Ann: You’re someone who wants to get this teen parenting thing right. You’re listening to this podcast – you likely listen to other podcasts, read books and blogs.

Maybe, you’ve realized something’s not working. Things aren’t going as you’d expected, or you just don’t feel right about the relationship with your teen or with their behavior or with your parenting abilities.

And you may have even determined that you’ve made some mistakes. Possibly, some pretty big mistakes.

If that’s the case, you’re certainly in good company because we’ve all made mistakes, will continue to make mistakes – just like our parents and grandparents and great, great, great grandparents.

This is Speaking of Teens, the podcast that helps parents who are struggling to find peace and connection with their teens. My name is Ann Coleman; I’m an attorney turned parent educator and a mom who’s been there - and I want to help you build a stronger relationship and decrease the conflict with your son or daughter, so you can help them grow into the young adult they’re meant to be.

On today’s episode you’re going to hear a conversation I recently had with Laurie A. Couture.

Laurie is a licensed mental health counselor, a child trauma specialist, a child advocate and the mother of a son she adopted at age 11…who’d been in the foster care system, had experienced major trauma and was diagnosed with mild Autism Spectrum Disorder, Reactive Attachment disorder, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, and severe PTSD.

His name was Brycen, and at the age of 23, her beautiful son ended his life.

Laurie spent 6 years writing the book, Nurturing and Empowering Our Sons, an incredibly interesting, compelling and thoroughly researched book, that I’ll be using as a reference for years to come.

You will hear in Laurie’s voice that she is a passionate advocate of attachment parenting. She strongly feels that most of the suffering our kids, teens and young adults experience today is born of our industrialized society.

A society that places unreasonable expectations on our youth – whether it’s through our educational institutions or within the family. Too many young people – and according to Laurie, especially boys – are being lost to mental and emotional disorders, and even suicide, because our society is literally toxic for them.

She says boys are the “canaries in the coal mine of society” and their developmental delays, behavioral addictions, aggression, anxiety, learning issues and all the rest, are a result of their “natural alarms” that signal “distressing conditions in their environment, insecure attachment, or developmental trauma.”

What do we do about this? Laurie says the answer is simple; restore homeostasis – we meet their developmental and their attachment needs – we pay attention to what is natural and intended.

And for that, we have to face facts: most of us, for generations, have been doing this all wrong. Those great, great, great grandparents I mentioned - well, unfortunately they’re still influencing how we parent our kids – the old-fashioned way – the authoritarian way. I asked Laurie to start here.

Laurie: Well, unfortunately, if we use an authoritarian approach with our children, we're just going to get more of the acting out. And that is because when children are acting out, whether they're teens or whether they're younger, but especially the adolescents, because they're now coming into the formal operation stage, their brains are changing, they're...they're figuring things out more, you can't pull the wool over their eyes anymore, they can sense any ingenuine intentions, kids will act out when their needs aren't met. And so when parents think that they're gonna stick it to their teen and they're gonna enforce and they're gonna push and they're gonna punish, then what ends up happening is you just continue to damage the relationship.

And you guarantee continued acting out behavior. Unfortunately, some parents will do that to the point where they pulverize the child into total submission. And while it looks like the child is obeying, then you are setting that child up for severe mental health issues in the future. So I am telling you the best way to parent your teen is to do it with compassion, with empathy, and with connection. And you do that by understanding the human attachment cycle, which I can go into if you'd like me to, Anne.

Ann: Please do because that's something that we've touched on a little bit in kind of a roundabout way but never have gotten into attachment as far as the science goes and what it says about parenting teens. So please do.

Laurie: Sure. So a lot of times we hear about attachment as being only relevant in those first three years of life, but attachment parenting is something that needs to happen to the completion of adolescence into the early twenties. I mean, ideally we always will it be attachment parenting, but it absolutely is necessary for the duration of the child's childhood, which is, you know, at least 21 years and the brain doesn't finish developing until age 26. So adolescents really lasts well beyond legal adulthood.

But basically, in a nutshell, I'll describe it for you, picture a circle. At the top of the circle, we're going to imagine that is the point in the circle where the child has a need. So your teen has some sort of need, either emotional need, a physical need, a physiological need, a social need, a creative need, something. But usually it's an emotional need or a physiological need.

The second part of the circle over on the next quadrant over on the right, picture that being the child expresses the need. Now babies, we know, will cry when they have a need. Younger kids might whine or point or tell you teens are a little harder to decipher their needs, they may act out or they may withdraw or their personality starts to change. But one way or another, they will let you know their needs.

And then at the bottom quadrant of the circle, picture that as the only time and only place in this attachment cycle where the parent can actually intervene. And that is the parent meets the need with sensitivity as soon as possible.

Now over on the left quadrant, you have the result of that, which is the child now feels homeostasis. All systems inside and out feel good. They feel trusting, they feel calm, they feel relieved, they know you have their back, and they feel just good. And what that leads to is called secure attachment when they associate that with you.

So again, picture that as a cycle. Child has a need, child expresses the need, parent meets the need, child feels homeostasis. Now unfortunately, what is typical that parents do with kids, especially with their teens, this is especially compounded in the teens, and teachers are notorious for this as well, is down on that lower bottom quadrant where the parent needs to meet the need with sensitivity. They don't.

They're frustrated with their teen. They don't look into the need. They focus more on what the parent wants, what's convenient, what the school wants, what the teacher wants, what they believe is the rule, what must be done according to the adult's interpretation. So the child's needs go out the door for the parent's convenience or wants. And what happens is when the parent...does not, when the parent denies, delays, or does not meet the need, then over on that left quadrant, the child doesn't feel homeostasis. The child feels dysregulated. So the teen was already out of homeostasis because he or she had the need, expressed the need, parent didn't meet the need. So now the child becomes more dysregulated and feels mistrusting, anger, rage, depression, panic, mistrust, all of those things, over and over.

And they associate that with the parent, and that is what's called insecure or disrupted attachment. Now here's where it gets complex though, because then when the next need comes around, now you're picturing that a circle. In my book, I've, Nurturing Empowering Our Sons, I've got a great visual of this, so it shows it. But if you picture this as a circle, when that next need comes along, well, that other need didn't just evaporate into the air and somehow magically meet itself.

So the next need is going to smash into the next one. And then what happens is like picture it being like a train wreck, a twisted train wrecks, just fizzling and burning and simmering. And now that's what happens over time. Now, what I find is that a lot of parents have problems with their teens because when their child was a baby or a toddler or they were a young child or a preteen, the parent was very sarcastic with them or they didn't meet their needs or they thought they knew what their needs were but they didn't, they put them in school early, daycare, and then they start seeing the acting out in the teen years. So a lot of times, teen acting out is the result of earlier disruption of attachment and even trauma in those first three years of life.

It's so common as to be almost the norm. Those first three years really form the foundation. And so if a parent doesn't have time to listen to the little toddler's questions and answer them and tells them to be quiet and is sarcastic and staring at your phone.

And when they look at you, they say, yeah, you're a kid. Well then, when they're teens, they don't say anything. The kids will end up giving back what they've seen.

Well then when they're teens, they're not going to give you the time of day. The teens will end up giving out, giving back what they received.

If there's a later trauma that definitely will affect the adolescent's relationship with the parent as well. Anything like corporal punishment, anything like physical, sexual, emotional abuse, neglect, family strife, alienation, dysfunctional divorce, situation between the parents, all of those things.

And parents just are not aware of how devastating daycare and schooling can be to young children. That could be a whole nother show right there on how that disrupts attachment.

Ann: Oh my gosh. Okay. So I have so many questions. I've been making notes. All right. So, because I can hear, you know, most of the, most of the parents like me, we're sitting here now going through our heads. Oh my God, what did I do to my kid when they were a toddler? You know, what, what did I do? What did I say? What need did I not meet? What am I, what, what did I do wrong?

 

Laurie: Oh, well, I want to, I just want to say, I just want to say right out, this is not about blame. Because if we were to blame ourselves, then we have to go back hundreds of generations and blame, blame back to the, back to the dawn of agriculture. Because we, we basically parent better than our parents did. But everybody, you know, we all have suffered traumas. Our parents have suffered traumas, our great grandparents and great grands all have suffered traumas.

We do the best we can. However, it's not good enough to say, okay, I did my best, I'm not gonna change now. No, now that you know the information, well, now is when we take responsibility. It's painful, it hurts, oh my God, does it hurt? We've all made mistakes with our child. But the key is it's not about blame because then what you're doing is you're putting the focus on you and not on your child's needs. And what we need to do is we need to acknowledge, feel, take the responsibility, and then put our focus on the needs of our son or daughter.

Ann: Yeah, yeah. You know, I think one of the things that struck me, what you were talking about is, and I just know, I hear the question in my own head, you know, well, what need is it that our teenager has when they're throwing a fit and they're mad because they can't go to a party or they're mad at us because we won't give them money or, you know, they want this pair of jeans and they, you know, we can't afford the pair of jeans or whatever it is.

I mean, I can just hear people going, well my gosh, if we give them everything they want, which is what I want you to distinguish here between wants and needs. Yeah, yeah, so please help us understand that a little bit better.

Laurie: Well, that's not a need. No, yeah, yeah. Well, those scenarios that you just described are really based and rooted in the first three years of life, needs that weren't met for connection, needs that weren't met for play, needs that weren't met for belonging. And my books get into what those needs are because in industrialized cultures, which we are all from, we are told to parent and educate a certain way that actually is diametrically opposed to the needs the children have.

So it's important to understand, like you said, that wants are not needs. The child does not have to go to the party. There's no need to go to a party or have designer jeans or sneakers. Really what's under that is something else. And so in that moment, the best thing to do is try to empathize with the child and try to get inside of their shoes and their head and understand what is going on. But really that is a relationship issue because children don't start you know teenagers don't scream and yell for those things the log jake's the latest i phone uh... because on the inside there's a big hole there and they're trying to fill it they're trying to fill the void with experiences with objects novelty and so it's important that we put on our Sherlock Holmes hats and understand where did we get off of that cycle and then try to get on it. So in like an emergency situation, the child's having a total, your teen's having a total meltdown, well, right there, empathize, try to just hear them out and listen to them. It doesn't mean that you're gonna give in, so to speak, if you feel that this party, for example, is inappropriate. However, the way you respond to your teen, says such a... such a... it speaks volumes to your relationship with them. If you just want to cut them down and shut them up and make them do what you say, well then that's the... that is the pattern that you've been setting for them. And they are finding these petty things that are currently important to them in the moment, and they might seem so desperate because teens are so dramatic, but underneath those are the real issues.

Because I have worked with teens that have been attachment parented since birth and they do not act that way because they have a relationship with their parent uh... so here's an example so for example if you have a child that their needs have been met since birth so when they cried as babies they were immediately held or they didn't even have to get to the point of crying then when they grow up they're not going to feel that desperate need to have a material object fill that void. But if you have a child that has spent his or her most of his, you know, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 years constantly being told no with needs, with actual legitimate needs, then their only focus is going to be on these things and wants and experiences and the latest this, the latest fill in the blanks, or these friends that are not in their best interests.

So what we need to understand is that this is going to be a process.

Ann: So how do we, that's the question I guess, is if we've gotten this far, and let's say we have a kid who is acting out in these ways, and it's because we have somehow failed to meet these needs in the past, then how do we reverse things? What do we do? And, you know, kind of a second part of this, because I'm thinking about my own experience, for instance, but when we have also...been in that same predicament as a child and we didn't have our needs met and we are dysregulated emotionally and we can't deal with our kid who's acting out. I mean it seems to me that just compounds the problem, right?

Laurie: Yes, so that's a wonderful question, Anne. And you know what? There's a lot of hope we can all do it. So the first step is you wanna be able to try to get some supports for yourself. You know, treatment for your own childhood developmental trauma, that's crucial. You need to be able to have somebody that can work with you as a mentor or as a therapist in treating your developmental trauma. Then what I would suggest, especially if...your child is acting out seriously or you know of some traumas or you or you know this uh... you know the behavioral issues are moderate to severe to even extreme you wanna find an EMDR therapist for your child that's eye movement desensitization and reprocessing eye movement desensitization and reprocessing or EMDR that is a neuro somatic trauma treatment what it does is it gets at the limbic system and it processes trauma that happens, that basically stores itself in the limbic system and causes those just trigger reactions out of kids. Cause kids are very much, they, teenagers, their brains don't finish development until they're 26 years old around. And so they are more focused on learning and experiencing and reacting from the limbic system level, and ironically, that's where trauma gets stored.

So if there's a trauma in there, then they are going to react from that trauma. So you want to, number one, get trauma treatment for them. Do not go to a talk therapist. Do not have your teenager sit one-to-one with a therapist who's just gonna talk - that is not gonna do any good for you, you're wasting valuable time. You wanna find an EMDR therapist that's also going to wanna do some family work. Now, you can either find somebody that does both EMDR and attachment work, but if not, also, the EMDR is the first priority. But the second thing is try to find somebody who does gentle attachment family therapy, not this authoritarian rules and consequences kind of stuff that they falsely call attachment therapy with adoptees. That is not, that is, that is a trauma causing treatment. We're talking about gentle attachment healing therapy. Then what you want to do is you want to get yourself and your child back on that attachment cycle.

You want to prioritize time with that child. That's one of their needs. They need your positive, loving time. Start to touch them, give them affection, hug them, look them in the eye and speak with them. Take them on a car ride and learn about who they are. Go out in nature and do things together. You're getting on the attachment cycle by doing that. If you know that a teacher is treating them poorly at school, you get in there and you advocate for that child. You show your son or daughter that they matter to you. And so by doing this, you are getting the trauma treatment for them that will help reduce the strife and the physiological reactions in the limbic system. You are helping to improve the attachment and family relationships with the attachment therapy.

You are getting yourself back on that attachment cycle by prioritizing your child's needs, not necessarily their wants, but their needs. And of course, their greatest need from you is going to be your love and your attention and your positive interactions. And then by you also getting the treatment for yourself, you also have somebody who can nurture you. Your child's job is not to nurture you. Your child's job is not to hear about how hard your life was.

Your job is to be there to nurture them. You need an adult to do that for you, and we all need that. And I would say that that's one of the biggest problems that single parents have is that we need to have better support systems. So again, I'll just say those really quickly, treatment and mentorship for yourself so you can heal your own childhood developmental trauma needs. One, EMDR to help your child heal from any traumas or behavioral symptoms. Two, attachment focused family therapy that heals developmental attachment issues. And then three, get back on that attachment cycle with your child as fast as you can, the fastest way you can do it just by saying, I love you. Hey, you want to hang out? Let's go out and get some food together. Let's find out what they love to do. Take a drive with them. Hey, let's go on and let's get lost drive together.

Ann: Well, let me ask you this because I think this is one question I have kind of floating around in my head and I can imagine other people would wonder the same thing, but we, you know, we talked a little bit about what those traumas could be from their childhood. And, and I would love for you to get a little more detailed about that. Just talk about what, because most of us, you know, we, we think that we've given our kid, you know, the best possible childhood they can have, you know, we've given them.

All the things and we've worked hard for to provide for them and you know and we have hugged them and we've loved them and we've you know read to them and played with them. But what I'm hearing you say is that trauma is very complicated and it's not something that is it's not like we've beaten them every day. It's not like you know they've been put in a corner for hours on end or something like that and I think that's kind of what we have a hard time grasping is what is trauma really and what can cause these acting out episodes. So will you get into that just a little bit more?

Laurie: Sure, that's a lot to unpack because you've asked quite a few things in one. And both of my books address this in detail so that there will be no question about it. And you'll see this reflected in your own childhood and in your parents and grandparents as well. So studies have been done on Paleolithic tribal societies. They parented diametrically differently, very, very differently than they did at the dawn of agriculture.

 

Laurie A. Couture: In Paleolithic tribes, the entire tribe was set up to focus on children's needs. And there were a few key things that studies have found that humans need as babies. And they did this by studying tribal cultures that were, we're talking not just any tribe, these are Paleolithic, which means hunter-gatherers, not agricultural or pastoral farming cultures. So what they found is that...

Children were birthed and immediately put on the mother's breast. They breastfed for two and a half years. They co-slept with the parents. They never were hit and never were scolded or screamed at, yelled at. And they were free all the way until adulthood to play and learn through observation, involvement in the community, and play. And when parents and children had conflicts, they dealt with it in a gentle way, and there were also intergenerational family members that could split the two up and basically provide some care. Unfortunately, at the dawn of agriculture, that all changed. When parents had to start toiling and farming and keeping animals out of their food and keeping people out of their food, well then they expected kids to stay out of their hair.

They wanted kids to stay away or work themselves. They wanted kids to help out. And so the focus went from children's needs to now working culture. And then obviously as civilization developed and industrialization, that is only intensified. Now, of course we do our best, but we've all been taught that the ways that we are supposed to parent and educate are the way we do it. But unfortunately, when we birth our child, the boy gets circumcised, which is a trauma in itself. We put our child in a crib to scream and cry instead of holding them and meeting that need for comfort and connection. When we push them away and put them in daycare and school when they need nothing more, every fiber of their being is screaming to be with us.

When we do those things, even something as simple as bottle feeding instead of breastfeeding, or weaning the child from breastfeeding, or turning away when the child is trying to talk to us, those things create invisible subconscious traumas that the child can, I'm never gonna remember that, but it is driving their behavior later on. Now those are attachment traumas, those affect, they disrupt attachment.

But a big trauma or what they like to call a big T would be something more obvious like violence, physical sexual, emotional abuse, corporal punishment. But there are also small traumas. Like you mentioned, putting a child in a corner, giving a child a time out when really they need you to sit and hear them when they are in agony emotionally. Little kids, they cannot handle.

That you hear them when they are in agony emotionally. You know, little kids, they cannot handle the intensity of their emotions, so that's why they throw cancer. They're not throwing cancer to intervene and protect us all. They're throwing cancer because that little mind is developmentally not capable of handling emotion. And so if we don't throw them in a time-out, what we're saying is we don't.

The intensity of their emotions, so that's why they throw tantrums. They're not throwing tantrums to inconvenience or piss us off. They're throwing tantrums because that little mind is developmentally not capable of handling the emotions. And so if we go and we throw them in a timeout, what we're saying is you don't matter. Your feelings and your emotions don't matter. And then later on when that child grows older into an adolescent child, well, then they're going to give us that same treatment back.

And at that point, sadly, they have now developed layers and layers of defenses for their emotions. So if you try to sit down with a teen and say, how are you feeling, they're not going to know how they're feeling because when they were three years old or eight years old, they had to swallow that. So the important thing is understanding that trauma is when a child is rendered powerless and their emotions overwhelm them and they have no way of coping with them. And now remember...

 

This is individual. So what's traumatizing to your child may not have been traumatizing to you and vice versa. So it's different for everyone. For example, I'll just put this one out here. This one is unfortunately still to this day so common is that parents still to this day carry over the trauma from their childhood and hit their kids thinking that is going to teach them something. The only thing that hitting their kids teaches is that violence is okay to use against somebody that is less power than you do. And what that does is it shatters the attachment relationship, shatters the relationship, and imagine doing that over and over. I mean, anybody can understand that if you do that in a marriage, that's going to harm your partner. Well, imagine that a vulnerable child that looks to you when they're young.

Okay. So, parents think, hey, carry over the trauma from the childbirth and hit their kids. Yeah. Thinking about it is going to teach them something. The only thing that hitting the kids teaches is that violence is rotating you into somebody that is less powerful than you. Yeah. As you're their rock, their world, their safety, their everything, you're like a deity to them. And so when you hit them, what that does to the relationship, you may not see it for a decade later, but when your teen is acting out, they're not gonna remember the trauma, but their subconscious does and it drives their behavior. So the important thing is that's why it is so important to get that EMDR treatment because a lot of times it can, you know, acting out can be traced to something in the home or nine times out of 10 traced to the school.

Ann: Yeah. Well, okay, so again, I have so many questions, but all right. So first, just real quick, that EMDR, because my son actually had EMDR when he was in residential treatment and he said it did so much good for him. And

It has all, I've never researched it. I don't understand it. I don't get it. Just real quick, what's the science there? What's the mechanism? How does that work?

Laurie: So EMDR basically works, it's a neuro-somatic treatment, and what that means is that literally means brain body, brain cellular. So EMDR uses a similar mechanism as our, when we go into REM sleep, what our brain does when we go into REM sleep, which is rapid eye movement sleep. So when we go to sleep, what we do is we, ideally when we are sleeping in a healthy way, we go through rapid eye movement sleep a few cycles during the night. And so our eyes move rapidly back and forth, up and down. And what that does is that is one of the brain's mechanisms for processing all of the events of the day and the emotions of the day and what it does is it organizes it and basically digests it if you will and then it stores it in the prefrontal cortex which is the part of the brain that helps us be able to consolidate memories and integrate them into our story. When that doesn't happen and things get stuck in the limbic system well then what ends up happening is we have a physiological reaction to it. Even if something, let's say a trauma happens when you're three years old and you're 75 years old, you will still react to that just like you know you're three years old. So EMDR uses the brain's own mechanism and now everything I do is about nature's intent so EMDR uses nature's own mechanism to heal itself.

Now remember if you were to cut yourself on your skin and let's say it's really bad, it gets infected, you don't go to the doctor to heal your arm. You go to the doctor so that they can, you know, help you remove the infection. So you remove the infection, but it's actually your own body, your own skin that heals itself once you remove that. EMDR is kind of like that. EMDR is like it removes the so-called infection. It's not a real infection, but I'm just being using figurative. EMDR removes the barrier to healing.

The reason your son said that it was so helpful, it was very helpful to my son too, is because the EMDR removed the barriers to healing some type of psychological trauma. Now what's happening is, the trauma we know, the science shows that trauma gets stuck in the limbic system and also the resonance of the trauma gets stuck in the cells of the body. It gets stuck in a part of the body sometimes too. A lot of times it gets stuck in the abdomen, which is a lot of times...you know, where, you know, it's the fear-based organ. You know, we've known that since ancient times that, you know, somebody, you know, feels it in their gut or they crap their pants or something like that. So fear tends to resonate in the gut and in the abdomen. So EMDR focuses on bilateral stimulation, which means it goes left brain, right brain, left brain, right brain, using the eyes.

Sound can also be used left, right, left, right, and tapping can be used. That's usually very effective with younger kids. You can use two of these modalities at the same time, and you can also add sand tray and art in between the sets of the bilateral stimulation. You're also focusing the person on the body. So there's a whole protocol, and you wanna make sure that your EMDR therapist follows the emdria.

Protocol that they're not just winging it also you may want to look this is just a bonus if you can find it You may want to look for somebody who does EMDR with what's called somatic Experiencing because that they put more of a focus on the body And kids are so body oriented. They experience life from the body. That's why hitting children or a school teacher not letting them go to the bathroom or have a snack or making them wait for physiological needs. That's why that's so traumatic to kids because everything is body kinesthetic for a child and when I say a child I mean your adolescents to your adolescents are kids. They're children. They are not miniature adults or they're not adults that you know, just have bad attitudes.

Laurie: They are, it is, adolescence is a stage of childhood. And so our job is to nurture that particular stage of childhood. And so EMDR is a way that can get into that limbic system, get into that trauma and help reorganize it, digest it, process it, and store it in the prefrontal cortex. Now, one other thing I will say about the prefrontal cortex is until you're 26 years old, that's still under construction.

That's why EMDR can be so helpful because it does it in a gentle way.

Ann: Right. Wow. So should we assume that if we've got a teen who is really acting out and who can't seem to control their emotions, should we assume that they're not going to be able to control their emotions? This is trauma-based and that they need some type of EMDR therapy or somatic therapy.

Laurie: Well, the first place I would look is the school, because I think a lot of kids, a lot of teenagers are acting out because of the school environment. There's so much stress on them with the work in school, the requirements, they're treated, it's like a military, you basically like in a factory or a prison. There's all the peer dynamics that tend to be very toxic. The homework loads, I would start there. If you think everything else at home is generally going good. Then I would start with looking for a child-centered private school or homeschooling or learning pods. I homeschooled my son through graduation and I thank my lucky stars every day that I did. And I'm telling you, in a lot of cases that I've helped parents find educational alternatives for their children, the acting out behavior disappeared almost overnight within a few weeks. Children, a lot of times teenagers are getting bullied.

 

at school by the teacher, by a teacher or multiple teachers, they're being bullied by their peers and they may not even tell the parents. So you have no idea what's going on in that school unless you have a camcorder, a video camera attached to your child. Oh, absolutely not.

Well, first of all, it doesn't meet any of the kids' needs. I mean, you think about it. You are asking these boys, any child, but especially the boys, to go to this place for six hours where none of their needs will be met or respected. And none of their feelings and wants matter. They have to circumvent everything that they would rather be doing with their time and learning and doing. And I'm not talking on screens. I think we should unplug our kids. I think screens are a detriment to our children. I'm talking about if the child is passionate about something. Let's say he loves nature or he loves sea creatures or he loves to build with Lego or he wants to go out in the community and do something that matters to him.

Maybe he's passionate about history. Maybe he wants to build a boat. You name it. There are endless amounts of things that kids are passionate about. He might be an artist or an actor or he loves to cook. And kids can't do that. They are confined for six hours to a chair and they're either doing paperwork or tapping on tablets as if they don't get enough screens at home then they're tapping on tablets at school. Then they're given homework.

So it's absolutely opposed to the needs that boys have. And boys need to learn with their bodies. They need to be moving. And that includes 12th graders, all. I remember when one of the homeschooling conferences that I used to go, we used to have homeschool groups, but the conferences really stood out to me because there were so many kids there and they were all ages. Right up. Through 12th grade. And those kids, it didn't matter their age, they never stopped going. They were running from morning till night. But yet, when something captivated their attention, they had no problem sitting still, those boys, those active boys. Why? Because they were self-directed learners. So boys need to learn with their bodies, their kinesthetic, all children do, but boys especially. Boys are more kinesthetic than girls. And so when you are telling a boy that the only time you're allowed to move is during recess and then we're gonna take that recess away by middle school. And then if we punish you, we're gonna take that one recess you have away or that, you know, it's absolutely, you might as well be just cutting the tree down right at the trunk. You are...So when you are telling the boy that the only time you're allowed to move is during recess, and then we're going to take that recess away, and my metal shoe, and then if you punish me, I'm going to take that one recess you have away. Right. Absolutely. You might as well be just cutting the tree down right at the front. Yeah. You are devastating at times. And what they have to do to cope is they have to stop.

You are devastating that child's needs. And what they have to do to cope is they have to swallow all of those needs and build up these thick, thick defenses. And then they wonder why kids turn to drugs and alcohol and screens

Well, I will say something, and this is going to be very blunt, but I have to say it. As a mother whose son died tragically at only 23 years old, we have to stop looking at this hypothetical future as more important than what the child needs and wants right now out of their lives. What brings them joy today is what should matter because none of our children

 

Although most of them will grow up to old age, not all of them will. And none of your children are guaranteed a future. And so I sit there, I thank my lucky stars every single day of my life that all those years that he would have been in public school, he was home homeschooling with his friends out in the community. We were engaged, we were doing a million different fun activities just like you described. And then I hear from some of these parents, that say all those years wasted in school. If I had known he or she was gonna die at this age or that I would have never made him do all that homework or told her that she had to suck it up or whatever. And so we have to focus on what brings us joy, what brings our family joy, what brings our child joy.

That old way that our parents and our grandparents and great grands had to do to survive of you have to suck it up, that doesn't apply anymore. Us Gen X parents and now some of the millennials that are parents, we are seeing a different way and we're doing a different way. And the reason for that is because we're seeing that our children have been miserable in that environment. The schools will never catch up because they, they're all about money and they're all about power and control.

Very passionately said by a woman who, to quote her directly, “discovered early in her professional career that our society’s institutions are out of alignment with nature's intent for children's developmental and attachment needs.”

Laurie is an incredible advocate for kids and works as a consultant and is the program developer of The Couture Protocol, a whole-child model of treating developmental and generational trauma in children, youths, and their families.

To learn more about Laurie’s work and her 2 books, Instead of Medicating and Punishing and the best seller, Nurturing and Empowering Our Sons go to lauriecourture.com/products and don’t worry, I’ll have the link in the show notes.

That’s it for Speaking of Teens today. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoy the show, I would really, really appreciate if you’d give us a 5-star rating and write a review in Apple – it will help potential listeners know the show is worth listening to!

And do come join us in the Speaking of Teens Facebook Group - the link is right there at the very bottom of the show description in your app.

Speaking of Teens is produced and edited by the grand master of trivial information, Steve Coleman; researched, written, and hosted by me, Ann Coleman.