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're talking today about how music can be a powerful tool for connecting with your teenager, helping them manage emotions, and supporting their development in an increasingly complex world.

Meet the Guests: Sara and Morton Sherman
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Andy Earle: Our guests today are Sara Leila Sherman and Morton Sherman. Sara is a distinguished classical musician and educator who's made music accessible to young audiences through her children's concert series, Mozart for Munchkins, and the nonprofit Little Mozart Foundation. Morton is the retired senior associate executive director of AASA known for his Visionary Leadership in Education. Together, they're the authors of the new book Resonant Minds: the Transformative Power of Music, One Note at a Time, which explores how intentional use of music can enhance focus, build community, and help develop emotional awareness.

I am so excited to have Sara and Mort on the show today.

Thank you so much for coming on Talking to Teens.

Sara Sherman: Thank you for having us.

Mort Sherman: Pleasure to be here. Thank you.

The Inspiration Behind Resonant Minds
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Andy Earle: You have written a fascinating book called Resonant Minds, which is all about music. Talk to me about this. What made you think you needed to write a book about this topic? how did it come about?

Mort Sherman: I wanna start, and then Sara will correct everything I'm about to say. But I want to answer the question. The book is not about music. It's about life and habits of life and becoming better people through music. Sara has done some amazing research about the impact. Neither of us are neuroscientists, but we've studied that part of it and we've looked at the ubiquitous nature of music in people's lives.

And that's where Sara has really tapped into something remarkable in the work she's done as a musician. And so how it came about and why we did it. Sara, you pushed us into answering Andy's question through your own life experience.

Mozart for Munchkins: A Musical Journey
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Sara Sherman: Yeah, so in 2017 I started a children's interactive concert series called Mozart for Munchkins.

My daughter was just four months old and it was a place where kids could be kids. We did some breathing with Bach. We would play classical music like Flight of the Bumblebee, let the kids buzz around like bumblebees. And the idea was to break down this fourth wall between performer and audience and let the kids be kids and the performers create this interactive experience.

From 2017 and one concert, it turned into two concerts and three concerts and all ages. It started with a young audience, but now we do program zero to high school kids.

We paired up with Minds Up, the Goldie Hawn Foundation, and the United Federation of Teachers and created workshops and professional development days on how to use music as a tool for mindfulness for their particular programs. my father is an educator, a superintendent, my entire life. I used to call him when I was developing these workshops and these professional development days and say, what about this?

What do you think if we do this with the teachers? he would always say, you're writing your book. I liked that idea, but I said, okay. Maybe, but I'm not doing this without you. it became one of those things that we would throw back and forth when I would call, to use my father.

my mother too is an educator, so I used both of them as sounding boards. the book developed from these workshops and seeing in person the power of music when paired with mindful action, whether it's to help teachers react and create these moments with their students for focus, emotional awareness, community building, and connectivity.

And that music really was this lever and tool they could integrate into their classrooms and their relationships with their students. That wasn't adding to the curriculum, but it was adding to the benefits of their every day. And from there on the book was born.

Andy Earle: Wow. I love that. it sounds so positive.

it sounds like an amazing thing that you've built over there.

Using Music to Connect with Teenagers
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Andy Earle: I just wonder, from a parent perspective, aren't teenagers already just way too attached to their headphones? Is this book gonna just be an excuse to spend more time listening to music?

Mort Sherman: Yeah. But that's the point we make in the book you build from the familiar. You don't say, just stop.

Put it down. How, what's going on? Like, I had a conversation, this morning with our 15-year-old grandson, Sara's nephew. And I said, so what are you listening to? And he said, you know, I listen to lots. I listen to my dad's country music and I'm beyond that.

Or I listen to your classical music, or I listen to pop. But he said, to calm my mind. I have found, I listen to indie music, I-N-D-I-E. So, being a well-rounded, grandfather, I said, what is that? Debbie, my wife, we immediately went to our electronic devices and said, what is indie music?

And then we listened this morning to indie music. And I think kids want to hear music, wanna open their minds and break from the familiar. But it's not saying, put it down and stop it. It's building from the familiar. using that as a lever. this book is not music appreciation. We should all go and listen to Taylor Swift or put on Mozart or Bach or whomever it might be.

But understand who kids are today. They want to be heard, they wanna be listened to. Sara, Go ahead.

Sara Sherman: Yeah, I'm gonna take that in a slightly different direction.

Intentional Listening and Emotional Awareness
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Sara Sherman: So, your point about already listening to music and headphones constantly is completely accurate.

Studies show that the average American listens to about three hours of music a day, and for younger generations it's actually closer to four hours, which is a staggering fact. But how much of that listening is done purposefully, with intent? and we do tackle this in the book: helping a teenager, or children, or even ourselves figure out how to intentionally choose music to shape our day. When we are sad and if we tend to listen to a sad piece of music, it keeps us in that more depressed state. If we are feeling sad and we purposefully select a piece of music that has a certain amount of beats per minute, or maybe it already has this emotional memory attachment, because we create these memory attachments to music, oftentimes we can purposefully do it, but it happens without us thinking about it.

And if we go back to that tune, it can boost our mood, and make us feel better, and get us out of a rut. it doesn't always do that, but it's a starting place for how we can intentionally use music to help shape the emotional awareness of where we want to be.

Andy Earle: I definitely see that.

Mort Sherman: I wanna add one piece to that. 'cause you could see when Sara and I wrote the book, how much we enjoyed each other's company and built on it. You know, this idea of the ear worm. The phonological loop. Building from the familiar. I bet you if I pressed you a little bit, Andy, or any number of folks who might be listening to this podcast, can you recall one of the nursery rhymes that one of your parents sang to you, or some songs from your childhood?

You build from the familiar. There's music in all of us, whether it's passive or active. It could be elevator music going to a doctor's office or a grocery store. There's music all over the place. But Sara's words about being purposeful and intentional is what parents can do.

Listen to the music a moment. Open your ears to what your kids are saying and to what they're listening and seeing how you could build on their familiar. So you might say to them, Hey, do you remember when we used to listen to Sesame Street?

If I started singing the theme song to Sesame Street, there's something about sunny days, right? It releases these memories to build upon for kids. Sara, you've done more research about that loop and the groove and all the other pieces that parents could build on.

Sara Sherman: I don't know what generation you are, but if I sang, this is a song that doesn't end, you know it, and it's gonna be stuck in your head now for the rest of the day.

But these earworms that attach to our phonological loop, which is our working memory, where we have our verbal information, our language processing. It's how we learn. And we can use this to our advantage as parents, as teachers, as everyday humans. What do we want to have as our earworm to go back to?

Creating Positive Musical Habits
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Sara Sherman: through the habits that we create, our mindful music habits, I like to call them, we can work to release dopamine. And when we release dopamine, we start to have motivation. And that's what starts to become a positive habit. So in our daily lives, we can use music to create these positive musical habits throughout our every day.

And it can be something as annoying as the song doesn't end. But in our household, I have two kids. when I work, I listen to Bach cello Suites. And it's my Pavlovian response. When I play Bach, I sit down and get work done, because that's the habit I've created over the years.

Now, my children do the same thing. it's something that's been happening in our household by habit, by routine, by this constant cycle. Even if I'm playing some other music, my son will come in and say, no, let's switch to Bach cello sweets. I don't want this. Or I wanna sit down and read.

And it's become this beautiful way to see that this can work in your household to connect and create family habits together.

Andy Earle: I also think you can do the opposite sometimes or change the way you feel about music if you're playing it at certain times. Like you play a song for your alarm clock in the morning for a little while, then now every time you hear that song, it's linked in my brain with the feeling of don't wanna wake up and, it's ruined for me.

Mort Sherman: Building on the familiar, like the traditional playlist. they played the same song in the same order over and over and over again, and the commercial products for playlist do the opposite of what Sara and I want to accomplish. they narrow you. they play that same song every morning when you wake up or you're saying, Hey, play my favorite indie playlist, or my favorite classical playlist, or my favorite hip hop. it's the same. what we're trying to do is create playlists of the mind, which are not the same every day.

That's the mindful action that Sara talked about. We've gotta be deliberate for ourselves, for our communities. How do you create that mindful spark, which says, let's go beyond that.

It's about trust. It's about respecting the other person. And that's what parents could do. Say, Hey, I really wanna know what you're doing. I wanna listen.

I trust you, I respect you. And then you could build from that moment.

Music as a Tool for Emotional Connection
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Andy Earle: Was interested to ask about some of these emotional things you guys talk about in the book. A lot to do with emotion, how music can help you process emotion or learn skills related to that. What are some ways, as parents, that we could help our teens use music as a way to cope with stress or anxiety or some other emotional challenges they might be facing?

Sara Sherman: Yeah, I'm gonna start with a school example we actually use in the book. We talk about a boy named George who is going through adolescence. there is so much research done that when everybody, but especially adolescents, are left alone with silence in their own thoughts. Those negative feelings can come in.

what if I said something stupid to my classmate? What if I'm wearing the wrong thing? Am I too short? all these feelings of self-doubt creep in. And we go through an example with a teacher using music in the classroom, where everyone is part of this community and gets to nominate songs.

Dua Lipe to Vivaldi. And then the class votes on which song they want to listen to. it might not be everybody's favorite pick, but then the teacher keeps that list of music.

once they put the song on, they're given the opportunity to choose a mindful action that best suits them in that moment. That might be just sitting quietly. drawing what they hear. It might be journaling, writing a poem, writing something that happened to them over the weekend. But the idea is that then they have that autonomy in that moment to choose what best fits them to listen to that piece of music.

And when we listen to music collectively, especially if it has around 120 beats per minute, that's like a walking beat, our brainwaves start to synchronize. even if you're not talking to your neighbor in that moment, but you're listening to this same piece of music, there's a sense of community that's happening without us necessarily even realizing it.

And we're all, all of a sudden connected. So that student, that boy George, with these feelings of anxiety and self-doubt, all of a sudden has this moment of connectivity with his classmates because they're listening. Not actively listening, necessarily. We're not saying, Hey, find the melody here and tell me if there's major or minor chords. But they're purposefully passive listening to the same piece of music, which helps build this sense of community.

And so, in terms of this emotional awareness and this emotional connection, it's not easy. And it doesn't come naturally to everybody. And some people already do this. If you go for a run and you pick what type of music you want to get that energy and boost your adrenaline, a lot of us already know how to do this. But especially teenagers, it's that little guidance of what we can do to help them find the music that suits them or helps them connect to other peers, their parents, whoever it might be.

Mort Sherman: could you tell the story of that Super Bowl party where the parents didn't know the music at the halftime show, but all the kids did, and how that could be this parenting moment for teenagers?

Sara Sherman: I grew up very classically music trained. A lot of my friends joke that I lived under a rock. we used to have movie nights where they would show me movies like the Big Lebowski and things that I missed growing up because I was living under my piano, so to speak.

And these are some friends of mine that know pop culture, but some of them were saying, who is this during the halftime show? And one of them said, I don't know, but my kids are singing along to it. And I didn't even know that they knew who this was. it was an interesting moment as a parent where we had this reaction like, who is this person? I knew Kendrick Lamar from this book and from doing research and from some listening, but to hear other perspectives from fellow parents and then using that instead of, we talked about judgment earlier, like, ah, I don't like this music, or, it's not something I necessarily go to. But to give it a chance as a moment to connect with our children over their musical preferences and to see what it is about, especially in the Super Bowl in that moment.

Why is this music important? moments like that are a really beautiful way for parents and their children to connect about not judging the music, but giving it a chance. The same way that if we wanna play the Beatles, or if I wanna play Bach, they'll give it a chance. Whether or not they're going to go back to it on their own...

but it's that adapting and trying to respect one another's choices.

Andy Earle: It's almost like part of who you are. What songs you resonate with is so personal. And such a big part of adolescence is discovering or experimenting with your identity and figuring out who you are. it feels like music is such a part of that.

Sara Sherman: There's research from the 17 hundreds, this doctrine of affections that I really love. It's obviously outdated, but the history of it's fascinating, that there are seven basic emotions, from Descartes, and that music can conjure each of these emotions, whether it's jealousy, or evil, or happiness, or sadness. certain sounds together help bring these emotions out.

composers were going back and kind of using this as, all right, how are we going to shape the music? So when we think today about music that brings feelings or certain emotions, it's been around for hundreds of years. This isn't new. Before we were able to speak, if we go back to Neanderthals, there was early music. The first instrument that we know of dates back to a vulture bone, made as a flute. Before they could even talk and had this formalized language, there were already drum circles and ways of communicating. And there was art before there was language. And so when we think again about emotion and expressing ourselves through music, it is a part of who we are. It's been a part of who we are forever.

The Role of AI in Music Creation
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Mort Sherman: We're advocates of AI used appropriately. there are some breakthrough folks out there, and Sara could talk about this a little bit more than I, but we've been introduced to some remarkable folks in the technology and music world who are creating generative AI for music.

Where if Andy said, I really love country music. I wanna add to that, some deep bass, and I want to pick up an uptempo, add some violins into it. And I wanna have a hip hop ending. Well, 45 seconds later you could have your piece of music. And it's yours.

I love what you said before, Andy, about identity and searching for identity. And we find identity through the music that others create. But what if the next generation allows us to build on the familiar to create our own music? Not to interfere with the beauty of musicians across the world who are creating, but to compliment and supplement what they've already had in our heads and in our lives.

And to build on that so that we have our own playlist of life. And Sara, you want to talk about Shara for a little bit about what she's doing?

Sara Sherman: a colleague of mine has done a lot with future Verse and a lot of AI technology companies. She's very fascinating. And this project that she started within the last year called Jen AI, is exactly what my father just mentioned.

Mort Sherman: JEN.

Sara Sherman: JEN. Can get confusing when you're talking about generative ai, but Jen, like the name, AI. and the idea exactly is what my father mentioned. But taking it a step further, because as a classical pianist, I understand that musicians are worried that AI is going to take over our performance jobs, movie soundtracks, all of these things that have traditionally had live musicians in the seats.

I think the idea when we look at something like Gen AI is not thinking of it as a replacement, but how can we use it as a creative supplement? especially when we look at children, whether they're teenagers, whether they're five year olds, whether it's a grownup that wants to find a new form of expression for themselves and to use it as a creative tool.

Not everybody has music at their fingertips. Not everyone has the funds to take piano lessons from the age of five. People get frustrated and they quit. everyone is busy. And so it's not something that everyone has access to. But everyone has the potential to have access to this app. it's released in beta and it will continue to come out, but to then use it as a form of expression.

Through Mozart for Munchkins we've done a lot of work with neurodivergent students and non-speakers. When we're in person, one of our workshops is with a live band. We usually have an octet. Inviting the children to come up and point to an instrument and either hold up their emotion card or point to our emotion card or on their computer if they have the computer to talk with us, point to the emotion they're feeling.

And what is really beautiful about this is not everyone is comfortable saying, Hey, I'm pissed off, or, Hey, I'm feeling really sad. But you can select a piece of music to express how you're feeling. So when you're talking about an emotion, especially if we're talking about someone who's not comfortable talking about their feelings, someone who is nonverbal and cannot talk about their feelings, but still wants a way to express themselves.

They can do that through this technology where they can create how they're feeling and express it through music that they wouldn't necessarily be able to have beforehand. Because they aren't a pianist. They're not a violinist. They're not a singer. But they can be whatever they want when they use this technology the right way.

Conclusion and Where to Find More
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Andy Earle: You have a lot of great ideas about how to do that in your book. I highly encourage people to check out a copy of Resonant Minds: the Transformative Power of Music, One Note at a Time. Sara and Mort, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing your humor, your stories, and this fascinating perspective on music with us.

Sara Sherman: Thanks for having us, Andy.

Mort Sherman: Thank you, Andy. It's been a good conversation.

Andy Earle: What should we tell our listeners about where they can go to find out more about you, about what you're working on, about anything that you have coming up next?

Sara Sherman: the book is available on Roman and Littlefields website, on Amazon, on most major retailers. there is more information on resonant minds.com as well, which is the book website that also has the playlist. So if listeners wanna listen to the playlist before they get the books. and also Mozart for Munchkins has a website.

So if you are in New York City and want to come see some of the programs, we skew young, but we have programs for all ages.

Andy Earle: Very cool. I love that.

Preview of the Next Episode
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Andy Earle: We are here today with Sara and Mort Sherman talking about how music can help us connect with teenagers, and we're not done yet. Here's a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.

Sara Sherman: If you ban anything from your child, they want it more. No, you can't have more candy. Well, why can't I have more candy? I want more candy now. Same with iPads, with phones, with all of these things.

Mort Sherman: What we want ultimately for those teenagers is to say, not for me. Not now. Not appropriate. This is not a book about music. This is a book about mindful action towards a better life through music.

Sara Sherman: It's a musical experiment until it becomes a habit together for ourselves and for our families.

Mort Sherman: We all have those songs, those moments, those things to go to that are so important. Like we used to bang tables. and the idea was without any rhyme or reason, just to start a beat. Somebody else picks it up and it goes around and around.

You do your own beat or somebody could pound it on the table. Can you guess that song without any words?

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You can now sign up directly through Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.