black).

However, other research has found that “negative words” have a much more profound impact on adolescents than positive words, which could actually mean that the magic ratio for a good relationship with our teens is even more than 5 positives to 1 negative – it could be 8 positives or 10 or 20 positives. Which means we have to be super careful to watch those negative interactions and pump up the positive as much as possible.

Positive interactions would be all those included in the big picture of what we’ve been discussing; supporting their autonomy by accepting your role as consultant rather than manager, providing relatedness by listening and allowing them to tell you things and have an opinion without freaking out, emotion coaching (being empathetic and listening when they’re upset, reflecting back what you hear, while validating their emotions, and helping them name them, and helping them learn how to problem solve), providing opportunities for them to open up to you (even if it’s not at the most convenient time).

And then there are the little things that add up: joking around with them, giving them a hug, praising them for working hard on something or for being a good brother or sister, having a positive conversation about something, watching a football game together or playing a game. If you focus on providing those positive moments and skipping the negative, you’d be amazed at the difference it can make in your connection.

So, what counts as a “negative interaction” with your teen? Invalidating their emotions, not listening to them, not considering their opinions, or supporting their autonomy, freaking out when they tell you something, jumping in with advice without being asked, punishing them, trying to control their every move, criticizing them, judging them, nagging, lecturing, arguing, yelling, nitpicking and on and on.

 

I can’t stress enough how important it is to your connection with your teen that you watch those negative interactions – you can’t stamp them out 100% but in an effort to do so, you might reach 80%. Again, research has shown that teens are much more sensitive to negative words than adults or children. And when you consider this magic ratio theory on top of that, it means that one negative interaction with your teen can set you back in this emotional bank account by a huge amount.

One of the main reasons for this is that an adolescent’s amygdala is extremely reactive. And just as a refresher, the amygdala is the part of the brain associated with emotions – mainly strong negative emotions. It’s the part of the brain that controls our fight or flight response. It’s always on the lookout for threats in our environment and automatically alerts us to those threats and sends neurochemicals throughout our brain and body causing the rapid heartbeat, tremors, hot face, all those things you feel when you get startled by something.

And long story short – the amygdala in an adolescent’s brain is extremely sensitive and makes mistakes about what is “threatening”. In other words, it likes to make mountains out of molehills.

For instance, it’s been scientifically shown that just hearing their mother’s voice can engage an adolescent’s amygdala and cause an automatic negative reaction like fear or anger! That’s why teens and tweens are so super sensitive about everything we say to them. That’s why they fly off the handle and get upset over nothing. That’s why they get so easily annoyed and frustrated about things that make no sense to us.

And the really bad thing about this is that the more the amygdala is engaged, the more it will keep on engaging – it gets primed for it - and this is what can cause an anxiety disorder…something we absolutely do not want for our kids.

So, if you want to make sure your child stays mentally healthy, please, please work on having fewer negative encounters – as few as possible. And I know it’s not reasonable to even think we can avoid all negativity with our kids – we’d have to be a saint and they’d all have to be angels – and that’s not the case. But you can figure out the things that trigger their amygdala. For example, knowing what I know now, I would try my best not to yell for my teen from another room in the house. I did this all the time and I know it triggered him but I guess it was just me being lazy. The word No is especially triggering for most adolescents –

I can’t remember now which episode it was where I mentioned this - but work on learning to soften the blow before saying no – give them options or negotiate. And every teen has particular things that trigger their amygdala, you just need to figure out what they are and do your best to work around them. And I know – I was one of these people who tended to be like “tough, he needs to get over it!” – yeah, as if it were that easy. It is not. You’re the one with the fully developed prefrontal cortex – you’re the one that can make good decisions to work around your child’s current deficits – do it for their sake.

Another way to work on your connection because it will help you decrease the negative interactions – be more empathetic. You can definitely make a huge dent in the negativity if you work on your reactions to their behavior, your emotions, and your general attitude.

What I mean by general attitude is having an attitude of empathy and compassion for what your teen is going through. And trust me, no matter how put together they seem, they are going through something.

Even the “golden child” feels pressure to stay golden and pressure to be perfect and not to disappoint. I can’t stress enough how all teens and tweens go through so much that we don’t see and they don’t tell us about. Of course, the easier we make it for them to tell us the better - and that’s what we’ve been talking about in this episode. But we’ll still be lucky to get 65% of what they’re actually thinking and feeling. So, your empathy is essential to a strong connection with them.

If you lack empathy for them, you will not be able to hide it – your lack of empathy will lead to arguments, acting out, and total disconnection with your teen.

You have to be able to feel empathy for them when they’re at their worst. If you think they’re just being manipulative when they have an emotional meltdown, if you think they could behave better “if they wanted to”, if you think they’re acting like a spoiled Bratt, if you think they’re disrespecting you and should “just do what you say”, you’re going to cause a major disconnect between you and your child.

You have to understand that their brain is not like yours. They don’t have the ability to think through things like you do, they don’t have the ability to calm themselves down the way you do, they don’t have the ability to use self-control or make good choices, the way you do. It’s not a matter of not wanting to – it’s a matter of not having the skills because their brain is not finished programming yet.

Imagine if you got mad at them when they were 6 months old because they couldn’t walk yet. Imagine getting mad at them when they were 3 because they couldn’t read yet. Imagine getting mad at them in first grade because they couldn’t do algebra yet. It’s the same exact thing. You can’t get mad at them for being unable to control their thoughts, emotions, and behavior yet. Their brain is in flux –

rearranging synapses and dopamine flooding – they can’t do anything about that. But you can help them do better by having empathy for what they’re going through so you can change your responses and your behavior to help them do the same.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to understand how their brain works. If you haven’t listened to episodes 3 and 4, you should. And to back it up, download my ebook, the Challenging Adolescent Brain, I’ll link to it in the show notes.

I make a big deal about this because it would have made all the difference in the world to me when we were struggling with our teenage son when he was 16 and 17. I took his behavior as a personal afront. I was not going to allow any child of mine to act the way he was acting. And you know where that got us? A psychiatric hospital stay and 2 months in a residential treatment program on the other side of the country. I’m telling you, if I had known then what I know now, I would have behaved differently, and I would not have exacerbated his anxiety.  When they say knowledge is power – it’s true. The other episode you need to listen to is episode 8 – all about your emotions and download my guide; Emotional Awareness Strategies – I’ll link to it in the show notes as well.

The last thing I want to say about connecting with your teen – and this is from the heart

Lighten Up. If I could go back and give myself this piece of advice…wow. As they say, hindsight is 20/20 and I’ve now had almost 4 years since my son turned 18 and I began this massive undertaking of self-education – and 2 years since he officially left home. And I can tell you that I was worried about so many things that just don’t matter. So many things that we’re concerned with and fuss over and nag about, just do not make any difference in the grand scheme of life.

Sure, we want them to look nice, make good grades, not get in trouble, clean their room, do their homework, hang up their towel, put their dishes in the sink…but I want you to take a minute and put things in perspective – real perspective.

If someone told you that you had only the rest of this week to spend with your teenager and at the end of the week, they were being whisked away for the next 10 years, how would you spend the rest of the week with them? What would you be concerned about? What would you focus on? Would you care what they wore? Would you care if they’d washed their hair? Would you care if their bedroom was neat? Would you care about grades?

Or would you spend that time trying to see them, understand them and appreciate them for who they are as a human being? Understand what they want out of life and what really matters to them…What would you focus on the rest of this week? What would you be able to let go of? What could you lighten up on?

Well, as the mom of a soon to be 22-year-old, who lives 1400 miles away, I can tell you that I wish I had the rest of the week with mine. I wish I could go back and not nag him about the tacky necklace he wanted to wear. I wish I could go back and say to hell with the messy bedroom, to hell with the grades.

If I could go back and relieve just a 10^th of that pressure on him and free up time for us to connect more, I would do it in a skinny minute. If I could go back and try to see him for who he truly was and wanted to be, I’d do it. If I could go back and stop trying to mold him into someone he wasn’t, I’d do it. If I could go back and tell myself to lighten the hell up, I’d do it.

So, this is my gift to you – Lighten the hell up mama. Will nagging about cleaning that bedroom make it clean? And does it matter if it’s clean? Who sees it? Who cares who sees it? Is it her dream to go to that elite college or is it yours? Is it his dream to get a baseball scholarship or is it yours? Is it her idea to take those AP classes or is it yours?

If you’re not ready to admit it, I’ll do it for you – most of the shit we’re so concerned about is because we’re worried about how it looks to other people. What will they think if our kid wears those clothes? What will they think if they join that club?

What will they think if they don’t play that sport? What will they think if they go to that college? What will they think if I don’t make them do this or that or they get in trouble and on and on. And thinking this way, causes us to put unnecessary pressure on our kids and ourselves. It’s ridiculous if you truly stop to think about it.

And all this pressure causes a major disconnect with our kids. We fuss and nag and lecture and try to control. And while we’re busy doing this, with each passing day, our kid gets closer to leaving home, going off to college or to work or halfway across the country to be a snowboarder! Yes, they’re still our kids, yes, we still see them and still have a relationship, but once they leave the confines of your home, you can’t just walk in and tell them goodnight or give them a random hug or leave them a post it on their mirror.

So, I’m telling you in the nicest way I know how – please lighten up! Forget all the crap that doesn’t matter and work on your relationship with your child! All this other stuff will not matter in a few years – but your relationship is forever and while they’re there in your home living with you, that’s what you need to concentrate on.

So, just to recap, these are the most important things to work on if you want a true connection with your teen – one that will allow you to influence them even when you’re not around.

Accept your role as their consultant rather than their manager. Support their autonomy and stop trying to control them

Work on the relatedness factor – make sure they feel comfortable being open and honest and sharing their opinions with you – learn to ask for those opinions and take them into consideration and learn to squash that freak out

Practice emotion coaching, listening, reflecting, helping them name their emotions and solve their own problems

Make opportunities for them to open up to you – learn to set an alarm and get up late to hang out with them or take a midnight stroll or car ride – you’ll be amazed at what you’ll learn

Fill their emotional bank account – keep those negative interactions to a minimum and fill them up with positive interactions

And finally – Lighten up. Life really is too short to let these years of your child’s adolescence roll by while you’re concerned about all the things that don’t really matter. There’s a song by Blues Traveler and the chorus is, “No, it won’t mean a thing in a hundred years”. Well, I can tell you, it won’t matter in 10 years, it won’t matter in 2 years…and it really doesn’t matter right now.

Speaking of Teens is the official podcast of neurogility.com, an organization I started to educate other moms and adolescents about emotional intelligence.

Go to neurogility.com/herewego to find all our free parenting guides and e-books to help you learn more about your teen and how to parent them in a way that increases their emotional well-being and keeps them safe.

You can go to neurogility.com/26 for this episode’s show notes and transcript.

Thank you SO much for listening – if you have a minute, I’ll love it if you pass it along to another mom who could benefit! That’s why I’m here so let’s spread the love.

If you have any questions or feedback please reach out at acoleman@neurogility.com – I LOVE hearing from you so much.

Have a great week - I’ll see you back here next Tuesday!