E223 Cracking the Teen Code: Tools Every Parent Needs Today

Join host Cynthia Coufal and expert Isla Reddin as they dive deep into the science of teen brain development and transform how parents understand and connect with their teenagers.
Key Insights:

Why teenage behavior isn't about rebellion
How brain development continues until age 25
Strategies for building stronger parent-teen relationships
Navigating social media and independence challenges

Isla Reddin, founder of Crack the Teen Code, shares her expertise from 18 years of working with young people and studying psychology, brain development, and communication theory.
🔑 Learn how to:

Communicate more effectively with your teen
Understand the biological drives behind teenage behavior
Shift from an authoritative to a collaborative parenting approach

Free Resource: Download Isla's 10 Reasons Worksheet

Connect with Isla:
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Website

#TeenParenting #BrainDevelopment #ParentingTips

 Struggling with anxiety in your family? If anxiety is causing tension, fights, or disconnect in your home, you don’t have to face it alone. I help parents bring more peace, confidence, and connection to their families. Let’s talk—schedule a free consultation today or email me: ccoufal@cynthiacoufalcoaching.com

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Transcript

Cynthia: [00:00:00] Hi, everyone. I am so glad that you are joining me today. I have a guest with me that I want to introduce you to, and she has so much information for mostly the parents, but I think teens will get something out of this too, because I think you'll, you'll see when, when we talk about it, how it also affects the teens as well.

But I have Isla Redden with us today, and she is the founder of Crack the Teen Code. She is passionate about nurturing the mental and emotional well being of youth, as am I. That's why I wanted her to be on the podcast, particularly in the adolescent and young adult years. Her own experiences of navigating through the stressful and confusing time with her two sons created a deep calling to share her learning with other parents.

In the past 18 years, Isla has worked with thousands of young people on their journey through grade school, college, university, and into the [00:01:00] workplace. Studying psychology, brain development, and communication theory helped her to further grasp the complexity of adolescence, its impact on both the young person and the parent.

And to gain the tools and strategies to teach and coach others. Isla speaks to parents, teachers, and community groups bringing awareness to how the brain development of the adolescent child informs so much of their behavior and how caring adults can support their teens through these difficult years.

So, Isla, I am so glad you are with us today. And please tell us more about this brain development and how this helps parents and teens to understand each other. Well, 

Isla Reddin: Cynthia, thank you so much for inviting me. I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to talk about something that I feel so passionate about 

Cynthia: too.

Isla Reddin: And this piece of Adolescent teenage brain development [00:02:00] is something that I learned when my kids were no longer teenagers, and I wasn't able to give them the gift of me understanding something that would have really made sense 

Cynthia: for them, 

Isla Reddin: help them. But as so often happens, we speak. About the things that were a mess in our lives, our message is our mess and in my case, that's certainly true.

I learned this after my, my kids were grown, but I am so passionate about sharing it with, with other moms. 

So my, the big part of that, of the message is that what nobody taught us was that the development that's taking place. In the in the youngest childhood years that zero to five or zero to seven that that that development that we see happening because we've got the physical cues of the baby going from [00:03:00] infant to crawling to toddler to kindergarten, etc to riding a bike.

And so we're visually watching development. And so We, we sort of know intuitively that there's a lot going on, but the problem we have is then the teenage years roll around 1112, we start a whole other process that goes on until our child is 25 or 27. We don't see it in the same way at all, but the amount of development, brain development, that is taking place is, is every bit the same as happened in those early years.

So we, we, me, I'll, I'll talk about myself. I thought that once I had gotten both of my kids to about 10 or 11, I'd figured it out. All I have to do is a bit more of the same and then, you know, maybe tweak it a little bit. But I got there. And what nobody told me was you've [00:04:00] got a whole other human being on your hands when they become a teenager, and it requires a completely different parenting strategy.

And so that's. The piece that I learned around the developing brain that I now want to share with, with others, other moms, other parents to really help them be able to help their relationships with their kids and to help their kids. 

Cynthia: Well, I am on a lot of different like Facebook groups with parents, and there's a lot of frustrated, angry, sad I mean, the parents are just struggling so much and needing so much information.

So what is some, what is one of the first things that parents should start doing or we're trying to learn about when they have teens and they're like, who is this kid? I don't even, this is not who I was raising before. So what should they be doing to try to. Connect or figure this out or what's something that you start with families.[00:05:00] 

Isla Reddin: I think that, I think that the, the, one of the hardest things is that this idea that we've, we've got to the point of the 10, 11 years old and then things start to change. And we're so surprised by it. I think the message would be, it's a different stage, a completely different stage of development that your child has no idea what's going on and is not very happy for a lot of emotional trauma that goes on inside the child of not to make sense of how they're feeling.

Mm 

Cynthia: hmm. 

Isla Reddin: That in, in inevitably. Comes back and hits us, the parents, because if the kids not okay, then the first person they're going to lash out at is the person that they feel safest with. And that's us. 

Cynthia: Yeah. 

Isla Reddin: So I think that the [00:06:00] my message is my hope is every school talks to parents about this so that we're able as parents to expect.

These changes and and we're prepared for them. But the big difference is we move from being authoritative, but we move from being the person who's in charge to being a team player. We've got to change our way of parenting to be thinking about the needs of this child as they're moving towards 18. And there is sort of a hard deadline there that we're all up against as parents.

And that hard deadline is that child will become officially an adult. At 18 and officially independent. 

Cynthia: Our 

Isla Reddin: job as parents is that we have to make sure that they get to that 18 with as much confidence and as many [00:07:00] competencies as possible. Life as they can possibly have. And then how do we do that? And how we do that is we have to sort of step back and go, okay, what does that look like?

It's a completely different parenting model getting them through those young years. 

Cynthia: Yes. Yeah. I, when I think about with my, when I'm talking about anxiety with parents, I want them to see that. You know, anxiety creates an uncomfortableness in their child, you know, like they don't want to go to school or they don't want to learn to drive the car or they don't want to take the new class or whatever that they're being anxious about.

And the parent doesn't want them to feel bad because if their child feels bad, then they feel bad. And so then they're like, how do I stop my child from feeling bad? And so sometimes it's a lot of, well, I won't make you go to school or I won't make you drive the car or I won't. And then the child never [00:08:00] learns how to be uncomfortable and still do something because their parent has taken it away.

Not because. Of anything bad. I mean, they're just wanting to feel better. They want their child to feel better, but that isn't, it's almost, you need to do the opposite of what it feels like you should do. And so probably a lot of the things that you come across with parents is some of the things that you want to teach them probably feel counterintuitive or the opposite of what they think they should be doing.

Is that what you find? Yes. Most 

Isla Reddin: definitely, most definitely. And I, as I kind of said about this hard deadline, so to speak, I think it's really useful for parents to think about this because intuitively we, we're going to do everything we can to protect our babies. It's just the way we are. But yeah. The, the consequences of failure [00:09:00] become more and more difficult to handle the older we get.

And we can't, we, we, as the parents have to take responsibility for developing some of these skills, these life skills that are the ones that our kids are going to go forward with when they're not with us, we're not there, you know, picking up all the pieces. And these, these life skills of critical thinking, of problem solving, of collaboration, of communication.

We are their best teachers. All of that. They do not get this at school. No. I worked inside the school system. Yeah. I know they don't, and you know they don't. Yeah, they do not. And not just in the school system. I worked K 12. I've worked inside universities. I've worked in training departments of companies.

Cynthia: They don't get 

Isla Reddin: it. They don't get this. So we have to be the ones that give them. [00:10:00] It's more important than any other aspect of education, in my view, way more important. But I think that when parents. Start to internalize. How am I going to help my child get to this next benchmark? And what does that look like?

And what are the skills? And what, what's the relationship that I want to have with this child? Not only gets us to 18, but gets us to 28 and 38 and beyond. So it's, it's a completely different way of thinking about the parenting journey. But if we don't know that everything is different, if we don't know that we can't just do what we were doing before.

A little bit differently, and it's all going to work, then we're really left without a lot of tools where we as parents are left in a very hard place with our [00:11:00] heart wanting to do everything we can for our kids, but we don't have the tools. 

Cynthia: What are, what do you see as some of the reasons why people aren't having, like they're having more conflicts with their teens?

Like, what are some of the, the reasons or the I'm thinking about, oh yeah, the most common reasons that there's conflicts in a teen, teen parent relationship. 

Isla Reddin: Well, I think the big ones are the ones. Well, one of the big ones is one that wasn't there 15 years ago, which of course is social media. Yes. The, the role that social media plays today.

And, and that is a very, it's a very complex one. But I'll, I'll, I'll come back to that one. Let me give you some of the easier ones is probably the most complex. Yes. I think the the other one that has been around forever is independence 

Cynthia: is 

Isla Reddin: this. [00:12:00] desire on the part of the teenager to be in charge of their own life, their own world, not at the, not to the detriment of their families, but to have this sense of, I want, I want some level of independence.

I want to be able to take control of certain things in my life. 

Cynthia: And 

Isla Reddin: the thing is, that is normal. That is a biological drive. 

Cynthia: Yeah. 

Isla Reddin: The adolescent child of any mammal is moving in that direction anyway, right? The, the, the, the drive towards becoming an adult and becoming responsible for yourself and independent is there.

I think as parents, and I can say, I had no clue how 

Cynthia: to 

Isla Reddin: think like this. I mean, I can think like this now because I've got all this information now. But if somebody had even [00:13:00] opened the door or a window to that idea of, have you ever thought, Isla, that this is a biological drive and necessity, and how are you going to help your child get to 18 and independence and have enough skills and confidence to be able to handle it?

I think it could have changed. That as well could have changed my thinking around the whole parenting thing. Because I, as a parent, I know it was about protection. It wasn't about development as much because I didn't see what was coming, you know, I, I was, I was just doing year on year without any real vision towards the future.

And I think that we miss. And a tremendous opportunity when nobody helps us see that what we're doing today at 13 or 14 is building towards what's going to happen at 18 and 20 and 25. 

Cynthia: Well, what I find with independence too, is that [00:14:00] when, when teenagers are starting to state views or ideas that are different from their parents, there is almost like a personal A fence that the parent feels like, Oh, how dare you not like this, that, whatever they, you know, originally had taught them.

And I re I have, I did a talk one time about how to get, get along better with your teens. And I mentioned this, not taking everything so personal, like everything that they think or do doesn't have to be an attack on what we think or do. It's part of them being an individual person that's different from their parents.

And I feel like, cause I, I remember very clearly what it was like to be a teenager. And I purposely said opposite things to my parents just because I wanted to be opposite. Not because I really believed any of those things or wanted to do any of those things. It was just a way for me to be like, [00:15:00] And I don't have to think like you or believe like you.

And so I think because I remember that so clearly, that was easier for me to understand with my kids. But I do see that with parents and you're probably seeing that too, that this individual or independence, the parent has to take their, take out their idea that it's personal against them. 

Isla Reddin: Yeah.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because so much. Of what our kids are doing is they're testing there. It's not so much that they're testing us. They're testing their own thinking. Yeah. And they hear it. It has to be said out loud. And it has to be acted upon in some in some way for them to have that experience of what is it like to have said that or thought that or done that particular thing.

And so there's a lot of. There's a lot of testing [00:16:00] for the kids, testing their own, their own thinking that's taking place where I think parents get really triggered. And I totally understand this. I think it's completely normal is that we parents, we look at everything. We don't just see it for what it is.

We're looking at what's beyond that. Like, if I allow this. What's this going to take me towards right and we're constantly about we're keeping them safe. We're, we're making sure that they're not making huge mistakes that they're not getting into terrible trouble, they can't get out of etc. But I think, you know, if I could, if I could help parents do anything, it would be.

Wind the clock back 10 years when your kid is five, six and seven and start to have them be way more independent of you at that point. 

Cynthia: So 

Isla Reddin: they, they fall down, they learn, you know, they get into trouble in school and they've [00:17:00] got the consequences of it. We're not saving them because when we're not saving them at 15, it's a much, much bigger deal.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Cynthia: Yeah, 

Isla Reddin: there's, you know, but, you know, I work with the teen I work with parents of teenagers rolling the rolling the clock back doesn't work unless we're working with the oldest and there are two or three that are coming behind. Parent learns. Oh, I can get ahead of the game here. But I think, I think this, the, the independent piece is, is huge.

And going back to the social media piece, I think one of the things that I find very very difficult to really grasp is, and there's, there are a lot of wonderful books out there about this, but to understand that my, the kids, Adolescents, teenagers, they're trying to find their tribe 

Cynthia: because 

Isla Reddin: their tribe has to be in place by the time they're [00:18:00] 18, by the time they leave home.

Because if they're on their own, thinking back to, you know, literally the days of the tribe. 

Cynthia: Mm hmm. 

Isla Reddin: If it if they became an adult and they didn't have peers that they had already connected with and everything else, they would be excited to be ostracized and they would die. Again, the, when we understand there's so much that's a biological.

Imperative 

Cynthia: in this 

Isla Reddin: thing. I think it also helps because it takes us our responsibility. It doesn't take the responsibility away, but it takes the some of the pressure off of us to get it right. 

Cynthia: We're able to 

Isla Reddin: kind of go, okay, this is this is nature taking over here. How can I. Navigate with nature. I can't go against nature.

How can I work with nature? 

Cynthia: Yeah. Well, that is the tricky part about social media because I get when kids tell me I just want to be connected to my friends. [00:19:00] I just want to hang out. You know, in these different or, you know, have Snapchat or have all these things so I can be part of the group and I can, you know, see what everyone else is saying and I can, you know, have fun with everyone, but I also see how damaging it can be and I see how much parents struggle to get some sort of balance with that.

And so do you have any tips or tricks about how to help this? Like they need to. And I also think that having no social media or phone until they leave your house, it also seems a little dangerous because then they're going to get one when they leave and then they're going to have no training at all or no experience going out trying to deal with it.

So what, what should parents do about the social media thing? 

Isla Reddin: I'm, I'm, I don't have, I don't have those answers. I just. I mean, I think that if we [00:20:00] did we would have figured out how to fix it all right. Right. But I agree with you. I think you, you it's. Parents can't. We've got to be careful that we don't try and take over to the point that we're shielding our kids from those aspects of life that they need to learn about.

I think what we're, it's much, much harder work on our part, but what we have to be able to do is we have to be with them as they're having these experiences. 

Cynthia: Yeah, 

Isla Reddin: completely non judgmental. We have to learn how to ask open questions. We have to learn how to zip it. We have to learn. I mean, there's so much that we have to learn as parents in the teenage years to be able to help them.

Cynthia: But, 

Isla Reddin: you know, we can't be on our phones or bring our phones to the dining room table. I mean, we are the role model. We've got to be handled in the room and we've got to be demonstrating that. It's not that we're going [00:21:00] to get it all right, but I think we've got to, we've got to take responsibility for thinking about how do we want to set, how do we want to set our family up?

What are the, what are the values inside the family system? And how do we, how do we hold everybody accountable to those values, including ourselves? 

Cynthia: Yes. I, and that's, I think that's what I have been thinking. I didn't have to deal with social media with my kids because I, my youngest graduated in oh nine.

And I think she had a flip phone that she could text on. So, I mean, we didn't have all the stuff or she didn't anyway. And so, and my older son there, he didn't have a phone. Anytime until he was an adult, because it wasn't a thing like people didn't do that. So I haven't had to navigate that as a parent, but I I've worked with lots of families and I see things when I'm just out and about, and it seems like parents are on their phones [00:22:00] probably as much as.

And so if they're trying to teach their child to have a balance of some kind, they're going to have to have the balance too. And so I think that that's true that we're the role model. And I think if we're starting the rules at the very beginning, With kind of how we want to do it and not like giving them free reign and then taking it back or, you know, like all this kind of inconsistency stuff, which I think when kids have talked to me about being really angry about the rules with their phones, it seems like their parents maybe let them do whatever they wanted at first and then something happens and then they're like, Oh, well now you can't have it at all.

And I think that's. more of what's caused the problem than if they were eased in with already some guardrails in place where they just sort of fall into those and then kind of see where it goes. But I feel like at least that's what it's looked like to me is that the kids that [00:23:00] have been brought up with balance and rules from the very beginning don't seem to be as angry about having the rules and the guidelines as those that maybe Didn't have them at first and then had too many.

And then, you know, it's just like, kind of went all over the place. Yeah. 

Isla Reddin: And I think, you know, as, as parents, we have a tendency to, we react instead of respond, you know, and. Learning to, learning to slow ourselves down and give ourselves permission to just pause 

Cynthia: and 

Isla Reddin: think about how we're going to deal with something that we just don't have that, that, that immediate reaction.

But I think it's, I think it's very, very hard. It's all, it all comes down really to communication. Yeah. And the communication being a value that we set up inside the home and that everybody understands [00:24:00] what, what communication really is. 

Cynthia: So, 

Isla Reddin: so that there's not that. There's not that knee jerk reaction that, oh, you're grounded.

Cynthia: I mean, 

Isla Reddin: I don't know. I mean, I know that we thought an awful lot about grounding both kids at various times. I don't think they ever truly got grounded. I think it was much more, okay, we calmed down, the parents, we calmed down, okay, so just tell me, what were you thinking? 

Cynthia: Yes, 

Isla Reddin: and just that, just asking that question of of your teenager is often so illuminating when you discover either they didn't, they weren't thinking They truly weren't, and it wasn't, they weren't thinking to make you mad.

Brain development again, this prefrontal cortex is not there. They don't have [00:25:00] the planning component. They don't have, they don't see consequences. There's so much that is missing until they're 25. 

Cynthia: Yeah. So 

Isla Reddin: they say, I wasn't, you know, what were you thinking that I wasn't instead of saying, but you should have known better and everything else.

Right. Dig deeper. I mean, really ask questions. Say, well, I wasn't thinking well, okay, fine. But do you remember we had a conversation two months ago when something like this happened? What did we decide then? Engage, engage, engage, engage and have conversations that allow your kid to come up with a lot of their own answers.

Because the kid is often every bit as confused as we are. 

Cynthia: They 

Isla Reddin: have no idea where these behaviors come from. They just know they feel bad. 

Cynthia: They're 

Isla Reddin: very confused and often they're really sad and upset 

Cynthia: and, and 

Isla Reddin: they don't feel good in their heads and they don't feel good in the belly, right? [00:26:00] It's not a good, it's not, it's not because they're not trying to get to us.

They're trying to figure themselves out. 

Cynthia: Yes. Well, so part of your work in the world is that you help families figure this out. You mostly work with parents, I think, but but you help them figure out this communication piece and the brain science piece so that they can get along with their teenager or young adult.

Is that right? 

Isla Reddin: Exactly. Yes. 

Cynthia: So how do families find out about you or like, how do they get connected with you so they could be working with you on these very things? 

Isla Reddin: People like you, Cynthia, that give me a forum to talk about what I talk about and I, as a speaker, I go speak on as many platforms, PTAs, different, different groups, different charity groups, places where parents of teenagers are [00:27:00] dancing.

My, my audience and where I love to speak and share my information and, and then I, you know, people, hopefully I have a lot of people that follow me on social media. I love putting my tips and tricks. A little short bite size nuggets on Instagram, et cetera. So I've got a YouTube channel, so I'm sharing what I can, as I can, and and just working with parents and then they can, they refer me often to other, 

Cynthia: other parents, 

Isla Reddin: other families.

But the, what, what I find is that parents. They, they go looking for help when they're brand new parents. There's a, there's a bit of a, I want to say a stigma to admitting the [00:28:00] problems that you have in the teenage years. 

Cynthia: Because 

Isla Reddin: there is this sense for the parent, and certainly this was true for me, it's like I should know how to do this.

I've got the kid from 0 to 12 or 13 or 14. Why? Yeah, why now? Why is it no mess? Why can't I figure this out? And. I think that's where I feel so strongly that somebody that we need that our society needs to actually talk about this stuff. 

Cynthia: Yes. 

Isla Reddin: You know I, I did some work. I was in Canada last summer and I did some work at the Children's Hospital.

And and because I have my, my rescue program, my rescue framework and I was talking to some, the doctors that were dealing with the kids with addiction and psychologists and social workers. And, Every, every one of them was saying to me, we need programs for parents. We need parents to understand what's [00:29:00] happening so that when their child, when we've treated the child and we've helped the child, they can go home and the parent can understand what's going on with their child.

Cynthia: So there's 

Isla Reddin: such a huge need to have this kind of science, this basic information out there. So the parents don't feel like they're failing or they're going crazy or there's something wrong with them or something wrong with their kids. There's nothing wrong with anybody. Right. Yeah. What's wrong is that we don't know.

Cynthia: Well, when you were talking about this should be taught to parents while their kids are in school, I was like, that would be such a great thing for schools to be doing is having this parent education on side. I know, you know, working in education for 31 years, we occasionally had a parent night where we.

You know, had maybe the police come and talk about the drugs that were going around the town, or maybe we had somebody come in and talk about sex trafficking [00:30:00] or, you know, just different things that we thought parents would want to know about. I think one time we might've had somebody come and talk about social media, you know, like what things are out there and what.

You know, like the secret things kids get into that could cause problems or whatever. But this just basic, like how do you parent a teenager seems like a great thing that we should be offering very regularly that people can get hooked into to help them get Navigate that because I just see a lot of people in pain online.

And that's kind of the place where parents are going when they can't get it figured out. And some of it's good. Like I see people helping, but then I see a lot of like being mean to other people too. Like, Oh, well, you haven't got this figured out. Well, what's your problem? And I just did this. And I remember my son was not doing well in school, like grade wise.

And I remember a parent telling me, well, I just don't allow my child to get anything other than A's. And I'm like Well, how do you do that? [00:31:00] You know, like, how do I, how do I make my child get A's? I don't know. He keeps failing everything. I don't know how to do this. And I just thought, you know, when I think about that, like, I needed somebody to help me with that.

And there wasn't anything and no one, I mean, you just had these other, I'm sure she was a well meaning person, but telling me, well, I just don't allow that. I'm like I don't know how that works. How do I, I would love to not allow that to happen. I just don't know how to do that. So I'm glad that you're out there doing these things.

And I am going to put all your links to everything where they can get you have your, your 10 most common reasons. Worksheet kind of, and I want them to have that, but also just your YouTube channel and your Instagram and your website, everything that they need to, to get ahold of you. I want them to be able to do that.

So that's all going to be in the show notes. And I'm just so glad that you're with us today. I just, I. My goal this year is to just make sure that my audience knows that there's lots of people out [00:32:00] here that want to help and that there's just so many ways, whether it's help with teens or help with parents or help at the school or all the things I want them to know that they can tap into these resources and that and that they, they, there isn't anything wrong with their family.

They just need maybe some support or education on how to do some things. 

Isla Reddin: Yeah, or just simply somebody to talk to. Yes. Oh, so that you can, you can speak, you can say out loud what you're thinking and nobody's going to judge you. You know, we've all been there before and we'll help in any way we possibly can.

Yes. We're all here. We're all in this together. You know, I had my messy middle and I'm sure you had your mess, but we're here because we lived it. And we don't want other parents to live it the same way we did. We want to help. 

Cynthia: I know. I so agree. And thank you so much. I have on, on my desk and on [00:33:00] my wall, I have this quote, people start to heal the moment they are heard.

And I think that is so true that the moment that somebody can say what is happening, there is a healing that happens just almost immediately. So I'm glad that you're out there doing that. And thank you for being with us. 

Isla Reddin: Thank you so much for the opportunity. I really, really appreciate it. 

Cynthia: Mm hmm.