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.

Our kids grow up in a world where they are under constant surveillance. Some of that comes from social media and things they do online. But some of that also comes from parents, we log into the school website to see what their grade is the second, it's posted by the teacher. And in some ways, it's great that our kids are under so much scrutiny from technology all the time. It's a miracle of modern science. But also, you know, in some ways, it's problematic. And it's a new set of problems that parents haven't really had to navigate before. So how do we do it? What should we be thinking about? That's what we're talking about. On the show today, with Devorah Heitner, author of the new book Growing up in public, Devorah is the authority parents turn to for empowering advice on raising resilient and kind kids in our always connected world. Her previous book screen wise, helping kids thrive and survive in their digital world was an Amazon Best Seller and widely praised. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and Fast Company, among others. And she's a featured speaker at conferences, and independent in public schools in the United States

and abroad. Devorah is here today to speak with us about growing up in public, how can we raise teens in a world where everything they do is being recorded? Devorah, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Devorah Heitner
Thank you talking to teens is like my favorite topic. So I'm really glad to be here.

Andy Earle
Well, yes, you seem to be kind of writing a lot about stuff. It related to this area, you've written a book called Screen wise, helping kids thrive and survive in their digital world, written various publications around these topics. And now you have this book Growing up in public coming of age in a digital world. Talk to me about that. And what inspired this and where, where this whole interest of yours comes from? Sure.

Devorah Heitner
So I've been talking with families and educators about these issues for years helping trying to break down the generation gap and demystify what young people, especially tweens and teens experience versus what parents kind of imagine or worry about. And with screen wise people were like, This is so helpful that I really understand more about balancing screens and regular real life activities with my kids. But what I don't know how to deal with is what if they go viral for the wrong reason? Or what if my kid shares like one dumb thing, and it just becomes like what they're known for? Are these questions about like privacy and reputation were really key for a lot of parents. And what I saw is that a lot of parents were not thinking about their own role in surveilling their kids and kind of accustoming their kids to sort of a big brother level of surveillance. So in some ways, parents are like worried that someone else will catch their kid doing the wrong thing, expose their kid cancel their kid, but at the same time, they're not maybe thinking enough about Wait, how is my tracking my kid on like, 360 are this grading app affecting their sense of themselves and their identity?

Andy Earle
You have a whole section in here kind of going through all the different ways that parents surveil our kids, kind of a lot of things that maybe we don't even really think about that much or something. But there are so many ways that we are collecting data on all aspects of our kids lives. Yeah,

Devorah Heitner
it feels like we're almost pressured to do there's this sense of, Well, if you're a good parent, then you're for sure reading your kids texts, or if you're a good parent, you're for sure tracking them their location on an app like life 360, or a Find My Phone or whatever. And I think we need to just ask ourselves some questions like just because we can do something just because the technology exists to track our kids. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a parenting when and there may be situations where there might be some situation where it could be warranted or even helpful, or where you and your kid agree. Like maybe your kid is driving through the desert and you agree like, Hey, I'd like to track your journey. So I won't be I'll be able to sleep at night and maybe you'll feel better too. If I do that. And cool. We agree on it. And it's one thing to have a consensual plan to track someone for a specific thing or a consensual plan for like, hey, let's check your grades together every other week, or hey, you just got a phone and you're 12 Let's go look at your text together. But I think when we get into covertly tracking Are kids or tracking them in ways that are probably undermining their independence and their development, which I think a lot of those areas of tracking can be really problematic for kids learning how to be in the world on their own, then that becomes really problematic. And it can really undermine the relationship, it kind of does the opposite of what we think like, we think it's going to make us feel better. And I also hear a lot from parents that it actually makes them more anxious and more mistrustful of their kids. Well,

Andy Earle
it's interesting. Also, you talk about something at some point, in the book, you mentioned that a lot of what these technologies are doing is kind of helping us fight, catch our kids doing something wrong, we cut, we're catching a messing up somehow, it kind of puts you in a weird frame of mind or a mindset you, you want to be kind of teaching them what to do and how to how to be how to do things the right way, leading by example, and all of that and not really so focused on kind of trying to trying to catch them in the in the wrong act, so you can punish them. It doesn't really set up a great dynamic

Devorah Heitner
100% I think it's really important that we want to teach kids to get things right. And we want to navigate helping them when they do mess up so that they feel safe coming to us and talking to us getting advice from us. And if they do need support at a basic safety level, like if they've been experiencing harassment or some really serious issue on the internet or in person that they can come to us. Even if part of that maybe came from them breaking a rule like say they got on an app, we told them not to get like say you have a 16 year old and you were like Under no circumstances are you to use dating apps that's for 18. And up, please meet your potential boyfriends or girlfriends in person like, Oh, you're allowed to date, but I want it to be people. And I want to know them as well. If you get in a relationship, and they get on a dating app, and then they're in a situation where they're being harassed, or they've had a scary experience, or heaven forbid, they've been assaulted. I mean, some really bad things can happen to our kids, unfortunately, I would still want them to be safe coming to me, even if they broke our rules, and they got on Tinder or Grindr or something else. And they didn't disclose that to us. And they lied about their age. And I'm giving that kind of I would say for most parents, that's gonna sound like an extreme example. But unfortunately, I do know of 16 and 17 year olds who've gotten on dating apps, and had negative experiences. And if that was my kid, of course, I'd be frustrated that they made that choice, but I would be much more concerned for their safety. And I think we would want to make sure that our kids know what just like the conversation we often have about substance use, like, I don't want you to drink at the party. If you drink at the party, call me and I will come and get you. In the End Call me I will come and get you because I'd rather be mad at an alive kid than be at your funeral is really important, right? So so we want our kids to know that our concern for them, and their safety is is a higher value to us and that they can't talk to us. And often it's a friend to like maybe it's their friend that got on Tinder or Grindr, and it's an unsafe situation. Or maybe it's their friend who is threatening self harm on social media, and they need help from us. So if we have told our kids again, like, you can't check it, your phone late at night, I'm gonna be mad at you. But they did sneak their phone late at night. Now they're concerned about a friend for just another example. Like, I want them to still feel safe coming to an adult that cares about them. So we just really have to convey to our teenagers that as much as we want them to sort of stay in bounds, right of the rules that we've created in our family. It's also important that we know that sometimes teenagers do break the rules. And that does happen. And we know that that they're figuring out their own boundaries. And that's an important part of growing up. And as part of figuring that out, if something happens, where their safety is threatened, or their mental health is threatened, we want them to be able to talk to us, and that we will come through for them even if they have gone around a boundary that we've created.

Andy Earle
Thinking about that, and also in terms of some the other aspects of what you write about in, in growing up in public, where feels like such a high level of scrutiny, maybe that kind of one thing that gets posted can really kind of change kids lives. How do we kind of balance that I guess? Or do we how do we prepare our kids for for living in a world where there's that? There's that more higher stakes, I guess.

Devorah Heitner
I mean, one big way is we model not throwing other people under the bus. So in other words, like say, I'm really bad video goes around in your community, and it's like kids vaping or saying something really awful. We don't share that. We don't share that because we don't want to be part of increasing the harm that that causes, especially if they've said something hateful. Like we certainly don't want to amplify that harm. And we don't want to throw a kid under the bus in their reputation under the bus. We don't want to add to the problem. What we do want to do is sit with a kid you can certainly reach out to them and say Are you okay, whatever. But often it's someone we don't know. But we would never want someone circulating an image or a video of our kid messing up. I think we just always first of all need to lead with compassion and empathy on that front and be a model for our kids. If they are talking about hey, I kid got canceled. Like I tell the story in the book of a kid who shared a meme that was problematic during the early days of COVID pandemic, and it was a meme with some xenophobic overtones. Not a nice meme, but maybe possibly the full meaning of the meme alluded, right? The person who sent it, maybe she didn't really get how xenophobic it was how problematic it was, rather than share the meme and talk about that classmate, you could encourage your kid Hey, hold that girl, could you reach out to her and just like, let her know what you think, like, let her know. But also, if she then moves forward and apologizes and takes it down. Maybe we don't want to be icing her out like two years later. But I mean, like maybe at some point, if someone has made a good faith effort to make things right, and they seem to have learned from their mistake, we can move forward. Now, if someone repeatedly makes the same mistake or expresses views that are reprehensible, you don't have to talk to that person, you can block that person like, I'm not saying to my kid, like you need to be friends with someone who's out there with racist or homophobic stuff, you can absolutely cut off contact, but to amplify it and encourage others to sort of cancel that person is also amplifying the harm they're causing. So I would say we still don't want to participate in that kind of righteous outrage. Instead, I would think about what can I do for the targeted community? Like if someone's out there with homophobic stuff on the group text or the social media? What can I do to make sure my high school is a safe place? For for the queer kids? What am I doing to be welcoming? It's not about what can I do to make sure that I'm signaling that I'm signaling that this is bad. It's more about what can I do to make make this space welcoming for for the folks in our community?

Andy Earle
Something that you cover in your book, which is really interesting also to think about is what happens when your kid is the one that's really getting piled on when when your kid gets canceled? And I mean, how do you even think about that? Or? Or what, as a parent, what do you need to what's your approach there?

Devorah Heitner
I think it's first of all really tricky. If your kid is lucky enough to have two parents or two adults, it could be like you and a family friend, it could be you and another parent, I think one parent needs to play the role of sort of the PR director who's sort of dealing with the world who's like climbing that image back if you can, letting School No, hey, this image got airdropped, or this video is going around like what can you do to try to stop this spread, and the other parent or the other adult in that child's life can be focused on the mental health of your child making sure that they don't take any doing as much as you can to prevent any rash decisions. Because we know that kids have on a worst case scenario died by suicide or experienced self harm going down the list from like that. Obviously devastating possibility to like refuse school would be like, obviously a less dire outcome, but still like pretty, pretty life altering if you're stopped going to school, because something has happened, all kinds of things. So we want to make sure that we're reducing the harm that our kid experiences, giving them a way to move forward, giving them a way to make restitution. Like, there's different things that can happen. I mean, if your kid's image has gone around on consensually, that's like a sexting image that they shared, maybe conceptually, but it's going around nine consensually, then your kid is the victim in that situation, right? Because they didn't intend for that to happen. That's a different situation. But kids still need a lot of care in that situation and a lot of support, they, they may need a potentially to move around their schedule, if they're at a high school where they could change schedules and a perpetrator of sharing their image non consensually is in one of their classes, maybe that can change maybe there there can be a way that they don't have to see that person school should do as much as they can to sort of tamp down the rumor mill and your kid should be kind of equipped with some things that they can say at school, like I'm not allowed to talk about it, et cetera. And our respect in that situation needs to really come through like I respect you, I see you you're a human being that someone decided to violate your privacy, that's not okay. Right. And then there's a whole bunch of like legal things that can potentially happen that I won't get into here because I think that's not the sort of focus of what you're asking. If your kid said something harmful if your kid said something, mean, or even in these categories that I mentioned, like racist, homophobic, misogynist, xenophobic, then we need to work with like, Where where are those ideas coming from? What can we do to make sure they understand so again, in the book, I share an a story about boys who shared an image of video of a classmate who had a disability and they believed he consented because he kind of was like, sad, he was okay with it. But they didn't. They weren't really transparent about their full intentions. They weren't really transparent, like they did not say, can we share this image on the anonymous school account so people can laugh at you? Right? If you take a video of somebody and maybe they have a different understanding of what's going on when you're taking that video and you can kind of process Hey, I'm not taking the With kinda intent, and then you post it again, for all of these kids who paid a significant disciplinary price at their school, they were kind of stunned because it just happened really fast. They took the video, they thought it was funny, they posted it, they didn't think about it. And that is the teenage brain to a certain degree. I think that it's not that these boys, when reflecting couldn't come up with the empathy to recognize how much that was a real error in judgment. And really cause could cause pain not just to that child, but to his family and other people. But in the moment, they weren't thinking about it. And I think when so when we see our kids do stuff like this, we can be like, Wow, what what possessed my well raise child? Who knows better? There's people in our family who have disabilities, like I thought they had empathy. I thought I did a better job. And it can be a real crisis for us as parents. So as much as possible, we want to understand where our kid is at. If your kid is further down the road like these were kids who I think genuinely they messed up. I'm not going to make excuses for them. I think they did cause harm. But do I think there's no road for them in the future to get better and improve? I do not, I do think that they can move forward from this with with better empathy. I don't think that we need to throw these kids out of society forever, right? I think that they really messed up and they were hurtful. But when a kid is further down the road, like say, you have a kid who is really more confirmed in like, say a white supremacist viewpoint or something. That's a kid who I would involve a professional, right? In a sort of a deprogramming and a helping process, what I wouldn't do is again, just like the Where did I go wrong, or to be in denial about it, frankly, like if your kid is far down the road of hatred, and has been kind of recruited into a perspective of, of, you know, something like white supremacy or something that's, that's in there. And they're not regretful they don't feel regret that that'd be very different than these kids who were poking fun of their disabled classmates. But when they kind of were slowed it down and thought about it, they recognized like, wow, that was harmful. That's a different place, you can work a lot with remorse. And we all have done things that we feel remorse for. And then we need, we can move forward. Those kids could maybe volunteer in, in a community, like do something like buddy ball or do something to increase their understanding of disability issues, right. But I would not subject a community whether it's a community of people with disabilities, or a community of people of color, or women and children at a women's shelter to a kid who's like posted a misogynist, my first step would never be to like, put them in that situation, because the targeted community should never be exposed more to someone with harmful views. The idea is, ultimately we want to get them to understand the impact of what they've done, depending where your kid is, or a child in the community is along that spectrum of like, I didn't really think about it, or I posted the meme. And I didn't even really get why it wasn't funny. And then I took it down. Like there's a huge range of what people can do, and sort of how canceled they are and how in trouble they are. But what we don't want to do is teach our kids that the goal is to not get caught. And I think when we gleefully celebrate the consequence, and we don't focus on character and a huge part of growing up in public for me is how can we move to a character versus consequence based approach when we focus on the consequence, say the kids who are joking about the Holocaust, and then we're rescinded from Harvard, we focus on the rescinding from Harvard, we don't focus on why genocide is a funny, we've missed the boat. What we want is for our kids to understand why some things are not funny, and why especially joking. Also, in frankly, a digital context can be more likely to be taken out of context and misunderstood and used against you. Yes, but it's not about hey, don't get caught. It's not about hey, just go further underground. It really is about how can we have conversations that don't cause harm, like bottom line, what I want to say to kids is not don't get caught, but don't do harm. And if you thought for even a second about a video of your classmate with a disability, if you just went through that checklist in your head, could I cause harm from this? Is there any way even though this person is saying thumbs up? It's not a surreptitious video? He knows I'm taking the video. But does he really know I'm intending to put it on the anonymous school account? Make fun of him? Would he consented that? Does that sound good to me, like let me think about this resign, oh, maybe I could be causing harm. Let me not do this, right. And I think it's so important that we try to get kids all the way there. And that when they do cause harm, that they have strategies, like taking down the video making an apology to the person recognizing that that person may never trust them again, and that they have some learning and work to do maybe about the community that they maligned and that they have to do their own work, but also recognizing that it's not about the consequence, right? Like these parents could have doubled down because these kids got suspended or expelled from their school, these parents could have doubled down and focused on the consequence. And I think they want to focus on the learning and that's really important. And yeah, it's a very painful consequence to be expelled or even suspended from school. That's a big deal. And I understand parents getting reactive to that. But when parents sort of get so focused on the consequence or lawyering up or whatever, they then they're forgetting the part where they have to actually teach

Andy Earle
their kids a missed opportunity of the learning. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. What should be a just a huge

learning moment for a kid to have something like that happen. Realize you really, this is not funny. Post this kind of thing. Wow, what an impactful way to learn that by getting so kind of focused on the Hey, this isn't fair and this is what, let's fight this, you kind of dilute that lesson from love just really that that idea of focusing on the character principle that underlies what what happened and why it's not okay is what's important for the kid to learn.

We're here today with Devorah Heitner talking about how to raise kids in a world where everything they do is being recorded. And we're not done yet. Here's a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.

Devorah Heitner
We can let them know all the risks we see in sexting and really, I would have a non shame based just honest conversation which we just don't live in a world where this is a safe way for teens or even adults to express their sexuality because of the privacy issues because it can so easily get exposed and shared not because it's shameful to feel excited about your body and the way it's changing not because it's shameful to have sexual feelings. Those are things are fine, it's fine to want someone to think you're attractive, it's fine to be curious about what someone thinks about your body. But this is just not a safe way to find out. One of the things we should be doing is in any kind of formal sex education program or consent based Program or School advisory that we do address sexting and that we don't just say don't do it, just like talking about sex and just saying don't do it. We know like, there's a lot of data that shows that abstinence only is a very ineffective strategy in helping kids stay safe and including their emotional safety, and that by addressing sexting and also make sure we address consent, and that coercing or cajoling someone, or harassing or badgering someone into sending an image is absolutely wrong. And we want to make sure our kids are never participating in that. And that they know that if someone else is harassing them, then it's not acceptable. I think it's really important that our kids focus on sharing about themselves in ways that feel comfortable to them. And if they identify with an identity, like a neurodiverse identity, or a queer identity, or like a survivorship identity, and we're uncomfortable with them sharing we should ask ourselves, Is that about us or about them? And what do they get by opting into that community as as well as coming out? Right? So we think about coming out, as in any of those situations, whether it's mental health, neurodiversity, LGBTQ plus, exposing our kids to potentially more scrutiny or bullying, and that that can be true, but kids are often pretty savvy about who they share with and when and where, and, and what venue, but also, we should think about how are they coming into community as well and recognize that our kid there may be benefits into coming into that community and being supported and shared in that community that may outweigh the risks?

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.