Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Andy:
A good place usually, to jump in is, what led you to team up and to choose this topic, and to spend this immense amount of time writing this book?

Barbara:
Yeah. Well, this is Barbara. And Kathryn and I have been working together for over 10 years, to explore what we can learn about human health and development from the natural world. And particularly, from other species. From animals, and especially, from wild animals.

Barbara:
So, I'm a cardiologist and a psychiatrist. And Kathryn is an animal behaviorist. And our first book was called Zoobiquity, and we looked at, across the animal kingdom, at cancer and heart disease. And eating disorders, and anxiety. And we learned a lot. And during that period of time, we also happened to be both raising adolescents, or they were coming into adolescence, and so we ended up turning the lens that we developed to study all these medical problems and psychiatric problems. We turned it to teenage life. And that's how Wildhood was born.

Kathryn:
This is Kathryn. And yeah, what happened was, we had been working on these for 10 years and found ourselves with adolescent animals of our own, in each of our separate households. And we just-

Andy:
Raising a herd of your own.

Kathryn:
Yes, we just couldn't help but apply our knowledge to what we saw out in the field. And we were up in Northern California, by the coast of Monterey, and we were looking out into the ocean. And we were with a biologist who was telling us about the area, which is full of great white sharks. And the sea mammals that live there have learned not to go into this area, that has all these sharks.

Kathryn:
And he said, "Oh, except for, there is one animal that will go in there." And we said, "What is that animal?" And he said, "Well, the teenage, the adolescent otters." And Barbara and I looked at each other and we said, "Adolescent otters, that are taking risks, that their elders and their youngers don't take? This, we have to look more closely at."

Andy:
It's amazing how many parallels there are, and how much can inform our views on human adolescents. And in the book, it's really done in a cool way. You guys follow four stories of different animals that are coming of age, or going through adolescence, in their own ways. And then, we learn different lessons about these four universal journeys, or missions, that are fundamental to adolescents throughout the planet.

Barbara:
Yeah. It's a book about human life. It's trying to understand adolescents in our species, but we were turning to other animals, and there's a lot of deep scientific research. But we also wanted to tell stories that were based on reality, so what we did is, we found studies that had actually looked at adolescent animals and their journeys, using radio collar tracking and GPS.

Barbara:
And, we were able to find these four stories, one that illustrates the first of four competencies that you have to have, to be a mature adult. So it turns out, whether you're a penguin, or whether you're a hyena, whether you're a humpback whale or whether you're a wolf. If you want to be a mature adult, you have got to number one, learn to be safe. That is, you need to protect yourself from predators.

Barbara:
Number two, you need to learn about status, which means social hierarchies and social systems, and figuring out how to make friends and avoid enemies, and all that.

Andy:
Okay. That sounds familiar.

Barbara:
Number three, you've got to learn about, really it's about sexual communication. So, it's not just about how to have sex, because it turns out, if you put animals together sex itself, that part of it, the mechanics are relatively easy. It's the courtship, the communication, it's the understanding, the expressing, the winning over. All that takes a long time, and a lot of practice. So number three is, sex.

Barbara:
And then, the fourth competency that we illustrated with these stories was, learning to be self-reliant. Literally, finding your own food, feeding yourself, so that you don't go out in the world, and starve to death. Literally, if you're one of these wild animals, but figuratively, if you go in the world and you're not prepared to make a living, it's a problem.

Barbara:
So it was safety, status, sex, and self-reliance. And each of the animals in the book tells the story of one of those competencies.

Andy:
Can you talk about what it means to be predator naive, versus predator aware?

Barbara:
Yeah. So that's a term that wildlife biologists use for adolescent animals, who haven't had enough exposure to danger. And they do really dumb things. They do dumb things, and they sometimes suffer the consequences. And I mean, capital C, consequences.

Barbara:
So, predator naive naivete is anything from, not recognizing a predator who's hiding, who's camouflaged. To going into an area that older, more experienced animals know is way too dangerous. You just don't go there. Like the triangle of death, that Kathryn was talking about.

Barbara:
But the flip side of that predator naivete is that, it drives a behavior called predator inspection. And it turns out, predator inspection is what takes you from being naive, to aware and safe. And so, what we found is that across... We're talking about from bats to gazelle, to... Lots and lots of adolescent animals will move toward, and not away, from predators. And, they will. It seems insane. We have video of a bunch of species doing this. They do it together, the way a bunch of teens will do something when they're together, that they might not do on their own.

Barbara:
They literally, we have a video of a group of meerkats, adolescents, going toward a cobra. And smelling it, and looking at it. And, it's insane. But it turns out these studies that have looked at predator inspection shows that, if a predator naive adolescent doesn't get some experience with danger, they're never going to be safe.

Kathryn:
And it's so interesting, because these near misses, these near misses that cause them to be safe even though they're scary, as Barbara was saying, really do, provided they survive them, keep them safer later in life. But they sometimes have those near miss experiences, by themselves. But the learning experience is heightened, and even better, if they're with a peer or a peer group. And so, sometimes we hear that human teens take more risks when they're with their friends. They drive faster. Other animals do that too, and that leads us to hypothesize that this kind of behavior actually has the safety flip side, that it gives them the experience, the exposure that they need, to be safer as adults. We have lots of studies about this in the book. And one of them found that, not only being with peers and watching peers make mistakes can make an animal safer, but also, hanging around more experienced peers and having them sort of mentor the younger animal in what's safe and what isn't safe, that can also help.

Andy:
Okay, I hear that. But isn't getting together with friends and doing risky things, what we don't want teenagers to do? Or is that, as long as they survive it, within reason, it's good? Or, how do we draw the line or know, when it's bad?

Barbara:
Yeah, that's exactly the question, obviously. And, what's interesting about this research is that, we found these really paradoxical things, that we thought were at first, really head scratchers, and then the longer we sat with it and thought about it, the more I realized, "Well, wait a minute, maybe this is just, decodes everything."

Barbara:
So, yes. There's no question that, we know that that peers can get human teenagers into a huge amount of trouble. The fact that kids are not allowed to drive with their friends in the car for the first, I don't know, like six months or whatever it is, that's directly related to the statistics that, it's not safe. Now, why would that be? Well, it turns out when kids get together, they're risk-taking. The threshold to take a risk is lower. And that's based on this brain biology, right?

Barbara:
But then, what is the evolution of this brain biology? Why is it that way? And one of the theories that we have is that predator inspection, actually, this really important learning about your predator behavior, is made safer when you do it with others. And so, it would make sense that there would be this biology, of risk-taking with peers.

Barbara:
Now. So there's this paradox that, gaining exposure to danger necessary to become safe. But on the other hand, when you're exposed to danger, you're exposing yourself to risk. So, that's true, whether you're a meerkat, and it's true whether you're a human. So, what is a parent supposed to do? What is a teenager supposed to do? One of the things that we learned is that, there's no universal, every species playbook, but as a general principle, avoiding danger completely is a really bad move, from a safety perspective. And that may seem paradoxical, but it's not.

Barbara:
And, one of the things we learned about animals is that they gain exposure to danger in a safe way by... There is safety in numbers. They do observe parents, they do observe peers, but being isolated is actually one of the most dangerous things that happens. If you're an isolated adolescent fish or bird or mammal, you won't really learn, ever, to be safe.

Kathryn:
It's also interesting to think about what the modern human version of a predator is, since we don't have eagles dropping from the sky, to carry us off. Or, most of the time, there aren't lions waiting to jump us from behind. So, if you think about the things that are dangerous and that can kill human beings, we have diseases. And, we have wars and shootings and murders and those kinds of scary dangers.

Kathryn:
And when you look at horror films, and games that people play, and books that people read and TV shows. A lot of the times, the ones that appeal to teens do have to do with, what we think is like a human literary predator inspection. Of allowing the reader, in the safety of her own bedroom or the privacy of their internet connection, to get up close to the things that are scary and dangerous, and that could kill them. Investigate them a little bit, learn about them, without actually exposing themselves to the risk. So there's something there, I think, for teens to take away.

Andy:
Yeah. So it's not necessarily a bad thing to be spending a lot of time on Netflix, watching things that have teenagers in them and show, situations that they could get involved in?

Kathryn:
Well, that was one of our head scratching moments, that Barbara and I had was, "Why are teens the audience for horror, and roller coasters and scary things like that?" And, adults seem to have, “outgrown” them. But, that could be that, just the brain biology and the socializing of an adolescent is more open to those scary things of inspecting the danger.

Andy:
Mentally rehearsing survival situations...

Kathryn:
Yeah. That's nicely put. Mentally rehearsing.

Andy:
You talk about salmon in a study, who are either exposed to predators, or not. And they look at the strategies that they adopt, in order to then get away from predators, when they're re-introduced. And there's a few different strategies that they use, and I was wondering if you think there are parallels, between those salmon strategies and anything in human adolescents?

Barbara:
Well, yeah. That study, it's... There's, you go to a restaurant, and you order wild or farmed salmon, and you're trying to, "Okay, which am I supposed to order? What's the upside and downside?"

Andy:
Why is one, twice as expensive, as the other one? Is it worth it?

Kathryn:
Exactly. It's a more experienced salmon.

Barbara:
Yeah. This is, we don't have the answer to that question, but it turns out there's a big difference between being a farmed salmon, where you're protected and really raised in a pen, where there are no predators. And being a wild, yet young, salmon, growing up. By the time they're adolescents, by the time they're smolts and they're... By the way, there are all these cool terms for adolescent animals. We say that all animals in adolescents are in their wildhood, which is the name of the book, but there are... Like, smolts are adolescent salmon. And there's this great word for an adolescent eel, called an elver.

Barbara:
But in any event, when a wild salmon becomes an adolescent, they know the moves, they're ocean smart. They're sea smart, let's say, and the ones that are farmed aren't. They have to go into the sea for a period of time to, they're going to get larger and larger. And the ones that are farmed, there was one study that, there was like a 95% predation rate because they were so naive. In fact, their predators would wait by the outlet for them to be released, because they were just, it was just completely ridiculous.

Andy:
Feeding frenzy.

Barbara:
Exactly. But the lessons that you learn from that, from the farm salmon versus the wild is that, again, experience is really important. And overprotection is just not the right way to be safe. It's a short term gain for a long-term, big loss.

Kathryn:
There's an interesting lesson learned, about peer behavior too, from that study. Which is that salmon, you've seen them schooling, and fish schooling is a protective behavior, because there's safety in numbers and they look bigger to a predator, and they're harder to catch. But salmon are born with the instinct to school, but they need to literally practice with other fish, so that their bodies line up and they move their bodies closer together, and swim in the same direction. And if you raise a fish in a tank by itself, it never learns how to school. It's like trying to clap with one hand. It needs the other fish around it, in order learn those physical skills.

Andy:
Some of the things that need to be learned during adolescence are gestures and sounds that indicate status, and how to navigate their place within the group. So what were the lessons on that, that you guys saw, from other species?

Barbara:
Yeah, it was interesting to think about anxiety, which is a really big issue with teenagers today. And there's, do other animals have anxiety? And the answer is, yes. I feel pretty confident in saying that, and it's not anthropomorphizing, it's based on brain biology. So, what is human anxiety? What does it mean?

Barbara:
So there's fear, right? Where the brain is having an experience which is signaling, "Hey, you know what? There's something really dangerous going on. Change what you're doing." And animals experience fear when there's a predator nearby. Anxiety is a different neurobiology, which has to do with being in a social group. And, what's going on with your status.

Barbara:
And status is kind of a, think of it as, not such a nice word. It's cars and clothes, and it's not... But it actually is the word that's used, in animal behavior, and it has to do with being a social animal, living in a hierarchy. And all social animals do, including us. When our status goes up, our brain chemistry changes. When our status goes down, it changes in a different way, but it changes. And the same thing is true, we found in our research, in fish and birds and other mammals.

Barbara:
So what does all that mean? It means that you can look at the brain biology of a fish and the brain biology of a human, and if a fish loses status, their serotonin systems are altered. Their behavior is altered. And, the same thing happens with humans. And what we mean by losing status as a teenager, is anything from not being invited to a party, being humiliated online, bombing a series of tests, a test that you cared about. It can be a lot of different things. And, if you ask someone, "What does that feel like?" A kid is going to say, "It feels like, it feels awful. It feels horrible."

Barbara:
That, those words. It feels awful, it feels horrible. Those are human words you use to describe a universal experience of losing status, across vertebrate species, fish and birds and other mammals. So, what we found was that status, it really affects mood. I have to say that, when my kids were adolescents or, they're in their early twenties now, they'd be bummed out about things here or there, but it was before we'd written this book. And, I didn't really think about status, per se. I didn't really think to ask them about, "What?" I just wasn't part of what, I was saying, "How do you feel?" Not things like, "Well, what's going on with popularity?" And that sort of stuff.

Barbara:
But we found that, actually, status is so important for survival in animal groups. Animals who have higher status, they... Gosh, they have more food. They have more protection, they have more opportunities to mate with others. So, falling in status is the opposite. So, that's really, we think the evolutionary reason that it feels so good, to rise in status and so awful to fall in status.

Kathryn:
It also gives some insight into social media, and why social media can be so powerfully exciting, but also can make you feel so bad, if you're on it for too long. Not only are you sort of getting the feel good, and then feel bad, brain biology hits from your actual social group, but you're also, many social media platforms are false. They're way, way bigger than you would normally have, there are people you don't even know on there. There's celebrities, who are professional risers in the social status. And you're kind of always put down, if you're comparing yourself to a celebrity. So connecting these social hierarchical systems in animals, to our feelings and moods in humans, we feel is a really powerful part of our book.