Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Introduction to Talking to 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.

Exploring People Pleasing
---

Andy Earle: We're talking today about the challenges of people pleasing. That little voice that tells us when something isn't right, when something's not going the way we want, when we don't really feel like doing something. And how to get better at honoring that and letting that guide our interactions with others, even when it might be challenging or tricky.

And we're also looking at the parenting aspect of this. How do we raise teenagers who are better at being in touch with that voice, with that inner truth in themselves? And how to speak that and speak up to things that don't feel right to them, that aren't something that they want to do or participate in, even when it might be scary or difficult.

Meet Amy Wilson
---

Andy Earle: Our guest today is Amy Wilson. She is an actor, a writer, a podcaster, and an author. Her new book is called Happy to Help.

Amy, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Really excited to have you here on Talking to Teens.

Amy Wilson: Thanks for having me.

Andy Earle: You have been working on a book and it's pretty fun. I've just read through it. It's called Happy to Help: Adventures of a People Pleaser.

Talk to me a little about this. What inspired you to go about writing this whole thing? And why was this the topic?

Amy's Journey and New Book
---

Amy Wilson: I was given a writing assignment, for this book, my second book, to think about the times that I had maybe under delivered in my life, that I really needed to pick up the slack and try harder, because I had really let things go. I couldn't think of anything to write about. I don't think there's ever been a math quiz or homecoming float that I didn't completely overthink and over deliver on and stay past midnight and see it through long past when other people gave up. Including thankless relationships, dead end jobs, things like that.

Then in fact, my problem was quite the opposite: that I always over delivered. That I was like, yes, I can do that one more thing. No, I don't mind staying late. That was really the story of my life.

This book starts with me in eighth grade and ends with my daughter in eighth grade. I have three kids: a 17 year old, a 20 year old, and a 22 year old. I'm actually on the other side of teenager parenting with two out of my three. Watching my daughter in particular come of age and start to take on these messages that she needed to swallow her own discomfort or her own resentment in order to do for the people around her and make it seem easy, and like it was her favorite thing to do in the world. I saw that start to happen to her and I saw her start to resist that in different ways, maybe than I had at her age, which I thought was a good thing.

And then that's what I wanted to explore.

Andy Earle: It's definitely a theme of the book, these pressures that we put on ourselves, but especially that society we put on women to do everything and have everything worked out.

How then that translated into your life. And it's really personal. You go into stories from your childhood all the way up through your young adulthood, and even recent experiences that kind of show the evolution of this in your own life. I found that to be really interesting. You also mix in some research and psychology throughout the book, diving into some of these topics a little deeper.

I like that.

Amy Wilson: Thank you. I'm a researcher. I have my own podcast called What Fresh Hell, and we talk about different parenting topics every week. We've been doing them for eight years now. Every episode is funny and useful.

It's an easy listen while you're working out or making dinner. But you're also going to get something out of it besides my crazy life lol. That's not enough, to keep people listening. Just like this show. I mean, I've listened to episodes of this show where there's really concrete takeaways, sincere engagement with the topics.

If people are going to choose your podcast over all the things they could be listening to, you should reward them with a well thought out conversation.

Andy Earle: Well, you've definitely got that going in here. Some really interesting topics.

Parenting and People Pleasing
---

Andy Earle: One thing that you talk about is with your own children and this tendency to be reminding them about tasks that they said they were going to take on. Things that they were supposed to do, but haven't quite done yet. And your evolution into that.

Isn't it funny how so often reminding people what they're supposed to do makes them less likely to actually do it?

Amy Wilson: It seems that way, at least for teenagers, right? And I've had this fight with them, like, that one of us gets to be annoyed that I've said four times you should bring these shoes upstairs and it's not you.

It's actually me. Like you're right. I do keep saying that. It would fix that if you just did it. But somehow that doesn't seem to get the message across.

Andy Earle: It's like gaslighting.

They get to be annoyed at you for reminding them that, no, you still haven't done it yet.

Amy Wilson: You said you had a paper to write today and it's 1: 30 and you're still hanging out at the kitchen table looking at your phone, right? Now, in those moments, every parent of a teenager knows you look at them and you're like, do I say something? They'll definitely be mad at me, even though at 10 a. m. they're telling me how busy they were and how much work they had to do today.

Now it's three hours later. They're still hanging out. Should I say something to save them from their own procrastination and absorb that frustration? Or should I s wallow my own frustration, right? Did you send that email yet? No. Right. Your phone is in your hand.

Just send the email. There's a lot to talk about.

Andy Earle: So, what have you come to or how do you manage that within yourself?

Amy Wilson: In that particular part of my parenting teenagers, I have realized I need to cut that at least in half.

I've become much more conscious of not starting every engagement with my teenagers or entering a room and seeing them sit there and not offer them an invitation to go do something to take out the garbage or finish the essay at least 50 percent of my interactions with my kids need to be completely open ended and, Hey, I'm going to walk the dog.

Do you want to come? Your teenagers do need a little bit of guidance, right? They're tacking left or right. Maybe you're shouting helpful instructions that they're not listening to.

There are times when you have to do that. But every interaction with your kids can't be that. I really try to be conscious about you want to bring up that overdue permission slip, but you're not going to, you're not going to say anything. Maybe tomorrow you will.

Andy Earle: Yeah, because then it starts to feel like every time we interact, you have an agenda.

Then I'm just on guard for, why are you being nice to me? Or what are you doing? That there's something else going on here,

Amy Wilson: They're on the lookout for the agenda. And they aren't wrong. I get things done and move through my list at any moment.

If I'm in line for five minutes at the grocery store, I know what email I need to send while I'm standing there. I think that's a hallmark of productive people, but not everybody does or should live at that level. If my kids are happy with a different set point, it is not for me to interrupt that unless the thing is due in an hour and you haven't started it yet.

Maybe they do need me to give them a little push. Or not. Because that's what happens when your kids go to college and you realize they really do seem to do this a lot of the time without me. It's two o'clock and they haven't started the paper they said they needed to start writing at 10 a. m. and they're still sitting here. But this must happen at school too, when I'm not there and I shouldn't be there. It's hard when they're out of your house to have them re enter and not feel like you need to parent them in the same way. Even though the evidence would show that they're managing without you.

Teenage Diaries and Self-Perception
---

Andy Earle: There's a whole interesting section of the book where you go back and look at your journal. You've only written one journal throughout your whole childhood and I think it was around 8th grade. It was 8th grade. A lot of nuggets in there that you pull out. What did you find or was surprising about the writings of your eighth grade self?

Amy Wilson: My eighth grade self, my friend, who's a theater director and I worked on a theater piece about this diary together because it's just mortifying in every sense and she said the eighth grade self, it's the most, it's the most you version of you. It's the most. Technicolor version of yourself.

And that's why middle school is so mortifyingly cringe. I think she's probably right that you're coming of age. Daniel Elkind talks about this, that when you enter this age as an adolescent, you're so sure you're living the most exceptional life that anybody has ever lived.

That only you can really understand you. That it's incredibly important and unique and there has never been somebody like you. You're living this personal fable, he calls it. The diary of an 8th grader or a 9th grader, you really do think that, who said what to who in the cafeteria are earth shattering matters that need to be engaged with and unpacked.

So any 8th grade diary is probably very funny if you go back and look at it. But what was funny about mine was that I didn't tell the truth. You think of a diary as being a place where you tell your most profound secrets that nobody can see what boy you like, and then you write keep out on the cover and nobody's supposed to look.

In my diary, when I go back and look at it, I think I was writing it for me now to be reading it as a grown up, but I didn't tell the truth about what happened. I wrote in the beginning that I was going to only write happy things in here. And then I kind of did.

I would just say, I'm pretty popular these days. Lots of boys like me. And then I'm like, that's not true. Definitely not. Here's what I remember. The things that I did. The mortifying things that happened to me, that I vowed, I wouldn't remember by not writing them down.

They're in the white space of this 8th grade diary that's all about me writing this character, this boy crazy character that's really coming up in the world, but instead I was just a terrible dork. The stuff I left out I, of course, still remember anyhow.

Andy Earle: Didn't work, huh?

Amy Wilson: No, it didn't work rewriting my life. I think it's funny to look back on that form of ourselves with compassion, particularly when you have kids that start to be that age. They really do feel love for the first time or anger at their parents for the first time.

They're starting to differentiate from you and these emotions are so huge and real. I can remember these stories that I left out of my diary so clearly. The shame, the mortification, how much I liked this boy, all that stuff comes right back to me. It makes me realize they are intense.

They're the first time you're feeling these things. They really are intense. It is more intense than what I remember about my twenties and thirties. It must have been as intense as it felt to that 14 year old. It really was.

Andy Earle: There's a pretty interesting section there, where you are trying to attract the attention of this boy, Jimmy Maloney, and you've got a whole plan worked out.

You are going to be your enthusiastic self all the time, really kind of bubbly, and then when you speak with him, you're going to be shy. That's gonna have him pick up the hint that there's something going on between us.

Amy Wilson: I would act suddenly very shy around him and act different so that he'd notice and then as soon as he did notice I would be my jovial, relaxed self with him again.

I would keep switching back and forth between those two things to get and keep his attention. I don't think Jimmy Maloney had any idea what I was doing. He might've even liked me a little bit, but I was acting so strange, he just wanted to play kickball at recess.

He wasn't reading into my emotional state like I thought he was.

Andy Earle: And going back to what you were talking about, in terms of teenagers and how we make up this whole scenario in our head that other people are really watching us and they're watching attention to us and they're really seeing us, and a lot of times they're really not.

Amy Wilson: And then when you see it from the parent's point of view, it's like, Oh, come on, it doesn't matter if these kids are nice to you. It doesn't matter that you're still in your driver's ed class with Emerson, even though you're not going out anymore. But yes, it does when you're living through it.

And I think our kids need to see the perspective that we can offer them, that it's going to be okay. It's not that you have to be as completely involved in every Snap as your kids are. But I think it's a little bit of both that you're not laughing at them or minimizing them.

You have the years of experience that give you the confidence that they will get through their crises.

Andy Earle: But I think about that a lot because I read so much on communication and talk to people about the best ways to communicate and what the research shows. We need to empathize with people and validate their feelings, and I definitely hear that. But also, to a certain extent, if their feelings are really blown out of proportion, or they're in this mode of thinking that something is so important, could we validate, but also offer some perspective?

Amy Wilson: The perspective is comforting. If you get too down into it with them, I don't think that's helpful. And sometimes offering them that perspective, Lisa Damour talked about when middle school kids are friends and all of a sudden they're not, and that's in the book too, how I decided this one girl in our friend group, I was the bully.

I'm like, she has to go. She's dead weight. She's not cool. We're all going to be cooler if we stop talking to her. And it lasted three days, my campaign and it didn't work at all. But what's happening there, Lisa Damour says it's like cogs on a board that are all spinning and interacting very nicely.

And then what happens at puberty is one starts spinning faster than the other ones and one's still spinning at the same rate and then gears start flying off the board. And that's just what happens. And the gear that started spinning faster isn't necessarily a bad gear. It's just spinning faster because it went through puberty 18 months before this kid.

Anyway, just thinking about it that way. And offering that perspective to my kids along the way, whether it's gears on the board, or I remember another time explaining to one of my kids that, you're all changing so quickly, the stars are moving around in the sky right now, things are going to look very different when you look up in six months, I know you don't feel that way now, but everything's going to move some more, and it's going to redistribute and it will be okay, and it was. I'm not sure that kid wasn't a little bit annoyed when I said that, but I think that would have been better than we are marching right down there tomorrow.

And I'm going to give those kids a piece of my mind.

You have to show your kids that you support them. You love them. You don't minimize how they feel.

And yeah. Things will continue to change and things will be all right.

Perfectionism and Social Expectations
---

Andy Earle: You talk in the book about perfectionism and the research on perfectionism and specifically coming across this idea of socially prescribed perfectionism. Why was that an enlightening moment for you?

Amy Wilson: It was enlightening because people would say, Oh, you're such a perfectionist. You have high standards.

I'm like, Am I a perfectionist? I don't feel like I can't leave the house until my hair is perfect. And I don't triple proofread every email. To me, a perfectionist is so, their gears are so ground by this has to be perfect that they don't get things done. I'm like, I move through my list, I do things and there's things I don't care about that much.

So I'm not a perfectionist. But then I looked at the three kinds that were put forth in the study in the nineties. And the first one was self oriented perfectionism that you have to, everything about yourself has to be perfect. I was told that girls like me were perfectionists and I don't identify with that really.

And then there was others oriented perfectionism, which is like the coach that's always yelling at everybody. Excessively high standards for people around you, more for yourself. And then the socially prescribed perfectionism is person who feels like society or their mom have excessively high standards for them that they can never meet no matter how hard they try.

And I read that as an adult, not as a teenager, I'm like, Oh yeah, that's me. I stagger under the weight of the unreasonable expectations that society has for women and for mothers. But at least the study said that was imaginary, that is socially prescribed.

A socially prescribed perfectionist only thinks that society has excessive standards for her, but it doesn't really. And that's where, I'm like, okay, but I think it does actually.

So that became something I very much wanted to unpack in the book. I do think society is particularly hard on women and girls. It's hard on everybody in different ways. But in these expectations that I explore in the book that girls have to help, give more assistance to people around them, and seem like they don't mind and seem like they're good at it.

I think it's particularly asked of girls.

Andy Earle: And then there's a perfect storm where some people are really respond really to that and we have a episode recently, we're talking about this concept called demand sensitivity, which is where we feel like we're really tuned in to anytime someone wants or needs something.

We feel like they're asking us for it or we're supposed to do it. And the psychologist was talking about how, to some extent, we built that up in our head, or some people are higher in demand sensitivity than others. I've been thinking about that a lot in reading your book as well, and how that plays into this and this idea like socially prescribed, Looking at other people and seeing their expectations or what they want and taking it on ourselves as okay, well, then that means I need to do that.

Or I need to be that. When really it's not our responsibility necessarily.

Demand Sensitivity and Family Dynamics
---

Amy Wilson: I'm going to have to read about demand sensitivity because it's very interesting to me. I talk in the book about somebody coming to me and asking me, would I head up a fundraising committee? Which I didn't, nobody wants to do that.

I really didn't want to do that. And she said, I hate to ask. You already do so much. But who else is there? And I tick through in my head, can't be him, can't be her, no, it's going to be him. So it has to be me, right? Nobody else can do it. So it has to be me.

And that's where the demand sensitivity must come in. I think there are some people like, Oh, yeah, too bad. There's nobody who can do it. But I definitely can't do it. Instead. I look around and nope, she's right. It is me. The fact that everybody else said no meant I had to say yes.

And we definitely don't want our kids, our daughters to feel this way, or our sons. So, I think it is something to be aware of. There's the scouting motto that I thought was just a Girl Scout motto, but all the Scouts say, on my honor, I will try.

And one of the things they say is to help other people at all times. But if every Scout in the world says that pledge, and I'm one of the ones who internalized that as my job forever, there must be something about me.

Maybe it's my demand sensitivity.

Andy Earle: I just think it's so interesting. There's another story in the book where your husband comes into the kitchen, you're like doing a million things and on a zoom call and trying to write your book at the same time. And he's like, Hey, we're out of dog food. And you're immediately like, okay, well, I can't go right now because I have this going on.

And maybe I'll go get it later. And it turns out he just went and picked up the dog.

Amy Wilson: Right, which was a total sea change in our relationship. I was the one who noticed we were out of dog food. So he noticed. And then he was like, Oh, but I don't know what kind she likes, he was texting me like, I'm not sure.

And I started to tell him he was getting the wrong kind. And I'm like, what am I doing? That looks great. My dog is not that picky. It took a long time to get to that. But you're right. When my Spouse who really did want to help me get this book done and who had started by saying just tell me what to do and I'll go do it.

I'm like, I don't want to tell you, I just want you to notice. And then he did, and then, when he said the dog's out of dog food I still thought he was telling me I had to go get it. And then he just went and did it. It's so small, but it was a real turning point in our relationship in a good way, in a lighthearted and important way.

Yeah.

Andy Earle: I also love that moment for you of then catching yourself telling him which type of dog food it needs to be and where to find that in the store and no that's not the right one honey it's this one and it ties back to what we were talking earlier about reminding your kids of things or oh it's 2 p. m. and you said your report is due tomorrow so therefore you should be working on it right now. We just want it to be done the right way or it should be done our way. Want to jump in. We've done it

Amy Wilson: Right. Let me just help you.

Andy Earle: But it kills your motivation or makes you feel like it wasn't your thing as much because you're just doing it the way they told you to do it, or because they said this is how you do it.

Amy Wilson: There's something that kicks in. One of my kids has to take medication regularly. At the hospital, they asked us to do one of those forms on the iPad that you hand in at the desk. And if they did this, they'd get a $20 Amazon card.

So this kid was, I think, nine at the time, was like, sure thing. I'm going to do such a good job at this survey. They were studying adolescents and their parents when adolescents have to take medication all the time and their parents are in charge of the dosage and overseeing.

And it was like, do you disagree or kind of disagree with these statements? And it was all statements like, when my mother tells me to take my medicine, it makes me want to not take my medicine. And my nine year old was like, who would ever not take their medicine when their mother was telling them to?

And I was like, I don't know. Who would do that? Well, that nine year old became a 16 year old that of course, when you tell me to do something, it makes me not want to do something. And I thought back to that study, like, all right, I knew this was coming. And here it is.

Andy Earle: Something kicks in around 12, 13, 14 years old.

Amy Wilson: And they were trying to study like actually these kids aren't taking their medication that they need because their parents are telling them to. So how do you help the, I was about to take it.

Andy Earle: I'll do it when I'm ready.

Not right now.

Amy Wilson: Right, now I'm gonna have explosive diarrhea because you told me to take my medicine and I don't want to now. Exactly. It's a weird thing that happens, but I feel like knowing, oh, there it is and this is supposed to happen and all I can do is try to move around it and do things differently.

It's helpful.

Andy Earle: Absolutely. And there are so many great stories about that in the book.

We didn't even get into really fascinating things like your college experiences your internship working for this, actress in New York and, your experiences in your career. It's jam packed.

Conclusion and Where to Find More
---

Andy Earle: I highly encourage people to pick up a copy of Happy to Help.

Can you talk a little bit about where people could go to learn more about you or about what you do or connect with you or follow updates from you. I know you also have a fantastic podcast.

Amy Wilson: Yeah, so the easiest place to find me and what I'm doing is amywilson. com. My podcast is called What Fresh Hell, Laughing in the Face of Motherhood.

It's whatfreshhellpodcast. com or you can search What Fresh Hell wherever you're listening to this podcast. And, we do parenting. Like I said, we do research and laughs and we do parenting related episodes and episodes about psychology and things that are just for fun. You can find all of those.

We're on all the social media at WhatFreshHellCast. And you can find, there's so many Amy Wilsons, Andy, that's, it's an issue out there. It's hard out there, but I am AmyWilson. com. If you go to that, you can find all my social media, if that's of interest to you.

Andy Earle: Amy, thank you so much for coming on the show today and speaking with us about all of this.

It's been, funny and helpful.

Amy Wilson: Thank you, Andy.

Andy Earle: We're here with Amy Wilson talking about how people pleasing shows up in our role as parents and we're not done yet. Here's a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.

Amy Wilson: They need us to be mama bear and papa tiger and fight for them. And I believe in that, but there's complications. It's a complicated thing to be a parent of an adolescent and see these relationships reshuffle and wonder if your kid is on the right side of that and not really know what to do about it. There's not that much you can do about it. What if nobody's any better at noticing we're out of dog food? What if you're not better at anything than anybody else in your family, and you can reset the expectations around that? What if I say things can't be this way anymore? I need to do things like what's going to happen if I say that? That's scarier than the silence that follows. It's nice to see our kids being able to self actualize and stop doing the things that aren't working for them or not starting to do those things in the first place. Getting curious about your own feelings about a situation is a good source of information.

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.