I just finished typing into the Googler, 3 different ways – “how to have empathy for your teenager?” just to see what turned up.

You know what I got? Not a single thing about how to have empathy for your teenager!

But I got 120 Million results including 5 strategies for teaching empathy to teens, help your teenager develop empathy, how to build teens’ empathy and on and on and on.

So, it seems there’s a TON of people concerned about teens having empathy, but no one is concerned about parents having empathy for their teens!

But guess what? If you want to have a strong relationship, secure attachment with your teen, you had better develop some empathy for them.

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 has been there - and I’m on a mission to help you build a stronger relationship and decrease the conflict with your kid so you can help them grow into the young adult they’re meant to be.

So, let me just define empathy up front – I’m not talking about sympathy or feeling bad FOR someone else. I’m talking about the ability to share, step into or feel another person’s emotions… to literally feel them.

Science has shown that empathy is a “highly flexible phenomenon” and depends on several factors such as the specific context, the relationship between the person empathizing and the other person, and the perspective taken by the person empathizing with the other person.

When Dr. John Gottman talks about emotion coaching in his book, Raising and Emotionally Intelligent Child, he says, “when parents offer their children empathy and help them to cope with negative feelings like anger, sadness, and fear, parents build bridges of loyalty and affection.”

Now there is no better time to have a bridge of loyalty and affection than during adolescence – between 10 and their mid to late 20s – you’re going to need that bridge.

Gottman did a series of scientific studies in which he observed parents and their children interacting. These studies led him to conclude that (quote) “the key to good parenting lies in understanding the emotional source of problematic behavior.”

That bears repeating: His research showed that to be a good parent – you must understand that the behavior your child is exhibiting is because they’re experiencing a particular emotion and you must understand what that emotion is. Got it? You need to figure out what emotion it is that they’re feeling, which is causing them to act the way they’re acting.

If you only pay attention to the behavior itself – you are not going to succeed during adolescence.

After all these studies, he ended up defining 4 types of parents:

The dismissing parent

The disapproving parent

The Laissez-Faire parent, and

The emotion coach

The Dismissing Parent is someone who just does not want to deal with their kids’ emotions – period. They’d rather just distract their kids and hope the emotion goes away. They feel emotions are simply – toxic.

This type of parenting, he learned, teaches kids there’s something wrong with them to have feelings – they feel totally abnormal, and they don’t learn to regulate their emotions.

There’s also the Disapproving Parent who dismisses their child’s emotions but goes further by being more controlling and manipulative. They’re just concerned with the child’s outward behavior and just want to “discipline” them – which generally means to punish them. They don’t care about the child’s emotions “why” they’re behaving the way they are.

The Laissex-Fair Parent – allows the kid to do pretty much anything – a very permissive parenting style, no behavior boundaries and the parent also doesn’t help guide the child through their emotions - they encourage them to just ride them out until they disappear.

Last is the Emotion Coach. This is the type of parent we aspire to be. Emotions coaches are very aware of their child’s emotions – they know what they’re feeling and can see it coming from a mile away. They don’t dread their kid’s negative emotions but look at it instead as an opportunity to connect with them. They listen intently to their kids when they’re experiencing an emotion and they validate or acknowledge their kid’s feelings and use the right emotion words with them so their kid can learn to recognize their own emotions, they’re able to set limits and help them solve their own problems to deal with their emotions.

Kids who’re emotion coached are more emotionally aware and emotionally regulated. They know how they feel, and they can direct their emotions towards problem solving rather than feeling confused and they’ll have more self-confidence, do better in social situations, they make better grades and they’re even healthier.

So, to be able to see your kid’s negative emotions as an opportunity to connect on a deeper level, and to be able to listen and validate and help them problem solve, what would you say the prerequisite is? You have to remain calm. When your kid’s having an exploding, crying, meltdown, you have to remain calm. What’s something that will at least help you remain calm when your teen’s having a loud, raging, eye-bulging, fist-clenching fit? EMPATHY.

Oh, I know, you don’t have to tell me what a crazy idea that is. You don’t have to tell me how extremely difficult that is. But if your goal is to bring calm to the situation, figure out what’s going on and help your child in any way, then you’d better learn how to empathize and stay calm because that’s what’s going to help them calm down.

To help you have more empathy for your teen, you can learn how the changes going on in their brain impact their thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Go back and listen to episodes 3 and 4. In a nutshell, their brain causes them to get angry, frustrated, sad, nervous, afraid, annoyed – all the negative emotions – much, much, much easier than they will when they reach adulthood. It causes them to be moody, embarrassed, snappish, snarky, self-conscious, smart asses.

Their brain causes them to jump into situations they know can have huge negative consequences and it makes them do it even more when they’re around other teens their age.

Their brain causes them to not listen to you as much as they do those friends and not want to hang out with you as much as they do with those friends and it causes them to be hyper-focused on making sure those friends like them, accept them, keep inviting them places and think they’re cool.

Their brain causes them to be interested in things you will never understand (although you should try). It will cause them to like one thing one day and the opposite the next, it might cause them to talk and dress one way and the opposite the next.

Their brain is not going to let them focus on being nice to you or appreciative of anything you do, or mindful of your feelings or emotions or doing things you’d love for them to do without asking.

And trust me, this is just a partial list!

But you know what? Most of what I just listed off would also describe a toddler wouldn’t it? They can’t control their emotions – they cry and scream at the drop of a hat. They’re natural risk-takers. They’d run out in 4-lane traffic if they could. They can be a bit mean too, calling you “mean mommy” “mean daddy”

But think back to those toddler days just a minute. Did you take their emotional tirades personally? Did you think they really didn’t like you or take offense or get your feelings hurt back then? Did you get angry (I mean really angry) at them when they did something wrong? Did you give them the silent treatment? Lock the doors and not let them in the house? Refuse to feed them or take their toys away. No – I hope you didn’t.

Of course, the new hadn’t worn off yet - they were still little and cute and smelled good and were also extremely affectionate and quick with the hugs and the I love yous. Yeah – not so much these days, right?

But besides their size and their smell and the affection, they’re not that much different emotionally right now – again – it’s how their brain worked then, and their brain is going through an almost identical process now that started with puberty and won’t end for years and years.

Yes, of course, they can do more things now. They can read and do math and rattle off all the words to the fast rap songs. But guess what? Those are cognitive abilities, not emotional abilities. We’re talking apples and oranges here.

Those emotional abilities won’t be fully functional until long after they’ve moved out of your home. They’ll gradually develop over the next few years but they have a LONG way to go and they all (and I’m talking about the brains here) they all do it at a pace that isn’t perfectly in line with the next brain down the street.

You might have a 12-year-old you’d trust to run your business and a 20-year-old you wouldn’t yet trust with your dog. There are so many factors. So do not compare your kids to each other nor your kid to another – never.

So, they do not have full control over their thoughts, they don’t have full control over their emotions, and they don’t have full control over their behavior.

They are doing the best they can with what they have. If they could do better, they would do better. They don’t do these things on purpose to hurt you or make you made or to be purposefully defiant. They do not yet have a fully functional brain. Period.

Now. Do you think knowing all of this will help you have more empathy, which in turn will help you be calmer, more patient and understanding. I really hope so. That’s the plan.

Let’s say after listening to this, they come in the room and are just a total ass about something. What are you going to say in your head? Pick one of these statements to repeat to yourself any time you feel like screaming, lecturing, or pulling your hair out:

• They are doing the best they can with what they have.
• If they could do better, they would do better.
• They don’t do these things on purpose to hurt me, to make me mad made or to be purposefully defiant.
• They do not yet have a fully functional brain.

Why might it still be hard for you to have empathy for them? Because you may have gotten it in your head that “they could do better if they wanted to” or “they could do better if they just tried” Well, I’m sorry, but that’s not how this works. When they were 2 would you have thought, they could understand not to cry when I’m on the phone if they would just try – they could do better.

For some reason, when our kids start looking more like adults with adult features and get a little taller and start having more grown-up conversations and knowing more adult-like things, we tend to attribute more adult social, emotional, and cognitive abilities to them.

Some are age appropriate, but many are not. So, having empathy and understanding their brain is not anywhere near finished yet, can help you stay calm in the moment when they’re having an emotional tirade or totally ignoring you or acting like a complete jerk. It may take some journaling, some mindful meditation, hell, it may even take medication, a therapist and a fine aged caberne.

But once you get this empathy and calm bit down, you can do the rest. You’ll have the tough stuff licked.

All right – I’m going to link some other episodes and parenting guides that you need to check out for more on emotions and emotion coaching.

And so that’s it for Speaking of Teens today. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here with me today. If you enjoyed this episode, fiddle around in your app until you see the forward button and send it on to a friend. I would really, really appreciate it and you KNOW they would too.

You can also join us in the Speaking of Teens Facebook Group – ask your questions, get some direction and feedback from me and others in the group. The link is right there at the very bottom of the show description in your app.

Until next time…

Remember, a little change goes a long way.