Ep 219: Discipline Without Negativity
Andy: I love the premise of the book, which is about shifting from control and conflict to structure and nurture and really reframing the way we think about adolescence and about teenagers. And as we were just saying, teenagers really are misunderstood in a lot of ways I think. And it's kind of funny because as a teenager I remember feeling so misunderstood by adults and by everybody. But I think there's some truth to that and of course maybe they blow it out of proportion a little bit.
But the book is called Rethinking Your Teenager. And can you just talk a little bit about what inspired you to write this? What's your background? Where do you come from and where did you get all the ideas to fill up so many pages?
Darby: Remember when you're writing those papers in school or college and you're like, "Oh my God, 10 pages, how can I write 10 pages?" That just kind of went. So I think what interests me, I'm a child and adolescent family therapist and people have questioned why do you put child and adolescent first? Because what I like to do is put them first in a relationship, because usually what happens is I get people saying, "My child's out of control," or "They're depressed," or "They're not doing their homework, can you fix them?"
Andy: Yeah right.
Darby: So I sort of take that and run with it by saying, "Okay, this is about you. This is a place when you're with me that I want to hear what do you struggle with? What are you good at? What is your motivation?" And get a better understanding for them. And I think that came... I know it came from the fact that I was one of six kids in seven years and growing up we had everything we needed. A very middle class family, everything was great. But I always felt like we really had to just be quiet and eat dinner or go to our homework or there wasn't a lot of room. And it was also part of the time, you didn't really ask. Parents didn't really care what I thought and that's all fair. So I'm not being critical, but I'm saying I think growing up... And I have a brother who's a psychologist, a sister who works in domestic violence, we all went kind of to this thing saying, "Could we just listen? Could someone hear us?"
Andy: Yeah.
Darby: So I think that's kind of where I came from. And I feel like adolescents are incredibly rewarding and can make huge shifts if you one: teach them and then you go where they want to go, which isn't always exactly where the parents want them to go.
Andy: And that's the difficulty sometimes. I think that's really similar to what we see here a lot. Parents come and they find our website and they find a podcast, "My kid's got a problem here and what do I do? How do I fix it?" And a lot of, I think, what we also try to do on the podcast is to reframe that a little bit and say, "Hey, maybe there's a lot of things going on in the kid's life and the community around, in the family and the school and everything that's creating this situation and it's not necessarily the kid has a problem. There's a lot of problems everywhere."
So yeah, I think that when we approach the whole situation of thinking in terms of, "How do I fix this?" Or, "How do I get rid of this problem and just get back to just a normal kid or normal relationship?" That we're missing the opportunity like you're saying, just to listen and to understand more. And maybe it's not something that needs to be fixed or gotten rid of, but maybe it's more something that we just need to understand more what they're coming from and where they are and what's happening with them. And I think that even just that simple shift mindset shift goes so far.
Or I talk to parents a lot about, it's not about teaching them what they need to know or where they need to go or what they need to do differently, but it's more about learning from them about what's going on with them or what they're thinking or where they're heading or where their life is going. And I really think if you can just take nothing else away from the entire 200 episodes we've done on this podcast, but that one idea. That's profound. That will change your life, that will change the relationship with your teenager. That, just shifting your mindset.
Darby: I couldn't agree more. I think that's such an integral thought and that is scary for a lot of parents.
Andy: Yeah, you're happy to give up control.
Darby: And we as human beings tend to control when we're afraid of things.
Andy: Absolutely. Yep. Yeah, we grip tighter. The more...
Darby: Yeah, and then we clamp down and for a lot of reasons, but neurologically, your teens are hardwired to be looking for new things and exciting things. And that's part of the evolution. If we're going to get you ready to be an adult, we've got to rev you up and get you out there to assess all these experiences. They're hardwired for gratification and novelty seeking. They're not the GABA that says, "Stop. What do you think?" It's not getting hit on at the same level. And I think a lot of people will say, "Well what can I do about that?" I'm like, "Well, you can preview with them why you want them to do something or why it might not be a good idea."
But again, I think earlier on we need to let them make those mistakes and then preview how it could be different or what else they could have done as opposed to shaming them and saying, "You never think. You listen," that kind of stuff. Because really none of us learns because someone tells us. You think of relationships or whatever. "I told you she was no good" or "I told you he was no good." That's not how we work. We work on experience. And if we could just remember teens, need to experience it. What we want to do is provide some sort of gutters, if you will, so that the ball can go down the lane and when it goes off, we'll be able to pick it up nine times out of 10. But we kind of have to allow for that in order for them to learn.
Andy: Yeah, I was just talking to my girlfriend about this recently, because my parents had this deal with us when we were teenagers and kids, that my mom I think got from her sister and my aunt and uncle that they did with their kids, which was if we make it to age 21 without drinking or using drugs at all, they buy us a car. Well I fucked that up. I did not make it and neither did my brother or neither did our cousin. We had one cousin who did it and he made it and wow, good for him. And it's like, what a nice thing to offer, what an awesome, great thing, a car, everything you would want as a teenager, really, really great.
But also at the same time, looking back now, it really made me feel like, "Well I guess that can't really talk to you about this stuff. If I am doing this or making these choices, well now it's a secret. Or if I do then even get the car, but I actually did smoke weed once, then I'm lying and that's bad too. But it's a car and I want the car," and it puts me in this kind of weird situation.
But that wasn't the intention. The intention was good. It was just like, "Hey, I'm trying to make this nice thing and give you this reward." And I think so many times that it also sends this message, which is not what I got in other ways from my parents, but this feeling that love is conditional or that's, "Hey, if you do all the right things and check all the boxes, then we'll be proud of you and we'll give you this car. But if you don't, then no. Cutting you off not having it."
And I think to what you were saying in terms of that, I think we need to make them feel like that it's okay to mess up or it's okay to make those choices. And that doesn't at all change how I feel about you, how much I love you, how proud I am of you or any of those things. That's going to happen and that's okay, we all make mistakes. And then how do we make our kids feel that, but at the same time also kind of-
Darby: Watch them.
Andy: Yeah, we do want to be pushing them to make better choices and to be informing them about what the consequences might be, but also at the end of the day, how do we balance that with also making them feel like, "No matter what you choose, I'll love you no matter what. You know you can always talk to me about it."
Darby: That's a great question. I think it's important that you say to your kids, "Oh, I'll love you no matter what, but when you do some of this stuff, the consequences are yours." And again, we want to put that back and on them because then that's how we learn. You can come home at 12:30 if your curfew is at midnight if you want, but then this is what happens. And then making sure we follow through instead of yelling and screaming, "You're bad, you're such a loser. Why did you do that?" And that gets into a real emotional battle, which makes part of raising adolescence awful. Right?
Andy: Right.
Darby: We can just withdraw and say, "I love you to death, but you weren't here when you were supposed to be. You got to get up early in the morning, take your brother to soccer and you're not going to be able to go out tomorrow night. I still love you absolutely the same, but there were some consequences for this." And I don't think we do a great job of that. And I think we'd rather yell and scream in the moment and then let them go out the next night.
Andy: Right. Yeah. We don't enforce the consequences consistently. And setting them ahead of time I think is just so helpful to be saying, "Hey, we talked about this and we said that if we were going to let you go out and this is what the consequence would be. So here it is." But then you're obviously also just constantly reaffirming that, "But I still love you."
Darby: Yeah. And I think we think that it's better to say, "This is what you have to do." I think also one thing I really encourage parents with, especially with kids that are missing the mark on rules or grades or something, have a conversation with them and kind of turn the tables to say, "Well what is it that you think you're capable of? Academically, what is it that you...?" By and large, most human beings, but particularly adolescents, they don't want to disappoint people, particularly their parents.
Andy: Of course, yeah.
Darby: And it's not malicious. A lot of it is this notion that the brain isn't working on all cylinders yet. And I'm not using that as an excuse. I'm very much about, "Okay, you did that. This is the consequence and I can't save you from that, but I'm going to help you figure it out differently for the next time and I'm here loving you." So I think that that is something really important. We are terribly afraid of allowing our kids to fail or meet the consequences when it's still not that huge. We'd rather yell at them and then let them go ahead and keep doing the same thing and then we wonder why they keep repeating it.
Andy: Interesting.
You have some interesting content in here about divorce, and one point you made I thought that was really profound, is that just in terms of processing. And we had an episode recently, we were talking about grief and helping kids understand death and grief. And she talked about how sometimes we wait so long to tell the kid that Uncle Joe has cancer or something, that it's to the point where you as a parent, you've known for months and you've gone through your grieving process, you've processed this and now you expect a kid to just jump to where you are and come to your level.
And you made a really interesting point about divorce, where a lot of the times by the time we tell the kid that we're getting divorced, as parents, we've already known for a long time. We've been processing this and talking about it behind closed doors and now it's like, "Oh hey, by the way, mom and dad are splitting up." And now we're at really different phases and how do we navigate that? Or do you think there's a better approach or should we have given them little warnings along the way more? Or what's your philosophy on that?
Darby: Well, I don't think a lot of warnings is helpful because again, that keeps you in a kind of escalated state.
Andy: Totally. Yeah. Now, you're just anxious all the time, right?
Darby: You're anxious all the time. And we do know that that level of stress now we call it Childhood Adverse Effects or Childhood Stressor. If you're always kind of uncertain or unsure, then you're not where you can use your prefrontal cortex and make great decisions and feel grounded. So that creates a lot of the, "Nobody cares. I'm not sure." That's not a great mindset and it's not terribly healthy from a physical perspective.
So I think a better approach is for parents to realize, yes, it probably took them years. I mean the whole process is very long. It's gotten even longer through Covid and courts and all of that stuff. And then if you think about that, it usually takes parents quite a while to make the decision, "I can't do this anymore."
Andy: Totally.
Darby: So what I ask them to do is think about honestly how long it took them to terms with it and then you don't need to give your kids that long typically, but you need to give them some time. And it's really important to let it be their process because everything in their life has changed, because they've always known you together. So in fairness, adults lived a whole life, then they got married.
Andy: Right. Oh, that is a great point. Yeah. You had many, many years before you even met each other that you understood yourself as an individual. To them, it's all I've ever known is two of you together, we've been a family, Mom and dad, or dad and dad, or mom and mom, or whatever.
Darby: Mom and mom, whatever it is, that's all you knew. And there's great security in your home. That's why we still, even in abuse cases, try to get kids back with biological parents because that home, that has a certain level of security. And I think that parents need to understand that too. Let them move at their pace. And a lot of times I see so many people where they want me to talk about the divorce to their kids and make sure the kids are settled with divorce. And lots of kids probably at least six out of 10, don't really want to talk about it, and not because they're ignoring it, but they're like, "Okay, I didn't have a choice here. We have two houses now and I want to just be able to live my life and not pick sides and not be asked about the sides. I want to be able to go straight down this path and all be okay."
If we tell them what to expect, and we really reinforce two homes as opposed to one, usually kids are pretty good at coming to terms with that. They just don't want it to be brought up all the time. "You're divorced, how are you doing with the divorce?" Especially when they don't have a lot of choice.
Andy: You have some really interesting content also about sex and dating in the book. And I wonder what you think is, where are the biggest places where parents tend to miss the mark in talking about sex and dating? Or where's the things that stand out to you as easy places where a lot of parents could just make small adjustments?
Darby: I think parents don't really talk about it and everybody sort of takes the approach, "They know it. Everybody knows what happens." Right? And actually, we really don't. We know we're not supposed to talk about it or it would be kind of a weird thing. So again, the best way to talk about sex and to give your kids the information is to not make a big long sit down lecture.
I remember our parents gave us a Library Life Cycle, possibly volumes of books. It's like, "Okay, ugh, could we end now?" But I think to be really straightforward about two pieces of it, the actual facts of the sexual piece and the developing an identity. And I think we kind of need to approach the idea, especially now, that you want to come into your sexuality. It's not quite as binary or clear as we've always liked it to be. And we know that more than we ever did. We want people to see that as a healthy part of their identity and finding their identity through adolescence. And I think if there were more space for that with the technical knowledge, this is what happens if you have unprotected sex, in a very clear way, "I'm not judging you, but just know this." That is a really good approach.
Again, adolescents are super responsive when they know things, but when they get that piece, like you talk about that secret, "I'm not supposed to let them know I got drunk." The secrets keep everybody distant.
Andy: It's like a barrier between us.
Darby: And you feel inadequate, anytime there's distance, you don't feel good enough.
Andy: "I messed up and I'm embarrassed to even say it," or whatever.
I love their approach in here. Really talking about just being direct about this kind of stuff. And you have little quotes in here. "I heard girls are giving blow jobs at the movie theater. Do you know about this?" So, because I think sometimes it's kind of like, "Yeah, what do you want, mom? What are we talking about?". Yeah, exactly. Or we try to be, "Well I hear there's things happening..." and we don't really want to talk about it. And I also think-
Darby: "Those are bad things and you shouldn't do that thing."
Andy: Yeah. They respond really well to knowing what you want and where are we go. And especially right at the beginning of the conversations, it's kind of obvious that this is what you want to talk about and you can prepare them a little bit. Or even giving them something like that and saying, "Yeah, we don't have to talk about it right now, but maybe a little later we can talk this afternoon or something." Just so they're even prepared a little bit that, "Oh, okay, we're going to talk about the blow jobs."
Darby: Exactly. "Can we talk about that?" But I think what's important is to sort of say, "Listen, I'm not accusing or anything, but what do you think people think of the girls giving blow jobs in seventh and eighth grade in the movie theater? And I'm not judging anybody, but what's that like? Or do they feel pressure? What do you think about that?" All those kind of open mind questions allow a child to think about it. And then also they're like, "Oh, they kind of know more than I thought they did. I just thought Mom dropped me off. I got some twinklers and we're all good. She kind of gets."
Andy: Oh, maybe she's been a teenager before?
Darby: Maybe she knows.
Andy: Right? You're talking about the emotional sides of things because even something as simple as that, it's easy just to say, "Oh well, that's a thing that happens." But it's if like, Oh wow, being in that situation or feeling pressured to do that or that you're supposed to do that and how might that feel, emotionally there's a lot going on there. This is a loaded situation to be in and feeling like this is what I'm supposed to do and if I don't, am I being a bad girlfriend or dating person? Or how is this going to turn out later? Or am I going to lose this opportunity to be with this person? There's so many feelings that are involved that, and it's a lot deeper than just a blow job in a movie theater. There might be many, many layers going on. And I think being willing to talk about that too is important.
Darby: And I think it's important that you don't have to answer the questions. I think parents always want to have, "I gave them this lecture, but they didn't say anything." It's okay. They heard you. You don't unhear things. Right?
Andy: Oh, they heard you.
Darby: Yeah. They're like, "Yeah, okay. I got to go now." Just let that be. Find comfort in knowing you probably know more and you don't have to be the authority or anything, you can just kind of throw it out there and they'll process that. Like you said, it's a complicated question. "Will I be popular? What will people think of me? Can I risk this? I'm terrified. I can't go to anybody." But if you've shown them you have a little understanding for it and simply throw out there, "Look, I'll protect you no matter what. You don't even have to go to the details. You're in a weird situation, shoot me a text. I've got to come home or something. Make a code." Again, kids are a lot more naive, young adolescents, even older adolescents are more naive than we give them credit for.
And that's the piece that I think I like that sort of raw emotional piece where they don't understand. I saw a girl in eighth grade the other day and she was really disappointed in herself that she had kissed her first boyfriend in the Fall and he'd already kissed a few other girls. Pretty innocent. But she said, "I just feel so foolish because it really hurts and I care about him, but he doesn't seem to care." She didn't have any understanding that maybe she's kind of hardwired differently and she's got the oxytocin that kind of tells her she's got different emotions than maybe what he needs. And it's not really a right or wrong, but it's important to kind of know why there's a difference. And immediately her thing is, "I'm not good enough."
I think we're struggling a lot right now with adolescence because there's a lot of, "I'm not adequate. I'm not matching up to whatever else that is."
