Helping Your Teen During Traumatic Times with Kari O'Driscoll

This week, Kari O'Driscoll joins me and we discuss how parents and educators can help teens better deal with traumatic events such as COVID19. Kari addresses important things that parents need to keep in mind such as:

• The flight, fight, freeze part of a teenager's brain is more than 3x the size of an adults
• That teens lack critical thinking skills at this age in order to be "logical" about events and that's where a lot of the 'drama' comes from
• The loss of friends, school being online, busy schedules came to a screeching halt, and that there's no real end in sight has a huge impact on them
• GenZ has lived with collective trauma their entire lives
• All of our nervous systems weren't designed to be on overdrive this long

Tune in to hear all of these points and more and be sure to check out Kari's books and follow her on social media with the links below!

• Truth Has a Different Shape, CavanKerry Press, 2020. Memoir
• One Teenager at a Time: Developing Self-Awareness and Critical Thinking in Adolescence, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019
• The SELF Project for Parents, CreateSpace, 2019
  
  
• Website: www.kariodriscollwriter.com and www.theselfproject.com
• Facebook: @kariodriscollauthor and @theselfproj
• Instagram: @karilod and @selfproject3369
• Twitter: @karilod and @theselfproj

Transcript

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spk_0:   0:00
you are listening to conversations on the Rocks, the podcast where my guest chooses the topic and I am your host, Kristen Dhaka's This week I speak with a parenting expert on the impact that Cove in 19 has had on our Children, but especially the impact that it's had on our teenagers and explains why it has affected them in a much different way than it has impacted us as adults. So grab your favorite cocktail or cup of Joe and let's get started. Hi, everybody. This is Kristen Focus and I enjoying today by Kerry O'Driscoll, who is a writer, parenting coach and a relationship advocates. And we're gonna talk a little bit today about our teenagers, are all of our kids, but specifically are teenagers and how we, as parents and adults, can help support them during while we're all being sheltered in place. Hopefully, it won't be much longer. Eso We also want to chat a little bit about how we can help them prepare for life outside of shelter in place and what we can expect as a new normal, especially considering we as adults, aren't even sure what the new normal is. So I say welcome. Hi, Carrie. Welcome.

spk_1:   1:08
Hi. Thank you for having me.

spk_0:   1:10
Absolutely. I'm excited to talk to you. We were talking a little bit about this in the pre show, and you and I both have a big, soft, tender space in our hearts for teenagers. You've been you've got, ah, one book specifically for that, right? One team. Your teen 81 teenager at a time. Um and then you've also got a couple other books that we're gonna talk about two. So let's talk. Just jump straight into it. What's how can we as parents help our kids who are so social they are not used to this. This is so hard for them.

spk_1:   1:43
Yeah, you know, it's not only that they're not used to it. It's that little really developmentally right now, their job is to be social. You know, their whole world is around navigating new social connections outside of the family and figuring out which ones are positive and which ones aren't. And how you know, how do we navigate all about so literally? What's happening with them right now is they are unable to do the most elemental, basic thing that they're supposed to be doing right now, but yeah, and so I think that the first thing we as parents and educators to can do is acknowledge that and not minimize it. You know, I think it's common for parents to be like, Oh, please quit being so dramatic or, you know, we're all suffering here or whatever and it's it's that feels dismissive to a kid, and it's also kind of gaslighting because, developmentally, they're different than us. And so it's hard for us to remember what that was like or imagine what that would have been like for us when we were teenagers. But it is. It's incredibly painful for them, and we all know that that sort of virtual social connection is nowhere near satisfying as the in person connection. And so but But kids are still going to really seek that out. And so if I'm a parent and I'm super annoyed with my teenager because they're literally on facetime for hours and hours and hours with their friends, instead of studying or doing their tours or hanging out with family cause I'm thinking, Hey, there's this great opportunity for family time. What I need to understand is that They're acting from a really basic emotional need right now, which is connecting with other people outside of their family. And they're doing it cause that's there. Biological physiological, social imperative during this time in their lives.

spk_0:   3:43
Yeah, with I've got three daughters, ones 21 1 will be 19 in two weeks, and then the other one is 16. And as far as that whole let's come together is a big happy. But we really haven't. We haven't spent that much time together. And, um, one of the other things that I do is I coach parents on social media and technology for their kids, right? And like you said, that's one of the biggest arguments I always hear from their parents is like, Well, they're not spending time. You can't take away in person. I'm like, That's not what they're doing. This is a supplement. This is the equivalent of us. Jen's Xers, you know, talking on the phone all day long or all night long, and you know that didn't that didn't take away from are important, you know, that's where we really connected, was in person, and since they're not able to do that right now, it's really challenging. I mean, I've let mine go out. I've let my go and you go to the park with their friends and, you know, giving them the drill down. And, you know, and I have to have confidence in them that they're doing the right thing. One of the hardest things I have seen is having that balance between their safety and their mental health.

spk_1:   4:45
Yep, well, and I think that's the other thing about parenting young people this age is that we really have to shift from that model of, you know, tightly controlling all of their circumstances. You know, it's we can't just say to them anymore. Okay, you're gonna have a sandwich for lunch. Would you like tuna or peanut? Better, right, because these kids know there's pizza. There are tacos, you know, your soup. Like they know there are other options. So it's our job to sort of share power with them, and I call it minding the levees. And then as we get older, we like, move the levees farther and farther apart and know that within the levees they get to bounce around and screw up and make mistakes in a safe place. Yes, yes. And as they get older, we start to move the levees. And eventually those levees will disappear in favor of levees that they create for themselves. But we have to teach them about those boundaries. And how did it make good, safe decisions within those boundary? That's our job. Our job is not to say this is all you can have a period end of story, cause that that ruins relationship.

spk_0:   5:58
Absolutely. And I see that a lot with my kids friends, you know, I shifted from parent to coach about their freshman year in high school.

spk_1:   6:07
Yeah, well, developmentally gots. That's where they are, right? I mean, their brains are beginning at that point to be able to integrate information across a bunch of different subjects, and they're able to see gray areas. So if we as parents, pretends that everything is still black and white, that's that. One of the things I love about teenagers is they can sniff out B s a mile away,

spk_0:   6:30
just like and

spk_1:   6:31
and they'll know that we're lying about it. And what that means is that is an erosion of trust in, says parents, because they know we're lying to them at that point, So we want them to trust us. And And if we want a partner with them in creating opportunities to make mistakes in a safe place, then we have to be willing to share power

spk_0:   6:56
a great 100%. Yeah, the, um I see that. Like I said, I see that with a lot of the parents of their friends who have not shifted that. And it's an interesting dynamic when those friends are in my household. The difference of how I treat them as I can even and I'm not judging anyone. Please, just no one think that I am you, do you? That's you. Do your parenting the way you do your parenting. I do mind, because I I knew from the very beginning when my 1st 1 was born that my job as a parent was to produce a responsible young adult who could stand on their own when they left my nest. Yeah, I want them gone eventually.

spk_1:   7:39
Well, sure, of course we do. But do we want them? You know, I mean, we that's what I think is like we have to be super intentional, Bill. Intentional About what it is that we want for them. And I mean again, I'm with you like no judgment at all. I don't judge other people's parenting styles unless you're, you know, physically or emotionally abusing your child and then yeah, yeah, well,

spk_0:   8:02
judge all day long,

spk_1:   8:03
you know, But I think so many of us just need your apparent the way that we were parented. And the vast majority of us, you know, in this in my age range were raised by baby boomers. And we were parented out of fear. Yes. And control. Yup, not didn't leave room for making mistakes and also set us up to think that the world was a really scary place. And then everybody was out to get us and and so fine being intentional about that I, you know, I have to think about Do I want my Children Teoh base their decisions and their lives on optimism and hope and abundance or scarcity and fear and avoidance. You know, that's a choice. And it's hard to do the first part because you have to have some faith. You know, you have to trust in your own parenting, which most of us don't. But We're constantly questioning ourselves and you have to, and you have to believe that the world is a safe place, full of optimism and hope in abundance. And that's a really scary thing if you were parented out of fear. But the other thing for me is I want a relationship with my kids by that, and I will prioritise relationship over power any day.

spk_0:   9:27
Have so obviously, um, it's interesting, you know, we grew up with the stranger danger mentality right and our kids being so technologically connected. It's very similar, however, if your parenting out of fear, you're not giving them the tools they need to be able to recognize the sexual predators online, the catfishing, all the other than all the other very, very real dangers that are out there. And I mean, so you've got Teoh. If your parents or not fear instead of logic, they don't know what to look for. They don't and they were going back to the relationship piece of it. They're not going. They're not gonna come to you because you have not develop that relationship for them for that safe that for that safe haven, And that's one of the big things I teach me My parents in these classes is like you've gotta have the world's greatest poker face when it comes to dealing with your kids. Social media, digital use. Because if you kind of turn it them and kind of give him the hairy eyeball for those something small when something major comes along, which all my gear into you, almost all of us have encountered it. They're not going to feel safe coming to you to say, Hey, this person is doing

spk_1:   10:34
this. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's another thing. It's another way we we need to be really intentional about the message that we want to send to our kids, you know? And so if my messages around, I want you to really be able to think critically, then I need to model that for you and not do that knee jerk fear response. When I hear about something, that's kind of scary. Now I need to be ableto unpacked what my fears are and my internal biases are and like put those aside and then model thinking critic, Who is this person? How do you know them? Why is it important that you connect with them. Maybe it is it. Why don't you block them? You know, just like all of those kinds of things, and that's that is absolutely critical. And I think it's another way that we, his parents, can support our kids right now because the other thing that we need to know as parents about kids this age is that they are ruled by emotion. I mean, the fight flight freeze center in their brain is literally swollen to three times its normal size during adolescence. Interesting. Everything that comes into the adolescent brain is filtered through the fight flight fear response first and with a undeveloped prefrontal cortex. That means that even if they can get it through there without having a massive emotional response, they still don't have the critical thinking skills to be completely logical about it. And once we realize that as parents, then we can stop saying, Oh my God, where you freaking out? This is not a big deal. They're literally physiologically wired to freak out. That's that's the the water they swim in during adolescence, and so if we can teach them to practice those critical thinking, this goes to acknowledge the emotion. Yep, that was really scary or saying that was really sad. Oh, my gosh, that feels devastating. And you, every right to be upset about that. And when those feelings have subsided, let's talk about what do we do and how do we put this in context? And we give them opportunities to practice. But what's happening right now for our kids is fight flight fears happening all day long. It's being triggered all day long because we're asking them to do the things that are completely counter to their physiology. Right now, we're asking them to stay away from their friends and their social networks. We're asking them to compartmentalize everything. I mean, most schools that they're doing online classes or like 30 minute class, 30 minute break 30 minute classes every minute break or there. You know there's all these little you know everything's compartmentalized. Their brains right now are primed for big abstract making connections across, you know, different subjects. So we're asking them to do the complete opposite of that. So they're triggered literally all day long every day and then if we come at them and say, well, not in your home you need a hang out with your little brother and do a puzzle. You need to do some chores for me. You need to not sleep so much. You need to get off your butt and study because now we can look over their shoulder. All they're in on the last right. That's us adding triggers on top of trigger. Whereas if we can say to them this sucks. Uncertainty is the worst. Being away from your friends is horrible. I mean, I have a high school senior right now. I have devastating. Is that not only are we away from our friends, we get no graduation ceremony. There's no prom. There's no graduation part. She will be 18 in a few weeks. No birthday party for you, Like that's devastate. You know what? If you want to sleep until noon and feed your feelings, knock yourself

spk_0:   14:23
out. That's how it's been in my house. Um, you know, I've let them take ownership of it. You know, I'm going to trust you that you have only got one in high school. Still, But you know, I'm trusting you. I'm keeping an eye on the portal and I'm not gonna sit there and you know, you do. You do it when you want to do it. You know what the schedule is? I trust you and the repercussions or yours if you don't. So I mean, it has exactly same thing. You want to stay up till two o'clock in the morning to sleep till noon, Have at it, Have at it.

spk_1:   14:54
Absolutely. And I'm so much a proponent of, like, there are all these other intangible things that they are learning or could be learning right now if we let them, like, you know, my kid has discovered that one thing that she can do that's gonna relieve stress for her is bake like she's never done that before. And she makes dinner at least once weeks. She goes online and find some ridiculously difficult recipe, you know, and puts together things in the pantry and does it and that that feels good to her. So she's learning that, you know, kids could be learning what they do. What's a good stress response? Maybe I wanna, you know, learn how to paint. Maybe it running is good for me. You know, all these kids whose days were absolutely jam packed from beginning to end. Maybe you had a zero period for band and then you had service hours after school. And then you got soccer practice till nine. PM or whatever. Right now you've got none of that. So what can you discover? You can discover what makes you happy. You could discover what really stresses you out. You can discover what what's good to do when you're stressed out. All of those things are survival coping mechanisms. They're going to serve you for the rest of your life. You learn calculus when you're 30 right? You really can. I don't care.

spk_0:   16:12
Yeah, it's, um or you could do nothing. Yeah, you can or you can't completely do nothing. But it's interesting on the part about the scheduling. Yeah. I mean, these kids are so used to going for 14 15 hours with absolutely zero downtime and all of a sudden just has slam on the brakes. You're right about how it's just triggers that because all of a sudden, all this time on their hands, just like we dio you know, I'm bored. I'm bored out of my mind and it's you know how it was so annoying at the very beginning of this. How you know everybody is like, Look at all the things that you can do And I even said it. I can do this and I can do that and I can do this But, you know, our brains are just We're dealing with something we've never had to deal with. The closest thing we've had to deal with something like this was 9 11 That is the closest thing that anyone in our generation can come close to having something. But that didn't stop our lives. It changed it, but it didn't

spk_1:   17:08
stop it well. And I think that's a good point, too, because the other thing about this particular generation of kids this Gen z group of kids, is they were born into 9 11 or shortly thereafter. And since then there, except for the last two months, has been at least one school shooting every single month, their entire lives, You know, the crises that they were born into. I mean, they're witnessing the me too movement there, witnessing massive climate change. I mean, these kids have lived with, like, collective trauma, their entire live.

spk_0:   17:47
That's a great point. You're right. That is a very good point

spk_1:   17:50
and what's happening. And in the midst of all of that, they checked all the boxes, right? They did the service hours. I didn't have to do 60 service hours to graduate from high school. I didn't have to take Driver's Ed to get my driver's license. I didn't have to specialize in a sport of the time I was fifth or sixth grade and play that same sport all year round. You know, these kids are taking AP classes, you know, they're like checking all the boxes because we promised to them if you do all these things, you're gonna get into a good college and then if you get into a good college, you continue checking all the boxes, you're gonna get a good job. Well, these are the kids that I graduated from high schooler right now who don't know if there's gonna be a college to go to

spk_0:   18:29
and the college kid don't know they have a job.

spk_1:   18:32
Exactly. I have a college student and she worked her tail off to get an internship for the summer, and I don't think it's gonna happen. And so it's not only this collective trauma that's happening. But to them specifically, they are suffering major losses cause we made promises to them that absolutely cannot come true now. No, that's a fun your kid a break. Let him go out and shoot hoops for three hours. So that's I think, what made Dio honestly

spk_0:   19:00
Yes, I agree. 100%. Like I said, I've been a little I mean, I've been very diligent, but I've also i e I just cannot have three mentally broken human beings coming out of this. I'm on a home body, you know, Give me wine and cheese on solid. Seriously, I mean now granite. There were a couple of places I like to go, and I'm looking forward to being able to go to them again. But this is not their lives at all.

spk_1:   19:31
Yeah, No, it's not. And it's a night. So I think it's really, really important that we give them and ourselves since lack and some understanding and recognize that it's not always gonna be like this. But right now, while it's like this, we need to understand that our nervous systems are on overdrive and Arnar, our systems were work designed to be on overdrive for long periods of time, and this is exhausting on my 20 year old was texting any other day because she's she lives in a completely different state all the way across country from me, which is really sad and kind of terrifying for me. But she was texting me yesterday and she's I'm so tired. Why am I so tired? Like I'm not doing, I'm She's taking finals and she's studying. But she's like, I don't I haven't been out of sweats and like, three months, you know? Why

spk_0:   20:25
am I so tired?

spk_1:   20:26
I saw And I said, Honey, your nervous system is amped. I mean, even if you're not physically doing anything, your body is using so much energy right now just to get you up and out a bit and motivated to do anything right now, you know, if you need to just go sit by the lake and stare for an hour and 1/2 please go do that.

spk_0:   20:51
Eugene V. Sims, in my award winning blogger, is now a full fledged podcast. Get it just about anywhere that you get podcast and even YouTube. Yeah, we're doing everything possible to keep ourselves sane and that does take a lot of energy. And, you know, the other thing that I experienced with my girls is I little know what? I'm having an anxious day. I haven't probably bad probably have at least one or two good anxiety ridden days a week. I mean, and I been talking about energy. I mentally and physically force myself not to allow it to happen more. But, you know, bottling old that up is what creates the one very anxiety ridden day. So, you know, I just have been trying to be good about showing them. It's OK. It's OK to freak out. It's normal. I haven't very anxious day today, So if I snap at you, this is one.

spk_1:   21:46
Oh, absolutely. Because what we're doing when we do that kind of stuff is we give our kids permission to be human, right? We're showing them It's the same thing when we apologize, right? If I like I was, I came downstairs the other day. I have two teenagers living in my house right now. One of them is mine, and one of the other one isn't. And when we've all been together for six or seven weeks, just Actually, it's closer to eight weeks, and I'm glad the two teenagers have each other. But, you know, I can dusters either day And they had made this gigantic mess in the kitchen because they had decided they wanted a diner style breakfast, which was totally fine. It was just a complete disaster. And I like to work at the kitchen table. So I came downstairs and I looked at him and I was like, OK, fair morning. I'm officially annoyed with everything today, so I apologize if I completely lose it with you later. At some point. I know you guys were busy and enjoying your wonderful Dunder style breakfast right now. At some point, I used to do clean the kitchen and I'm not gonna assume I know what your schedule is today with online classes or whatever obligations did you have, you just need to know I really like my fuses. Super short transparency is key. Yeah, letting them know because what that allows them to do then is you know, if my daughter yesterday my daughter was feeling really, really super annoyed and she just kind of looked at me and was like we were doing a project together for the local food bank. You did it for a while, and then she finally looked at me and just said, You know what? I can't do this anymore. I just I can't even physically be here anymore. Can I leave? My was like, Yep, sure can mix for tartan. Like I would so much rather have that feed back then. You know her to have her hold it in and then completely lose it over some seemingly random thing and scream at me and bite my head off, you know? So the fact that we are established relationship when she was able to notice that she hit her wall and go, Yeah, I can't be here anymore. I'm out. What's like Cool? Okay, I'll finish.

spk_0:   23:54
Isn't it amazing Later? Isn't it amazing what transparency and communication could do for people?

spk_1:   23:59
It really is. And it's also amazing how hard it is to sometimes create that dynamic, you know, especially if your parenting by fear, you know, if you feel like you absolutely have to be in control all the time, My house, my rules, you know, kind of, You know, if you are the kind of parent that rules with an iron fist again. No judgment you, do you? But what I tell parents that I work with is what you're doing is you're teaching your kid either how to be a really good liar because if they want to do that thing that you are, you've told them is absolutely off limits. No matter what. We're not even going to discuss it. Um, they're gonna find a way to do it, especially if other people are doing it or you were. They'll be ridiculously compliant. And then when they leave home, they will believe that good, healthy relationships require one person to be in power and one person to be really compliant.

spk_0:   25:02
What a great point.

spk_1:   25:04
And I don't know about you, but I don't want I have two daughters and I do not ever want my daughters to go out into the world and think it's normal for them to not have any power or agency in a relationship

spk_0:   25:16
that's such a crime rate. White. Yeah, that's it is a perfect set up for a co dependent relationship.

spk_1:   25:23
It is. And I can say that because that's how I was parented. And that's how a lot of my relationships were until I figured that out on my own that I actually do get Tau have agency and power over my own himself. And sometimes that means I fail miserably and paste the big consequences of it. That's learning. I have

spk_0:   25:48
been doing and we might have to have, Ah, hole. We might have to come back together and have a whole episode on this because I have been doing ah, lot of reading and a lot of research on that because it took me until it was the last summer that I finally put the pieces together and as toe where some of my attachment issues were and guess where it came from.

spk_1:   26:14
Oh, I think it's super common. I think that that was, you know, that our parents generation and those baby boomers they came by it honestly, and then they just handed it right off to us, you know, But I was fortunate enough to have done a lot of that work before I had kids, and then when my kids were little, um so that I could understand and be super intentional about parenting. And now you know, my kids air phenomenal at looking at me when I say something, you know, because I'll still revert to some of those things every once in a while and especially my oldest will look at me and she'll say, uh, that's yours to own Mom.

spk_0:   26:53
Good. That is really right.

spk_1:   26:56
Okay. Or she'll say that was a choice. You made that choice I didn't force you to do. That s so you can't be angry with me about it's like, Oh, yep.

spk_0:   27:09
Projection. Projecting of the projection of feelings and emotions has been a big one that I've been working on. My girls. You own that?

spk_1:   27:18
Yeah, absolutely. Like you did that. I was talking to somebody the day a young person who is a friend of mine, and she was, you know, just racked with guilt. I hurt her. I made her feel on safe. I mean, you know, she's saying all that stuff I said, No, you didn't. You said X, and at that point, this other person had a responsibility to say to you. Wow, I don't like that. That's really painful, or I feel hurt by that. And then the two of you get to you know, you you have an opportunity to apologize and say, Okay, how can I change my behavior in the future? But this person didn't tell you that, and they, you know, buried it, and they let you. I think that everything was fine for a really long time. And so you continue to act that way. And she wasn't being, you know, purposely emotionally abuse ever. Whatever she was, it was acting out of ignorance, right? So it's like it's a two way thing. You know, we all have to own our own responses, and we have to have the courage to say to that other person. That thing you just said or did really bothers me. And here's why

spk_0:   28:26
Taking ownership. All right, we're almost at the end of our time. I can't believe it, but so let's talk a little bit about your let's talk a little bit about your book. So, um, you've got a new one. You've obviously been writing a lot here because all of your books seem to have come out over the past couple of

spk_1:   28:40
weeks. They did. It was kind of crazy. It had the way that it happened. But yes, I have to Books through an organization I started a few years ago called the Self Project. And that's my That's why we work with educators and pig parents of adolescents do parenting coaching and also, um, continuing education on social emotional learning for educators. Um, so I have a mindful parenting but called the Self Project for Parents, and that's specifically for parents of adolescence. And then the book that came out last August is one teenager at a time, developing self awareness and critical thinking in adolescence. And that's for educators. And for parents. It's really a curriculum for social emotional learning that rooted in adolescent brain and social development and mindfulness and nonviolent communication. So it's really comprehensive. Um, there's lots of fun discussion, prompts and activities and things in there, and then I have a memoir. Actually, that just came out in February called Truth has a different shape, and that really traces a lot of the way that I was parented and, um, how I came to a lot of my views around mindful parenting and being intentional and having compassion and really rooting relationships in mutual unconditional, positive regard.

spk_0:   30:12
Excellent. And where can we find thes books?

spk_1:   30:15
I mean you could really find them anywhere. You can find them online pretty much anywhere. I love pointing people for the memoir I love pointing people to bookshop got word or Indy bound dot com because they support independent publishers and independent booksellers. The other book, one Teenager at a Time. You confined literally anywhere. Probably the Amazon is the easiest, but you can also buy it straight from the publisher through my website, which is the self project dot com on,

spk_0:   30:46
and I will be adding all these links into the show notes so that people can usually find them

spk_1:   30:52
and the parenting book as well. You can get off the Web site or you can get from Amazon and then the website. I'm in the works. I'm trying to update it cause it's not the most user user friendly. I created it myself, So it's not the most user friendly, but there are lots of resource is on there for parents and for educating years as well as a whole bunch of guided meditations for teens.

spk_0:   31:16
Oh, what's nice, price? Carrie, thank you so much for spending time with me today. I learned a lot. I'm sure that Ah, the all the listeners will learn a lot as well. And, you know, in the meantime, all we can do is just lead with compassion and, ah, lot of understanding. And you know, patients and forgiveness in some instances, because nobody's on their best behavior right now. We're all caged, a little animals. You gave some great insight as to why they're acting the way they are and how we can help them. And I really appreciate that.

spk_1:   31:50
Thank you for having me. This was really fun. Yeah, definitely. Let's let's chat again.

spk_0:   31:55
Absolutely. You're on the hook now. And that, my friends, is a wrap on this week's show. Thanks so much for listening. You can get all of the episodes at conversations on the rocks dot com. You can also follow me on Twitter, and that's at Kristen Dhaka's k r I S t e N d a Youth k a s until next week, he riel and let's hear what your story is.