Transcription:
Parenting Teenagers

Anne Walters, MD: Teenagers are awesome, aren't they? Seriously, teenagers are great. It's a beautiful period of life when we begin to blossom as people and find our sense of self in society. As teenagers, we take risks. We try out new things that might not be the best decisions, and begin to talk back to our parents. But besides all the drawbacks that come with adolescence, the perks of being a teen really are exponentially more than the drawbacks. We invited Gary Regan, a licensed clinical social worker and clinical director of Adolescent Partial Hospital Programs and SafeQuest and an expert on all things teen. Welcome, Gary.

Greg Fritz, MD: Hey, Gary. Thanks for being here today.

Gary Regan, LICSW: Oh, great to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Anne Walters, MD: This is Mindcast: Healthy Mind, Healthy Child, a podcast from the experts at Bradley Hospital. I'm Dr. Anne Walters with Dr. Greg Fritz. Thanks for listening.

Greg Fritz, MD: So Gary, great to see you. As Anne said in the intro, we have so much to learn from teenagers, I think. In my opinion, teenagers sometimes get a bad rap. And some may deserve it sometimes, but most teens are great, at least most of the time. We just got to look a little closer than we usually do, don't you think?

Gary Regan, LICSW: I totally agree with you, Greg. I think teenagers can be a fantastic period of time because they're developing their own personalities in a sense of who they are. But there's also a lot of questions and curiosity and trying to figure things out as teenagers. And I think we as parents, as adults, as teenagers, as mentors, as leaders, need to be patient with teenagers as they're trying to figure themselves out, and how can we role model for them to help them develop their own personalities.

Anne Walters, MD: Gary, what I find unique about teens is, as a group, they strive for individuality, yet they crave peer acceptance. And this could not be more true than with the onset of social media. How do you see this play out with teens, a fine line of being unique but accepted?

Gary Regan, LICSW: So, when I do family therapy, I always explain to parents that and try to reference back to when children or children in grammar school and junior high, I ask them to envision that playground scene where everybody's just running around and just being one large group of kids and there's very little back and forth in terms of grouping. And then, in junior high is when teenagers start to grouping themselves out. But there's also a lot of fluidity between the groups. So, kids might be in sports, they might be in theater, they might be good in academics. And then, when teenagers get to high school, that's when they're really trying to separate out into their own groups. So, the kids in sports may mostly hang out with kids in sports and kids in theater may hang out with kids in theater and so forth. And there's a lot less fluidity amongst the groups.

In terms of social media, I mean, we've seen a huge rise over the last couple of decades with that. I'm always teasing the kids that they're teaching me about social media every day. And I reference it back to, you know, it's so different. I remember when I was in high school, if something happened in school, it stayed there in school. And now, things are bopping in other schools. I've had teens in my programs, one teen will bring up something that happened at their school and other teenagers will say, "Oh, I saw that on Facebook" or "I saw that on Snapchat" or whatever it might be. We're also seeing a lot of teenagers who are developing part of their own sense of self and their own sense of individuality based on what they're seeing on social media and what they see the new norm being.

I think back to the early days of television and print magazine and the studies that were held about influencing teenagers and body image and all that other stuff simply based on what they saw in a magazine. But now, they're seeing hundreds of thousands of pages on social media, and now they're comparing themselves to what they're seeing on that. Teenagers are being exposed to so much more inaccurate information about mental health and their own personalities and whatnot, that they're taking it as truth. And we're doing a lot more debating, if I could, with teenagers about not everything you read on the internet is accurate and true, so you have to take it with a grain of salt. So, social media is just going to be continuing to be a huge issue for teenagers in terms of how they're developing their own sense of self.

Greg Fritz, MD: So, that makes perfect sense. And their struggles are real. That's for sure. And parents are often put in the position of having to police their kids' behavior. What thoughts do you have about that for parents?

Gary Regan, LICSW: Well, I try to say to parents, you know, you look at things of define for yourselves as a parent, if you're a single parent or as a pair of parents, understand before you even go with your teenagers, what are your expectations? What do you want your teenager to do or not do? And then, as you set those limits with your teenagers, be consistent with what you're enforcing and, you know, what you're willing to let go. I also always encourage parents to understand if there are things that you can let go, let it go. If your teen wants to color their hair blue, let them color their hair blue if it's really no big deal to you.

And then, there are going to be things that you may be able to negotiate out. So, your teen may say, "I want to come home at three o'clock in the morning," and that might be unreasonable, but also having them be home at eight o'clock is not reasonable either. So, negotiate that out in terms of what actually works for your teen and works for you.

And then, also understanding there are going to be some things that are not negotiable that you're going to have to set limits with your teenager and make sure that they're following through with that. So, be consistent with those expectations. Be consistent with your rules. Be consistent with what you want your teen to do. And also, role model for your teen in terms of what you expect for them. I get a lot of teenagers who come in and say, "My parents say I can't do X, Y, or Z, but then mom and dad are doing X, Y, and Z." And the teenager will be more than okay to throw that back in their face and say, "This isn't fair." So if you're going to set a limit, you want your teenager to do something, you have to role model for them. And the old adage of, "I'm the parent, this is okay for me," it does not work for teenagers.

Anne Walters, MD: I think you're talking about establishing good boundaries in the household and good communication. And at the same time, even with that, there are going to be times that teenagers make mistakes and it's very tempting to swoop in and fix it. Can you give us some tips on how to allow kids to make mistakes effectively?

Gary Regan, LICSW: So, yeah, I think, part of us, as human beings, hopefully we learn from our mistakes. And then, if we make the same mistake a couple of times, we'll hopefully eventually learn from it and not repeat it. But teenagers, in their brain development, they have to kind of test those boundaries, they have to kind of test those limits and rules, see what they can get away with. They're comparing it to their friends in terms of what they can do. So, I think maintain, as parents, those boundaries of, again, what you want them to do. Let them fail. Let them learn from it. Help them learn from it. It's not our job as parents to just be that savior.

Again, I think the other thing I would also say to parents is don't relate back to when you were a teenager. That really aggravates your teens. So, you don't say, "Oh, when I was in high school I remember when..." Just listen to your teenagers and we have to be honest. I mean, certainly, when I was in high school in the '80s, social media didn't exist. So, I can't relate to teenagers on that, and I've been more than happy to say that to them, that you have to teach me about this new stuff. And things are different in 2022. I mean, we're still at the tail end or hopefully coming out of a pandemic. When most of us were teenagers, there was no pandemic. So, we have to relate at that level to where we are now, but not when we were teenagers. So, don't go to your teenagers and say, "I remember when I was a teen."

The other thing is maintain your own boundaries in terms of what you did or didn't do as a teenager, because teenagers will very frequently ask us in our programs, "Oh, you do X, Y, or Z" or "You did this when you were teen." And most times if they're asking us that, they just want to be able to turn around and say, "Well, geez, you did it. I should be able to do it as well" or throw it back up in our faces. And I've worked with lots of families who will share too much with their teenager and then, all of a sudden they get into an argument and that teenager is throwing it back in their face to kind of feel that fire for that argument a little bit. They're really not going to learn from our mistakes. They're going to learn from their own mistakes.

Greg Fritz, MD: That's great advice. So, all this presupposes that a parent of a teen can communicate and sometimes that's a challenge. Would you give us some of your thoughts about how to best communicate across the generation?

Gary Regan, LICSW: Yeah, I think the first thing I say to parents is be quiet. You know, just listen to your parents. I'm always willing to throw myself under the bus and say, "I can be a gabby Irishman, and it's very hard for me not to talk." So, I'll say to families, use what I call my rule of three to five. If you're going to talk to a teenager, if you're going to give them advice, say it in three to five sentences and no more. If you go beyond that five-sentence mark, now you're nagging and you're sounding like that teacher from the Peanuts comics from years ago. And our teenagers are no longer listening to us once we're going on that too much.

Again, limit the advice, limit the feedback. You know, I draw from the teen in terms of what do you want from me right now? Do you want me just to listen? Do you want me to listen and then give you feedback? Do you want me to interrupt you? Get that guidance from the teen and follow their lead because if you're giving them cues that you can't manage the conversation or are actually not willing to listen and talk with them, then they're not going to talk with you.

The other thing is it might not be too late if your teen is struggling at 16. But for those parents who have young children, start now because you want to start developing those good skills as soon as possible. And if you do have an older teen that's struggling with talking, get the advice. Seek out some guidance from friends, from family, from therapists. There are people out there who are willing to helping and give you those good communication skills to learn how to just stop, listen, don't give too much advice, and then that encourages your teenager to talk to you that much more.

Greg Fritz, MD: So, what if a parent has been following those tips as best they can, but the communication is broken down and that you just can't communicate with their teen. What do you advise in those situations?

Gary Regan, LICSW: I think, A, we try to figure out what's not working and seeing what you can change with that, but also reach out. I mean, there are people here at Bradley Hospital. There are people throughout the community everywhere that are willing to engage in family therapy and how do people listen to each other. And, you know, family therapy is not necessarily looking at all the druthers that a family is going through. It could just be how do we help you redevelop new healthy skills and talking with each other and listening to each other without necessarily having to do a lot of things. I think a lot of families might think, "Well, if we have to go to family therapy, that means we're dysfunctional as a family." No. We're all struggling. I think, even in the field for a lot of us who are therapists, we try to use the skills in ourselves, in our own homes, and it's realistic for all families to be struggling with the same things.

And I also say, don't wait until it gets more difficult. The sooner you can intervene with something, the better luck you're going to have in terms of fixing something.

Greg Fritz, MD: That's always the case. Well, this has been really useful, Gary. And it's true that parents may be worried about their teen's behavior, but they should remember, I think, that it's a normal part of the physical and mental changes that teenagers undergo during the transition from childhood to adolescence. It's important to remember that these swift hormonal changes that are taking place and the rapid growth processes could be confusing for your teen, causing them to behave rudely or otherwise ways we don't want them to.

So, our brief talk today reinforces that it's important to try to understand the emotional changes your teen is going through and be patient while dealing with their rebellious nature.

Anne Walters, MD: Thanks so much for being here with us, Gary. And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and check out our entire podcast library at bradleyhospital.org/podcast for topics of interest to you.

This is Mindcast: Healthy Mind, Healthy Child, a podcast from the experts at Bradley Hospital and, today, Hasbro Children's Hospital. I'm Dr. Anne Walters with Dr. Greg Fritz. Thanks for listening.