Ep 303: The Secret to Raising Securely Attached Teens
Andy Earle: 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 talking about connection focused parenting. One thing that always amazes me about teenagers is just how quickly things can go downhill. It can seem like everything's great, you're connected, you're in tune with your kid, and then all of a sudden things start spiraling out of control really quickly.
We're going to talk about the science behind what caused that today and look at some psychologically backed strategies parents can apply to kids of all ages, but especially teenagers to bring things back into a state of calm and connection.
Our guest today is Eli Harwood.
She is a writer and therapist, and she runs a community online at Attachment Nerd. And she's the author of the new book, Raising Securely Attached Kids.
Eli, we are so excited to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for being here.
Eli Harwood: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Andy Earle: You have a whole community and this book that you wrote, Raising Securely Attached Kids.
where did this journey start for you in being so interested in parenting, interested in attachment?
Eli Harwood: Okay. It started when I was born because I am one of the lucky 50 percent of people estimated who was not born into a secure home. I grew up with some rough family dynamics and that led me to having some issues.
And in that process went to therapy and it was in my therapy process that I was able to really start to recognize like, Oh, there's some stuff here that makes sense with attachment. And I'm more, I learned about attachment.
the more I healed, I became a therapist. And then I worked with clients for a really long time. And then 15 years into my clinical career, I was like, I really want people to know how to prevent some of this stuff. I love helping people process it, but there are ways to prevent some of the pain that comes from insecure dynamics between parents and kids.
the teen years are one of those points of tension that a lot of parents don't know how to engage securely because it's messy complex and emotional. I started running my mouth on the internet and writing books just trying to get the science. From out of the hands of the people who are so smart and know how to make the science and into the hands of the rest of us who really need the science.
Andy Earle: Talking about adolescents, you write in the book that the teenage years are interesting in terms of attachment because this is the part of their lives that they begin to transfer some of their attachment needs to their peers. What do you mean by that? And how does that look?
Eli Harwood: attachment is the instinct in all of us to form close relationships.
we tend to have cooperative relationships with different people. I tend to cooperate with the person checking out my items at Target. I give them the money, they give me the overpriced socks I couldn't say no to, and we go on our way. But it's not the same as an attachment relationship.
The attachment relationships are the relationships we go to for emotional support, for regulation, for identity and belonging. There are people, right? Our parents, our children, our sweethearts, our besties. in childhood, children are instinctively drawn to their parents for their attachment needs.
We're their primary attachment figures. because our species needs to continue, and eventually we have to, make more humans, We begin to form deeper bonds, with our peers so that we make our own families and communities and evolve past our families of origin.
adolescence is the time at which kids begin this process. There's an ongoing journey and every kid is different. some kids bloom late. Some kids don't transfer their attachment till they're 20 or 25. But for the most part, the average kid in their teens is more invested in their peer relationships than they had been previously.
So they might go through a breakup and want to call their friend instead of wanting to tell us about it. Oh, rude. So rude, painful. I'm the star of your show, but they're doing that because they have to practice. They have to learn how to do this closeness thing. they know how to do closeness with us.
They have to learn how to do closeness with other people. And that is tricky because we're going to have our own feelings about that. It's the beginning of the end of a very meaningful part of our lives where we were their person.
Andy Earle: This makes me think about what it looks like for them to be successful in that transition, in that transference of the attachment from the parent or the primary caregiver to peers.
it strikes me that they're a different relationship because with the parent, you're being the soothing and open rock for the child to help them soothe themselves and you're not really unloading your emotions and asking them.
Hopefully. But. In their peer relationships, hopefully they're more bi directional or so they're going to learn the skill set of being able to not only use a peer to help them soothe themselves, but also to adopt that role where they are going to be the one who helps their friend through something.
Eli Harwood: Yes, so it's really messy and complicated and nuanced and they have hormones going through their bodies at insane rates and their brain is myelinating. There's all these things happening that actually makes this really messy. And so as caregivers, we have to be extra sturdy in ourselves and in the long term trajectory with our children because while our children will Eventually transfer their primary attachment needs to friends and peers and romantic partners, all that stuff.
We still remain an attachment figure in their life. They don't stop wanting us in their support. we have research that shows securely attached teens will still seek out mostly the mom, but mom or dad in a situation that is high distress. like in a car accident,
They still want their mom there, not their best friend or their boyfriend. So you're still playing that role. It's just that they aren't needing you as frequently or in as many scenarios, because now their peers are able to be some of that for them. And they're trying to figure out how to do that. So we have to be pretty sturdy, not take it personally and not just go, okay, I guess you're done with me.
That's it. If you're not going to tell me about that, then you don't get to tell me about anything. We have to be able to go, okay, it sounds like you really want Sarah to talk to you about that. And, we go to our peers and our partners and go, I can't believe they want Sarah. And we let it out and we work through it, but we don't do that with them.
We don't punish them.
Andy Earle: it strikes me that maybe we also coach them on how they can be a good friend to Sarah Maybe that's what Sarah needs right now is some of that stuff we do together where we talk through your feelings and we talk about what they're called or what you might be feeling and why and what else might be causing it.
Eli Harwood: If you handle this maturely. Your teams will let you be a consultant. They won't follow all the advice that you give them. but they will let you consult. If you respond immaturely, you will lose your position at the table. And now they're not being influenced by you in any way, shape or form.
that's not what we hope for. We hope to be able to continue to be a voice of guidance, but also of support. You got this. I believe in you. You can handle this. You also don't have to take that. That was not a nice thing that Sarah said to you. do you feel obligated to continue to stay in that relationship?
What type of a terrible thing does someone have to say to you before you're done with them? I'm curious, have you established that? We can be in that role of consultant if they can sense that we aren't threatened by their growing independence.
Andy Earle: Or like trying to. Usurp Sarah, get back as the number one,
Eli Harwood: I mean, later I could do a whole episode on things not to do when your child chooses a partner, continue to try to be number one in their life. No, please don't do that. this is the similar training ground. I can be secure in my position.
no one else is ever gonna be you. you are in your position that's set and solid, but your child is going to continue to grow out and have more relationships and hopefully flourish in the world outside of your arms because of the love you've given them, because of the security that you've given them and that you can trust.
That as they venture deeper in the world, they're taking you inside their hearts and minds, even if they're cultivating more dynamic relationships in their life.
Andy Earle: You write about something in your book on page 95 called Alexithymia?
Eli Harwood: Alexithymia.
Andy Earle: What is that and why is that something we need to watch out for?
Eli Harwood: Alexithymia is the absence of an adequate amount of words to describe emotions. If someone has Alexithymia, they probably have a very small amount of words. Something like sad, mad, glad, Maybe scared. very few words to describe their inner world.
Our inner worlds are incredibly nuanced and complexed. There's a difference between I'm excited for something, and I'm nervous about something. There's a difference between I'm nervous about something and I'm freaking terrified. Or, I'm feeling sheepish and I'm mortified, we need lots of words to describe all of the complex things that we feel as human beings.
And the more words we have to represent our inner states, the more likely we are going to be proficient at sharing our inner states with other people, which means that we will have more productive relationships. So when you have alexithymia, it's usually because you grew up in a home where your caregivers We're like, we don't talk about feelings.
So you have a feeling, stuff it down, eat something, do something else, get a blanket. but we're not going to feel the thing. And we're certainly not going to give it a name because that will make it bigger. Which isn't actually totally wrong. When we acknowledge our feelings, there's an increase in an expression of our feelings.
So by saying I'm sad, we'll often go, I'm really sad. And then the tears will start coming out or I'm feeling really disappointed. But what. ends up happening is the emotion recedes because it's gotten out. It's been given in relationship to others, it's been expressed, it's been physically let out.
So we want our children to have, and our teens, a wide array of words to describe their inner worlds because it helps them to get their feelings out and connect well with others.
Andy Earle: Wow. that sounds like a lot of adults I know How do we correct that? Or maybe we're parents listening and recognize some of those traits in ourselves.
What do we do about that?
Eli Harwood: Get curious about your inner states and pay more attention to what's happening inside your nervous system as you go throughout your day. What am I feeling right now? Do I have a word to describe this? If you start with a general word like I'm mad. you can tell Oh, I have about as many words as a toddler would have about this body state.
Find safe people in your world to begin to talk about it. Hey, can I talk about being mad? And look, literally just get on Google, synonyms for mad, there's a lot of them. And then you might be like, Oh, and then you might read a definition of one and which one's worse than the other.
And, just start to educate yourself and be curious about your inner state. The more competence you have about your own emotional world, the more likely you're going to accurately pick up on your child's emotions as well. if you've been taught. Don't feel, like Elsa don't feel shut it down.
you're not going to be able to pick up on the feelings. But if you start to say to yourself it's okay, I can feel, I can notice my feelings and I can talk about it. you probably want a therapist for this process. Then you can get to a place where, you know, when your child has a nuanced body reaction and body state, your body will pick up on that and have a connection.
Oh, they're feeling a cocktail of, envy and jealousy, which aren't the same thing, by the way. Envy is about someone having something that you want. And jealousy is usually more relational. It's about someone having a connection with someone that you want.
Oh, what's a really great resource. It's Atlas of the Heart. Brené Brown wrote a book called Atlas of the Heart, and it's basically just defining all of the emotions. So go do that. Buy a book.
Andy Earle: I think that our reaction is, oh they're acting out.
They're being difficult. And we miss those cues to lean into the emotion and to help them through that process.
Eli Harwood: Behavior is communication and behavior is secondary to emotional state. So if a child is acting badly, we know with certainty. That a child is feeling badly. We don't know what the bad feeling is.
It might be about belonging. It might be about, insecurity in their performance. It might be about past trauma. We have no idea what it is until we begin to get curious with them. But we know a kid acting badly is a kid feeling badly. And that if we only address the behavior and we try to control the behavior, we're going to continue to erode trust in the relationship.
So we're going to have to figure out what's going on, one of my favorite things to say to a teen who's making bad choices, whether that's my client or it's a sibling, I have a big gap between me and my siblings in my life. So I was like a bonus parent when they were growing up something like, Hey, I can tell something's wrong.
I don't know what it is, but I know this is not. how you like to act. So something's not going well, what is it, when you hold on to someone's dignity, it's amazing what falls out of that bag. All of a sudden they tell you this happened and that happened.
I can't tell you the amount of kids who are holding on to painful, shameful stories of trauma because they just don't want to disrupt everyone's lives because they're really good hearted kids and they think that the best thing to do is to keep it quiet. And so instead they're grouchy and they're off and they're shut down and they're awkward.
And it's not because they're behaving badly. It's because they're coping with something that's too big for a teenager to hold by themselves. And so you get them talking by addressing their dignity, and all of a sudden what's happening makes sense.
Andy Earle: If we have kids who are acting out in various ways, doesn't that just mean we haven't punished them properly or found the right combination of rewards and a star chart that gets them to behave in a better way and we're failing as a parent.
Eli Harwood: I want someone to bring out the dictionary definition of sarcasm because it was just so good. I almost thought you meant that. Almost. No. So if a kid is having a hard time. And we punish them. We're adding hard times to their hard time. It's not good math. Sometimes we have to set boundaries and there's a big difference between setting a boundary and punishing a child.
So let's say our child has been given the keys to a vehicle and a license in which to drive it. And let's also say that we've discovered some illicit drug in said glove box of said car. And we've been clear that One of our parenting boundaries around cars is that we don't drive cars while there are drugs or alcohol in our bodies.
Okay. And so now we find drugs in the glove box. Our kid is in a position where they're not making a great choice. Something is not firing right. We can just conclude that, right? And whether Jenny from down the block, whether they're Jenny's drugs or there are kids drugs, it doesn't matter.
Drugs made it into the glove box of the car and that's not safe and not good. And so they do need a boundary. But the difference is why am I setting this boundary and a punishment? Why am I setting a punishment?
I really need to update my vernacular. The smoke, they say they smoke. The Mary Jane, the marriage one. I found it in the glove box. That's a violation of the safe driving rules. Unfortunately, what that means is that we're going to need to drug test you for the next two weeks.
And if you pass your drug test for the next two weeks, then you can regain access to the car. Or in order to keep you safe, we're gonna need to take a six month break. hopefully you've thought of this ahead of time, Okay. But that sounds very different than I cannot believe you did this. I'm taking the keys to the car. You're not driving the car for two weeks. It could be the exact same limit and boundary. But the first one is I'm going to keep you safe. I am putting a boundary here because your safety matters to me.
And also my car matters to me because I can't just buy endless cars It's about the intention of the boundary is in support of my child, my teen, myself, my property. That is very different than you did something I don't like and I want you to suffer so you'll learn.
So we do need to set boundaries, but we don't have to punish.
Andy Earle: What's something you really care about
Eli Harwood: We all do it by the way. I don't want anyone to think that I've never done that with my kids.
We get desperate. We have moments where we're triggered and activated. It's just not effective. It's not the most effective way to teach a child. It's also not effective. If you find the weed in the dashboard of the car. To do nothing about it and hope that they just don't notice it's missing and stop buying and smoking weed.
That's not going to be effective either. We have to address the situation, with maturity. Hey, I found the weed. And this is what that means. I love you, but I love you enough to keep you safe. I love you enough to piss you off. And I know this is going to be hard, but I was supposed to drive, I know this is going to suck.
I'm so sorry. But you know what? It's going to suck a lot less than you getting a MIP, Two weeks without the car and doing drug tests. It sucks. I hear ya. But it's gonna suck a lot less. And if you actually have a drug problem me helping you figure it out right now is gonna suck a lot less.
Then, being in rehab for years or, getting married and your partner leaving you because you can't stop smoking the doge. Like whatever the thing is, I am going to make a decision right now that is in favor of your well being because you matter to me. It is not about me having control.
It is not about you learning some lesson. It is about this is what I think needs to happen for your safety and being and our safety and well being.
Andy Earle: And the deeper level is, as you were mentioning before, what's going on with them that's causing them to do this. And you have a really powerful story in the book about a teenage boy who comes into therapy And you can instantly tell he's just not feeling very good.
so you use one of those lines you talked about earlier, inviting him to open up. he talks about how he had this terrible day and then he threw his shoes on the floor when he got home and then his dad yelled at him because the shoes were on the floor. Can you walk me through that a little bit?
why is that such an important story in the book and how might that apply to what we're talking about with the drugs in the car?
Eli Harwood: I think sometimes we forget what it was like to be a teenager, the sheer volume of conversations and interactions, thoughts and pressures, just the number of teachers they interact with alone.
And I don't know about you, but all my teachers were not like, Pleasant and pudding and pie, right? So you don't know all the things they went through during their day. this particular story is about a kid working so hard to earn all the awards and please his parents but he's struggling and he's not sharing his struggles because he's gotten the memo from his parents that what they want from him is to perform.
And the dad comes in and he hasn't performed because his shoes are in the middle of the floor instead of in the shoe spot, But he misses the point. He comes upstairs and he's like, why are your shoes?
In the middle of the room, like I was going to buy you these Air Jordans. And now I'm not going to, he's trying to motivate his child to make good choices, but he's missing the whole point. His kid's like laying in bed depressed and he's not wait a minute. Why is my teenager in bed at 5 p.
What's going on? we can get so lost in trying to create the behavior we think our kids should have that we miss their story, their life, their heart. we've got to always come back to how are you kid? What's going on? creating that open dynamic and dialogue between us and them that they can rely on.
So that instead of coming upstairs and going, why aren't you shoes? There we go. Hey, How are you? We're checking in. And then, let's say they're like playing video games and they're disconnected. We also wouldn't want to jump to conclusions. Like why haven't you done your homework? Why aren't you video games?
We want to go, Hey, can we put a pause real quick on fortnight? Can I check in with you about something? I'm just wondering if you're okay. Like usually you're so good about making sure stuff isn't in the middle of the room or like your backpack was everywhere. Like you're up here and what's going on?
Nothing. I'm just overwhelmed. That didn't register as fine in my barometer Are you stressed out? Yeah. Okay. Is there anything that I can be doing right now to support you?
I'm going to give you like 10 more minutes on fortnight and then I'm going to come back in and we're going to check in about what's really going on I'm going to help you figure out what's stressing you out what matters more to me than your behavior.
Is your well being when we focus on the well being of a child or a teen, their behavior improves You want someone to learn how to cope. You have to help them learn how to regulate and we regulate by feeling like other people care about what's going on with us.
Andy Earle: And it's so easy to miss that opportunity, I think. And I think back to my teenage years and just how often I felt unseen or misunderstood what you're talking about here is more an interest in how I was doing on things and not so much interest that felt authentic and like how I'm really doing and like an openness to want to really talk about that and discuss that.
So I think that's so important.
Eli Harwood: Amen. We all needed that.
Andy Earle: What a powerful note to end on. Eli Harwood, thank you so much for coming on the show today. The book is Raising Securely Attached Kids Using Connection Focused Parenting to Create Confidence, Empathy, and Resilience.
Can you talk about where people can go to find out more about you, what you're doing and stay connected with you
Eli Harwood: I regularly run my mouth on the internet at attachment nerd. you can find me on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok I do lots of reels and posts, helping all of us come back to that central place of being relationship focused doing the things we can and letting go of the things we can't.
on my website, attachmentnerd. com, there are options for support through coaching and education, you can find my books wherever you buy books. specifically on my site, there are lists to all of the international and local links.
Andy Earle: Wow. I highly encourage people to go and check it out.
And I'm so grateful to you for coming on the show and spending some time with us today. It's been enlightening and really real.
Eli Harwood: I'm glad to be here. Thank you for having me.
Andy Earle: We're here today with Eli Harwood talking about how to reconnect with your teenager when things are going off track and we're not done yet. Here's a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.
Eli Harwood: We are creatures that are relationally regulated. That's why no human being does well in solitary confinement, because we're relationally oriented.
The more empathy we give to a child, the more empathetic they will be. We as a species. are honest, fully honest, authentically honest with the people we most trust to handle our honesty with maturity and acceptance.
The more you punish lying, the less honesty you're going to get. Be curious. What has made it hard for there to be honesty here? Our teens need us to stay in a regulated mind state while they go through their emotional rollercoaster of all these big changes.
Our teens smell bullshit from a mile away. That's the other thing you used to be able to come up with a side story for your shit with your kids when they were younger, But they're smart. They know something is weird here.
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