Five Nervous System Takeaways For Parenting Teens

I’m closing out the teen series with my five key takeaways from viewing teen behaviour through a nervous system lens. 

We start with a real summer story from my own home: my almost 11-year-old changes the PIN on her dumb phone to feel more independent, immediately forgets it, and accidentally bricks the handset. I unpack what happened inside me (frustration, the urge to shame, the pressure to “fix it now”) and what I could see happening inside her (shutdown, embarrassment, disconnection). From there we come back to the pause, repair, and the kind of boundary-setting that keeps dignity intact while still teaching responsibility. 

Then I share 5 practical ideas for parenting teens and supporting emotional regulation: why your teen’s body often knows before their thinking brain does, how interoception and body literacy give you a better starting point than “tell me what you feel”, why feelings are information not instructions, how a safe home environment supports regulation, and why confidence is built through experience rather than reassurance. The big aim is long-term: helping your teen become their own safe adult, able to meet discomfort without automatically believing they are unsafe. 

If you want something hands-on, I also mention my nervous system reset deck for teens, designed to teach interoception with simple prompts and optional actions (available at www.youaretheanswerco.uk). Subscribe, share this with a parent who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find their way back to their body.

Transcript

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Welcome And Core Message

Naomi Mills 0:01

Welcome to You Are the Answer, the podcast that helps you reconnect with the most powerful healer you know, your own body. I'm Naomi Mills, chiropractor, healthcare professional, and believer in the natural intelligence within us all. In this podcast, I explore what it means to trust your body, decode its signals, and take ownership of your well-being without quick fixes or health fats. Whether you're just beginning your journey or deep in transformation, I'm here to guide you back to the truth. You are not broken. You are the answer.

Why Teen Brains Need Context

Naomi Mills 0:52

This will certainly not be the last time that we talk about developing teenage brains. It's a huge personal area of interest of mine, of how both we as adults show up in the world, but how we support our young people to do the same, because it's really difficult to really know, and I use that like in inverted commas, what the right thing to do is. Because guess what? There is no black and white on any of this stuff, and that's why I think looking at everything through a nervous system lens just gives us such a greater level of understanding of what anybody, never mind a young person, but that's what we've been focusing on these last 10 episodes. But anybody is going through, so we can approach them with empathy and understanding as well as holding our own boundaries. And today I'm going to share with you my five key takeaways from what I've learned from going through this journey with you, from sharing this stuff, from doing research, from really thinking about it from my professional perspective.

The Dumb Phone PIN Disaster

Naomi Mills 1:57

But first, I just want to share a little story that happened to me over the summer as the parent of an almost 11-year-old who you'll know quite well if you listen to her interview a couple of episodes again, ago, even. And you might have realized that Beatrix is very thoughtful, independent, lovely little human. And it makes me very proud of where she's at. But actually, as her parent, I'm noticing there's quite a lot of gaps of things that I believe that she should know or that we've taught her, never explicitly taught her, but there's so much we assume that our kids know just because we think, well, you've seen it loads of times, or we've said it loads of times, without expressly giving it to them as a teaching moment. And one of the decisions we made in our family was for her to have a dumb phone, one of these phones that just call and text because she is going out independently and we want to encourage her independence, but we want to avoid the pitfalls of the apps and the social media and the internet for her at this time. So we got her this brick phone, very old-fashioned. Um, she's got an old Nokia 3210 now, and it's got a pin number. And it never occurred to me that as an independent person, she would want to change that pin. And we were on holiday, and it became clear something was a bit up. And anyway, she had decided that she was going to change her pin number herself without asking first, without saying anything about it. And what did she do? Well, she of course immediately forgot what pin number she'd reset it to, even though she'd done it, you know, within the last 30 minutes. And the thing about these phones, and I think most phones, they're designed not to be broken into, like your pin number, it's like the pin number on your bank card. If you set it and forget it, there's no workaround for that. And she had essentially null and void her entire handset, which was stressful and expensive. But the reason I share the story is because I was really aware of so many dynamics, and I'm sure you will um be able to identify this of being flummoxed, being really annoyed about the situation, feeling annoyed not just at her. First of all, there's like, well, how dare you do that? You don't have the right to do that. Having a phone is a privilege and you shouldn't be changing it. Whereas really what I'm thinking and feeling is like, oh my goodness, why did I never think to talk to her about the pin number and how important it is and why, if she wants to change it, she needs to ask permission first, and actually why she's not allowed to have a pin number that we don't know yet for other reasons. I could feel frustration, I could feel, you know, wanting to shame. I can feel her going into shame about it and shutting down. And we did a great episode last time on shutdown and that pause way of so you know, I was just being a human parent, not doing it the textbook way, and also masses amounts of empathy and understanding because at the same time I'm feeling all of this. I'm thinking, well, she's only 10, of course she has. Like, and I think my overall feeling was we should have done better here, like we could have had a conversation, but everyone's learning. We're learning where our massive gap, our you know, blind spots are as parents, and we're not foreseeing these potential pitfalls. And she is going through it all in real time and trying to exert independence, and that really is for me the tension point of trying to raise healthy, safe, like nervous system needs met children while also allowing them to build resilience and experience fear and experience overcoming hard things, and so you're actually holding an awful lot, including all your own feelings and thoughts about it, at once.

Frustration Shame And The Pause

Naomi Mills 6:16

So, what are my top five takeaways that I learned as a result of digging into the teenage nervous system? And how is that helpful? Because we are dealing with complex situations, and luckily the phone is not life or death, but we also wanted her to learn a lesson around consulting us, thinking ahead, and valuing the things that she does have. And so you're always trying to take all of that on board as we do it. And so, one of the things I think that is sometimes missed in society in general, because it's not something we are taught and that we practice very often, is trying to teach our young people to gradually become more aware of what's happening inside themselves. So I could notice all the different emotions coming through my body, how that was feeling physically in my body. I could hold the situation and see different views on it at once. And that takes practice and it does take teaching as well, first to ourselves and then to our younger people, because as the adult, of course, we are the scaffolding of that. We need to present that to them. And actually, we did the pause framework because it kind of happens organically in our family anyway, and we realized in that moment that pushing her and pushing her to try and remember that pin was not going to work, and we came back to it when everyone was calmer and talked about what had happened and where each of us hadn't, you know, done the best that we could and where we were gonna go forward and what the consequence was gonna be, and so it wasn't a disaster, it was a very useful learning point.

Five Nervous System Takeaways

Naomi Mills 8:02

So, my five key body-brain nervous system takeaways.

Body Signals Before Clear Thoughts

Naomi Mills 8:07

Number one, your teen's body will often know before their thinking brain does, and what I mean by that is when we are trying to dig into why did you do this, or how are you feeling, or why do you not want to do this, a teenager very often says, I don't know, I don't know what's wrong, or you're like, What's wrong with you? I don't know. And they perhaps genuinely don't know. And so one of the things we can do is begin to encourage our young people to notice what's going on in your body, and this will feel really weird and strange in the beginning, because actually, if you notice it in yourself, and it's why as an adult you have to start with yourself, and I would definitely recommend going back to one of the earlier episodes on interoception, which is our seventh sense, if you like. It's our ability to describe what's actually happening in our bodies. So maybe their shoulders are tight, their stomach are aching, they've feeling restless or tired or irritable, and they have a physical shutdown before the mental one. And so the body is always going to give them really good, clear feedback, but it's for us to try and help our young people tune into and describe more what's happening in their bodies, and perhaps when it started and what it needs. Do you want time to yourself rest? Do you want to move? Shall we try and shift this? And so we're taking it out of simply describing our emotions and our feelings, which can feel very complex, especially at that stage, but into what we call body literacy. And as I say, that is something that is an alien concept to a lot of us as adults, and something I learned only as an adult. But it's a lovely place to start where you and your child can start talking from those perspectives.

Feelings Are Data Not Orders

Naomi Mills 10:03

The second thing is for us to remember that feelings are information, but they're not instructions. Because when we say we want you to listen to your body, that doesn't mean, oh, something makes me feel nervous or uncomfortable, I shouldn't do it. And that's why I did a whole episode on why it's so important to support our young people through doing things that are uncomfortable and building resilience. Because yes, a racing heart or an upset tummy might mean danger, but it can also mean excitement, anticipation, it could be embarrassment, it could be how you feel right before you do something brave and feel absolutely incredible. And that's why I think it's so important that we start opening these conversations with our young people, and perhaps looking back is a very helpful thing, going, did you notice something in your body? How did you feel physically? What did you notice? Was there something you'd have liked to have done? And we really have to kind of lead them through this whole different way of experiencing and thinking about them their body, their brain, and what's going on.

Building Safety Through Home Regulation

Naomi Mills 11:11

Number three is definitely that when we create a space of safety. So we talked about how we can change the environment, the home, how we can build a life that helps our teens feel safe, held, and regulated, understanding that when they're at home, that is the space they need to be able to do all their self-expressing and to feel really, really held. Because when they go out into the world, they're much more about context, fitting in, doing what's being done. So they need to be able to come home and really dig into some of this deeper work that we've been talking about. Regulation is ultimately for all of us what gives us the best quality of life and the best choice. Because when we feel safe and more regulated, we can be curious, we can problem solve, we can dream, we can make different choices. And I'm not talking about your teenager doing what you ask of them. It's it's funny, I do a lot of adjustments actually in babies, a lot of work with babies, and a lot of new parents, especially, they're like, oh, we don't want them to cry, and we just don't want them to have any discomfort. And it's like, no, no, no. Your baby should cry, it should let you know when it's uncomfortable. These are all very important parts of being human. And as a teenager, calm and compliant isn't kind of your typical teenage state, and it's not really what we want for them because this is about them making mistakes, growing independence, getting things wrong, and having a safe place to land, and hopefully having some extra tools in their toolkit where they can express what's going on in their body, find ways to shift their state if they want to, because we are really tooling them up for when they become adults, because that's their next stage, right? When they're gonna leave and it's going to be on them. So this is a real important time, a really important time that we can be teaching them this language. And if you can help your teen to realize what do I actually need in this situation that would allow me to move forward, especially in challenging situations, that's what we want to help them get to, rather than teaching them that the loudest signal in the nervous system, which might be scary, hard, too tired, can't be bothered. Well, that's what we listen to. So it's about noticing. And I think that's where the the episode, especially on environment and all the unconscious things we can do to help our teens regulate, really kind of bolsters this workup and takes the pressure off you as an adult a bit.

Confidence Comes From Real Experience

Naomi Mills 13:56

My fourth key takeaway was just a reminder that all of our nervous systems are learning through experience. So our teens don't feel safe simply because we tell them there's nothing to worry about. It's when they do something, often practical, where they were nervous and they achieved it. Their heart was pounding, but they still did that speech at school, or they didn't know how they had an issue with some of their friendship group. And rather than tell them, well, this is what you do and this is what you do, you sit with them and allow them to work it out for themselves. And it sounds so simple and conceptually it's simple, but in practice, for so many reasons, it's challenging, and especially because you are not just this, you know, magical inhuman parent that just does what you know, what all the research and and all these well-meaning people tell us we should do. You've got to hold all of your stuff and your safety and your experience too. So it's it's really challenging stuff. But I would I can invite you as a parent to if you practice this with your child, then you will also gain confidence in empowering them to problem solve through experience. So it's kind of win-win because our nervous system as adults, if you're anything like me or as a parent, you just want to protect them and keep them safe. But actually, the experience of allowing them just enough exposure to save themselves, you start to really trust in what you're teaching them and trust in them for the future. And so I think long term that's got to be where we're at if we can.

Helping Teens Become Their Safe Adult

Naomi Mills 15:41

Because ultimately, my my fifth key takeaway that I got from doing this work was that you really want them to be their own safe adult. And one of my favorite quotes from Glenn and Doyle is that our job as a parent isn't to teach how to avoid the fire, it's how to walk through it. And of course, that has extra special resonance for someone like me who does firewalking and has done firewalking with my child. But I just it just speaks so powerfully to me of the world is going to be whatever it's going to be for your child, and us teaching them the skills of paying attention to what's going on inside their bodies, their emotions, seeing their thoughts not as facts but as pieces of information, and choosing sometimes to see what happens if I do it anyway. And then, of course, you as an adult, that's where you come in of going, oh, if they push through here, I can see how that's going to create a sense of achievement. And actually, if they push through here, well, that might just exhaust them or overwhelm them, so we're not going to, and you can just gently guide them through when to go through it and when to honor it, because we've talked about this in previous episodes. There is no black and white for any one of our nervous systems. We are all completely unique. But what you can do as a parent is set up their environment, set up your toolkit so that you can teach your child how to settle and regulate, even when it doesn't go perfectly to plan. And so your our young people can learn how to live with discomfort without automatically believing they're unsafe and understanding that they'll be okay anyway. And then for us as adults, our role becomes not trying to be the answer for our teens, but building enough connection with them personally, and then with their own body and brain that they can find the answer themselves.

A Practical Tool For Interoception

Naomi Mills 17:51

One of the tools that I have created and now use for this work, if you are looking for something practical, is I have a beautiful nervous system reset deck for teens, and it is designed to teach the skill of interception. Everyone has a little statement about a feeling or a thought, very universal amongst um young people, it has a little question where they can start to think about what's going on in their body or what they notice, and then an optional action that is designed to help them find regulation, calm, peace, and safety in that moment. And I created these cards because this is what I'm seeing all day, every day in my practice in whole families, that we don't have the language, we don't know the tools, and we don't then know where to take action. And that's fine because all of us have just been getting on with our lives. But if you are interested in what I've been saying, if some of this resonates with you, and I'd say especially if it feels a bit of a far reach, because it can't it can be so far away from the way you were parented or the language that you use, having something like these cards as a tool that you can either give your teen to go off and explore on their own, but you can also do with them is a really, really beautiful place to start. Those cards are available to order at www.uartheanswerco.uk where you'll find all the products. There's also nervous system cards for adults if you'd like to try them for yourself first. And so I hope you enjoyed the teen arc. I'm really looking forward to the next series of episodes where I'm just going to explore what's coming up for my community, my client base, and in my own life right now through this nervous system lens. I'm really excited to explore some new topics and get back to discovering why you are the answer.

Closing Thanks And Next Series

Naomi Mills 19:57

Thank you for joining me on You Are the Answer. If today's episode sparks something in you, share it with someone you care about and leave a review to help others find their way back to their body too. For more tools, inspiration, and resources to support your journey, head to www.uartheanswer.uk. And until next time, stay connected, stay curious, and remember, you are the answer, and you always have been.