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.

The Importance of Teenage Love
---

Andy Earle: As adults, we don't tend to give a lot of weight to teenage love.

It's naive, it's hormonal, it doesn't last, it's a distraction from the things that are really important in their life.

It's awkward to talk about, it could get them into dangerous situations.

But it's actually really important in our development. Even teenage crushes that don't turn into reciprocal relationships are laying the foundation for what kind of relationships we're going to be able to have for the rest of our lives.

How can we help our teenagers navigate their first forays into love in a way that is supportive and helpful and empowering?

Introducing Lisa A. Phillips
---

Andy Earle: Our guest today is a writer, a professor. She teaches a course on love and heartbreak.

And she has a new book called, First Love: Guiding Teens Through Relationships and Heartbreak. Lisa A. Phillips is on the show today Lisa, thank you so much for coming on the Talking to Teens podcast.

Lisa Phillips: Thank you so much for having me.

Andy Earle: I am super excited to talk about the topic of First Love, and you have a whole book on this, Guiding Teens Through Relationships and Heartbreak. Really interested to dive into that. Talk to me a little about where that came from. How did you find yourself writing a book on the topic of First love.

Lisa Phillips: Basically, I wrote the book that I felt I needed to read when my daughter was 13 and started having romantic relationships. I felt very much at sea in a couple of ways. One was dealing with the feelings her entry into the world of romantic relationships stirred up in me. I found myself revisiting my own past as a teen in certain ways.

One of the things that I say often, quoting a friend of mine: we're all still recovering from being teens. The other thing was just wanting to know how to look at what was happening with her and what to do. What I found was there's a lot of guidance out there about sex and increasingly about sexuality.

But there wasn't a whole lot about the emotions and the landscape of romantic relationships. So, when you're a journalist, and in particular a journalist who has been writing about mental health and relationships for a long time, there's a lot of guidance out there about what to do. And you confront a moment like that, where you want information and you're not finding it, that means a book, a project.

Andy Earle: Duh, duh, duh, duh!

Lisa Phillips: Exactly.

Andy Earle: Awesome. It's pretty interesting, and there's a lot of really cool research that you bring in here, interviews that you've done with all kinds of people. It really adds a lot to the book.

Navigating Parental Emotions
---

Andy Earle: Something interesting you talk about early on is some research by psychologist Lawrence Steinberg showing the emotions that parents can struggle with while their teenagers are experiencing first loves and dating. Things like envy, longing for youth, increased self doubt, regret over past decisions. Fathers may become less satisfied with their marriages when sons start to date. A significant percentage of fathers get more anxious and depressed.

This is super interesting. We think so much about the kids and what they're going through and how this is going to affect them and how we support them through this. But interesting thinking about the other side of this, which is how it affects parents. What's going on there and why is that happening?

Lisa Phillips: I think that I tend to focus a lot more on the fact that it is happening, the whys are going to be all over the place. But I do think that one of the most interesting things about this is that this whole idea of the midlife crisis, which we all know is this this reckoning point with who am I, what am I doing here at midlife actually is more related to having a teen than it is to how old you are.

So if you're 32, if you reproduced early and you have a teen, you will go through something that looks like a midlife crisis. Statistically speaking, you'll be more likely to go through that at that age. As a 50 something who has a teen. So it's not really age as age related as it is with this whole idea of having someone that you parent go through this big beginning to their on ramp to adulthood and relationships are really big part of that.

So, what that says to me is whatever you do to approach what your child is going through. There's also a whole internal world that you want to be paying attention to in terms of what is this stirring up in me? What is this allowing me to see? And maybe if we can really think in a zoom out way, how might this be distracting to me? Am I thinking so much about my high school relationship? That I'm really freaking out because my child is in a really serious relationship at 16 without actually looking at what your child is going through and what the quality of that relationship is.

Andy Earle: Yeah, we just get triggered into our own stuff and fail to see what they're really dealing with.

Lisa Phillips: We're seeing our child go through all these romantic firsts and that can stir up feelings of like, ah, if I only had the wisdom I had now to do it all over again, I could really have that cinematic first love experience. But it does not work that way.

Andy Earle: We want to just make it go right for them.

Communicating About Love with Teens
---

Andy Earle: But then what's interesting is the way we communicate about love and relationships with our teenagers is often lacking. You have some interesting research in here. A remarkable 70 percent of 18 to 25 year olds, wished they had more information from their parents about the emotional aspects of dating.

Despite all of this anxiety or worries that it triggers in us and these fears we're still not really communicating in a way that our teens need or want.

Lisa Phillips: Yeah, and I think that that's a really interesting statistic. And I think what it does is it provides some real encouragement for parents.

It's not necessarily that we don't want to talk about love and relationships and breakups with our children. It's that it can be really hard. How do we do it? Do we have anything to offer, which parents often go through? For example, if they've just been through a divorce, what do I have to say to my kid about relationships?

My marriage just ended. We go through all kinds of feelings. And I'm sure you have heard this thing of like what teens do when their parents try to talk to them, which is they put on their earbuds and waltz into their bedroom. Or they shrug you off, or they say something really pithy that makes you feel like they don't want to talk about it.

So I think that thing that teenagers do makes it difficult for parents to talk about it. When they're moving through their twenties, they're going to look back and be like, Hey, where were those conversations that I didn't seem interested in having. It gives parents real encouragement to keep trying. And even the efforts, even checking in on the crush, the how do you feel about that breakup of six months ago?

How do you feel you've grown from that? Those questions, even when unanswered, I've found in my many conversations with parents and young people matter because it's a signal to your teen that you value love, that you think it's important, that you think it's a subject of reflection and ethics and important emotions and all of those things.

So even the "failed efforts" to communicate matter tremendously.

Andy Earle: It really got me thinking, reading through the book how little, we talked about relationships and love in my family growing up.

The Significance of Crushes
---

Andy Earle: 1 of the 1st topics you really write about in the book is crushes. And how we can talk about crushes, encourage crushes, and really got me thinking about crushes in a different way as something that isn't necessarily going to turn into a relationship, but is one of those early stages in developing your capacity to love and be loved and have relationships.

Lisa Phillips: In my reporting for this book, I was so struck by The voices of young people who felt that their first big crush was in a way a more important milestone than sexual debut, than first relationship. And I think that was the case, especially for young people who were not interested or didn't happen to have a relationship in their teens and waited.

And I think that that was something that I found really important to listen to. The book that I wrote before. This was called unrequited. About unrequited love. So crushes were something I reported on for that book as well. So I knew this was coming. The emphasis that so many young people put on their experiences with crushes really convinced me that a crush is a milestone. We focus on the first boyfriend, the first girlfriend, the first time you have sex, all these milestones. But a crush is a milestone, too. The reporting I've done explores the way that crushes are dress rehearsals for relationships. So a younger teen or even a medium or older teen not quite ready for a relationship may invest a lot in a crush as a way to experience some of the emotions of a mutual relationship without the risks.

They're not ready for that level of intimacy. They're not ready to be vulnerable in those ways, but the crush can send them through some of the experiences of having those feelings and debating what to do about them. This is a wonderful opportunity for parents if a teen is forthcoming about a crush. Because it's a chance to talk about these things in like a slowed down way.

So, for example, if a young person has a crush, engaging with them about why can be really interesting. Sometimes people have crushes and they have no idea why. Then not so great stuff happens. Like the person doesn't treat them very nicely or what have you. So, if that is going on, you have this chance to say, all right, you have this feeling.

But then there are also these facts, which is that this person is not treating you that well. So what does that mean? What does that mean about your ideas of love and how to go about it? These conversations may not necessarily cure a crush like that, but they do offer This thing that's so important, which is that relationships aren't just about feelings, they're about Mutuality. They're about somebody else acknowledging that you have needs and feelings and those feelings are important, not just this kind of longing attraction thing you have for someone else.

So that's 1 of the really many reasons crushes and using crushes as a way to really start or amplify ongoing conversations about love. So important.

Andy Earle: Some of the research that you have in the book, looking at middle school as this time when a lot of this stuff starts, but really that only 20 percent of middle schoolers are going to have a relationship in the way we think of a relationship.

They're really more interested in popularity and status, their peers, and things like this. But crushes are starting to emerge, as a formative experience for them. It strikes me that it's a great opportunity to start talking about love and relationships before they're actually in one.

Lisa Phillips: When you start to have conversations about crushes, you're signaling a couple of things. One, this is really important to talk about, and two, it opens the door for this wonderful concept that Rick Weisbord, who is the founder of this wonderful organization called Making Caring Common at Harvard University, emphasizes, which is you can, with your child, become a kind of romantic philosopher and explore these big questions like, oh, you really like this girl.

What do you do about it? Are you ready to ask for a date? Is that even appropriate? Or how do you express these things? What do you do if she doesn't like you back? All these things are so important because it's about taking your emotions. And this whole idea that as human beings, we have responsibilities to one another.

We have responsibilities to treat each other kindly, to treat each other with respect, to listen when someone isn't interested in being with you, all those things. And it can be very interesting. To have as a family conversation. We can talk about sports. We can talk about music and we can talk about love.

I want to cycle back to something you said earlier, which is you did not have this experience growing up. This is common, especially for boys. Their emotional landscape is almost not seen frequently and crushes are a great way to signal to a boy that you are a feeling person, along with being a boy who likes to get dirty and play sports or whatever other boy things you do.

And so, even if it may not seem as easy or the boy might not seem as interested as a daughter. It is really important to say, I see you, I see you going through this, and this is one of the most important things in a person's life and future. So let's talk about it.

Andy Earle: There's an idea I found really interesting in your book, which is something that you talk about noticing a lot with your students and having conversations with them about their relationships.

Self-Actualization vs. Relationships
---

Andy Earle: And it's this idea that there is sort of a boundary or a separation between self actualization and finding love that we need to kind of develop ourself and find ourself and really do this self work.

And that's something we need to kind of. Go off and do or we can't be in a relationship because I need to work on myself. Once I've got that sorted out, then I can be okay to be dating or having relationships. I definitely see that a lot now that you call it out in the book. I've been noticing, those sentiments.

What do you think is going on there? Why do you think that's not a helpful way to conceptualize these factors?

Lisa Phillips: I love that you picked up on this part of the book because this has fascinated me ever since I started teaching the seminar I teach, called love and heartbreak, to college students.

The students that have talked to me about this very much want to feel ready for love. And I think this is coming from a number of different streams in our culture. There's a sociologist named Andrew Cherlin who talks about this idea of marriage as a capstone experience, where once you've gotten your law degree and your six figure job and your apartment then you get a spouse.

It's like the spouse is this add on after you've hit certain life milestones. And so what I'm finding in the young people around me is they're carrying some of that mentality into their own lives where they really expect a pretty intense degree of self possession and accomplishment before they let a relationship into their lives.

This could be because of the pressure we put on them in late capitalism to be successful people, that it's getting harder and harder to get to a point in your professional career where you can move out of mom and dad's house and so forth. So I don't know if every teen is necessarily thinking about these things, but I think that as students go through college, especially where I teach, which has a very diverse mixture of classes and perspectives and races and ethnicities, this idea of like, okay, we are here so we can do better in this world than our parents did.

So I think that may feed into some of those pressures. But I also think there's something else, which is that this is a very mental health literate generation. I'll ask my students things like, all right, here you are. I bet at 20, you know all your friends mental health diagnoses. And they all just kind of nodded.

It's like, this is a huge part of the conversation, which was not something that was going on when I was their age. And so I think along with that, there are a lot of skills of self protectiveness, that to let someone into that complicated emotional landscape can feel very difficult and trying.

The paradox there is that relationships are about vulnerability, and they're about, to some degree, interdependency, right? So, this whole idea that I need to be whole in myself, I call it the whole soul first mentality, can fly in the face of the fact that relationships are a partnership and you do let the other person influence who you are and what you do. And the other person should let you do the same. It's interpersonal and dynamic. And growth happens in relationships, not just what you do on your own to build yourself.

Andy Earle: It's this interesting constellation of beliefs that I need to get to this place where I've arrived and figured out who I am and what I'm all about and then I'll be ready to merge with someone else in a relationship.

Lisa Phillips: Yeah, it's a little bit about fear too, you know, because when you are longing for someone, when you are dealing with, okay, what are we?

Are we going to be together? Are we not? When you're dealing with the vulnerability of being on the rocks in some way, hurting each other, all these stages in relationships have pain points too. So I think there's a fear of the vulnerability of the ways that strife in relationship, and stress in relationship, and the end of relationships, or being rejected, make us feel less than whole.

So what I'm seeing is young people really want to protect themselves from that. And I think in some ways that's incredibly healthy. I certainly could have used more self protective impulses when I was younger. But in some way, it should also take into account the inherent vulnerability of intimacy.

Andy Earle: Here's a fascinating tidbit.

Friendships and Future Love Lives
---

Andy Earle: Researchers at the University of Virginia followed a group of people from age 13 to age 30 and they found that the skills teens learn in same sex friendships mattered more than teen relationships for having a good adult love life. How much dating experience teens had and how satisfied they were in their relationships didn't have much of an impact.

Wow. That's pretty interesting.

Lisa Phillips: When I came across that research, I was like, all right, why am I writing this book again? But I think that relationship between long term and good same sex friendships and the quality of your love life later is so interesting because it points to the ways that friendships and relationships have different goals and priorities in teens.

Adults prioritize, at least compared to teens, conflict resolution in relationships. But the research shows that teens actually don't prioritize that nearly as much. They're like, all right, I want something. It's good. It's good now. But when it hits the rocks, you know, I got my SATs to take and practice to go to.

And a whole life ahead of me where there will be all these other relationships. So it's not that teens don't move through problems at all, it's just it's not as much of a priority as adults.

But with friendships, the longevity of them, you're used to things kind of coming and going, you're used to working through stuff, deciding what to do together, you're working through whatever it is in this way where it's not a do or die thing like relationships.

You're less likely to break up with a friend. So you're used to that kind of long haul negotiation change. Openness becomes very valuable later for relationships. After I had that despairing moment of what am I doing writing about teen relationships, I actually looked more closely at the study and saw how valuable that was.

It simply has to do with the goals of long term friendships in teen years more aligned with the goals of relationships later.

Andy Earle: Relationships are so disposable when you're a teenager. You could just be dating this week and broken up next week over text message and, it's all over.

Lisa Phillips: Yeah, it can be.

Conclusion and Further Resources
---

Andy Earle: Well, there's so much more that we're not going to have time to get into.

Really interesting research you cover on the links between depression and relationships. So much interesting stuff on abuse and boundaries and consent and on and on and on. A lot of really great topics, research, interviews, stories, all packed into here. I highly encourage people to check out a copy of, First Love: Guiding Teens Through Relationships and Heartbreak. Lisa, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show today and share your experiences, research, and your work with us. It's been fascinating and helpful.

Lisa Phillips: Thank you for having me.

Andy Earle: Can you talk about where people can go to find out more about what you're doing and follow updates from you?

Lisa Phillips: Sure, I'm on socials and I also have a website lisaamyphillips. com and you can find the book wherever fine books are sold.

Andy Earle: Excellent. I hope people will do that. Thanks again for coming on the show.

We're here today with Lisa A. Phillips talking about teenage love, and we're not done yet. Here's a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.

Lisa Phillips: One of the key differences in this generation, as opposed to what parents may be remembering about their own past, is that there's more ambiguity in relationships. There's a kind of much wider spectrum, or shall we say a much more gradual set of stages.

Andy Earle: Does your partner expand your sense of who you are or contract it?

Make you feel like you have more to give the world or less? We also minimize teen breakup pain, as adults.

Trying to make our teens feel better, but discounting what they're going through or making it seem like you'll get over it quickly.

Lisa Phillips: When breakups happen, there's a part of a parent that thinks, okay, good. Now, this person is free. Recovery from a breakup, recovery of self esteem is actually expedited by having another relationship fairly soon after.

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 through Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.