Q&A: What Does this Look Like with Teens? {EP 126}

Now, what does it look like with teens? Well, that's a different question. Now, I have a 17 year old. And I've been with a lot of teenagers in the office, and my husband's work is largely with teens and young adults. So I kind of think that what it looks like to parent a teen this way, looks actually mostly the same as it did when he was younger. From my perspective, I use a different tone of voice than I did when he was two or four, eight, even. And I'm probably using a lot more sarcasm. And just, you know, teen way of communicating. So attunement with a teenager feels the same in that I'm still attuning to what his inner world is, but what it looks like might be different because he's a teenager. And so he is different than he was when he was much smaller, but that- that attunement piece is still really the common thread. And yeah, oftentimes, that means my tone of voice is a bit different. And I'm interweaving a kind of teenager way of being, which often involves a little bit more sarcasm. 

What I have found is that when parents are asking me this question, what does this look like with teens? What it feels like they're often asking is this confusion about how this way of parenting often has this heavy focus on connection and playfulness. And a lot of our teens are individuating more. They're getting more disconnected from us, because that's what they're developmentally supposed to be doing. They can look a little surlier. They're rolling their eyes at us. Like our typical ways of connecting with our kids has to change and evolve as they get older. And our teens get really good at pushing back on our offerings of, I think, both connection and playfulness. And what I observe in the families I work with, as well as in my own family, is that connection and playfulness are both really vulnerable for us. So when we get the pushback from our teenager on our offerings of maybe connection and playfulness, we get their pushback, and it's easy then for us to retreat. I think oftentimes we feel a little embarrassed or a little bit sheepish or, honestly, my therapist self would say our own teenager parts get kind of triggered and activated. And we feel a little bit foolish about wanting to connect with our teens in this way. 

And well, I know what I'm about to say isn't true about all teens, or even all kids. For sure, this is not universally true. But my experience has been that if I keep pursuing my teenager, whether that be mine in my family, the pare- the teenager I’m parenting, or teenagers I'm connecting with in my office, or when I watch my husband work, which is again, all with teens and young adults. What my experience has been is that if we don't take their rejection of our offerings of connection and playfulness too personally, and we continue our pursuit of them with connection and playfulness still, and maybe we shift the way that connection and playfulness looks like or what it sounds like. But if we don't kind of agree with their rejection of us, right? Like if- if we don't get rejected, and then therefore retreat, but if we continue with a non-intrusive pursuit, I mean, we still to be attuned. So I'm gonna say non-intrusive pursuit. But if we continue with that pursuit, it often doesn't take that much before that teenager is just a little bit more connected to me. And sometimes, that's all we get is just a little bit, and it's gonna have to be enough. So that doesn't necessarily mean that all of a sudden the teen is, you know, “yes mother, yes father, let's go do this thing. Yes, I will suddenly be cooperative. Yes, let's all of a sudden be very connected”. But there might just be a slight shift in the look that they give, or a slight shift and downregulation in their nervous system, right? It could be small. And we have to get really good at looking for those things, looking for the little ways that our teens communicate with us. Like, okay, yes, that offering of connection that we made? It landed. They received it. Because sometimes it's real subtle. It's real subtle the ways that they let us know that they've received our offerings of connection. And I really get that. 

The other thing that I hear from teen parents is that it can be hard to trust this way of parenting with connection, and co-regulation, and felt safety because teen behavior is so much riskier, right? That when our four year olds are really dysregulated, we don't like their behavior. And sometimes yes, it's even dangerous. And maybe they're actually hurting us in their four year old ways. But it's not dangerous in a way that our 16, or 17 year olds’, or even 13 year olds’ behavior can be actually quite dangerous, right? So as their behavior- as the danger around their behavior gets bigger, our fear gets bigger. Their behaviors gets so dangerous, that really all we want to do is have control over their behavior. Which let me reassure you, makes perfect sense. But we're also at a time in our relationship with them, where we actually have significantly less control over their behavior. I recorded an episode once, I'll look for it in the archives and link you to it called Influence But Not Control Over Behaviors. And the truth is, is that this is true about our relationship with everyone. And there's a lot of things we can do to have influence over somebody else's behavior, because there's a lot of things we can do to have influence over their sense of connection, their sense of felt safety, and their regulation. But we are not in control of someone else's behavior. Because we're not in control of their regulation, of their sense of connection to us, or to themselves, or to their felt safety. All we can do is make our offerings, right? So we have influence, not control. 

And this is never more clear or more obvious than when we are parenting teens. Teens are tough because we really are at a stage of development where we're not with them as much and we need to rely on their internalization of our connection and our co-regulation in order for them to be out in the world making safe choices. And I know that those of you listening have teenagers who are more vulnerable. They have more vulnerabilities and their sense of regulation, and connection, and feel safety is more tenuous. Or- or maybe they haven't been parented by you for very long. So the time period that they've had in order to feel connected to you and to internalize your co-regulation is more limited. 

Theoretically, our teens need more structure, more boundaries, more co-regulation than some of their same aged peers. And this might mean that they aren't out in the world doing the things that a lot of other teens are doing, like getting a job, or driving, or being dropped off places without a lot of or maybe even any adult supervision. And I know that a lot of you are parenting teens that simply aren't complying with your boundaries, or your structure, or the ways in which you're trying to decrease the distance and offer more co-regulation. And you're not in control of that, which is leaving you feeling so very helpless. 

So what is there to do if you literally can't control their behavior? Well, the truth is, and it's a bummer, but the truth is, is what we can do is, is trust in regulation. Trust in connection. Trust in felt safety. Trust in what you've been doing, you know? That you've been seeing behaviors through the lens of connection, and regulation, and felt safety. And you can continue to do that. You can frame their behaviors through that lens, so when you're presented with a behavior that's dangerous, or- or that you don't know what to do with, you can take a breath and pause and look through it through this lens of ‘does my child need more co-regulation? Does my child need more connection? Does my child need more felt safety? And even if you can't offer any of those things any more than you already are, and especially because you can't be in control of whether they receive those things, you are still framing their behavior through that lens. And we know that that matters, because that changes how you see them, right? And we know how much that matters. We have to grieve our limits when we're parenting teenagers, and we have to grieve the truth that they're going to learn some really hard lessons the very, very hard, hard way. And we're gonna grieve that you're not as connected to your teen as maybe you'd hoped or you'd envisioned parenting a teenager would be like. And I think about all the ways we talk about how to grow your child's owl brain, right? With connection, with- with co-regulation, with by decreasing the distance, by- by offering scaffolding, and- and by matching the energy. And all these things- and all of these things are absolutely applicable to teens! I mean, I really feel when I think about the difference between my current teenager versus when he was younger, and the teens that I know professionally versus the younger kids that I work with. And really, the bigger difference isn't them. It's me, it's my delivery. Like how am I offering the ways that I'm matching their energy? How am I offering the scaffolding, right? That- that just- that looks different now that they're teenagers, but the same ideas absolutely apply? Right? I think about all the ways we talk about bringing safety to the watchdog or the possum brain. Like when our kids are in the middle of a stress response and they're on the watchdog pathway or they're on the possum pathway and and all the ways that we talk about bringing safety to their watchdog or their possum brain, all those things apply to teens too. I think the big, big, big difference is really, in being with our own fear. Their behaviors feel scary for us because it feels like we're running out of time. And because the consequences truly are more dangerous. I mean, for some of you, I know we're talking about substance abuse, drugs, sex, alcohol. Behavior that's not just just regulated, but maybe is actually illegal. And as much as possible, yeah, we want to increase boundaries and- and increase structure and we want to decrease the distance between us and them. But yes, I know that there are limits to that. Because your teens just have so much more agency than your little ones ever did to just kind of do whatever that they want. 

So I want you to remember this. I want you to remember that the behavior that you want from your teen , things like cooperation, respect, and ability, and a willingness to understand how their behavior is impacting others, and also to care about that, and- and their ability to delay gratification and think about the long term impact of their choices, right? Those are all owl brain skills. As our kids get older, the discrepancy between their level of owl brain skills and the level of owl brain skills we wished they had based on their chronological age does sometimes tend to get even wider. But your goals with your child are still the same. Grow the owl brain, grow safety, increase connection, offer lots of co-regulation. Because the behavior you want your teen to have emerges from a strong owl brain and nervous system that's experiencing felt safety, connection, and regulation. 

So I know I've not given you a lot of specifics, but have wanted to really just come back to what does this look like with teens, well, it essentially looks the same. I think it just sh- our tone of voice shifts, and our awareness of our own fears really shift. 

Now there are a few excellent resources I want to give you specific to parenting teens, which are, one, Parenting in the Eye of the Storm written by Katie Naftzger. And Katie writes specifically about parenting kids who have been adopted or have had attachment loss. So I think a parent of any teenager can get a lot out of Katie's book, but it is specifically written through the lens of parenting adopted teens. Brainstorm by Dan Siegel is an excellent resource for parenting teens and understanding the teenage brain, making sense of our teenagers behavior. Then we just have to take what you're learning on this podcast about nervous system vulnerability and the stress response. How that might look different for your teen because of their nervous system vulnerability. You’ll have to kind of take what Siegel says and put it through that lens. And then my friend Katie Malinski, she also wrote a book about parenting teens called How to Talk to Your Teen About Anything. And Katie Malinski was a guest on the podcast previously, and so I'll make sure to link to all of these resources as well as to that podcast with Katie Malinski. 

So does this way of parenting work with teens? Yes, especially if we get really clear about what we mean by does it work. And what does parenting this way look like with teens? Well, I think it looks largely the same, with maybe a little more awareness of our own tone of voice and our own fears. Alrighty, y’all thanks for tuning in to another Q&A on Friday's episode. I'll catch you back here next week for our normal Tuesday episode and maybe another Friday Q&A, I'm actually not sure. See you next week, y'all.