Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

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 talking today about how to push our teenagers toward personal growth.

Any places where our children are stuck in life or where they're having repeated problems, there's something about the environment around them or the way that we're showing up as parents that is enabling them to continue in that cycle.

We might be failing to really push them toward growth and to facilitate that growth towards the next level of their life.

For our children to really grow, the people around them have to change, and that means we might have to look at some of our own behaviors.

What could we possibly be doing that might be holding our kids back?

Our guest today is Sean Grover. He is a therapist who works with teenagers. He's the author of the book When Kids Call the Shots and the new book Shortcuts to a Happier Life.

Sean Grover, welcome back to the Talking to Teens podcast.

Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Sean Grover: Thank you, Andy.

Andy Earle: We had a great discussion last time you were on the show about your previous book, When Kids Call the Shots. An interesting breakdown of these different patterns that parents and teenagers fall into of how we let our kids bully us in different ways.

Looking at why that is. Things in your life, in your past, that might have set you up to be bullied by your child. Really interesting. Now you've got a new book where you've pulled together a lot of different topics you've been writing about on your blog on Psychology Today. Really excited to dive into that.

Sean Grover: All right, let's do it.

Andy Earle: There's so many places to start. The book is called Shortcuts to a Happier Life. And there's a whole section on teenagers. Lots of stuff on parenting relationships.

But as we were just mentioning, one thing that I found really interesting in the book had to do with group therapy for teenagers.

You talk in the book about how group therapy is the most effective form of therapy for teenagers by a significant amount.

Sean Grover: That study was a 20 year study. And they found that, in terms of how to treat teenagers and all the struggles they're facing, group was the most effective. The stat they use is 73 percent more effective than other therapies.

Yeah. Wow. That's right.

Andy Earle: Why do you think that is?

Sean Grover: Adolescence is all about identity. Think about teenagers. They move in groups. If you have a group, you feel secure. The minute a kid gets to high school or college, they're looking for their group. Where are my people? Where do I fit in?

They naturally group themselves. On the streets of New York City, I'll see a group of teenagers hanging out and think they just need a therapist. There aren't a lot of therapists running groups for teenagers. And honestly, Andy, that's because they're a pain in the neck.

They smell, they stink up your office. They make so much noise. I can't tell you how many times I've been run out of. I had a very nice office after the pandemic. A doorman. Very fancy. I got in so much trouble. 10 teenagers coming in at a time. Could you imagine that? Or when I was interviewing for an office and they'd say, what do you do?

I said, I run groups. Oh, adults and teenagers. And you can see the blood drain out of their face. And then they say, how many teenagers? My groups are usually 10 to 12. And then suddenly it's, thank you for coming by. I don't think this is going to work.

Andy Earle: We'll get back to you.

Sean Grover: I always say I have to have an office that's just the right amount of shitty. So I'm in a basement right now in Greenwich Village. It's a lovely place. No one minds the kids are yelling and screaming, or running up and down the hallway. I can work here in peace. But I really honestly feel that therapists aren't down for that kind of experience.

Andy Earle: It doesn't really sound like a walk in the park there.

Sean Grover: And the question is what's wrong with me?

Andy Earle: Some interesting things in the book about aches and pains. You talk about different areas in the body that you might feel a pain in that part of your body, and how you've been starting to map that onto different psychological issues that people might be struggling with.

I thought that was really interesting and something to note that if your teenager is constantly complaining about the same kind of thing or you're noticing they're always feeling a certain type of pain, maybe there's something psychological going on with that.

Sean Grover: That's right. The thing with teenagers is they have more feelings than words. They can have a whole truckload of feelings but don't know how to express them. They don't have the language to express it. So anytime you're containing too many feelings, where is that energy going to go?

A lot of it will manifest in psychosomatic symptoms. Nail biting, obsessive thinking, rumination, paranoia. Kids start pulling on their hair. And at extreme level, they may start cutting themselves. So all this energy that's trapped needs a language to be released.

Someone comes to therapy and says, I feel hurt. I feel upset. Or, I feel so angry. I haven't done a thing but listen and reflect back to them. And they leave saying, wow, I feel so much better. Teenagers don't often have that ability. So, in a group situation, I had to help them find the words.

Andy Earle: And so you're almost observing and helping them to recognize what they're feeling when they might not even be able to vocalize that for themselves.

Sean Grover: That's right. And with running groups, you do a lot of modeling. Often I'll talk about a dilemma. We'll ask, who has a dilemma here? Or they ask for a dilemma for me. So I'll say, oh, a girl came in and her boyfriend wants to have sex and she doesn't feel ready. What do you guys think?

How is she feeling? She must be really angry, ugh. And then we explore it. And through exploring that situation, they gain more freedom. For example, if I say to a group of kids, how do you feel about blah, blah, blah? Y ou hear that silence? That's what I'm gonna get. So when I would do workshops in the schools, I draw a stick figure on the blackboard.

And I say, this is Derek. It's his first day in a new school. What do you think he's going through? All the hands go up. He's frightened. He's scared. He wants friends. Because they're talking about someone else. So that's the first step towards beginning to understand their own internal life.

They call that an object oriented question, focusing on something outside of themselves that reflects their inner experience. Most teenagers, you ask how they're feeling. They have no clue. If they're really pressured, they'll lie.

The group is a social gym. It's a place to learn language, to identify your feelings. And whenever a teenager comes in and joins a group... actually a girl joined a group on Monday. They think it's the freakiest thing to be in a room of teenagers talking about feelings and talking about very intimate difficulties at home.

And suddenly it's normalized. That romantic notion of only I am going through this. Only I have these struggles. That keeps kids isolated. And when they're isolated, they're not going to grow and their fears are going to multiply.

Andy Earle: I love that idea of making it about a fictitious person or a fictitious dilemma that somebody else might be having. And it's like that classic, I'm asking for a friend.

For some reason it's so much easier to talk in terms of somebody else than is to talk in terms of ourselves. But through doing that, a lot of the things that come out are going to be things that are authentic to the kids you're talking to.

Sean Grover: Or I would if I'm desperate with a group, I'll use myself as that cautionary tale.

I was invited to a Christmas party at the clinic and I really don't want to go. And they're like don't go. I said, but I have to go because they're expecting me. You go to school. You don't want to go. I have to go to this thing. And they say, oh, you got to stand up for yourself.

They start giving me advice. And also I'm demonstrating to them, which a lot of therapists are very resistant to, my own fears and vulnerabilities. And showing them, it's okay to be uncertain. It's okay to be frightened. It's okay to be anxious. We all go through those things.

So by modeling that I often get in arguments with kids in a group. I threw two kids out in the spring. I told him, get out. Don't come back. Slam the door. And I got apology letters for a week texted to me. Please let me come back. We're so sorry. And I held the boundary there. I did let them come back, but I wanted them to sit with those feelings.

I wanted them to feel the consequences of their actions. By making them sit with uncomfortable feelings, writing them down, communicating with me, realizing the impact of their behavior and the sense of loss that they've created, that they lost something really valuable. That's also part of the process. So with an adolescent group, you can't sit back and be like, how are you feeling today? Therapists, have to be very engaged and have fun.

If it's not fun, they're not coming back.

Andy Earle: That's really interesting talking about the kids who you kicked out and then had to figure out how to reintegrate them because you talk also in the book about as a parent, never giving into your child's demands when they're bullying you or acting in inappropriate ways. Like, holding the boundary.

So with these kids, was it that they were really sincerely apologetic? At a certain point, then it becomes okay to allow them back in. Or how do you work out that line when you want to hold the boundary, but also you want to maybe work it out with the kid?

Sean Grover: It's very similar to parenting in that we can get angry. We can be furious. And at times we may even hate each other. But we don't disrespect each other. We don't attack each other. We don't humiliate each other. We don't engage in things that are truly destructive to any relationship.

So when those two left, I also had a room full of teenagers to process it with. Some are saying, don't let them come back. They have to learn a lesson. Some are saying, give them one more chance. And I'll say don't you think they're fundamentally unhappy? When they talk about their life, seem so unhappy, they don't know how to have relationships and they've come here to learn.

So we kick them out, they're going to go back to depression and loneliness. We all deal with that. We have this big council meeting and they came back and apologized to the group. If I said this to the parents of those children, they would not believe it because on some level when you have a bullying situation with a kid at home, they're honestly a little afraid of the kid.

They try to pacify the kid and give the kid much too much power over them. A teenager with too much power is on the path to self-destruction.

Andy Earle: You talk about expectations and having too high of expectations maybe for your life or for how things are gonna turn out for you. And how that can actually be not a good situation or make you feel trapped. How does that work? How can we be aware if our teenager is having too high of expectations?

Sean Grover: We want kids to have dreams. We definitely want them to have dreams. And when I asked a kid what their dream, and I'll say you could have several dreams, you don't have to have one... if they don't have one, I start to get really worried. If they're thinking of their future and it's just darkness... But if they come in and I love the more unrealistic, I said, please don't be realistic with your dreams. So if they want to be a rapper or a professional basketball player,

That's energy. It drives them forward. And as they hit curves and bumps along the way, they'll change routes, but that energy keeps them moving. There was this amazing study that I always think of. They were looking at preschoolers and kindergarten kids, and they found if a kid was praised a lot, you're amazing.

You're just so smart. You are just so impressive. And wow, you're... The more they praise the kids, the less they were motivated to work. When they were praised and the expectations are so high, they were afraid of failure. They didn't want to lose that status of the golden child. So they're like, nah, I'm all right. No. So with parenting, it's the same thing. By over praising, it actually creates pressure on your kids.

They feel they had to maintain this. If they're a great musician and you're like, Oh, you're going to tour with all these bands. They begin to feel frightened. I'm going to let you down. Maybe I'm not that good. We have to be very careful when we set our intentions and expectations with kids that we're not creating pressure on them.

Andy Earle: Yeah. It's like we do it out of excitement or trying to give them hopes and dreams, but also we're putting on them this burden of trying to live up to our vision for what they could be doing.

Sean Grover: That's right. They honestly don't want to live to please you as much. So the more you're like, Oh, do this.

They feel like they're doing it for you. The less self motivation they're going to have.

Andy Earle: You talk in the book also about...

Sean Grover: Andy, you really do your homework. You actually looked at the book. Sometimes I'll do a podcast and someone will ask me a question, what the hell are they talking about? You're doing your homework. You must have very good parents.

Andy Earle: I like to be prepared, and there's so much great stuff in here.

And I thought this was really interesting section on parent burnout. It's interesting because often when we're experiencing parent burnout, maybe we don't realize it or we're throwing the blame on everybody else. If you find yourself humorless, angry, or critical often, maybe it's not your child, partner, or friends.

Perhaps it's you. How can you know when the problem is you? And if so, what can you do about it?

Sean Grover: Parenting burnout doesn't get enough attention. If you look at statistics, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal so many years ago, and the title is fantastic. It was: Here Comes Baby, There Goes the Marriage. People run into not getting enough sleep, their diet falls apart, their relationship doesn't have any maintenance anymore. They're fatigued, exhausted, irritable, and they now have something more important than their partner in many ways. Parenting burnout usually wears you down.

I can tell you my first child, I gained 32 pounds. My doctor called me, I was walking down Fifth Avenue, 15th Street. And there's a fire hydrant there that I sat on when I got his call. I call it my nervous breakdown fire hydrant. He says whatever you're doing, you have to stop immediately. You're in the highest risk category for a stroke. So that was shocking. I had to reinvent myself and work on my diet. My wife and I had a weekly date every Thursday night. We go out. Most people talk about their relationship at the wrong time. They're exhausted.

They're sick. It's early in the morning and let's talk about how we're doing. By going out and having a date and discussing our role as parents and also with each other, we refresh ourselves. Because ultimately, every kid wants a happy parent. An unhappy parent is a burden.

As you go through life, you're looking for models. I don't know if you ever did this. When I was younger if I found a happy adult, that was like finding a bar of gold, because the adults I was surrounded with was so stressed out and so unhappy. But if your parent's happy, you feel like, okay.

Life isn't that bad. But if your parent is grumbling and you're walking around the house upset, that's another sign of burnout. And then you really hit the bottom when you start to hate yourself. I'm a miserable person. I think there's a statistic that divorce rates peak in the first three years after their child was born.

So looking at that and getting into being a parent without doing the work on yourself or without being prepared, that leads to a lot of crash and burn. We're really mean to our partners. We're mean to our bodies. We stop seeing our friends. It's just such a path of despair.

Andy Earle: Wow, you make parenting sound so fun.

Sean Grover: I've been accused of that before.

Andy Earle: What a joyous occasion. This isn't the only part of your book where you help parents recognize our role in various situations. You also talk about angry outbursts. Teenagers have angry outbursts about various things. But one thing that I found really interesting is you write, before you label your kid with anger issues, ask yourself this question: could I be the cause of my kid's angry outbursts?

Wow. What are things that parents might be doing that would be causing those angry outbursts? And how do we stop doing that?

Sean Grover: Okay. A lot of times our child will mirror back to us our own behavior, but we don't recognize it. I was in an elevator many years ago, and there was this small child, two brothers, I think, and the mother was absolutely stressed out.

You could see she was at her wits end. And she slaps the kid and then says, we don't hit each other in this family. So we give this double message. Parents will say I'm the adult I can, blah, blah, blah. That's not going to work. When I was starting out, I got fired a lot, because I would confront parents all the time.

One guy came in complaining about his daughter's weight, and she's wearing bigger clothes and hiding her body. I said, Edward, you're not exactly a gymnast. He was very heavy. But we're so blind to our own behaviors. So we really have to check ourselves.

We have to check ourselves and see, am I angry? Irritable? Am I shaming my kid? Am I comparing? Cousin, so and so got accepted to blah, blah, blah. Are we making them feel bad about themselves? Kids have more feelings than words. So a lot of times when a kid is angry they have this outburst. But if you really look and analyze, generally, they feel hurt.

They feel misunderstood. They feel ashamed. And that hurts so much. They just lash out. So the feelings that come out often as a therapist, we have to translate them. A lot of kids if one of their parents gets sick, the kid starts to get mean. They're so frightened. And I've seen this a number of times where they bring him to therapy and, I don't know what's going on. She's just, everything's a problem. And the feeling is they're so frightened of their parent possibly dying or abandoning them in some way that if they can fight with them, it makes them feel better.

They're going to hang around longer. So with teenagers, what you see is not really what you get. If they can't express something, it's going to come out in their behavior. And then we're going to take a look at that behavior and say, what are they trying to tell me?

Andy Earle: Being a detective.

Sean Grover: Yes, that's right. You have to follow those footprints in the snow. And often something happened at school. Something happened that they're so embarrassed, I don't want to tell anyone. And that's when you begin to see real shifts in mood. And they isolate. That's why when they come to group and share, I'm in the lowest social rung in my social ladder in my school. He was eating lunch in the stairwell, going through the stages of shame when you're new in a school: sitting alone in the lunch room, not knowing anyone in gym class, not getting picked.

My God. So they come to the group and talk about these experiences and we laugh about them. They feel better. They don't have to contain all that hurt and anger and disappointment. They discover that everyone has it. It's how we manage it that really determines the outcome.

Kids aren't successful because they were spared hardships. They're usually successful because they overcame them.

Andy Earle: Yeah, that's developing resilience.

Sean, we are out of time here, sir. Thank you so much for coming on the show and speaking with us about all this. It's great to see you again. These are really great topics. I highly encourage people to check out a copy of your new book, Shortcuts to a Happier Life: Essays On Life, Love, and Parenting.

Sean Grover: Thank you, Andy. You are one of the most prepared hosts I've ever worked with.

Andy Earle: I appreciate that. So where should people go to follow updates from you?

Sean Grover: They can just Google me and follow the path. SeanGrover. com, Psychology Today. Workshops or podcasts or radio shows. It's all on my website.

Andy Earle: We're here with Sean Grover talking about the things we might be doing as parents that might enable our kids to stay in some maladaptive patterns in their lives.

And we're not done yet. Here's a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.

Sean Grover: Boxing is my favorite thing with a lot of kids. And parents will say, he comes back from a kickboxing class and he's talking. He ate dinner. He finished his homework and he went to bed. That was therapeutic. You're never going to be in a truly intimate, rewarding relationship until you go through a lot of frustration together. A life without conflict, challenge, and growth often is boring. That's when you turn to substances, alcohol, or self destructive behaviors to counteract this feeling, this unwanted feeling. Like I have no purpose. Usually people in our lives are reflection of how we feel about ourselves. So if people in your life are mistreating you or critical of you, there's a big chance you have those thoughts about yourself. We're not looking for change. We're looking to return to our true selves, our true identity that somehow got knocked off course.

Andy Earle: Want to hear the full interview? Sign up for a subscription today. It's completely affordable and your membership supports the work we do here at Talking to Teens. You can now sign up directly on Apple Podcasts.

Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.