GROW Counseling
GROW Counseling
The challenges of parenting teens during uncertain times
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Dr. Wendy Dickinson, founder and psychologist at GROW Counseling, talks with Jill Howgate about the challenges of parenting teens during this uncertain time of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hi everybody, Wendy Dickinson here at Grow Counseling. I'm a licensed psychologist, and we are excited for our brand new podcast series that we are releasing in light of quarantine and coronavirus. I've got Jill Halgate here with me, who is one of the therapists in our Alphabetta office, and she sees teens, works a lot with anxiety and a variety of other things. So thanks, Jill, for being here with us today. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me. We recorded part one earlier. So if you guys haven't heard that, you can check that out. Basically, we started with this question of like, how do we be okay with teenagers and we're all locked in our house together? So how do how do we get through this and be okay? So there's some super helpful tips there you're gonna want to check out. Jill, I know you're a parent. You have a couple, you have two boys who are now young adults but have successfully navigated uh teenage years. What are you hearing from your friends that still have teens at home about the quarantine and being cooped up together? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, it's it seems like it's it falls into two camps. One is the parents whose kids are having a lot of anxiety. They don't, they there's no definite end to this. Um at first it was kind of that snow day kind of things are are shaken up and that's kind of exciting kind of thing, but now the kids are really anxious and and getting upset about the things that they're gonna miss in school or events and time with friends. And then the other extreme are the parents that are stressed because their kids are just not taking it seriously and think this is way blown out of proportion and are kind of minimizing it altogether and trying to be a little blithe about the situation. Right. And while the parents are are freaking out and breathing into a bag, the kids are kind of being dismissive and saying, You're just overreacting and this is so stupid. Why can't I go and meet my friends, you know, for whatever?
SPEAKER_00So let's talk about that group for a minute. Um, you know, parents are the authority figures in the household, they make the rules. Why can't they just lay down the law here and lock all the doors and keep everybody inside?
SPEAKER_01Right. And it's so tempting. It really does feel like a great option. I think the the problem there is that you are relying on force rather than influence, and that only works as long as you are exerting force. So it doesn't garner any trust, it doesn't build any relational strength, credibility, respect. And so you pretty much have to have your eyes or your hands on them every minute because they're only doing what you want them to do because you have forced compliance.
SPEAKER_00That's great. So I I imagine too, like easier with elementary children or maybe even middle schoolers when you're bigger than they are.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00The older and the bigger that kids get, the harder it is to just rely on force. We have to use that relational influence that you were talking about. Tell me about how you build relational influence or leverage that during a time like this.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. I think there's a there's a handful of ways. I think you have to be real. You know, kids have an instinctive sense of what is fake, what is phony. It's if you wouldn't buy what you're selling, they're not gonna buy it either. So you have to, you have to be honest first. And so, and I think you can do that without creating more uh anxiety. You can say, this is not something that we've experienced before. I this is not something that came up in the manual. This it is not fair, it is not okay, and it may be way worse or way milder than than what we anticipate. I don't know, but what I do know is that I have to try and make decisions to to the best of my ability with the information that we have to keep us safe.
SPEAKER_00That's great. That's great. So honesty is important. I think that vulnerability of just being like, hey, here's where we are and this is why it matters, goes a lot further than trying to convince them, like you said, to buy something that maybe even you wouldn't buy yourself. Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And it's, I think you can be confident in that. You can say, I don't have the answers. We're gonna figure it out. And and what you think matters, ultimately, I'm gonna have to make some decisions for all of us because I'm the grown-up here. I'm the one that, you know, signs on the dotted line. But we will figure it out, and and you're gonna be a part of this process. I want to, I want to know about your experience. I you're part of this group, and it matters what you think and what you're feeling. And even though I don't have all the answers, we are a strong unit and we'll we'll figure it out. We'll get through this.
SPEAKER_00That's great. That's great. So summarized so far, we've talked about being honest. What's your next bullet?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, to kind of be confident in that. Um, to I think to be human, I think it's okay to say, it's this is scary. It's I wish I had more information. I wish this was more predictable. I I wish I could give you answers to these questions. I wish I had them myself. This every now and then, uh I get really stressed out. Sometimes I feel really mellow with it and I can be kind of sanguine, but sometimes it starts to get to me, and and I can I can understand that it's frustrating and that that you're not loving all my solutions. It to that humanity, I think, is is totally reasonable.
SPEAKER_00That's great. I love that we're all in this together, we're all a team. This is what we're gonna do because we're all we're family, and our family is gonna work together on this. Yeah. Um, how it kind of shifting a little bit, um, how should parents respond if their kids aren't taking it seriously? So, you know, they've tried some of these things, they're being positive, they're being confident, and the kids just kind of continue to want to go the other direction. How do we how do we as parents respond when kids don't take it seriously?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So it's the one thing I and we talked a little bit in the last podcast was to try not to take it personally, uh, which is an incredibly hard thing to do. Um they're so provoking sometimes. They're real good at it. They're super good at it, the special talent. But, you know, to recognize some of that bravado is their way of coping. With for when threats are overwhelming and avoidable, if we can't avoid them, then we've got to make them seem smaller. And so sometimes the bravado is is really just a way to kind of bring these problems down to a manageable size. And when we insist on kind of going, you gotta get it together, kid, you gotta understand what's going on. That actually is really a threatening thing. This this reality is is gonna put them in a place that feels really unsafe. So a little bit of emotional distance from it in that regard, to not to take their bravado personally, number one, and to understand what's motivating it.
SPEAKER_00Um that's great. I I think that you know that the keeping the perspective that we are adults, we have fully formed brains that can kind of understand a lot of this stuff with nuance is really important because all the research shows that our brains aren't fully developed until we're around 26. Probably for some people it's 28 or 30, but that's a different podcast. So we're dealing with a bundle of human that has a lot of emotion that definitely is taking in information, is freaked out about what they're hearing, but doesn't have all of the brain capacity to really process and understand the same way we do. So I think that piece of not taking it personally and actually proactively expecting them to behave in some irrational ways or things that um, you know, are you know not the way we would? Well, of course they wouldn't. They're teenagers and we're adults. So I think maintaining that sense of, you know, I'm an adult and I'm the one who needs to handle the situation well is a is really important. Is there anything else that you'd add to that?
SPEAKER_01You know, I I think that you're spot on and the the to remember too, they have so much information. You know, this is part of the thing with with the information age that, you know, in my phone I've got more power than NASA had when they launched men to the moon. So much information, but so little life experience. And that incongruence, that can be really tough. So it it feels they feel like they should, they should, they should know more, they should have more credibility. We feel like they have more experience than they do. So keep it keeping that in mind is really important.
SPEAKER_00That's great. So, some practical tips for keeping your house from kind of falling into chaos during this time. I know we talked about a few on the other podcast, but just to kind of recap in case people have just caught this one, yeah, we talked about structure, just maintaining something that sort of works for everyone, remembering that it's not a one-size-fits-all approach.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, checking in with each other to ask for what everybody needs to kind of get a sense of, you know, it it buy-in and investment and feeling like people are seen and known.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and we talked about maintaining reasonable expectations. I I've seen a lot on Instagram about people who are like, I'm gonna reorganize my whole house this week and I'm gonna redecorate everything. And I know you do happen to be in the middle of a uh house reno project, which actually started before all of this. So we'll give you a pass on that one. So maybe it's okay to give yourself permission to not accomplish all the things that have always been on your to-do list. If it works for you, great, but don't expect that that's gonna necessarily work for everyone.
SPEAKER_01Right. And I think um another thing that I would say is to make it personal. When you're having these interactions, it's it's easy, it's A versus B, or my way versus your way, and I'm the authority and you're the kid, so this is just the way it is. And and at the end of the day, that's that's a lot of times the way it goes. I mean, when I took my kids into the doctor, they would rather have not gone. But I I felt like I knew better, and so I made the choice for both of us. So it may come down to that, but the way you couch it can make a big difference. And so I I always kind of say, you know, make it personal, let them know that their opinions and their actions matter and that you need their help in this process. Um, in the same way that we talk about this with with relationships between couples, but using I statements so that even though you may have to kind of say, this is just the way we're moving forward, it's a lot less antagonistic to phrase it in a way that says, I know this may not sound reasonable to you, but this is what we need to do moving forward. Or I understand that you're frustrated, or I understand that that you don't understand, or that you disagree with this decision. And I I don't I don't go against that lightly, but here's what we need to do. Here's what we're gonna go forward, what needs to happen for our safety. Again, it's you're still having to ultimately, if you strip it down, it it comes down to I'm the one in charge and I'm gonna make the rule here. But it the way that it comes across does a lot more to keep the relationship in good shape rather than just reducing it to this power struggle.
SPEAKER_00That's great. I I think that's a great place to end. We all want to be seen and known and cared about and know that our our needs and our opinion matter to the people around us who we're in relationship with. So thank you so much for taking your time today to join us. Super helpful. We will check back in and see how the floors are coming in your house later on down the road.
SPEAKER_01It's gonna be an adventure.
SPEAKER_00All right, take care.
SPEAKER_01Okay, thanks.