Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Jessica Lahey, author of The Addiction Inoculation and The Gift of Failure, joins us for a second time to talk about her latest book and the power of inoculation theory to help teens say no to alcohol, drugs, and other risky behaviors.



Full show notes

Stories of addiction and overdoses are incredibly scary. We hear about teens who lose their way after getting in with the wrong crowd, or watch friends and family struggle to keep their lives together while battling substance abuse. As a parent, the last thing you want is for kids to fall into a destructive pattern of addiction that slowly chips away at their mental and physical health….but teens are impressionable and drug and alcohol use among adolescents is on the rise. What can we do to make sure our teens don’t develop a substance use disorder?

Today, we’re talking about prevention. So often, we view substance abuse from the end, looking at the rock bottom as the starting place for recovery. And while it’s important to acknowledge those life-changing moments of realization, it’s time to focus on how we can stop our teens from using drugs at all. In this episode, we’re getting into the steps you can take right now to ensure your teen is safe from substance abuse.

Our guest is Jessica Lahey, author of Addiction Inoculation: Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence. With over 20 years of teaching and parenting experience under her belt, Jessica began to write about her experiences, becoming a blogger, journalist, and eventually a best-selling author. Her work with adolescents in rehab clinics pushed her to research and write on the subject of substance abuse–primarily how we can prevent it instead of waiting until our teens hit rock bottom.

In our interview, we’re debating the existence of gateway drugs, explaining how kids get into substance use, and deconstructing the popular myth that it’s better to give kids wine at the dinner table before they reach drinking age. Plus, we’re covering things like academic failure, monitoring teens online activities and more!

We all want to know the truth behind why teens develop addictions–but there are so many myths, stereotypes, and misconceptions to shift through! In our interview, Jessica and I start out by tackling the popular notion of gateway substances. Does the use of marijuana really lead to more serious drug use? Do vapes make kids more inclined to try cigarettes? The answer is more complicated than you might think, and, surprisingly, has a lot to do with racial profiling.

Jessica and I also touch on an often debated topic: the role of genetics in the development of substance abuse. According to Jessica, genetics are about 50 to 60 percent of the risk factor for addiction, but early childhood experiences are also pivotal. Kids can be affected by a whole range of things–whether it’s seriously traumatic experiences or something as common as moving to a new place. The more adverse events kids battle with, the more susceptible they are to substance use disorder...meaning prevention is even more important, says Jessica.

Let’s say you want to keep your kid from experimenting with substances, so you get rid of all the alcohol in the house...but your friends say it’s smarter to just let them have a little bit of wine when the family sits down for dinner. Or, if they’re going to go out with their friends and get drunk anyway, maybe it’s wiser to just give them beers, lock them in the basement and take away their car keys….right? In the episode, Jessica explains how introducing your kids to substances early on can actually backfire.

Now that we’ve separated fact from fiction, let’s talk about action. How can we take steps to prevent alcoholism and drug dependence among our teens? Is it smart to monitor their behaviors or let them make their own way in the world? We cover that in the episode too!

As a worried parent, it makes sense that you want to know what your kids are up to. Nowadays, you can use technology to follow your kids phone, see their card transactions, read their texts, see what websites they’re visiting….the list goes on! And although it’s tempting to surveil your teen just to make sure they aren’t getting into trouble, Jessica doesn’t recommend it. In the episode, she explains why she suggests that parents take a step back from all the monitoring, even though it’s so accessible.

As Jessica shares in our interview, research shows that the more teens feel that they’re being controlled, the more likely they are to lie to their parents. Plus, they’ve been shown to have less motivation than teens who are more independent! While all that control might make you feel more secure as a parent, you have to let kids face the music on their own, says Jessica. In our interview, she describes the process of “individuation” in which teens learn to do their own thing–away from grown ups. In the episode, she explains how significant this process is for teens to grow into healthy adults.

Instead of focusing on putting up walls for your teen, Jessica emphasizes the value of building bridges. If you can cultivate a strong relationship with your kid based on mutual trust and vulnerability, you might find that you won’t read their texts or track their location to stay in touch with what’s going on in their lives, says Jessica. We talk further in the episode about how to walk the line between being a friend to your kid and being an authority figure.

When it comes to teaching kids to be independent, confident individuals, there’s another area of expertise for Jessica: helping kids handle failure. In our interview, we touch on some fascinating ideas from her first book, The Gift Of Failure: How to Step Back and Let Your Child Succeed.

Teens can be pretty dramatic, taking one small failure and making it into the end of the world. They get upset beyond consolation over one bad grade, or act as though their break up means they’ll never be able to return to school again. As a parent, it can be pretty frustrating to get teens to listen to reason and remember that next week, they’ll forget about the whole thing. If your teen is having trouble handling failure, Jessica has some advice for you!

Her method involves two parts: making failure specific and success general. By honing in on the exact details of a failure, Jessica says we can help teens see it as an isolated incident. For example, say a teenager gets detention for talking to a friend in class. It may make them feel like a bad student, or leave the impression that their teacher hates them.

Jessica suggests prompting your teen to ask themselves why they got into trouble. If they can break down their underlying motivations, they might realize that they were only talking in class because they were nervous about doing well on the test. Jessica stresses the importance of helping them see how they’re still on the road to success. Instead of being a distraction, they were trying to be a dedicated student–and it’s not too late to explain that to their teacher. Using Jessica’s method, you can help teens put their failure in perspective!

Jessica was a joy to talk to this week! In addition to the topics listed above, we discuss:

Thanks for listening. If you want to dive into more of Jessica’s work, you can find her books wherever books are sold. Don’t forget to subscribe and we’ll see you next week!

Sid’s advice on creating change is backed up by psychology research and I hope listeners can leverage it to create the changes they want to make in their own families and lives! Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.

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