How to Talk So Teens Will Listen and Listen So Teens Will Talk

"This is more for teenagers than little ones. I see a lot of teenagers and, for many parents, it’s almost a second toddlerhood. Some teenagers – but not all of them – can become more needy or have a lot of challenges during that time. So, it’s a time when they often need more support but they are also trying to become independent as well. Adolescence has always been a tough time but I guess there’s a sense that perhaps the pressures that teenagers face today are somehow greater than the pressures that many parents faced in their own adolescence. It’s very complicated and we’re seeing very worrying statistics about mental health problems among teenagers today. The reality is that we don’t really know why this is. People blame it on social media, but it’s important not to scapegoat it. There is no doubt that social media can be stressful for many young people because they may be exposed to cyberbullying, porn or even online grooming. But from my experience I don’t think social media is the only reason why teenagers are suffering from anxiety because I believe when they have a healthy relationship with technology, it can have amazing benefits. I think we need to be looking at the wider stresses in our society, and in schools. A lot of us are stressed adults and young people are like tuning forks: they pick up on stress around them. They just feel it. Younger people are very sensitive and a lot of them are stressed about school. Kids are telling me at increasingly younger ages that they’re worried about their tests. Obviously, they feel their entire future rests on exams, which is such a huge burden at that age. It’s very scary for them. I feel that sometimes young people are reflecting wider societal issues and mirroring them back to us at some level. There are so many changes going on at the moment. We’ve got, obviously, the political arena, employment prospects, technology, and family issues. There are so many reasons why a young person might have anxiety. The one positive is that in my experience, they are a very emotionally self-aware generation. The young people that come to me are very willing to talk about their problems and that takes a lot of courage. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Well, they are the YouTube generation. They are exposed to issues around mental health and talk about their feelings at a much younger age. So, I think we also need to celebrate that because it’s amazing. Certainly when I was young, there wasn’t anything like that and much less awareness. I don’t remember talking like this about my feelings and it could have been helpful. So, I think we have to say that it is great – it is a positive – that they are talking, as well as noting that there is a problem going on here. But I do think the exam pressure is probably a big part of it, and the emphasis on achievement and success as the only indicator of being a successful person in society. Absolutely. You have to have those experiences, don’t you? I think that we’re starting to put more emphasis on building resilience but we still have a long way to go. The ability to actually make mistakes, experience failure and pick ourselves up helps the brain develop. It’s good to have those experiences as a child. But it’s very difficult for parents to watch their children struggle, as you will know. I love this book by Faber and Mazlish because it has a wealth of practical advice on connecting with your teen based on workshops they conducted with parents and teenagers. There is a lot of real experience there. One of the things I really like is the emphasis on just listening, without immediately jumping in to offer solutions. Again, it’s quite a simple thing and this is an area I spend a lot of time on in my book and with parents that I work with. I find that, as a parent, when your teenager comes to you with a problem, you want to help them. You want to ‘fix’ them and you’re desperate to make sure they don’t make the mistakes that you made. It’s very hard to resist that impulse to offer advice. But sometimes all young people want is that space to be heard. They aren’t always looking for that answer from you. They want you to hear their pain if they’re struggling with friendships or something awful is going on at school. They just want you to listen and hear and actually just be there. And I think that’s what this book does very well: it shows you how to validate a teen’s feelings without having to solve everything. Whatever’s bothering them might seem like quite a little thing to us because maybe we’ve been through it and we’ve got bigger problems of our own to worry about, but for them it is the be-all-and-end-all. It can sound quite trivial but, to them, it’s like the whole world. Whether it’s with a friend or something at school, it can be a real catastrophe. Again, they’re still learning how to manage their feelings. The logical, rational part of the brain isn’t yet fully developed. “ I think that’s what this book does very well: it shows you how to validate a teen’s feelings without having to solve everything.” Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is an amazing neuroscientist in the UK and she does lots of research on the teenage brain. She has a new book coming out next year. But I think the Faber and Mazlish book is also about how we can help them to come up with their own solutions, to problem-solve. It’s far more empowering for teens if they can come up with their own answers. And they’re more likely to follow it as well because none of us like being told what to do. This book is very much about cooperation. Again, one of the things that I emphasise in my work and with mindful parenting is that it’s more about the attachment and relationship than about strategies. There is no manual for parenting. But we do have what I call an ‘inner parent’ – this intuitive guidance, the wise part of us that knows how to respond, that knows the answer. In our culture, we have been very mind-focussed, very in-our-head focussed. We’re in a bit of a mess at the moment. We need to learn to trust our gut feelings more. In fact, there is a little brain in the gut that plays a significant role in how we think and feel and react, because it feeds information back up to the brain. Science is showing that our gut feelings are actually really important in how we make our decisions. Trusting your intuition has a real basis in biology. And, for children, we need to emphasise the value of critical thinking and intuition. The education system is all about the logical brain: being a rational problem-solver and getting good exam results. This is obviously good – I’m not knocking that side – but we have to develop the other side too. They are doing more mindfulness in schools now, which is good. I’d also like to see children being taught about the neuroscience of their own brains, and the kinds of skills they can use to manage their emotions and enhance their feelings of well-being. Absolutely: self-care skills. One of the things I emphasise in my work with teenagers is that you have to look after yourselves. There is a lot of anxiety, and I am seeing increasing numbers of young people who are having panic attacks and feeling so overwhelmed. “Taking a breath acts like a brake on our nervous system and calms our whole physiology down, and we can start to see things more clearly. ” I’m really emphasising to them that your mental health and well-being has to be as important as your exam results. There’s no question. You have to look after yourself. And this is a new thing for a lot of them: self-care. Being kind to ourselves has not been something that has been taught in schools. We’re taught to strive and be competitive from day one. Yes, it’s amazing. This is the thing, you have to be balanced, and look at the amazing benefits and not simply feed into the negative narrative about social media and how bad it is. For young people, they see it very positively. It’s just that young people can be very cruel sometimes and bully each other, and the bullying can move into cyberspace. So bullying doesn’t stay at the school gates as it used to. It can continue into the evening and weekends. That’s when it’s tough for young people. I talk in the book about parents having to take the same kind of responsibility for their kids’ use of technology as they would for their nutrition. It’s not about being over the top, but monitoring it and having ongoing conversations about it. Healthy technology use is about knowing when to switch it off. And with your child, if you see that they’re more anxious or uptight or they have a meltdown after their gaming or whatever, maybe you need to have a conversation with them about that. But some children don’t have that. They’re all different. Again, that’s where mindful parenting comes in. It’s about what works for your child. And you can have two very different siblings. One might use technology very responsibly, and the other one gets addicted. And with the one who’s addicted, you might need to come up with some sort of contract with them that will lay down boundaries that everyone can agree to. Yes, they’re their own people. They have their own minds and their own personalities. And even siblings can be very different. You have to then use a different parenting stance for two different children and that’s another layer of complexity in parenting."