Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Andy Earle
Hey, it's Andy from talking to teens, it would mean the world to us. If you could leave us a five star review. reviews on Apple and Spotify help other parents find the show. And that helps us keep the lights on. Thanks for being a listener. And here's the show. You're listening to talking to teens where we speak with leading experts from a variety of disciplines about the art and science of parenting teenagers. I'm your host, Andy Earle. A we're here today with Michelle Icard talking about her new book eight setbacks that can make a child a success. Michelle has designed a simple three step approach to helping our teens bounce back from setbacks, and learn important life lessons. In the book, she walks through eight of the biggest setbacks that teenagers often experience and shows us how we can respond as parents in a way that will help them bounce back in today's episode, we are going to walk through the framework and dive deep into a few of the situations and we'll end up with a set of tools, or turning failure into success. Michelle Eichert has written for the today's show parenting team, NBC News learn CNN science and wellness and the Washington Post. He's also the author of 14 talks by age 14, and a middle school makeover. He's been featured in the Chicago Tribune time, people and is the author of the new book eight setbacks that can make your child Michelle, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Michelle Icard
It's great to be here. Thank you.

Andy Earle
I am really looking forward to this one. You've got a new book, eight setbacks that can make a child a success. Yes, brand new baby out there.

Exciting. Congratulations. How did this concept come about for a book and and what sort of inspired you to to do all this work to put this

Michelle Icard
together, I actually came at this concept sort of through the side door, I'm really interested sociology I am interested in coming of age. So I love a coming of age book, I love a good Coming of Age movie, I think that is the best genre out there. Or my kids always joke when there's a new Coming of Age movie out there. But conceptually, I'm fascinated by the idea of how different cultures and societies and people across time and geography and all different kinds of have different sort of barriers, how they usher young people towards adulthood, what that looks like for them and, and what is universally true. So it started there in a real kind of geeked out academic way. And it morphed into a deeper look at failure. Because failure is a huge part of becoming an adult, it's actually a huge part of rites of passage into leaving childhood behind. I wanted to explore kind of the joy of failure and what it brings to our lives in really productive ways.

Andy Earle
Do you feel like there's something that people are kind of missing there or that something that kind of other books hadn't hadn't covered yet, in terms of how to how parents can kind of leverage failure or respond to

Michelle Icard
Yeah, I think we have a sort of cultural societal disconnect with failure. I think, as parents, we're often really afraid of it for our kids. Like we we get it intellectually? Yeah,

Andy Earle
sure. Yeah. It sounds good. Yeah, definitely. that's needed. Kids need to have some some hardships and stuff like that. And that all sounds good. Exactly.

Michelle Icard
But maybe not my kid. Not My Kid. So I wanted to sort of soften our hearts around this idea that even though watching your child go through a crisis, watching them go through a setback, a failure, a public faceplant of any kind is painful, I did want to remove the shame around that and I wanted to create space for us to talk about why that's going to help that kid become a really awesome adult.

Andy Earle
We talk a lot about values on this podcast and I thought something interesting that you mentioned in your book about values or values, sometimes conflicting, just the very real situation that's going to occur as your as your child starts to decide what their values are that they're going to be different than yours. How do you think prepare people to deal with that or think about that. I

Michelle Icard
think a lot of times parents think, well, if I instill my child with the right values, then they're probably not going to fail, they're probably not going to drink with their friends on a Friday night, they're probably not going to send a nude to another person, right? There's this idea that values can can be a protective element. And they, they can be a really wonderful element in decision making. But for young people, the values can also be just a great way of self exploration, and they don't always stick. And they also can be a big part of identity formation when you're separating from your parents. And you're trying to figure out who you are and what you believe in. Sometimes the process of figuring out your values begins by rejecting your parents values, because that's a way of saying I'm independent. I think for myself, even though it's a little bit of a catch 22. There, if your kid is saying, I think for myself, therefore, I'm picking the opposite of what you pick,

Andy Earle
I got to start from somewhere, I might as well start from kind of as far away from you as I possibly can.

Michelle Icard
It's a it's a pretty safe act of rebellion. I like it as a way for kids to explore who they are. And it can be shocking for parents who raised their kids in a religious home, who then say, well, I believe in God, or, or the opposite. I have friends who are atheists whose child is a devout Christian. And they're like, No, how did this happen? Right? Kids will pick the opposite of what their carrot parents pick sometimes. And sometimes it sticks. And sometimes it's just self exploration. But what it never is, is invisibility cloak that will take that kid and keep them safe from making mistakes. So that's where I wanted parents to really have a better understanding of what values do for you, and what they don't

Andy Earle
really think it's like values are something that we can sort of take and transplant into our kids. And okay, if we just raised them with these values, then that'll everything else will take care of itself or something like that. I don't, I don't think that that's really true. They're gonna develop their own values, it's important to talk about with them.

Michelle Icard
Yeah. And a big thing that I'm seeing now, I don't know, if you're encountering this a lot, is a lot of parents who are saying, how is my son speaking this way about women, or about kids of other races or ethnicities, we'd did not raise him this way, what's going on. And there's this sort of YouTube culture where a lot of young men are expressing values that are so contrary to the way that their parents raised them. And I think that's another real shocking element to this. It feels like a big failure for young boys. But it's such an opportunity to have really important conversations if you're not so frightened of the difference in perceived value.

Andy Earle
Yeah, but it's easy to just like see, read and go into start freaking out like, we didn't, we didn't teach you that. We didn't raise you to think like that, or believe that. And I think it's how do you how do you kind of check yourself and not take it personally?

Michelle Icard
Absolutely. It's so hard. But anyway, that's sort of the point of the book is getting you to get out of the frame of mind of taking it personally making it shameful, being embarrassed by it and getting to a place where you can help your kid grow from it and stuck there.

Andy Earle
Pretty interesting. You talk about some research by French Dutch ethnographer, Arnold, van Gennep says something about passing through some stages on a successful path to adulthood, separation from the group at time of being tested learning and growth as a result of the test, and then return and reintegration with the group as a better version of oneself. I love that. Yeah, the idea of a rite of passage and sort of kind of the universal appearance of that throughout different cultures. Yeah, I think it's really it was just interesting to see that research. It's something that I definitely think about, how do we kind of provide our kids with those types of possibilities,

Michelle Icard
that that research, which has been around forever and has been used by lots of people and explaining adolescence brings me a great deal of comfort, because I like knowing that every kid everywhere, kind of goes through the same process. So they differentiate, they pull away, they are separated from their family or their peer group, either by their own choice or not. Sometimes kids are iced out by their peers. And sometimes they decide that they need to change, they break golf, but they separate and then they learn something new about themselves in that process. And they come back to the family or to their community of peers, knowing better being a better version of themselves. And it's looked different over centuries and over geography, but it is the same process no matter where a kid lives. That's really what it means to be an adult to go through that and knowing that and watching a kid who's struggling with their friends or who's made a really bad decision that's caused a break ake in, in their sense of community, I'm comforted knowing okay, this is the process. And we do this and it's painful and then learn and grow, and then come back and be better.

Andy Earle
Yeah, I love that and just how it that that's the natural flow. And it really strikes me to how similar that is to the hero's journey that that's like every every story that you read ever is the same basic kind of four steps that are in this research on kind of what is a rite of passage, and you talk about coming of age stories and everything. But really, it's all always that similar sort of thing of having some going away, getting in over your head a little bit and having to sort of figure something out and then coming back, having learned a lesson or being being being changed in some way. And it's like, as much as we want to just give our kids everything, you can't give them that because it fundamentally involves kid going away. Step one is they have to go away on their own in order for it to work. So

Michelle Icard
yeah, that's exactly it that that hero's journey that Joseph Campbell, sort of exploration of mythology, like, this is what this this is what the universal truth is here, folks, this is how it works, right? There's, there's a big piece of that where we step aside, and we say, we'll be right here, when you come back around again. And that's really hard, there's a little bit more than we can do a little bit more we can do than just stepping aside, we can facilitate really great conversation with kids about this. And the best way to do that is to be non judgmental, and not to freak out and say, I can't believe you did x, I raised you better than that. I can't What Why in the world, would you make that decision when you do that your kids gonna say See you later, right. But if you're able to talk about this in a way that is free of judgment, and that is really curious more questions like that must have been hard. Tell me what you did next. And tell me how you felt when you did that? What are your thoughts about moving forward on this, that's gonna get a kid to open up. So there's some direction in the book about how to move through this together side by side, you're not holding their hand and leading them. But it's a way to make sure that your kid doesn't get stuck in the mud. And this failure doesn't become the headline of their childhood.

Andy Earle
Well, much of that also involves our reactions to what they're going through as parents, and I love how you break down some ideas on that or like understanding what your go to responses when you feel a threat to your family and kind of get triggered or you talk about sort of fight or flight response. Why is that important to understand as a parent? And how do you kind of assess that or use that information?

Michelle Icard
I think so much of our parental instincts go back to what we experienced this kid. So I'm a flight person, I know this very well. And know that when I'm upset about something, my instinct is to say, Well, fine, I'll never do that again. Or I'll just leave for a few days, you know? That's right. That's right, I'll show you and no one on the other side of that has ever had an epiphany where they were like, oh, man, it wasn't being grateful. What's up with you, and that really dramatic reaction? So if you if you kind of know what your go to is, you're, you're often your wrong instinct, right? Like that. You're a person who freezes and who won't you avoid conflict or, or like me, if you're a flyer, you run away from it, or you fight you're, you're just like, instantly in that mode, whatever it is, and there's fault, right? So that's like, I'm just going to coil over you to make you like me, I'm a people pleaser, what that is you can explore the possibility of using other tools. So I Maslow said, um, if you're, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Like, if you're a carpenter, everything looks like a nail, right? So you're going to use the tool you have and make every problem fit the tool that you have. But instead, if you say, All right, I'm typically the light. What if instead, I stayed and engaged? What if I asked him question? What if I sat here quietly and listened instead of flying off the handle? So doing that can be such a nice way to change the situation before you get too far into it?

Andy Earle
That's like finding balance, I think are finding the more appropriate response because not the answer is really never one. One is always the answer. But we just tend to sort of habitually go down that one pathway kind of every time we we get feel threatened or get triggered and I love that just kind of seeing how that applies to your parenting and things to and yeah, you really spell it out well in the book, I think because, yeah. That noticing those reactions and sort of how when something's going going on with your child, what what, what's your patterns, then? I think it gives you so much more awareness to be able to step back and start saying, hey, wait a minute, I'm going down that go down that path again. Hold on. Yeah,

Michelle Icard
and maybe it's the right path. But maybe it's not you won't know until you kind of look at your different options and try a few things. Try the wrench, try the screwdriver or not just the hammer, and see how they work for you.

Andy Earle
You talking to here about body changing, and I thought you had a really good response to some of these things in your list in terms of you have subsections, where you kind of have questions from parents, and you go into answers. Yeah, it's it's hard to know what to do. Sometimes as a parent, when you feel like you're really like your your child's not eating the way you would want them to eat, or they're eating really a lot of junk food, or they're eating really, some seems to, maybe they're not eating enough or kind of always feel like approaching issues around food. Is this really kind of difficult and sensitive? Or what you how you recommend that people think about that.

Michelle Icard
Sometimes it appears to us that our child is failing to take their health or their body caring for their body seriously. And it can feel like a failure like why is my child not treating their body better? Why are they eating Cheetos every day? Why do they only want to drink soda? Why and we have these ideas about some food being good and some food being bad and our child making sort of moral choices about their body based on what they're putting in to it, I will tell you that I am not a nutritionist. But I am very interested in this field. I just watched the space pretty carefully. A couple of things I know to be true based on what I'm studying that that the experts are saying is that it doesn't do our kids any good to make judgments on how they are feeding themselves. So remove morality and emotion from feeding entirely kids. Really, there's a division of responsibility that Ellen Sattar who's a nutritionist, I love talks about the responsibility that a parent has is deciding what you'll serve. And when you'll serve it, your child gets to decide whether they eat at all how much they will eat, when they stop when they feel full. And if they just want bread. If you have bread on the table, and they say no to the pork and no to the green beans, and they only want the bread, that's their choice, all you do is make it accessible to them. And you want to make enough of the really exciting foods that are full of fat and flavor available. So your child isn't craving them either because it's a forbidden thing or because it just tastes delicious. Oreos are yummy, right? So you want to have enough of that stuff around so that they don't feel like in order to satisfy themselves, they have to go elsewhere or be secretive about how they eat. So that's kind of my approach to this based on what I've the research that I've done. And I think it's just a misunderstanding that a lot of adults have, again, probably based on how their parents reacted to their changing bodies, and to how they ate food. But there's enough good resources out there that that we can shift our mindset on that it's much better for kids.

Andy Earle
That's a really good point. Just to think about I guess we're when we have value judgments on anything really, then it just kind of forces the behaviors underground more, it doesn't necessarily make it stop it just makes your makes your kids now they can't really talk to you about it or that if they are doing it, they should kind of be quiet about it. That's

Michelle Icard
right. I like the idea of of making them sneaky. And apparently say I'm not making them sneak, I'm just not allowing them to have soda everyday. Well, that's fine to say that to yourself. But the reality is, if your child really wants soda, and you're not allowing some amount, you don't have to say soda with every meal. But if you're not allowing someone not have access to that, then they are going to have to sneak

Andy Earle
or Yeah, make it make a choice between being being honest with you are doing something that you want, or their friends are doing or whatever.

Michelle Icard
I would think that most parents want their home to be a place where their middle and high school aged kids want to bring people around. It's frustrating for parents when they say Why won't you let my kid ever hang out at our house, they only go to their friend's houses and one of the easiest ways to do that is by having really awesome snacks like just you might not redoes well but if your garage fridge has Dr. Pepper in it and you have Doritos in the pantry and it's not an everyday thing, but it's like yeah, man when your friends come over you guys help yourselves and hang out and shoot baskets and have a Dr. Pepper suddenly your house is a cool place to hang out and I think there's tremendous guys Are you in that above and beyond any nutritional considerations?

Andy Earle
That's a such a great point. Yeah. The trade offs. I think, also, with a lot of this stuff, it's like we, again with thinking about your reaction, or what those kind of different ways that you can get triggered a lot of times, it's, it's when we're our feel, we feel like our kids are really kind of sneaking around or going behind our back with things. Maybe we're kind of being we're fight mode, we're getting triggered in fight mode. And that's what's caused, that's what's causing them to feel like they have to sneak around on us is because when when when we find out about these things, we get really pissed off, we go, we lose it or go off the handle, when they've learned that, wow, it's really kind of better to just just keep this little quiet. Not let not let my parents know that I'm doing this or find out about this, because they kind of can't handle it. And so I think it kind of connects also with what we're talking about earlier.

Michelle Icard
Absolutely, absolutely. And that this is not to say, Hey, your kid gets a free pass to do whatever they want. And you just have to say, okay, dear, because you don't want to create a sneaky kid or create conflict, but what kids can really handle debate, and they can handle negotiation, and they love negotiation. And they're really excellent at compromise. But when they feel like there is no shot at that, when they feel like they can't say I want to stay out later because everyone else is staying out later. Or I want to be able to go to this party because all the kids in my class are going and there's not a shot at negotiating with you reasonably, it's going to be a fight or you're going to shut it down. Because you're really strict or really firm. That's when kids are going to say exactly what you just said better if I don't ruffle anybody's feathers.

Andy Earle
We're here with Michelle, I record talking about how parents can help our teens bounce back from failure. And we're not done yet. Here's a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.

Michelle Icard
It's it's absolutely normal for kids to put themselves first in most scenarios, they're really the egocentric in their thinking. And that's developmentally appropriate. Where I would say there are some lines that can be crossed is if your child is doing things that are intentionally hurtful to other members of the family. That is a source of great anxiety for parents, if they see their child floundering socially, if their child struggles with making friends or keeping friends. I mean, I talked to parents who said my child jumps from best friend to best friend and is never really satisfied and or my child cannot find a friend. They're struggling with being accepted by their peers. So but I think parents should look at what the pattern is here. If it's, for example, a kid who's being rejected by their peers consistently, maybe they've even changed schools to try a fresh start, maybe they've tried different soccer teams or whatever it is, and it just never works out, then maybe that kid needs some help with their behavior that's off putting to other kids, then they probably need some some resources and some help. The parents might need a little bit of help, too, because parents might be so desperate for the kid to make those friendships that they are willing to overlook what is not working out? I think parents often jump to a conclusion when they find some thing that they feel as evidence. And it may be that your conclusion is exactly right. But it may be that it's not usually I think it's helpful to give a free pass the first time so you could say something like, Hey, I found this, it's probably not yours. I'm sure one of your friends accidentally fell out of their pocket, but it brings up something that I think we should talk about. Definitely downplay your suspicion. But what you're doing is encouraging your kid to talk to you about these things. Once you've done that, you can say so here's the rule going forward. There's no vaping in our house. And if I find a vape cartridge, I'm going to assume that it belongs to you.

Andy Earle
Want to hear the full episode, head over to talking to teens.com/register for a free trial of our premium podcast, you get exclusive access to loads of great content with no obligation and your membership supports the work we do here at talking to teens get started today with a free trial over at talking to teens.com/registered Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.