Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Marc Fienberg, author of Dad's Great Advice for Teens, helps us kick off the new year with some fresh advice for teens--and the best way to deliver it!



Full show notes

There are so many things in life that teens, no matter their high school education, are not prepared for. Rarely are there standard courses on how to monitor our own technology use, balance friendships and relationships, and effectively resist drugs and alcohol. It falls on parents to deliver life advice. And with so much to cover it can be tricky to know where to start!

Moreover, it’s daunting to do: being the brunt of eye-rolls and bringing up sometimes awkward topics generally isn’t at the top of anyone’s to-do list! Parents know their teens will just tune out as soon as discussions get lecture-y and cliche.

Luckily, Marc Fienberg joins us this week to help with the issue of how best to dole out advice--and how to say it. Marc is the author of Dad's Great Advice for Teens: Stuff Every Teen Needs to Know About Parents, Friends, Social Media, Drinking, Dating, Relationships, and Finding Happiness. A father of four, Marc found when each kid became a tween/teen, there were certain pieces of advice he consistently wanted to impart. Significant age gap between his kids meant he had the chance to tweak and adapt his advice for each kid--and his teens let him know if his advice was any good!

In speaking with fellow parents and friends into account his own teens’ feedback, Marc has a wealth of knowledge on what advice is sound, what strategies work, and the best ways to deliver advice to your teen.

Marc’s key piece of insight on how best to deliver advice is to do what no one else can: speak from your own experience. There is perhaps nothing that perks up your teen’s ears more than hearing stories about their own parents’ (mis)adventures. (Bonus points if another grown adult they know is in your stories!). Marc notes that not only will you have your teen’s full attention, but using your own experiences will lift your story out of the realm of cliche and prevent eye-rolls.

Using your own experience has the added bonus of built in vulnerability, which Marc asserts is vital for a healthy teen-parent bond. Teens need to know it’s okay to “get it wrong”. Sharing times when you messed up or got hurt shows your teen no one is perfect--and that’s normal. When it comes to giving advice on romantic relationships, sharing your experience is particularly impactful for teens.

The teenage brain is wired to find new relationships incredibly rewarding. You may notice your teen sloughs off plans with family and friends to hang out with a love interest. Instead of lecturing generally on the importance of maintaining relationships, Marc suggests pointing out the relationships you have from your high school years that have lasted. It’s fairly rare that we keep in touch with the people we’ve dated in high school. But the friends we make in our teen years often last a lifetime--maybe you’ve even zoomed them recently!

This is not to say teens shouldn’t bother dating--Marc believes it is an important time for young people to put themselves out there and test the dating waters. Our role as parents is to help adolescents navigate the choppy seas of young love and keep everything in perspective.

One of the ways in which parents can help teens keep perspective is to push them to keep things balanced. Instead of accusing your teen of spending all their time with a new love, a better approach would be to try a relationship time-spent exercise. Whether you as the parent are in the right or not, is not the point: accuse your teen of something and they will immediately be on the defensive.

You can try making it a thought experiment by saying something like: “If you have 10 hours a week you can spend with everybody, what do you think is a good way to break that up?” Most teens inherently know that they shouldn’t be spending every waking moment with one person. However we all fall prey to obsession from time to time--the teen brain just more often than the adult brain! It may take a parent sharing their own experience with losing friends over a relationship to wake up the teen to the fact that relationships are a balance.

Similarly, teens can get sucked into their relationship with technology. And it’s a parents job to make sure they stay balanced in their relationship to social media/entertainment as well. Marc’s advice to avoid overdoing it with technology is to challenge your teens to balance consumption with creation.

Marc’s rule with his own four teens on technology use? One hour of content creation gets you two hours of consumption. Creation can be as simple as making TikToks or as complex as running a podcast. It’s the act of flexing those creating muscles that’s the important thing in Marc’s mind.

Additionally, Marc is adamant that we get our teens to balance the content they do post. Whatever our kids put on the internet is, in a large way, a part of their ‘brand’. Marc thinks it crucial to remind our teens that when they post content, it should be more than just them looking good. It can be so easy to get wrapped up in posting only pictures where we look beautiful, pretty, handsome, or sexy. Marc says parents should challenge teens to post things that show other facets of their personality. How can you share your other interests in pictures or videos?

It was a blast to speak with Marc this week and hear his fresh advice and stories on raising teens. In addition to vulnerability and relationships (personal or otherwise), in our interview we cover:

As Marc states, no kid is going to take all your advice, but delivering it in an engaging way, and surprising them with your vulnerability, will at least get them to listen for longer. Cheers to starting the new year off with an advice-giving refresh and to closer, more connected relationships for all!

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