What Your Teen is Trying to Tell You E-Book

Stella O'Malley

• Herausgeber: Swift Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 431

Beschreibung

Leading psychotherapist Stella O'Malley has walked many miles on 'Planet Teen'. She understands difficult teenagers – she was one herself, and as a psychotherapist she has spent many hours working alongside unhappy adolescents. Stella takes parents inside the teenage brain and provides practical advice for each of the key milestones teenagers need to tackle during adolescence to become happy, healthy adults. You will learn how to navigate many issues, including anxiety, obsession with technology, body confidence and the sexual self. Rather than always looking to 'fix' the situation, you will instead be empowered to know when and how to intervene and when to allow your teen to work it out for themselves. Ultimately, you will understand your teen better and learn to rekindle joy in your relationship.

Leseprobe

Stella O’Malley is a psychotherapist, best-selling author, public speaker and a parent with many years’ experience working in counselling and psychotherapy. Born in Dublin, Stella now calls Birr, Co. Offaly, home, where she lives with her husband and two children and runs her private practice. Stella is often invited to give talks to teens and parents.

SWIFT PRESS

First published in Great Britain by Swift Press 2023 First published in Ireland by Gill Books 2023

Copyright © Stella O’Malley 2023

The right of Stella O’Malley to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Designed by Graham Thew

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 9781800752542 eISBN: 9781800752559

To my friend Alasdair, with all my love, from one erstwhile crazy, mixed-up teen to another.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Using this book

PART I UNDERSTANDING THE TEENAGE MIND

Chapter 1 Half child/half adult

Why are some teenagers so irrational? (And why can’t you be more like your sister?)

Inside the teenage brain

Risk-taking and sensation-seeking behaviour

Impulsivity and impaired inhibition

Behaviour management

Emotional regulation and information processing

What parents can do

Takeaways

Chapter 2 Connecting and communicating with your teen

The different communication styles of the family

Five key steps to help you connect with your teen

The ways family members approach conflict

Developing emotional intelligence

The Drama Triangle

Blended families

What parents can do

Takeaways

Chapter 3 What teenagers need to learn during adolescence

Teenagers’ milestones

Develop coping skills

Learn to maintain relationships

Acquire healthy methods of communication

Learn to cope with independence

Come to terms with the maturing body and the sexual self

Develop a sense of personal identity and purpose

Identify meaningful moral standards, values and belief systems

Begin to reach emotional maturity

Takeaways

PART II GROWING UP IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Chapter 4 Immaturity: Why doesn’t my teen want to grow up?

The daunting nature of adulthood

The cultural shift

Limited opportunities to gain maturity

Compulsive lying

Stealing and delinquent behaviour

The carrot and the stick

Failure to launch

Where is the trade-off?

Takeaways

Chapter 5 Drama and conflict

Drama queens and addiction to drama

Attention-needing versus attention-seeking

Fights and emotional dysregulation

Teaching the teen how to manage conflict

Encouraging wellbeing

What parents can do

Takeaways

Chapter 6 Friendships, relationships and school life: Managing the social context

How attachment bonds form

Peer-orientation versus adult-orientation

Attachment styles in childhood

School difficulties and school refusal

The stepladder approach to school refusal

Shutdown, withdrawal, disengagement

When the bond becomes cold and transactional

Lonely and desperate for friendships

Teaching social skills

The attachment void

What parents can do

Takeaways

Chapter 7 The challenges associated with the overuse of technology

The illusion of companionship

The pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain

The echo chamber

The anxiety-inducing feeling of social media

Sexting and inappropriate online content

Digital self-harm

Chronic sleep deprivation

Online gaming

Online gambling

Parental controls

The power of micro habits

What parents can do

Takeaways

PART III EXPLORING TENSION, FEAR AND RIGID THINKING

Chapter 8 Anxiety and depression

The impact of the Disneyfied childhood

An uncertain and complex world

Symptoms of anxiety

How anxiety happens

Negative thinking

Symptoms of depression

When your teen won’t get out of bed

Nurturing resilience

Avoidance, drowning and blocking

Six steps to calm the anxious or depressed mind

Overcoming fears

What parents can do

Takeaways

Chapter 9 Intensity, rigid thinking, compulsions and obsessiveness

Rigidly repetitive behaviour

Difficulty with unmet expectations and things going wrong

Obsessiveness

Intrusive thoughts

Compulsive behaviour

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

Perseveration

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Selective mutism

Perfectionism, fear of failure and performance anxiety

Academic intensity

Fear of success

What parents can do

Takeaways

PART IV THE RECKONING: COMING TO TERMS WITH OURSELVES AND OUR BODIES

Chapter 10 Body issues: Self-loathing and disordered eating

A sense of control

The critical inner voice

Body dysmorphic disorder

Eating disorders

Anorexia nervosa

Orthorexia

OSFED

Bulimia nervosa

Binge-eating disorder

Seeking professional support

What parents can do

Takeaways

Chapter 11 Sex matters

Sexual awakenings

Consent, boundaries and saying ‘No’

Hygiene and the developing body

Masturbation and a joyful approach to sex

How porn has changed

The Coolidge effect

Sexual orientation

What parents can do

Takeaways

Chapter 12 Identity exploration

Stages of development

A developing identity

Who am I and what can I be?

Providing brain space

Career choices

Coming of age

Gender identity and gender roles

Gender dysphoria

External influencing factors

What parents can do

Takeaways

PART V FACING COMPLEX CHALLENGES

Chapter 13 Neurodiversity and other issues

Assimilating the diagnosis

Support for the neurodiverse teen

Socialising the neurodiverse teenager

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)

Puberty and sexual development for the ASD teen

Executive functioning and the neurodiverse teen

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

Impulsivity and risk-taking for the ADHD teen

Dyslexia and dyscalculia

Dyspraxia

Medication and neurodiversity

Takeaways

Chapter 14 Self-destruction, self-harm, suicidality

Self-harming behaviour

Why do people self-harm?

Harm-minimisation strategies

Suicidality

A search for meaning and purpose

What parents can do

Takeaways

Chapter 15 Alcohol and drugs: Seeking oblivion

Alcohol and drugs as a solution

Coping mechanisms: Why does your child seek oblivion?

Weed, hash, marijuana, pot, grass, skunk

Addictive behaviour

Hard drugs

Heavy on boundaries, heavy on warmth

Takeaways

PART VI ESTABLISHING POSITIVE FAMILY DYNAMICS

Chapter 16 Supporting your distressed teen

Take care of yourself

Become an emotional detective

Evaluate the impact of family roles

Don’t sweat the small stuff

Is it trauma catching up?

Facing potential mental illness

The difference between supporting and enabling

The process of individuation

A supportive presence with a loose rein and a strong core

What parents can do

Takeaways

Chapter 17 The magic is in the repair

Regaining your sense of authority

Parents are the world experts on their children

Remaining curious

Don’t be afraid to choose the nuclear option

Pebbles in a barrel

Strengthening the parental bond

Rekindling the joy

And finally …

Notes

Acknowledgements

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

In the interests of confidentiality, names and identifying details have been changed throughout this book.

‘The right way to wholeness is made up of fateful detours and wrong turnings.’

CARL JUNG

INTRODUCTION

I WAS A demonic teenager. When I look back, I can hardly believe that I acted in the way I did. I was filled with power and certainty and lived with almost animal-like instinct. Ironically enough, I had the reputation among my friends of being a ‘deep thinker’, as I charged around the place, filled with fury and intensity. Although I was certainly thinking hard, I was also manic, disconnected and totally out of touch with myself. I literally hadn’t a clue what was going on.

In my work as a psychotherapist, I spend time in Planet Teen alongside unhappy adolescents and I have met hundreds of troubled teenagers who are just as mixed up as I was. I like them. We typically establish a warm relationship and I’ve seen first-hand the difference that some understanding and connection can make to these kids. Some of them are potential powerhouses, almost overwhelmed by the depth of their emotions. Others go the other way and seem to have shut down entirely: monosyllabic responses emerging from a hanging head communicate a slouching antipathy that can melt their parents’ minds. Too much or too little emotion, it really doesn’t matter – the reason you are reading this is because you are worried about your kid and desperately afraid that things are getting worse.

Parents can often feel at sea in the face of their teen’s distress; they don’t know what to do and they don’t know what to say. These days, our instinct is often to ‘get the professionals in’, but the professionals don’t always know how to help your teen – and anyway, nobody cares as much as you do. This book aims to help parents lean in to the challenges involved and help their teenagers as much as they are able. Through an analysis of the ‘tasks’ each teenager needs to tackle during adolescence in order to progress to adulthood, parents will know better when to intervene and when to allow the teen to work it out. Some kids have additional needs, and certain common conditions are examined in the context of helping teenagers to one day become better-functioning adults.

Witnessing a teenager in distress is so incredibly hard that the vast majority of people – be they siblings, fellow parents, teachers or other professionals – feel that somebody, somewhere needs to be blamed for the mess – and the parents are the easiest target. For many parents, it is heads you lose, tails you lose; you’re either too strict or too easy, you either worked too much or not enough. Whatever you did, you did it wrong. Yet, although trashing the parents might be easy, it’s not necessarily justifiable. Equally so for the teenager. I have written this book so that harried parents can refer to specific issues and hopefully find some self-compassion, a deeper understanding of what is going on for their teen as well as some suggestions that might improve the situation on some level. You may not read the book from start to finish; you might instead choose to cross each bridge as you come to it and approach the book section by section.

This book isn’t too concerned with the easy-going teenager who is sailing blithely through adolescence – for those parents who have such an easy job, we wish you well (with perhaps a hint of dark envy); rather, this is for the parents of the teenager who is in distress. Although it is unsettling, most parents can endure common or garden bad behaviour from teenagers; what feels unendurable is when the teenager’s behaviour seems incomprehensible.

I don’t promise a miracle – false promises seldom help. Instead, I seek to help parents improve things, little by little. Although the situation might not be radically altered, it can be improved, and this is usually enough. If we can reduce the impact, the intensity, the length of time, the fallout and the frequency of distress, everybody’s life will change for the better. Bringing some self-awareness, gentleness and compassion into everybody’s life can make all the difference.

Some teens are sad, others are anxious; some teenagers appear to take on every difficult trait of adolescence and turn it up full volume. They may live at an intensity that is difficult to fathom. Many teens are a little on edge or just seem dejected. No matter what’s going on, many teens need help with communicating and the parents of these teens need help to figure out what’s being communicated. I will attempt to not only support these endeavours but also bring insight, awareness and compassion into the equation.

• • •

Using this book

This book is not exhaustive – I haven’t tried to explain every possible distress that might manifest in teenagers. Rather, I have tried to give snapshots of common issues that arise in my counselling practice. I have used some recurring features throughout this book in order to provide practical support for parents and to highlight specific issues.

Case studies: A case study is an in-depth study of one person. As space is limited, I can’t provide all the details of any given case study, and instead I point to what I perceive as the pivotal moments that happen during the therapeutic process. Certain details have been changed in the case studies to protect the identities of those involved and, in a bid to further protect confidentiality, I illustrate scenarios similar in kind but not in actuality to those I have heard from clients over the years.

Developmental milestones are a set of functional skills or age-specific tasks that most teenagers can do by the time they reach emerging adulthood. These milestones or ‘tasks of adolescence’ can be cognitive, emotional, social, physical or behavioural and it can be very helpful for parents to realise that their teen is struggling with a specific developmental milestone and might need some extra support in this area.

Coping mechanisms are conscious or unconscious adjustments or adaptations in our behaviour that decrease distress in a stressful experience or situation. Some coping mechanisms (also known as coping behaviour and coping strategies) are healthy and some are unhealthy. In the counselling context, therapists often seek to help the client become aware of and modify unhealthy coping mechanisms in favour of healthier options.

Parenting strategy features and the takeaways at the end of each chapter are offered as clear and concise suggestions that parents might try to see if they work in their household. I urge parents to only follow suggestions that sit well with them – you are the world expert on your child and, as with all suggestions in this book, the old saying, ‘Take what you need and leave the rest’ is very apt.

PART I

UNDERSTANDING THE TEENAGE MIND

CHAPTER 1

HALF CHILD/HALF ADULT

‘We don’t so much solve our problems as we outgrow them. We add capacities and experiences that eventually make us bigger than the problems.’

– CARL JUNG

When the clinical psychologist Lisa Damour was in graduate school, the professor teaching the psychological testing course presented her with a pile of Rorschach inkblot tests to score. Before letting her loose on the tests, the professor warned Damour, ‘Double-check the age of the person whose test you are scoring. If it’s a teenager, but you think it’s a grown-up, you’ll conclude that you have a psychotic adult. But that’s just a normal teenager.’1

For some, the storms and stresses of adolescence arrive with a bang; the teenager is suddenly unaccountably ill at ease, and many parents feel that It Has All Gone Wrong. One kid might swing madly from arrogance to devastating insecurity, from laughing wildly to screaming like a banshee, from giving affectionate hugs to trashing the kitchen. Another might completely disengage and live behind a thick wall of silence. None of us really knows what function the storms and stresses serve; perhaps teenagers need to experience this distress to prepare for adulthood? The psychologist Carl Pickhardt tells us that the task of adolescence is to break the spell of childhood.2 Maybe the magic of childhood necessarily leads to crushing disappointment in adolescence as we come to a reckoning with life and realise that it isn’t filled with magic and Hollywood endings and, in fact, is often really harsh. If an adolescent doesn’t learn how hard life can be, will they truly be fit to become a functioning adult? As yet, psychologists remain unsure about this point, but most parents agree that the spell of childhood certainly seems to get smashed as the adolescent navigates the teen years.

‘Why did I ever embark on this parenting lark?’ the parents in my clinical practice rage. ‘They hate me, I hate them; we never stop screaming at each other. What the hell has happened?’ It can feel even more unsettling that some teenagers seem to behave in a manner that is designed to destroy their entire family. They might reject your views, your politics, your friends and your personal values. Even random inoffensive stuff, like your cooking, your soft furnishings and your taste in music, suddenly become the object of contempt. Some parents feel they can do nothing right during this tumultuous stage, and the insidious notion that parents are just hopeless fools can creep into the parents’ mindset as they begin to believe the propaganda. ‘Perhaps the kids are right,’ they think. ‘I can’t follow all their jargon, and their way of life looks pretty insane to me. Maybe I’m just a hopelessly out-of-touch old fool?’

Yet, in many ways, we parents are supposed to be out of touch – we’re not the new generation any more. And we are often hopelessly flawed; I’m flawed, you’re flawed, we’re all flawed – but that doesn’t mean that we’re fools. Most of the time, we parents still know more than teenagers. For teenagers to thrive, parents need to learn how to carry themselves with authority. It’s important that parents don’t give their power away and let the teenager think that they are vastly superior to their parents. The wisdom we have gained from experience might be dismissed in this era when youth is glorified, but our wisdom is hard-won, and teenagers feel more confident when they realise their parents have insight and experience that they don’t have.

• • •

Why are some teenagers so irrational? (And why can’t you be more like your sister?)

In my work as a psychotherapist, I have noticed that roughly a third of teenagers find adolescence relatively benign, about a third find it challenging, and for the last third, adolescence is a complete nightmare. This makes everything even more difficult for the family as the parent looks askance at the difficult teenager and wonders why the hell they can’t be more like their siblings. But let’s look at the bigger picture. It is readily acknowledged that some babies can be impossible to settle; they can cry all the way through those early years and then become perfectly happy children and healthily functioning adults. Some individuals are happy babies but then become whiny and moany in middle childhood, and then there is another turnaround: they are really quite manageable as teenagers and eventually become reasonable adults. Some teenagers can be impossible to please and can tantrum through their teen years but become contented adults. Sadly, some of us are difficult from the cradle to the grave. It’s impossible to predict, and although many theories are floated, no one has quite figured out the reason for this.

Both brains and bodies develop at rapid, though differing, pace during the teenage years, and teens develop at different times. One adolescent might be going through a pubertal growth spurt at the same age as another is experiencing a period of cognitive growth. Not only that, but the huge influx of hormones and the many developmental peaks and troughs cause more tumult in the teenager’s life. We don’t quite know why some children walk at nine months while others learn to toddle at 18 months; neither do we know why one child can speak in full sentences at 20 months while another is still saying ‘Mama’ and ‘Dada’. Intelligence is not always a factor, and neither is verbal competence or physical agility. Yet there is one similarity between all babies, children and teenagers – they all experience extraordinary surges in growth and development in a way that isn’t replicated in adulthood. They are literally growing up, and one day it will all calm down. Their bodies and minds will become aligned, and they will be grown up.

If a person is a cranky baby, then becomes an unhappy child and eventually turns into a nightmare teenager, it is likely that there are certain unmet needs at play and this needs to be attended to. The parent might need to take a long, hard, honest look at this child’s life so that they can accurately figure out what is lacking. Perhaps the teen is bored and needs more freedom? This might not suit you as parents, but if your teenager has the pent-up energy of an animal in the zoo, maybe they need to unleash some of it?

If the difficult teenager was reasonable as a child, it is more likely that either hormones and growth surges are impacting them in unimaginable ways, or else some unresolved trauma has caught up with them and they need extra help. Some people have harrowing experiences during early or middle childhood, and as a result they are thrown off course for some years. Early life experiences can really shape us, and if adverse experiences are the reason for your teenager’s angst, it can be helpful to take some time to find the right support for them to process what has happened. When a teen fully understands what happened and has enough time to analyse the sequence of events with someone understanding and sympathetic, they can emerge from the experience with more wisdom. If they don’t face this monster, if they continually look away and attempt to quickly move on from it, they can be unconsciously shaped by those early experiences.

No matter the reason for your teenager’s difficulties, this life stage is such that they are likely to disregard their parents and instead turn to their peers for emotional support, fun and friendship (see Chapter 6). This works to varying degrees, and it is vitally important that parents don’t give up at this crucial time. Although it is developmentally natural for the teenager to seek validation among their peer group, it is also natural for parents to ensure their child has a strong base to return to when life becomes overwhelming. As one parent said to me, ‘I see myself as the lighthouse, and my child is out on the stormy seas.’

For a long time, much of the intensity, moods, attitude, conflict with parents, risky behaviours and other challenges associated with adolescence were assumed to result from the heavy influx of hormones that teenagers experience. However, developments in neuroscience over the last 20 years have brought a deeper understanding of the teenage brain, which has led to more insight into why teenagers are the way they are. These discoveries show us that brain development is another key reason why teenagers are so unpredictable, emotional and impulsive.

The human brain develops in two directions at once: bottom-up and top-down. The bottom part is the oldest part of the brain. It generates emotions and involuntary, unconscious reactions. The top part is the newest part of the brain. It generates rational thought, regulates impulses, weighs risk and reward, and modulates emotions. During adolescence, developmentally speaking, the bottom part outpaces the top part, so the instinctive, emotional brain is more powerful than the modulated, rational brain.

In her book The Teenage Brain, Frances Jensen, a neuroscientist and neurologist, looks to the latest developments in neuroscience to show us how the the brain continues to develop throughout adolescence. Although the brain is 90 per cent of its full size when we are six years old, studies in the last 20 years show that our brains aren’t fully developed until we are 25 years old, so while the brain doesn’t grow in size during adolescence, it gains complexity.

• • •

Inside the teenage brain

When we look at neuroscientific imaging of a teenage brain, we can see that it’s like a half-baked cake; it may look fully formed, but we shouldn’t be fooled! The inside is a mush of ingredients that have been mashed up together and aren’t properly cooked. The teenage brain is characterised by low judgement, immature planning and underdeveloped analytical capabilities. This, combined with being easily bored, high emotionality, an excitable reward system and low impulse control, can be pretty dramatic. On top of that, the teenage brain is sensitive to social judgement, which is why teens will sometimes get led by the nose by their peers.

It doesn’t matter how smart the teenager is or how good their grades are; they do not have the gift of judgement at their disposal. The rational and judicious part of their brain is not fully developed. So even if they have intelligence, they seldom have wisdom. Adults can think with the rational part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex. This prefrontal cortex understands the concept of long-term consequences, but this part of the brain is not fully formed until early adulthood. So teenagers are mostly driven by the emotional part of their brain, the amygdala. The amygdala is fast, filled with certainty and power, wildly illogical and given to seeing the world in black and white. The connection between the emotional part of the brain and the logical, decision-making centre is still developing. So while adults might be thinking, teenagers are busy feeling. Men may be from Mars and women from Venus, but teenagers are from Pluto.

• • •

Risk-taking and sensation-seeking behaviour

Just as most parents for thousands of years have suspected, recent evidence suggests that teenagers are chemically distinct from the rest of humankind. Teenagers’ ability to assess risky behaviour and evaluate potential rewards is pretty much half-baked. Teenagers have uniquely loosely connected frontal lobes, which impact the decision centre of the brain, while the reward centre in the brain is on high alert. So when adults make a decision, they can correctly carry out a risk–benefit analysis. In contrast, when teenagers weigh up a decision, they see the pleasure in full technicolour but their ability to consider the risks is dulled.3

Worse than that, teenagers’ ability to assess risk is even more muted when they are in the presence of other teenagers. The psychologist Laurence Steinberg ran a simulated driving study that showed that teenagers take twice as many chances when driving in the company of their friends than when driving alone – for example, running the lights when they are amber.4 It is developmentally normal for teenagers to be more preoccupied than any other age group with social judgement and more sensitive to the potential for approval. This is why they feel compelled to engage in risky behaviour – they are sensitive to their peers’ judgement, and their half-formed brains enjoy risk far more than mature adults’ brains. Adolescents and adults understand potential rewards differently – teenagers see them as almost the full picture while adults’ brains are better able to balance potential rewards with possible consequences, so the conclusions they reach can be vastly different.

The amygdala in the brain can drive emotional reasoning and teens are easily talked up – this is why they’re so excitable. The adults in the room sometimes need to help teenagers to dampen their amygdala-driven behaviour rather than talking it up. Distraction is an under-appreciated but very valuable technique for adults to use if they want to help their teenager to calm their fevered mind. You can distract with a favourite dinner or activity or some interesting gossip you heard about somebody. If distraction works with your teen, appreciate this gold coin in your pocket, as it can be invaluable in helping to talk your child off the metaphorical ledge. If distraction doesn’t work so easily, you can seek to slow down your teenager’s brain by helping them fully understand the consequences of the issue. You might do this by initially listening with empathy to whatever is creating the high emotion, and then, with sensitivity, bring some other factors into play. You might say, ‘I can see why you think you need to make this dramatic statement to the entire school year; but I wonder how Julie will respond to it?’ From there, the teenager could easily move into a rant about Julie’s nefarious actions. The parent can gently guide their teens to engage more about why Julie acts like this and what is driving Julie’s motivations. From there, they could then begin to complexify the issue further by exploring how another person might respond. The end goal is to teach the teen the consequences of a proposed risky action by helping them to consider potential responses. When we become adults, we learn to better evaluate risks and rewards, and we – eventually – improve our ability to control our impulses and look to the long term.

Teenagers’ risky behaviour might seem frightening to adults. Still, there are perceived evolutionary benefits to a propensity for risk-taking. Without this desire for adventure, teenagers would not be motivated to strike out on their own and would never leave their family of origin. The rise in ‘failure to launch’ among young adults (see Chapter 4) is a good example of how a risk-taking impulse is both needed and often impeded by other circumstances. Young adults who have failed to launch tend to stay in their childhood bedroom well into adulthood, safe and mollycoddled, some with no desire to move out and explore the big wide world, others feeling prevented from growing up by the current economic situation. Adult kids who are forced to remain living with their parents can cause much more distress to their parents in the long term than your average risk-taking teenager.5 Believe it or not, we need young people to take risks – we also need them to seek to grow up and move on. (In addition, we need older people to provide a thoughtful counterbalance to excessively brave and risky behaviour.)

Another reason why parents need to endure rather than always seek to curb their adolescents’ propensity to take risks is that, in evolutionary terms, risk-taking appears to have reproductive advantages. It is not only required for the adolescent to individuate from their parents but also necessary to impress potential mates. Even so, it’s important to become more attentive and supportive when your child falls into risky behaviour. This might mean taking them away regularly for a night camping, mountain-climbing or go-karting – any activity that will engage their interest. If chosen correctly, the activity will be interesting and involve something exciting that satisfies their need for risk-taking behaviour without being thoughtlessly self-destructive. It’s not easy and will require thought and commitment but, as the saying goes, ‘You can lure them with a silver string, but you can’t push them with an iron bar.’

• • •

Impulsivity and impaired inhibition

Of the many fears parents have about our kids – and most of us are terrified about several issues at any given moment – we are often most frightened by the fear that our beloved child will make a terrible mistake, an error perhaps born out of compulsive impulsivity and a low boredom threshold, and that this mistake will alter the course of their lives. We remember our own crazy behaviour and lack of inhibition. We might have seen our friends lose their way, maybe fall into drug addiction, or drop out of college, or harm themselves. Teenagers seek risk, sensation, mental stimulation and physical freedom. This is simply petrifying for parents – and, developmentally, that’s perfectly appropriate; as fully formed adults we’re right to be frightened! We often talk blithely about chicks needing to fly the coop, but it is not so well known that the most dangerous time in a bird’s life is when they first leave the nest.

To complicate things further, though, not everything a teenager does is problematic. While moderate risk-taking and sensation-seeking are perfectly natural, parents tend to immediately conceive the worst-case scenario and catastrophise things. Parents need to steel themselves so that their teenager is free to learn from their own mistakes: sensation-seeking in early adolescence is both normal and necessary for teens.

It is arguably more important that parents watch out for impulsivity and impaired inhibition than for risk-taking or sensation-seeking behaviour, as a lack of cognitive control correlates with a higher risk for future issues. Appropriate risk-taking or sensation-seeking behaviour could be, for example, going to a carnival with a group of mates – there will be lots of excitement and there might be flirting, but it’s not intrinsically dangerous. Impulsivity or impaired inhibition is deciding to jump from the top of the carnival ride or having sex without taking precautions because they get swept away by the moment. Therapists are taught to emphasise the patterns of behaviour more than any given situation. Similarly, it is most helpful if parents can evaluate the golden thread that represents the overall pattern of behaviour rather than tumbling from one problem to another without seeing the wider perspective and pattern of behaviour. In many ways, parents need to introduce the teenager to the teenager. We can do this by saying, ‘I notice that this is a pattern of yours.’ Rather than decrying the behaviour, it is far better to be neutral in the face of specific behaviour and instead point out the specific pattern of events that is repeating. This is what skilful therapists do, and it doesn’t come easily. For example, if your child has been caught stealing, is this indicative of a pattern of impulsive, risky behaviour that has escalated to the point of criminality? Or is it a one-off impulsive act that could act as the much-needed wake-up call that your teen needs?

Parents often have a lot of valuable insights to impart to their children – the challenge is knowing how and when to make the point. Timing matters, and it is often much better to stay silent, bide your time and then, when you judge the timing to be right, land your point and walk away. If you have been careful in your communication and if you have chosen your time well, there will be no need to repeat what you say and no need to hang around to justify it. You might choose your moment and say something like, ‘I’ve noticed a pattern of risk-taking behaviour that worries me. For example, you were caught vaping, and then you got into an unsafe situation with your friends after the party, and now you’ve been caught stealing. Your impulsivity and general lack of inhibition when it comes to risk seem to land you in serious trouble. Maybe it’s time for you to learn how to take a deep breath, feel the soles of your feet, and step away for a minute before you make a decision?’ It’s like throwing pebbles in a barrel. You might feel like you can never fill the barrel – that nothing is going in – and then one day, you have a strange inkling that your child is learning something. Eventually, usually around the time when the teenager becomes a young adult, the synaptic balance in the brain becomes more inhibitory than excitatory (which basically means that the brain becomes more able to evaluate risk as it isn’t so likely to become over-excited). So the ability to behave safely and logically has improved with time – and the barrel is finally full.

• • •

Behaviour management

Parents of toddlers will have learnt how a well-known psychological tool called operant conditioning – a method of learning that employs rewards and punishments for behaviour – can be very effective when it comes to raising kids. However, we often forget that this learning can reduce and even become extinct if we stop providing rewards for the behaviour. When the behavioural psychologist B.F. Skinner accidentally discovered how a conditioned or learnt response will decrease in strength or become extinct if not continuously attended to, he became very excited: ‘It was a Friday afternoon and there was no one in the laboratory who I could tell. All that weekend, I crossed streets with particular care and avoided all unnecessary risks to protect my discovery from loss through my accidental death.’ It is easy to laugh at Skinner’s intensity, but the learning from his experiments turned out to be as significant as he thought it would be. Skinner’s work shows that we can’t take our teenager’s learning for granted. Although you may have taught them – and taught them well – not to engage in sexting or inappropriate behaviour online, if you don’t regularly reward them – even through mild verbal acknowledgement – for avoiding this, there is a danger that they will slowly drift towards it without even realising it. Simply put, children and teenagers will continue to demonstrate good behaviour only if we continually satisfy their reward centre and tell them they are great for avoiding bad behaviour.

At the same time – because nothing about parenting is simple – it is important that parents don’t become the ‘verbal wallpaper’, with commentary becoming so repetitive that it is like the radio in the background, unnoticed, slightly annoying and always on. The delicate balance between the two is hard to achieve. We parents are always on a tightrope, trying to get it right, swinging to the right, veering wildly back to the left, failing, failing miserably, and then, sometimes, failing better. In the meantime, all we can do is give ourselves a break and bring some self-compassion into our lives, as parenting a difficult teenager is an extremely tough challenge to navigate.

EVIE, 14

On the first day of secondary school, Evie was as excited as any 12-year-old could be. She wore her new uniform with pride and thought that, finally, now that she was in First Year, she was in the big kids’ world. That morning in school assembly, some older boys from Third Year felt her bottom. Evie didn’t know what to do. She was shocked and embarrassed but flattered that older boys could be interested in her. In primary school, Evie had found it difficult to find a friend group, but suddenly, in secondary school, the boys were giving her huge amounts of attention. Her status was automatically elevated into the cool group. It didn’t take long for Evie’s behaviour to become very sexualised.

Evie’s parents had no idea that this early sexualisation was taking place – they were happy that she seemed popular and content in school and didn’t think to ask anything more. Evie’s mother had already taught her all about safety online, so she knew all about the risks of online inappropriate sexual behaviour. But these lessons faded away as Evie became in thrall to the boys’ compliments and attention. Evie had a large bust and was intrigued to discover that she was the recipient of plenty of male attention. She leapt at this unlikely chance to shine and became proud of her sexual self and proud that so many boys were sexually interested in her. She dressed provocatively both at home and with her friends and regularly posted sexually explicit pictures of herself online. One day Evie’s mother picked up her phone and saw a series of sexual messages flash up on the screen. It became clear that Evie was engaged in a lot of sexualised behaviour.

When Evie first came for counselling with me, she was happy that she was the boys’ favourite. She reckoned the other girls were jealous, as was her mother. With the exuberance of youth, she felt that she was extraordinarily sexy and that all the boys loved her. It was heady stuff, and she found it difficult not to be sexual. She wore revealing clothes everywhere she went – even in the kitchen with only her mother and father to see her. Evie had become over-identified with her sexual identity. This identity had been foisted upon her when she was vulnerable. It had been the first time she felt like a social success and couldn’t give it up easily.

Evie and I worked together for quite some time. This involved getting to know each other, learning to read the boys’ behaviour, building real friendships and learning to notice hostile behaviour and learn from it. As Evie became more astute at reading social cues, her intense need for superficial approval from the boys diminished. Her parents introduced further restrictions on Evie’s tech and imposed rules on her phone usage; she could only have a phone if her parents had the password. In the meantime, her relationship with her parents improved as they started to hang out with her more, watch films together, go shopping and generally re-establish a connection. Prior to counselling, Evie’s parents had been distracted with their work and had not been spending so much pleasure-seeking time with her – indeed, most of their time together had consisted of hurried breakfasts, lifts to school and dinnertime.

All this effort took a lot out of Evie’s parents. It was a difficult time for everyone. Her parents had felt very alienated from Evie’s extreme sexuality. At the same time, Evie was almost addicted to the excitement of sexual approval. Sensation-seeking and risk-taking behaviour was the order of the day, and it took a lot of energy from her parents to help Evie enjoy more boring pursuits such as a day out shopping and a movie. But time and effort paid off, and eventually Evie began to integrate her sexualised identity into a larger identity. She still enjoyed receiving male attention, but she also found pleasure in building friendships with other girls, playing sports and having fun with her family.

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Emotional regulation and information processing

We already know that teenagers are easily bored and more responsive to rewards than to consequences. To make matters even more challenging, changes in the limbic system in the brain also make teens less able to regulate their emotions. These changes also increase the pace and range of their emotions. When a person is more emotional, they’re more likely to be more vulnerable as they are more likely to wear their heart on their sleeve.

It’s not easy being a teen, but it’s not all bad. The good news is that adolescents can process more information than adults, and their brains are developing all the time. During adolescence, their cognitive ability improves in five areas:

1 Attention improvement: Their ability to maintain their attention improves.

2 Memory: Their memory improves.

3 Processing speed: They develop the ability to process information quickly.

4 Thought organisation: Their thoughts become more organised.

5 Metacognition: Their ability to think about their thinking improves.

In short, they become aware of their own thinking patterns and gain more self-control and insight, and this leads to the development of more complex thinking processes. Thankfully for us all, their brains are fully formed by the time they are in their mid-twenties.

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What parents can do

It feels torturous to watch your child make unnecessary mistakes. Whether they are dropping out of a valuable college course or alienating their good friends, we parents want to leap in and redirect them. Sadly, this seldom works. Their brains are half-formed, and we also know our children very well – better, sometimes, than they know themselves – yet it is not always our place to take charge of their problems. Sometimes, the failures we endure as adolescents are the very experiences that propel us to become healthily functioning adults. We can attempt to provide wisdom and insight when our kids seem at sea, and if we can help, all well and good; sadly, more often than not, our ‘help’ turns out to be more destructive than supportive (see Chapter 16, ‘The difference between supporting and enabling’).

Can we really sit idly by while our teenagers make mistakes? Although it is definitely the role of parents to keep our children safe, when it is more a matter of reckless irresponsibility it can be more valuable to allow our children to learn from their mistakes and provide love and wisdom when it is all over. We say we would take a bullet for our child; this bullet sometimes comes in an unrecognisable form. Sometimes it is imperative that we watch our child make a mistake; we say our piece so that they know what we think, but we allow them to make their mistakes and provide a safe and loving harbour for them when they are ready to seek help. This is incredibly difficult to do.

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Takeaways

• Some teenagers are easy and some are very difficult – this is not necessarily a consequence of parenting.

• Ensure your teenager knows the reality of the unformed teenage brain so that you can point out that their ability to assess risk is impaired and you retain authority over decisions about their welfare.

• The amygdala can drive emotional reasoning and teens benefit more from dampening down their amygdala than from talking it up.

• Don’t underestimate the value of distraction.

• Prop up information about brain biology with memorable stories you have gathered (through searching online) that demonstrate the impulsivity associated with the teenage brain; for example, reckless teenagers jumping off high rocks into the water and hurting themselves; driving too fast, etc.

• Parents need to be the lighthouse as the child is sailing in stormy seas.

• Teach your teens that they can be resilient and competent. The brain seeks drama, and the adolescent brain can swing wildly from one drama to the next. It is helpful if teens are regularly reminded that they will probably cope better than they think they will.

CHAPTER 2

CONNECTING AND COMMUNICATING WITH YOUR TEEN

‘The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.’

– GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

EACH FAMILY is like a tiny planet of its own, with its own particular climate. You might remember visiting your friend’s house when you were a child and realising with a shock just how differently each family operates. The way family members behave, the way they laugh and how they communicate all combine to create the family dynamic that fosters each unique family atmosphere. Whether the family atmosphere is positive or negative is often unknown until problems arrive and the dynamics undergo pressure-testing. Most families tend to jog along in life, accepting their particular quirks, hoping for the best and navigating each problem as it arises, until, all of a sudden, a difficult teenager explodes like a bomb in the household, and the parents are forced to carry out a critical evaluation of the family dynamics.

Rather than waiting to confront issues when that pressure point is reached and the teenager has exploded, we should learn to improve connection as soon as the cracks start to show, so that conflict can be tackled in a healthy manner. Although this can be difficult, the entire family generally benefits from improving communication. Making some necessary adjustments to the family’s communication style will lead to a significantly improved family dynamic – and life – in the long run.

The teenager will not be thinking about this on any level; there is perhaps nothing on earth more self-absorbed than a teenager who is in mental distress. This is why it is wholly up to the parents to lead the way in changing unhelpful dynamics and patterns of communication.

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The different communication styles of the family

It is perhaps easiest to understand others by remembering that there are two main styles of communication: direct and indirect. Major problems can arise when direct and indirect communicators clash, as they are speaking two different languages.

Direct communicators give the headlines. They tend to disregard body language and tone of voice and instead focus on words. These people go by the motto ‘I mean what I say and I say what I mean.’ They value other direct communicators and can feel very frustrated by indirect communicators. They make their point with conviction, and it is easy to know where they stand on any given point. They tend to be forceful and often use words like ‘should’ and ‘have to’.

Indirect communicators are very different. They may tell long, rambling stories with a tenuous link to the subject. They often use metaphors, body language and tone of voice to communicate their thoughts and emotions. They ask questions rather than argue the point and use qualifying words like ‘maybe’ and ‘possibly’. For indirect communicators, ‘It’s not what I say, it’s how I say it.’

Direct communicators think they are clear, assertive and efficient. The problem is that other people may think their clarity is rude, aggressive and insensitive. Indirect communicators often perceive themselves as gentle, sensitive, courteous and subtle, yet other people may see them as inefficient, wishy-washy, sly and even dishonest.

Julie, a teacher and a mother of two, came to see me for counselling as she felt overwhelmed by the huge fights that were erupting between her husband, Harry, and her son, Brian. Harry, a direct communicator, regularly gave orders to his son and could never understand why Brian seldom carried out the tasks. Brian was an indirect communicator and didn’t like his father’s rude manner. Rather than expressing in words why he believed that the stark orders were inappropriate, he chose to communicate his unhappiness with his behaviour – he went on strike. Both became irrationally angry with each other, but neither knew exactly why they felt so irked. Julie and I examined Julie’s options, and she decided to intervene by first gently asking Brian what he thought was going on and then privately asking Harry for his version. Then, in front of the two of them, one evening after supper, at a rare moment when both were getting along well, she translated the words and the behaviours and pointed out that there was no argument here – there was only a different style of communication and that if the family were to jog along together, both Harry and Brian needed to appreciate the other’s way of communicating.

There are many other aspects of communication: some people are goal-oriented, others are people-oriented; some people are thinkers and enjoy making plans, others are action-oriented and can be dismissive of plans. Figuring out communication styles within the family can make it easier to build bridges between warring factions.

It can also be important to note who is a verbal communicator and who communicates behaviourally. This is not necessarily linked to direct or indirect styles of communicating – in conflict, some direct communicators are verbal and say, ‘I don’t agree’; others are behavioural and will leave the room and slam the door to demonstrate disagreement. Indirect communicators in the same situation choose to tell a long story that contains the message that they don’t agree with you, or, if they were more behavioural, they might gently remove themselves from the room with an elaborate excuse. The more parents can figure out how their teenager communicates, the sooner they can help their teen in the language that best suits them. Some people will never be talkative: they prefer slamming doors to shouting; they leave the room rather than explaining their problem. This is their preferred means of communication, and it can be pointless for parents to try to ensure that all their children are great verbal communicators. Some people prefer to communicate with their body language, with their music or art, with the food they make or with their facial expressions or their hugs. There are many ways to communicate, and it is not very helpful to hassle your teen into becoming a brilliant verbal communicator when they are more comfortable with behavioural communication.

Sally was an ex-client of mine who started back in counselling when she became concerned that her son, Paul, hated school. We worked together to try to make the experience nicer for Paul. Sally noticed that when Paul came home from school, he was often exhausted. Sally decided to make the kitchen feel really calm and pleasant and ready for Paul to eat a snack. She would then invite him to go to his room afterwards to decompress. Talking only stressed Paul further – what he needed was alone time to allow his body to de-stress. Some people benefit from a hot bath, others from a blanket on the couch, and some of us need to talk endlessly when we are distressed. It doesn’t do to assume one way is better than the others. The most important aspect of communication is learning to honour both your communication and the other person’s communication. This means actively listening with openness to the entire communication, including the words, body language, behaviour and tone of voice.

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Five key steps to help you connect with your teen