I wasn’t scheduled to record an episode this week, but I wanted to do something for you and explain it here. So, we’ll just call this a mini episode – a minisode.

We celebrated our son’s 22^nd birthday last week…over the phone…1,400 miles apart. This is the second year in a row we haven’t been with him on his birthday. For the first 20 years, we were able to have our annual family hug at exactly 10:20 pm, the moment he came into this world, via his birth mother.

That was an emotional day for everyone. We’d gotten to know her and her family over the course of the past 4 months and were there with all of them for 12 hours that Saturday as we patiently waited for our beautiful boy to show up. Of course, we were thrilled to finally meet our baby, but at the same time it was heartbreaking to see her and know the anguish she felt in making this decision.

And I can honestly say that day sort of set the tone for our emotional life together – me and my son. We’re both a lot. My husband being the laid-back calm, soft spoken, never upset, never flustered type…but my son and I both always seemed to be teetering on the brink. He’s always been anxious; I’ve always been anxious and both of us have ADHD. So, big emotions have always been front and center…BUT, neither of us knew anything about our emotions or how to manage them.

I’m Ann Coleman, and this is Speaking of Teens.

If you’re a regular listener, you’ve heard me talk about the long road I took to become the parent I wanted to be. And you’ve heard me talk about how our thoughts, emotions and behavior are key in how our kids think, feel, and behave. No, it’s not our fault every time they have a meltdown or do something totally off the wall. There’s temperament, genetics, neurobiology, present circumstances, and other factors at play. But to ignore our role in our teens’ mental and emotional health and their behavior, would be ridiculous.

As I’ve said in the past, the scientific data has shown for years that a kinder, gentler, more emotionally intelligent way of parenting is best for our kids – all the way around – without question. As parents, we need to emphasize empathy, emotional connection, kindness, and autonomy along with enforcing appropriate boundaries.

It’s time to banish any thoughts in our society that raising kids is about obedience, punishment, forced respect, and control. The scientific evidence is totally to the contrary.

But, changing our parenting style, especially when we’ve been doing something for 10, 13, 16 years (in my case 17 years) – it’s not easy. For me, it was like learning a new language. And on top of that I was learning to recognize my emotions and figure out how to regulate them, for the first time in my life.

We’re human and it can seem like our mind, our emotions and our behavior are just on autopilot. They do what they do and we’re just along for the ride. Or at least that’s how I felt, and you may be much more emotionally intelligent than I was…or maybe you’re kind of lost too.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed trying to pull it all together and parent your teen the way you want to, I promise there’s hope. We can change our mindset, we can challenge our thoughts, we can recognize our emotions and where they come from, we can regulate our emotions…we just have to want to bad enough and be willing to work at it hard enough.

And other than wanting my son to begin with, I’d never wanted anything as much as I wanted to change our relationship and help him with his emotions and behavior. I was desperate to help him. I would have done anything. So, when I finally realized that I was a big part of the problem, I started the work.

And I’ll tell you, at first, I was so nervous, I couldn’t think in the moment of what to do or say – like when he was falling apart, or I needed to discuss something touchy with him. I was still just as anxious as I had been before. Maybe more so because now I knew I needed to change and I knew I needed to regulate my emotions and to say things a certain way – where before, I ran full speed ahead based on my emotions – fear took the lead.

But gradually, as I learned that I could take a breath and pause to think – that nothing needed to happen instantly – nothing was going to happen if I needed to take a break to decide how to handle myself - I started figuring it out. And I could see the changes in our communication immediately – they may have been subtle to someone on the outside looking in, but to us they were huge.

We had a lot of bad habits to shake off. And at first, I think my son was a little confused by my about face - and if I’m honest, probably a little suspicious or skeptical of what I was trying to do.

But as I read more and learned more, I explained more to my son – just in small bites – just what I thought would help him make sense of his own feelings and behavior. In a matter of weeks, things had changed dramatically.

Now, obviously, everyone’s situation is different. Your child may not have anxiety or ADHD or an intense temperament. And hopefully you don’t have ADHD or anxiety like I do. Your child’s issues, your issues might be completely different. But the basics for parenting teens and tweens – communicating and connecting with them - are the same.

The problem is, if you’re anywhere close to where I was and you need to totally change your parenting approach, it can seem daunting - overwhelming. That new language to learn. What do I say now, what is it I’m supposed to do when this happens. Oh my gosh, now what?

So, I thought maybe it would help you to have a bit of a “cheat sheet” for what to remember in certain situations, what to say and what to do. You can keep it on your refrigerator and let your child see you’re working on this – or you could keep it in your closet or a drawer. You can literally grab it and look at in the heat of the moment when you can’t think straight! This would have helped me so much so I thought it would help you. It’s simply one page divided into quadrants and each one contains sort of a bullet list of reminders for different situations: with what to do when they’re emotional, what to do when you’re feeling emotional, what to do when they’ve made a mistake or broken a rule and what to do when they want to do something.

You’ll see the main theme for the whole cheat sheet is Connection – because Connection is the whole them for parenting – your child – your adolescent.

Connecting when they’re out of sorts or having an emotional moment, connecting when they’ve made a mistake, broken a rule, or they’ve asked to do something and you’re feeling emotional. Having a deep emotional connection to your teen (rather than you trying to control their behavior) is what will help them make good decisions and stay safe – as well as stay mentally healthy. Which is obviously what you want.

Your close connection can prevent them from doing whatever they can to avoid you or keep things from you. Now, I’m not saying they’re going to share their whole world with you because of this connection – they certainly won’t. But they are much more likely to keep you more in the loop, to ask for your advice, to confide in you, to trust you over a friend, to hear your voice in their head when they are in a tough situation …or even text you when they’re in a tough situation.

You won’t be able to lecture them into doing what you want. You won’t be able to punish them into staying safe or making good decisions. But if you have that connection, they’re more likely to keep you close enough that you can continue to influence and guide them. Go back and listen to episode 26 if you need more of an in-depth reminder about how to maintain that connection.

The cheat sheet is divided into 4 quadrants - I’ll explain each of these and if you need to you can come back and listen to this after you’ve downloaded it and have it in front of you.

The first quadrant – what to do when they’re emotional, basically reminds you of the elements of emotion coaching. What to tell yourself and what to say and what not to say. You can go back and listen again to episode 6 for a refresher. Buying the book, No Drama Discipline by Sigel and Bryson wouldn’t hurt if you’re having a problem with this (it’s for parents of young kids but if you’re like I was and starting at square 1, it’s very helpful). There’s also How to Raise an Emotionally Intelligent Child by Gottman, who actually did the research that discovered emotion coaching. I’ll link to both in the show notes again.

The second quadrant – what to do when you’re feeling emotional gives you some tips and reminders before you blow your top. If you can stop and look at it – even that will help you calm down. But this cheat sheet helps you remember that being able to regulate your own emotions is paramount to the connection with your child.  And I know – I say “child” often but whether their 10 or 22, they’re still our child - so you know who I’m talking about! In this quadrant I give you some questions to ask yourself, things to do – some self-talk. It will help.

In the third quadrant is a list of things to remind yourself of when they’ve gotten in trouble, made a mistake, broken a rule. You’ll want to remind yourself that all kids want to do good – they don’t want to give you a hard time, they’re not trying to manipulate you. If they’ve done something wrong, it’s because their brain is incapable of helping them in that moment.  You’ll want to examine whether there are natural consequences for what they’ve done or not done. For example, if they didn’t wash their clothes over the weekend, the natural consequences are they’ll have no clean clothes this week (or they’ll wash them during the week). There’s no need to take their phone away or do anything else – they’re learning the hard way. If you’ve worked with them already to come up with the rule and the consequences for breaking it, then you’re only role is to enforce it consistently - and if something happens that you’ve not discussed with them before (as it often does) then now is the time to discuss what will happen. But there’s a lot to this, so go back and listen to episode 22 if you need a refresher on the details (and I listed resources in the show notes there as well). It’s critical that you get this right because there can be a fine line between consequences and punishment, and you do not want to veer into punishment territory because it will definitely impact your connection.

In the last quadrant I gave you some things to remember about setting rules with them or for making decisions about things on the fly, when you haven’t discussed it before (like that weekend ski trip with someone’s 21-year-old brother as chaperone or a request to dye their hair magenta). Remember back in episode 16 when we talked about the categories of issues that fall under our purview as parents (to be discussed in advance with them still) and that anything else should be in their domain. Go back and listen to that episode for the details.

Now, again, I made this cheat sheet for you because I could have really used one, at least in the beginning. So, I hope it helps just a little to keep you on track with your parenting goals. You can go to neurogility.com/31 and I’ll have the link there for you.

And remember, if you don’t have them all, download the guides and e-books I’ve put together for you – you can find them all at neurogility.com/herewego.

I’ll be back on the 27^th with a full episode – so until then, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah – enjoy the holidays with your family.

See you soon!