Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Introduction to Talking to Teens
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Andy Earle: You are 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 are talking today about the myth of teenage misbehavior. One of the biggest problems with how parents today discipline our teenagers is that we're actually wrong about the reasons why our teens are acting out.

We are telling ourselves a story in our head about what caused our teen to act out, and oftentimes this story has to do with their motivation.

But if we can change this to a story of ability, we can significantly improve our relationship and our outcomes with our teenager.

Guest Introduction: Doug Bolton
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Andy Earle: Our guest today is Doug Bolton. He is a clinical psychologist and educational leader. And he's the author of the new book, Untethered.

Doug, I am super excited to have you on the show. Thank you so much for coming on Talking to Teens.

Doug Bolton: Thanks for having me, Andy. I'm excited to be here.

Andy Earle: You have this book called Untethered, which is all about your experiences, running the school where you're doing some amazing things with kids who are really struggling in standard schools.

It's inspiring to see the stories that you've got in here. You've got research on developmental psychology and education. Can you talk a little about where this came from and what led to this book?

Doug's Journey and Insights
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Doug Bolton: I learned early on what I wanted to do with my life.

I graduated from college not being sure what I wanted to do. And I went to a program in New Hampshire for kids with emotional behavioral problems. And within days I'm like, this is what I want to do with the rest of my life. So I worked there, it's called Winico Children's Services. And I, became a teaching assistant for a school in Boston, the McKinley Schools.

And they are schools for kids, who struggle to manage the demands of a gen ed program and for emotional behavioral reasons they needed a separate setting. I realized that the kids I wanted to work with the most I needed more time with them than 50 minutes a week.

And schools are really a place where you can create communities. And when you embed any of us in healthy communities, we get healthier. And so I was able to work at a place called Northshore Academy in, Highland Park, Illinois for about 21 years. First as a school psychologist, and then I was the principal.

Understanding Teenage Behavior
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Doug Bolton: And one of the things that we learned, as we were doing this work was a lot of the things that we thought were the magic sauce to helping kids grow and develop and change, got in the way more than they were helpful.

What we all realized was, I'm a psychologist. I yell at my kids sometimes. I'm not motivated to yell at them. So what, there's gotta be something else going on. And so as a team, we began to dive into the research.

We began to take a look at who are the people doing the most transformative work with kids? And we watched them closer. What we found is that there were a couple principles behind how we helped kids change. The first was, the people who were able to develop the closest relationships with them were the ones who were able to help them change the most.

And then the second was instead of seeing behavior through the lens of motivation, we began to see it through the lens of emotional regulation.

The Role of Emotional Regulation
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Doug Bolton: I started realizing that when. I behave poorly. It's because of my emotional regulation where I'm not able to make the choices I wanna make. The same thing is true for kids.

And the thing about trauma, and we had a lot of kids who'd experienced trauma is that it disrupts both kids' abilities to stay connected in relationship because relationships have oftentimes been the cause of the trauma. It's physically and emotionally dysregulating.

But the same thing is true for all three things. If you wanna help kids develop healthy relationships, if you wanna help 'em learn how to be emotionally regulated, if you wanna help them buffer the impact of trauma and reverse the impact of trauma, we embed them in connected and regulated communities.

During Covid, I started to write some of the stories down and it became a book. We were able to combine the research and stories from both my parenting that I started realizing, oh, this is how it shows up for myself as a parent, in my life.

This is how it shows up in kids' lives, in schools. And to be able to use those stories as the glue that holds this narrative of how do we help kids, especially kids who may be struggling, get them back onto a developmental course that's gonna for work for them?

Andy Earle: I love it.

Motivation vs. Skill Development
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Andy Earle: You've got these core ideas in the book this idea of motivation as the root of behavior problems is really interesting.

And when you think about that, then you think, well, my role as a parent must be to make you more motivated. Or if the problem of your behavior is that you're not motivated enough or you're lazy, or you don't care enough about this, then I need to enhance your motivation. So I start to look for things that I could have leverage over or things that you like and care about and I take them away, or I threaten to take them away if you don't do certain things.

But what's interesting that you point out in the book is then a lot of times what ends up is this situation where I'm actually taking away the things that would give you opportunities to practice the skills of emotional regulation, which is what you're talking about as what's really actually behind the problem behaviors.

Doug Bolton: How we see the problem really determines how we engage with the problem and what solutions we come up with. If we see it through the lens of motivation, we've got two options punish or incentivize. The tricky part about incentivizing is we end up doing the right things, but for the wrong reasons.

When we punish, punishments rely on fear and shame. Fear and shame shut our brains down. What we want kids to do in these moments where they're struggling the most is we want to think how do we open those brains up? So then the work is, if you don't see it through the lens of motivation, how do you see this?

There are a couple of psychologists and psychiatrists whose work have really been helpful in helping me think through this. The first is Ross Green and Stewart Alon, they created the, Collaborative Problem Solving Model, or collaborative and proactive solutions.

They each have their own way of addressing this, but what they really say is, kids do well if they can. The question is, is it kids do well if they can, or kids do well if they want to. If we say kids do well, if they want to, then it's a motivation issue.

But if kids do well, if they can, then it's a skill issue. And oftentimes a lot of the things that we get most frustrated about with kids are the things that can be slower to develop in some kids than other kids. So we call them lazy because they don't wanna get off their video games to do their homework or to practice the piano or whatever it may be.

But to be honest with you, that's a skill, moving from a preferred to a non-preferred task. Making that transition is hard for all of us who've been stuck binge watching a TV show, or not wanting to leave a game we're watching, or whatever it may be. It's hard to move from a preferred to a non-preferred task.

And for a lot of kids, the things that drive us most nuts, are things that have to do with the prefrontal cortex, that part of our brain that manages things like our ability to regulate our emotions, inhibit impulses, plan, persist when things get hard, to have empathy for other people in stressful situations. The thing about that part of our brain is that it's not fully developed until we're about 30. So if you've got an 8-year-old, it's about a quarter of the way developed, and we don't all develop at the same rate. Right?

There's a lot of variability in that development. Ross Green and Stewart Ablon when they say, kids do all if they can, they just don't have the skills in that moment to do what we're asking them to do. When we're being asked to do something we can't do, it's really stressful.

That's one of the ways it's helpful for me to think about this through the lens of development. Have they reached that level of development yet? Or are we asking them something that's hard for them to do?

Stress and Misbehavior
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Doug Bolton: The other piece is stress. Stuart Shanker talks about this. Misbehavior is stress behavior. The more stress we have, the harder it is for us to show up in the ways that we wanna show up. And so there's some days that my kids do something and it'll roll off my back and other days I don't respond so well to it. Oftentimes it's because I'm bringing stress into the situation.

And the same is true for our kids. So how can we begin to see things less through the lens of incentives and punishments and more through the lens of stress and skill development.

Andy Earle: You write in the book about seeing a video and hearing that phrase kids do well if they can. That was a pivotal moment for you in realizing that all of the kids you've dealt with that have had trouble following the rules have felt bad about that. If we are coming at them with the mindset that if they really wanted to, they could do this. Then we're also putting onto them this feeling of shame that you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing. You're not living up to the expectations. And it feels bad.

Doug Bolton: Yeah. We really are a compliance based culture and the kids who are compliant often are the favorite students. What it means is the kids who struggle, whose engine might run faster than other kids and have to sit in school for six hours a day, the kids who may struggle to organize and forget something at school so they don't get their homework done, these are all developmental.

We develop these. First of all, there's a wide range of our ability to do these things. And when we get older, if I don't like sitting still, I'm not gonna do an accounting job. Right. I get to begin to choose what is it that I wanna do. Construction would be better for me or something else would be better for me 'cause it means that I'm moving more.

The other thing that Green and Abalon say is that doing well is always preferable to not doing well. I was at North Shore Academy and all of our kids struggled in school in one way or another. That was the entrance criteria for North Shore Academies.

You had to really have struggled in school. And as much as they struggled and as much as they wanted to, there was this sense that, they could become oppositional, they could become defiant, they could become withdrawn. They could become more mildly oppositional, whatever it looks like. They could refuse to come to school.

I don't think in the thousands of kids that I've ever worked with in my private practice or in a school setting, that they'd rather have a teacher call home and say, yeah, he got into a fight and he was really disruptive today, versus, he was so helpful in class today and I wanna let you know he got an A plus.

He aced that assignment. I can't think of any of those oppositional kids, any of those defiant kids who'd rather have the first call than the second call. So there's something else getting in the way, right? There's something getting in the way when I struggle to be the parent I wanna be, or when I struggle to show up at work in the way that I wanna show up.

And so how can we begin to think and be curious? I wonder what's happening for them that's making this task harder? Is it something developmental? Are we asking them to do something that's just harder for them to do? Is there something that's happening in their lives today that makes homework harder to transition than it was yesterday when it seemed to be really simple?

What we often do is say, oh, they were able to do it yesterday and they're not doing it today. So they're just motivated not to do it. Well, some days I show up better and some days I'm irritable at dinner and some days I've got my full sense of humor on board. It's not that I'm motivated to be irritable.

Andy Earle: We should punish you on the days when you show up irritable to dinner. We're gonna take away the remote. You don't get wine with dinner that night. No dessert for you.

Responding to Bids for Attention
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Andy Earle: I love that, you talk in the book about how kids make bids for our attention. And that sometimes these bids are something we want to respond to. They're nice, they're inviting, they get our attention in a good way. But oftentimes they are not.

Doug Bolton: Yeah.

Andy Earle: What do you mean by that?

Doug Bolton: I love this work. I'm not sure if it started here, but John Gottman, and the Gottman Institute did a lot of work with this in their work with couples.

They took a look at interactions between couples and what they talked about is when you make a bid for attention. That could be saying, Hey, do you wanna do something together? It could be, Hey, I love your sweater, or did you hear about what happened with our neighbor?

All of these are bids for these connections, right? And what they found is they were able to determine, and I can't remember the exact percentage, but by taking a look at these video clips and seeing how couples respond to each other's bids, they were able to determine, I think with close to 90 or even above 90% accuracy, which couples were gonna stay together and which ones weren't.

If that's the case in our marriages, imagine for kids how important these bids are. When our kids are younger, they're constantly making bids. They're asking a lot of why questions. Wanting us to look at something they're seeing, making all of these bids.

As kids get older, these bids look a little bit different. How we respond to these bids is important. It doesn't mean that we always have to give them our full attention, but if we can acknowledge the bid and we can acknowledge the person behind the bid, then the relationship is gonna be stronger.

There are a lot of kids where those bids, are not reciprocated. They make a bid and you've got a single parent who has got four kids and gotta get dinner on the table before they head off to their second job. Or if it's me, I'm on my phone when one of my kids makes a bid and I'm really into this...

Andy Earle: Right. You're in the middle of something thing.

Doug Bolton: It's actually,

Andy Earle: Or they're doing it in an annoying way if they're like an annoying way.

Dad, dad, dad, dad, dad. And you're just like, just shut up. Exactly. You don't wanna give them your attention because you don't wanna reward that type of tone, or talking to you that way.

Doug Bolton: Right. What we want our kids to do is to be able to make bids that are successful.

Andy Earle: Yeah.

Doug Bolton: When we don't pay attention to them, oftentimes it'll get louder. And more frequent. So there's teaching and coaching that can happen. It could be being able to say, when you yell my name like that, I end up not wanting to respond to you as much. So let's figure out a way that I can respond better.

But also, what's a way that you could get my attention so I'm more likely to listen? For a lot of kids who haven't had success in making bids, because adults weren't available. Or sometimes adults could respond negatively to bids. We still need to make connections to other people, but oftentimes it can be through more negative interactions.

I remember working with a family and the son kept, his way of interacting with his dad was to mock him. His dad used to be an athlete. His dad used to like certain teams and he would mock him and it would drive his dad nuts. That's the 16-year-old version of the dad, dad, dad, dad, dad.

Right. And,

Andy Earle: Yeah.

Doug Bolton: Make fun of him for little things that he might do wrong or say wrong. And it just drove this dad nuts. So what we tried to do then is to figure out, okay, this teenager who's trying to get their independence. And that's important to be able to get that independence, but also how can they engage the dead in a way that isn't demeaning. And figuring out, in a lot of ways the dead was always working.

Part of what we did was we said, let's make sure that a certain time every day, even though you've gotta work a lot, you get 15 minutes where you and your son are having some time together where you can give him that full attention. So he is not always anxious, is dad gonna show up for me?

If I know that I've got him for 15 minutes so I can watch a little bit of sports center, 'cause that was their thing with sports, let's make sure we watch a little bit of sports center every day and talk about it. That can ease that anxiety of will I be able to engage my dad or not?

Andy Earle: Makes a lot of sense. If they're showing up in ways that feel annoying to you, it might be because they just want a little more attention.

Doug Bolton: You know, one of the things I think about is I drove across Nevada. And I don't remember it that well, but I remember there weren't a lot of gas stations.

In the desert. I wanted to stop at every gas station, but if I knew there was a gas station every 200 miles, I wouldn't feel anxious about when the next gas station is coming up. And I think kids can get that way with us in terms of being anxious about when am I gonna get dad's attention or mom's attention?

When am I gonna have my time with them? And if we know, okay, it's coming at these times, or when you do this, then you'll get it. When it's predictable, then I think they can be less anxious. But what often happens is because it's not easy for kids to predict, then they're always kind of, taking advantage of whenever they can, of being able to get our attention.

And then it drives us nuts and then we snap at them. And then we aren't satisfying their needs and we're making their bids negative bids. And so can we get in front of those moments?

Andy Earle: A tip that you have in the book comes from someone named Mike.

Positive Reinforcement Strategies
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Andy Earle: And he had some really cool ideas and one of them is, instead of taking things away, we should put things on the table. What do you mean by that?

Doug Bolton: Mike is a dean of students of ours, and he had this very intuitive brilliance about him. One day he came into my office and was talking about a teacher who was being really punitive with kids.

And he said, well, this is what I told her. He said two things. The first is whenever a kid is struggling, I think, what can I put on the table instead of what I can take away? And the interesting thing is, when my kids are struggling, oftentimes I'll be very eager to get control.

Andy Earle: Right. Yeah.

Doug Bolton: Oftentimes I do that by figuring out what can I take away? What do they care about?

Andy Earle: What do they care about? What point of leverage away possibly have in this situation?

Doug Bolton: Exactly. It's like my own behavioral Rolodex, right? What can I take away? A guitar I can take away? You can't drive, you can't do this. You can't do that. You're grounded. And what that does is it takes a child who's already dysregulated and it further disregulates them because getting something taken away, there's nothing quite as dysregulating for us as that.

So we take a situation that's bad and we often make it worse. And what he talks about is, what can I put on the table? One of the things we know about emotional regulation is that, one of the best cures for emotional regulation is time. Just taking some time away.

Our dysregulation does two things. It, creates a false sense of urgency. This needs to be solved right now. And an exaggeration that if we don't solve it now, then terrible things are gonna happen, right? If he doesn't do his tour right now, then he'll, he'll, he'll never be able to hold a job down, right?

Or he'll never be able to be accountable, or whatever this language is that shows up. And dysregulation is wildly contagious. When there's a dysregulated child, it's really hard to be regulated as adults. So, what he would do is instead of saying, we've gotta solve this right now, he'd say, what do you say we take a walk? Do you wanna listen to some music before we do anything about this? Do you wanna play some Legos? And of course, typical behavioral theory would say, don't let them play Legos. It'll only reinforce the behavior.

Andy Earle: That's kind of rewarding 'em for being bad.

Doug Bolton: Right. The assumption is that it's motivational. But at the end of the day, what we wanna do is get their brains back online. For some kids Legos are the way to do it. You'll say, why don't you go up to your room, play some Legos. I'm gonna, walk the dog and then let's get back together in 10 minutes and see if we can figure out a solution to this.

But neither of us are in a place where we can do that right now.

Conclusion and Resources
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Andy Earle: Doug, thank you so much for coming on the show today and speaking with us about all of this. It's been fascinating, enlightening, and helpful.

Doug Bolton: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciated your questions and I love this podcast because of all the different ways it helps parents to find it from every angle.

You guys find every angle of figuring out how do we better understand kids and how we can support them as parents. So, thank you for having me on. I'm really honored to be a part of this ongoing dialogue that you're having.

Andy Earle: I appreciate that. Thank you. The book is called Untethered.

I wanna encourage people to go pick up a copy. Creating Connected Families, Schools, and Communities to Raise a Resilient Generation. Could you talk just a little bit about maybe where people could go to learn more about what you're doing or follow updates from you or anything like that?

Doug Bolton: Yeah, I'm at dr doug bolton.com. I'm also, I work with formative psychological services in Chicago and outside of Chicago. We've got a couple of different offices. And so, that would be fps chicago.com. And you can see some of the work we're doing with schools and families there as well.

Andy Earle: I encourage people to go check it out and thanks once again for taking the time to come on the show.

Doug Bolton: Thanks so much, Andy.

Andy Earle: We're here today with Doug Bolton talking about the misperceptions around teenage misbehavior, and we're not done yet. Here's a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.

Doug Bolton: That's the thing about emotional regulation is that we lose some really important tools when we're emotionally regulated. We're not as good at listening. Think about the last time you lost your temper, were you able to listen? When I'm upset, the only words I can think of are four letters long. And I tend to yell them, and that doesn't help. Often the things we do to kids when they're struggling are things we wouldn't want done to ourselves. It would not help me if I'm in an argument with my wife if she gives me a timeout.

What they found is the week after LSU loses in an upset, the judges added 1300 days of incarceration to kids. These judges aren't aware of this, but when we're cranky, we don't have the same empathy. We seem to think accountability is our ability to accept a punishment, but really what accountability is, if you look at the definition of accountability, it's being held to account. When our behavior impacts other people, then we're responsible to that.

Andy Earle: I

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