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.

We're here today with Jenny Wallace, talking about one of the most important things you can do as a parent of a teenager, which is making sure your child feels like they matter. Jenny has spent the last four years surveying 1000s of parents all across the country, interviewing teenagers and tracking them over time, because she wanted to understand the rise of toxic achievement culture, and she wanted to figure out what parents can do to fight back. Jenny worked for many years as a journalist on 60 minutes. She is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. And she is the author of the new book. Never enough, we're going to be speaking with Jenny about why today's teens feel like there's so much pressure on them to achieve and what we can do as parents to send the message that our kids matter, regardless of how they perform in school.

Jennifer Breheny Wallace
Thanks for having me, Andy.

Andy Earle
Oh, yes, I'm excited. This is an important topic to discuss today, I just finished reading your book, never enough and really interested to dive into it. So can you just maybe get us up to speed a little bit with who you are, and how you got kind of into doing this.

Jennifer Breheny Wallace
I am a journalist by trade. I started my career at 60 minutes. And then I have been working print Wall Street Journal and Washington Post for the past 10 plus years. And I write about all sorts of things. But as a parent of three teenagers, I write a lot about parenting. So it's either things that I'm struggling with, or my friends are struggling with or reading about in the news. And I have questions that I've had access to such incredible psychologists, and researchers over the past 10 years. And in 2019, what sort of got to this book and 2019, I wrote an article for The Washington Post. And it was talking about how kids who attend what researchers call high achieving schools, those are public and private schools around the country, with, you know, kids who go to four year colleges, the test scores are usually very high in that school. They offer rich extracurricular activities and advanced classes. So the kinds of schools that parents hope to send their kids to, I certainly am sending three of my kids to those schools. And I said the article was about how to national policy reports found that those kids were now an at risk group, after kids in poverty kid this kids with incarcerated parents, recent immigrants and children living in foster care, yeah, at risk for two to six times national norms when it comes to anxiety, depression, suicide ideation, substance abuse disorders, they're two to six times more likely, yeah, it was, it was hard to read as a parent. So I went on a four year journey. And that journey was to find solutions from my own kids in my own house and to do whatever I could to buffer against that toxic pressure that was in their environment.

Andy Earle
So what is going on there? Why, how's that even possible, that the kids that the good schools are having more problems with kids, that that does not compute.

Jennifer Breheny Wallace
So when they were when the researchers were first looking at this population, and again, just to be clear, these high achieving schools generally have families that are in the top 20 to 25% of household incomes. So we're not talking about the 1%. Here, we're talking about upper middle class families that make you know, roughly $130,000 A year and more depending on where you live in the country. So what's happening in these schools is a few things and I sort of go into depth at it in the book, but it is what the Surgeon General calls the excessive pressure to achieve the never enough Feeling that these kids are feeling in all aspects of their young lives. When it comes to grades when it comes to extracurriculars, things that used to be stress reducers, like, you know, playing in the band or playing tennis are now just added sources of stress, there is a need to not only measure up that measure over their peers. And so kids are just struggling with this excessive pressure. And anyway, I worked for four years to find out what what was at the root of it and what we could do to buffer. It.

Andy Earle
One of the big themes that runs through the book is the idea of mattering. I'm really interested in that, you know, comes up I think, almost in every chapter, but just how mattering plays into this does, I guess, does that mean that the problem or part of the problem is feeling like you don't matter? So

Jennifer Breheny Wallace
I let me just back up a little bit. So I hired a researcher at Harvard graduate researcher, because I wanted to see is this just a problem on the east coast or west coast, we're in small pockets of the country. And so we put together a first of its kind parenting survey, I, within a few days, we this, the researcher wanted a sample size of 1000. So it was our goal. But within a few days, over 6500 parents around the country had filled it out from Alaska to Texas, to Washington State to Maine, Wyoming, and Cleveland, Ohio. And so at the end of the survey, I said, if you would be willing to be interviewed, reach out to me, hundreds of parents reached out. So I then went and traveled all over the country. And I was listening to stories, but I was also looking for who were the kids who were thriving, despite the pressures in their environments. What was home life like for them? What did their parents focus on at home? What was school like? What what did they see as their role in the larger community. And I found about 15 things that these healthy achievers had in common. And as I was looking for a site for a construct of sort of a framework to present these findings to parents, I came across this idea of mattering and mattering has been around since the 1980s. It was conceptualized by the same researcher who conceptualized self esteem, Maurice Rosenberg, and what he found was that the kids who enjoyed a healthy level of self esteem felt like they mattered to their parents. And there are a few different ways researchers define mattering. The one that really resonates with me is this idea that mattering is the feeling that we are valued by our family, by our friends, by our communities for who we are at our core. And then we are depended on we are relied upon to add meaningful value back to our families, to our friends to our communities. The kids who were doing well in these communities, had this high level of mattering. And it worked like a protective shield, it didn't mean that they didn't have setbacks, or they didn't experience failure, they didn't get anxious, or sometimes depressed. But what mattering did is it acts like a buoy, it raised them back up. The kids who were doing the worst I found in my travels across the country and in interviewing hundreds of families, where the kids who felt like their mattering was contingent on their performance that they only mattered when, and the other kids who were not doing well, were the kids who were so self focused on their own achievements, their own resume, that they were never asked to give back in any meaningful way. And so their mattering, they they lacked social proof that they mattered. So their parents told them, they matter. They, you know, their resume told them they mattered, but they lacked social proof that they were actually adding value to anyone other than themselves. So So anyway, that that's I mattering, the discovery of mattering for me and applying it in my own home has completely changed my life and my parenting, and I am just so grateful to be able to bring this to parents everywhere. How

Andy Earle
does this idea of mattering connect with this situation? of kids kind of feeling so much pressure? Is it that really the combination of a lot of pressure in the absence of the sense of mattering is really what the toxic? The toxic recipe is? Yeah, I

Jennifer Breheny Wallace
think that when we talk about pressure that our kids are feeling, and are in that our parents are feeling, the pressure we're talking about is this idea that we only matter when that you know, having a sense of self, where you are, where it is contingent on your performance really sets you up to live a very hard Up and Down life, it also can prevent you from reaching out because you don't think you are worthy of support, this lack of mattering also impacts relationships that are that should be providing a safety net of support. So I guess to me, to me mattering was the was mattering to me was the solution to it. And, you know, as I mentioned, I have three teenagers who attend these high achieving schools. And, you know, I, as I was doing all the research, I was applying it in my own home. And I will tell you, it really changes things. It really has improved our family climate, my kids well being in ways that I, I found extraordinary.

Andy Earle
It makes so much sense to me what you're saying, I just think, how stressed out are you going to be about a class or a test? When you think that if you don't do well on that, then it means you're not worthy of love? Or you don't matter? And I guess it's not, it's not the test itself? It's the are you talking about conditional regard? I think no parent is gonna say, you know, I only love my child, sometimes every parent we love our kids in, and we do, and but we also kind of think, oh, they know that you but you sort of point out in the book out even more subtle kind of ways that we are responding to our kids, or I also think that you're something that I would notice from my parents is like, attention, or when I'm like, do when I'm doing well, or doing good. Like now suddenly, I have mom's full attention, you know, and give that that sort of feeling. Really, it's just I think, is it's subtle. It's not, it's not that we're saying, oh, Idol, idol love you because you got an F on this test. And but but we kind of give the send that message, I think in a lot of ways, I'd

Jennifer Breheny Wallace
wanted to find out how we send that message and how our kids are receiving it. So I also did a second survey with a researcher at Baylor. And we surveyed 518 to 30 year olds. And I'd love to read up just a couple of my findings from the book, because I as a parent, I found it very difficult to read it. Just to be clear, every single parent I interviewed, all deeply loved their kids, they loved them unconditionally. The problem is the kids didn't feel it. So this is what I would love. I'd love to reach you. More than 70% of the young adults I surveyed, reported that they thought their parents valued and appreciated them more when they were successful. In work in school, more than 50% went so far as to say they thought their parents loved them more when they were successful, with 25% of students saying they believed to this a lot, the highest degree the survey allowed. And I'll say one other thing, when I asked these young adults, whether they agreed or disagreed with this statement, I feel like I matter for who I am at my core, not by what I achieve. 25% of students agreed either a little or a lot. In other words, one in four of the students in my survey believes that achievement, not who they are as people is what mattered most to their parents. That was hard. And I will say in the book i i have i had open ended questions, hundreds and hundreds of responses. And these responses were hard to read things like you know, my parents thought they were doing well by, you know, pushing me to, quote, reach my potential, but really, that was a catalyst for my depression and anxiety. So there it listening to these responses really made me hyper aware of the signals, even unintentionally, I might be sending my kids and like you said, with attention what what do i So actually, this is a good little exercise for parents that Tina Paine Bryson gave me. She's a psychoanalyst. And she said, if you think if you're wondering what kind of signals you're sending at home, ask yourself these four questions. Look at your what, what is my child's calendar, like? What do I spend my money on? What do I ask my kids about? And what do I argue with my kids about? And those four questions you may think that you're not sort of having this hyper achievement environment in your house, but those four questions will tell you a lot about what your child thinks you value most. I thought that was a really useful

Andy Earle
exercise. Yeah, just think with Soma. Much of parenting teenagers are so perceptive. It's not this big, big huge things that we do. It's really a lot of the subtle things that add up. Now this book's got me thinking about that a lot. I'm curious what you talked about the doing this research, and then applying some of your findings in your own household. There's what things you started to notice or wanted, wanted to change or anything like that.

Jennifer Breheny Wallace
So many things, so many things. So one of the things that one of the parents I interviewed was very wise. And she taught me a lesson that I now use at home. And it's about making the thinking what you're thinking as a parent explicit. So we think that we love our kids unconditionally, no matter what they matter to us. But what she found a way to make this explicit. And so she would say to her teenagers, you know, if they got cut from the ATM, or they failed a test, or they were disappointed in a million ways, they would come home from school, and she would do this little exercise, she'd say, she'd go to her wallet, take out a $20 bill, and she'd say, Do you want this $20 bill? And the child would say, of course, then she would very theatrically, crumple it up, put it on the floor, squash it with her foot, then dip the $20 bill into a glass of water, and pick up the soggy $20 Bill and say, do you still want it? And the teenager would say a course yes, I'll still keep it. And she says, exactly. She says, like this $20 Bill, your value doesn't change whether you get cut from the team, whether you fail a test, or are disappointed at a million ways, your value is your value. So that's something that I gripped by, what I have realized is that home home really needs to be a haven from the pressure, our kids are getting these messages at school, with their peers, with their peers, parents, about how much they have to perform that at home to be that safe base for them to recover from these messages. It doesn't mean letting them off the hook. Because to matter means that you're achieving. And you're achieving in ways that will either now or one day, be meaningful to the world that you will add value to them. So mattering is not exclusive from achievement. People who feel like they matter want to achieve, because they believe that even if they fail, if they reach for the top, even if they fail, they don't they still matter. Anyway, just wanted to make that clear that mattering and achievement are complementary. And actually, I would argue that for healthy achievement for long term healthy achievement, it can only be done through mattering. You know we can as parents, we can motivate our kids with what I call Healthy fuel, which is mattering or dirty fuel, which is criticism, criticism or comparing your child to their peer or their you know, their sibling, or really acting, withholding love and affection when they disappoint you. That is dirty fuel. And that might get you that short term goal, but it's going to make them burn out it's going to burn that engine out in the long run. So motivate with mattering. I could keep going on. I have so many things that have say one more thing. I could talk, I could just talk for hours about this event, how it's changed my own house. The most surprising thing I found in the book, next to mattering was with some decades of resilience research, a lot of research done by Sonia Luthor, who passed away recently, but was one of the leading resilience researchers in the world, then what what her research has found in others has found is that the number one intervention for any child in distress, whether it's a child in poverty, or it's a child attending these high achieving schools, the number one intervention is to make sure the primary caregiver, which is most often the mother, the primary caregivers, well being support system and mental health is intact, because a child's resilience rests on their caregivers resilience. So that to me blew my mind because as the mother of three teens, before I was writing this book, I was honestly running myself into the ground, I was getting up at 4am to write articles. I wanted to be the full time parent and the full time worker and I was exhausted and reading that research and I read it just at the sort of beginning of COVID i It completely changed my ways. And so I prioritize my support system, my friendships, for the sake of the people within my house, so I do it I you know, as Sunil Luthor the the researcher and she and I were having fish tacos in in Arizona near where she lived at the time. And she said to me, if you won't prioritize your own friendships and support system for yourself, do it for your kids. So whenever I feel a little bit guilty, taking a little too much time with my friends, I say doing it for them. And I will tell you, it is made me such a better mother, such a better more patient more connected, you know, just it's when you when you're, when you're running yourself ragged, you know you're you can be short, you can be rushed, you're not as good a listener, and kids can interpret that as that they've done something wrong

Andy Earle
as some of those things we were talking about earlier. These kinds of subtle cues that I can't really get dad's attention. And what does that mean about me?

It feels like so often as parents, we get this kind of martyr complex, where we feel like we just need to kind of give, give, give really interesting thinking about that research. And, you know, they say you can't pour from an empty cup. So much of that I think is, is modeling, but it's also a strong base.

Jennifer Breheny Wallace
What I'm not saying here is to, you know, spend 80% of your time with your friends, what Sonia Luthor found in her interventions. And she she has done she did a few studies, including with professionals at the Mayo Clinic, professional mothers, in particular physicians, physician's assistants, and nurses, she found that just one hour of intentional connection with a friend or two per week was enough to give these mothers that she was studying the support they needed. So it's not like we need a ton of time. What we need is intentional time, as little as one hour a week. So that that, to me was a life changer. I'm very intentional. I've always had law, you know, I've always had friends and I have friendships that span 40 plus years, but I have become much more intentional about every single week connecting with the people closest to me, helps me parent in and be the best parent I could be. It helps me be my best self.

Andy Earle
We're here with Jenny Wallace, talking about how parents can make our teenagers feel like they matter. And we're not done yet. Here's a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.

Jennifer Breheny Wallace
One school that really stuck out to me was a school in Cleveland, Ohio, St. Ignatius, like at two o'clock every day, the lights go down, and the kids rest their heads on their desks. And for two minutes, they hear from a faculty member or another student about a need in the world to get their minds away from themselves. And to help them create this other oriented mindset. So when you're hearing about the needs, and the challenges and the problems of the world, going to school, working hard, there's a reason beyond yourself that you're doing that you're doing that so that ultimately can go out there and solve these problems in the world. That really sparks our evolutionary impulses, right? If our kids can't at least live the lifestyle that we raise them in that feels like a drop in status to a parent, it actually releases these painful chemicals in our brain. And so we do things to sort of stop that pain that unfortunately, it can really damage our relationship with our kids. Yes, I want my kids to be independent, but what I have focused on is actually giving them the skills of interdependence. I want my kids to know how to lean on other people, and how to have other people lean on them for social support. I don't want them to ever worry alone. So our mantra in our house now is never worry alone. To me what is more important than them getting that a and Spanish quiz is to know to have the interpersonal skills where they feel like they are valuable enough to reach out for support and help. That is the kind of safety net I want for my kids.

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/register Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.