Transcript
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Rachel, hello and welcome to teenagers.
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Untangled, the audio hub for parents going through the teenage years. I'm Rachel Richards, journalist, parenting coach, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters. Now, Susie's still away, and I have some great guests lined up. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out. But I didn't have anything for today, and I do love you guys, and I don't want you to let you down. So I realized it's the 100th episode of this podcast, yay. And that means I've been rambling about parenting ever since my youngest daughter became a teenager. I'm still learning all the time, and I'm still screwing up, but that's okay. We're human, right?
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We need to give ourselves a break. So what can I give you as a present for the 100th episode?
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And I decided it's a top 10 of things I've learned while doing this podcast. We all love a chart, don't we? Now, it's not exhaustive, and to be honest, the order is pretty meaningless, but here goes number one connection. So, yeah, yeah, okay, there is, there is an order. This is the most important thing. If you're going to focus on only one thing, make it this. When our kids know that we care more about them than we do about being right, we set up a situation where they will want to listen to us. I know it's hard to believe, but it's true anyway, researching for my consequences episode and blog really drove this message home.
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So have a read. Have a listen.
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If you haven't already, how do we develop that connection by letting go of the idea that we control them and giving them a safe space to unpack their thoughts. It's only recently that I've really understood that as kids grow up, what we do is we sort of lend them our prefrontal cortex. I mean, when they're little, obviously we just make all these decisions for them. Then what we do when they're teenagers, tweens, we're giving them that bit of that sort of making decisions, trying to help them to develop their own and that that's the point we need to give them that opportunity, and this happens at completely different times for different kids, there isn't a very specific order. So don't panic if it looks like your kids don't seem to be able to make good decisions. Yet, it's not a process we can rush. We can help it along by allowing them somewhere they can voice their thoughts and fears without judgment, so that they can sort of step back and start to understand themselves better. So that episode on how we talk to our teens, which we did nothing, was number two is my go to on this topic, we talked about Super silence and active listening, and they win every time. If we try to punish our kids, we're going to ruin that connection. Punishment is about power and control, not only does it destroy the connection we're trying to build, I've also read neuroscience research that proves when it comes to teenagers, it doesn't actually work to change their behavior.
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So when one of my kids does things I find troubling, I've learned that I need to ask why I'm troubled by it both so that I can explain my reasoning and think about why it truly matters. For example, yes, I discovered my daughter was vaping. She knew that one of the consequences was going to be a reduction in her allowance because I refused to pay for her to harm herself. She also knows I've done all the research into this. She knows how I feel about it. But more importantly, I engaged her in a conversation about why. Why is she doing it?
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Because I've invested so much building in our connection.
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She's prepared to talk about it.
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She explained she doesn't really know, but all her friends vape so she doesn't really know how to stop then she said she would give it up. And I said, Well, why would you do that? And she said she'd do it for me. And I explained that is not a good reason to do anything. Again, research shows it doesn't actually work, and that my love for her isn't dependent on her doing anything specific, so she needs to find her own why I talk about it in all all of this, in the vaping episode, anyway. In summary, connection is about giving my kids a safe space where they can talk without judgment, so they can hear their own thoughts and work out whether they make sense. It's also about helping them to learn how to think for themselves and analyze and question why they're doing things, rather than hiding and trying to force her to do things that matter to me. I hope that makes sense anyway. Number two, it's not personal. If I catch myself thinking, why are you doing this to me? That's my signal to stop. Most of the time, our kids aren't conscious of their behavior, and they aren't really in control if they're doing things that piss us off. Our first job is to ask, Why? Why does it piss me off?
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And then try to find a way to explain it to them calmly. If we react with anger, we're just teaching our kids that reacting with anger is the right way to behave when something doesn't go the way we want. Obviously, we're all here. Men, we're all going to get angry or upset.
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It's normal, but being able to apologize if we do get upset helps us to keep that connection strong, and it's also going to let our kids know that it's okay to make mistakes and apologize.
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I love the phrase, they're not giving you a hard time. They're having a hard time. So when my daughter and I were playing paddle, for example, she kept checking her phone and then playing badly and, oh, driving me nuts, and I felt angry.
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Managed to calm myself by saying, Rachel, it's not personal. And I didn't simply put up with it. I did explain to her that there was no point playing because of her behavior.
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So I said, I'm going to leave.
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And it was only at that point, because we had this connection, that she stopped to think about why she was behaving the way she was. We talked it through and came up with a solution, which involved her putting her phone in my bag. And then she also realized that winning the game wasn't about the points you score, it's about being in the moment and enjoying ourselves together. Right? Number three, bullies. We all hate bullies, but the worst bullies aren't in the playground. They're in our heads. I think that depends on the school you're in. Anyway you know what I'm saying, the voice that we have in our heads that says, you must, you should, you aren't good enough, you're falling short. When we say these things to our kids, we're handing them a bully to keep them company at night or, you know, in their daily activities.
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And often that bully is just one that we have had occupying our own mind for far too long. Over the course of this podcast, I've learned to notice when one of those bullies crops into my thoughts, and now I challenge it, the first thing I do is think, Hey, where's this bully from? Is it my own parents?
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Maybe they're the words of people in my friendship circle or someone in my family, or are they things I've read? I then ask, is it true I had a family member who made me feel constantly judged to the point that I hated my life and couldn't enjoy my kids, because I spent every day feeling inadequate. Once I'd realized what was happening and where the voice was coming from, I pushed back and realized that the most important thing was the connection with my kids and my husband. And interestingly, a listener recently contacted me to say she had been trying to use list to help herself, but it's really hard with ADHD, and it made me think that we often forget that the tools to help us in life, they're just that.
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They're tools. We forget it and use them as weapons against ourselves. We beat ourselves up thinking there's some mythical person who's got the perfect list keeping strategy, and somehow we're bad people for not being able to keep up drop the judgment use I could I might. Is this really what I want? Does it really matter right now? Number four, it's not our job to tell our kids what to do. It's our job to find out who our child is. Don't try to make them some fictional character that doesn't exist, or next doors child. My husband showed my daughter a 16 year old Olympic sprinter recently who was destroying records. She said, Oh, I hate those things. I just look at them and think, What am I doing with my life? I'm nothing. I'm useless. Nobody was telling her that's who she should be. But she did feel that pressure. I'm so grateful that she felt she had the space to be safe saying what she really thinks. We inadvertently put pressure on our teens to I don't know, be something they're not. And if we focus on trying to really understand the child we have, surely that's better. In fact, one of our listeners, really early on, said, some of us have to grieve the child we thought we wanted before we can love the child we have. And using the words of Angela Duckworth, the woman who did the TED talk on grit, I love what she said, which is, Don't ignore your passions, her parents wanted her to go to medical college, she ended up veering off into education, which was what she wanted to do from a young age. They weren't very happy to begin with, but it all worked out just fine. I discovered that I'm passionately interested in psychology and parenting teenagers. What's really interesting is that I recently remembered mentioning studying psychology when I was a teenager, my father said only a mentally ill people study that subject. It was a throwaway comment, but that was enough to put me off following that path, which is really stupid. So I've made it my job not to dismiss anything my kids are interested in. When one kept mentioning she was interested in cults, instead of thinking, Eww, that's a weird thing to think is interesting, I bought her a book and told her, don't ignore it. Follow it through. If you're interested in studying cults or criminology, good for you. And and she is.
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That's what she's starting to take an interest. In I've seen too many miserable adults who have tried desperately hard to do things they were told they should, rather than the things they felt inspired by. To send my kids down that path, number five. Number five rooting. Now this is one that I've only recently picked up on, and to be honest, it completely eluded me.
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But once I realized how critical routine not critical, how wonderful routine can be, it really the light bulb went on.
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And when my kids were little, I had a solid routine. They were, you know, you know what it's like. You have to, you have to have to have a routine?
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Otherwise your kids will never get into bed at night. And then when they became teenagers, it all began to unravel. And I think part of that was because I grew up in a chaotic household with no real routine, so I never really understood how you did this and how useful it is. From the research I've done, I've realized that it's one of those things that can pay dividends.
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It reduces nagging and makes everything in your home run more smoothly. Again, there is a danger that we can use it as a weapon and punish ourselves for not having a routine, or not sticking to a routine or getting too rigid about the routine. But I've read enough to know that a solid routine, held lightly is the greatest gift of all, and that's because every time we have to stop to think about what we should do, we run the risk of losing track or kind of procrastinating and not doing things. So my key routine things that I, you know, if I was starting their teenage years again, but I still, this is what I'm focusing on now. But I'm thinking, you know, if I was starting out, I would definitely be focused on these things, sleep, wake, routines that work for the whole family. So what time should the whole family be, kind of making their way upstairs, going to bed? And at what point do you start shifting those times and the whole waking up cycle and having conversations with our kids about why this matters, routines around devices, most importantly, keeping them out of rooms at night, but also around the dinner table, some sort of meal time routine that everybody knows about and understands, and keeping an open dialog with your kids about their routines, so helping them to understand how important it is and to develop structures that work for them.
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Honestly, I can't tell you how important this is and how useful it is when it comes to revision and when the pressure ramps up.
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Don't stress if you haven't got it sorted out, but think, Okay, I'm going to have a look, look to see whether where I can tweak things at home. The important thing about this is, as parents, we need to walk the walk. We can't just tell our kids what they need to do and have an adult teen divide. We do need to look at our own for example, screen time, use bedtimes and figure out what routines work best for everyone in the house number six. Assume they're trying their best. Being a teenager can feel overwhelmingly difficult, so don't panic if things seem to be going wrong at a crazy pace, all of the expectations on teens and tweens ramp up so rapidly at senior school, it's not surprising they drop some of the balls. It's not just extra work. They're expected to manage their own time, develop new friendships, develop their own identity, cope with raging hormones, look don't panic if they seem to change overnight, or they're not their usual self and their grades drop, or they're being sullen, the amount of Judgment they will be experiencing is almost impossible to fathom, but it will feel incredibly intense for them. As a result, I've realized that the best thing we can do is to be the voice that isn't all about judgment, like we feel like that's what we should be doing. But actually, if we start by assuming they're trying to do their best, and then notice whenever they do good things, rather than just trying to correct them, they will flourish. So if we see them, you know, loading the dishwasher or just taking their plate to one side, or something that we've been asking them to do, notice that. Don't notice all the things they're doing wrong, because they will start getting that real pleasurable feedback, and then they'll they're likely to want to keep living up to it.
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So much of my research for this podcast has been about trying to understand the world through our teenagers eyes, and I think I feel like my daughters feel safe coming to me with their problems, because they know I get it, and it makes parenting not way more enjoyable, and I feel far more compassionate, both towards them and also to myself and my former self. You know, I was a teenager, once I start to go, okay, you know, you weren't that bad. Number seven, try to have clear expectations, boundaries and consequences, but be ready to discuss and negotiate them. So you know, when they were kids, when they were little, we needed those boundaries. And I don't know how good you were at that. I haven't been completely consistent with my. Expectations, but I'm pretty good, because, again, I was coaching parenting when they were quite young, so I figured some of that's out then, but there's a big difference between boundaries and rules. Boundaries show us the edge. Rules try to control us. Many of us grew up in households, wow. You know where they were. It was all a bit toxic then, and you know, either you didn't have clear boundaries, which can feel very scary, or maybe our parents tried to control us with rules.
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Some of us had very loving households. Who knows, but if we don't set clear boundaries, it can make our kids feel very insecure. I remember chatting to a 30 year old woman recently who I mentioned boundaries, and she said I had none. I still need therapy. Now it was terrifying.
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So it's important to create them, and our kids will push against them, and when we do create them, we need to have a clear eye about why we're creating them, and to be up be prepared to uphold them with consequences. Consequences are something we can discuss beforehand. And the great thing about them is that when they're clear and we stick to the ones we've created, it's the process that becomes a bad guy, not us, like we've said, if you do this, or if you don't do this, then this is likely to happen, or this is what's going to happen.
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And you discuss it beforehand, and everyone's like, yeah, that's how it works. Then if it does happen, or they do the thing, like, they don't come home on time, and you say, well, then you're not going to be able to go out, you know, the next night, or whatever it is. It's not a discussion, and you're not the bad guy. They just go, oh yeah, all right. Because you just say, well, we knew what this was, right? This isn't this is we knew before this happened.
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My kids and I regularly discuss expectations and consequences, so there's never really any pushback when those consequences kick in. But I'm also conscious that I can't tell my kids to be something that I can't live up to myself. I know I need to model the behavior I want to see in them, and they'll quickly tell me if I'm full of bullshit, so you have to be prepared for a bit more of that. To and fro.
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Expectations are about showing our kids we believe in them. If we don't set any we're inadvertently telling our kids that we don't think they're capable or that they don't really matter. Something like that. And I made this mistake, hands up and but it's never too late to be more definite about our expectations and to show our kids that we genuinely believe in them. I'd say this is hardest when we have a complex kid who might be neurodiverse, you know, because you just think, Well, how am I supposed to set expectations and be fair with them? So my friend has a daughter like this and was struggling, and I said to her, I found one of the most useful phrases is, Oh, honey, I can see that's really hard, but you know what? I think you can do it.
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That phrase shows with we we come, we're compassionate, we understand that they're going to struggle with it, but it also shows that we believe in them.
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Of course, when we do set expectations, they need to be focused on growth, not outcome.
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Number eight, community, trying to build it wherever you are.
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Another one that completely bypassed me. I had no idea about community. I didn't grow up with any didn't really understand it.
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And then I got to sort of mid teen years, thinking, holy cow, I've missed the boat here. I didn't understand, because it's not the same. It's not the same online, you know?
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And I think our kids really benefit from having a community of values around them. They need people in real life that they can spend time with. They need.
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And the thing about being online is the values that they are going to access there, quite possibly, are not our values, and they don't feel held by an online environment. So I'm not saying it's a terrible thing for them to be online, but don't let the online environment be their community in the same way that we can offer at home. So I wish that I had been more open with other parents and tried to get our kids together and continue that even when they changed school. I wish I'd been more understood better. And I've got a friend who's absolutely amazing at this whenever she moves. She's really good at setting up a new community, inviting people over, and I think it's a skill, and some of us have it, some of us don't, but if we actually think about it as being important, then we can try and notice opportunities and grab them when we have when when they're there. Number nine, be honest about our own failings. So often we feel that being an adult should be about getting things right and being in charge. I mean, this was, this was me. I kind of, when I became an adult, you're you're running a house, and you're cooking meals for people, and you feel like, how did I end up having to all these responsibilities? I don't feel like, this is, you know, you had imposter syndrome and and then you think, oh, I need to be in charge, and I need to look after these people.
