Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Andy: Your book, Winning Arguments really caught my eye because a lot of the things that parents have trouble with in talking to teenagers is, arguments that everything seems to turn into an argument. So I was really interested to see what tips you had in here. And this book is philosophical. You get into really deeply how arguments work and how they work in different contexts. And it's a lot more in depth than I was expecting, which was really cool. So can you talk a little bit about where it came from and what inspired you to write it?

Stanley: Sure. When people think about arguments that is, disagreements, disputes. I usually assume that being in the midst of an argument is a special case. Whereas the more normal case, the more ordinary case is agreement. That argument marks the point at which agreement has broken down for whatever reason. And so then you get into a confrontational or adversarial position. In my view, and it's not only mine turns that around and says, "No that, argument is our natural state." Being in an argument or dispute a disagreement is what life is all about. And that agreement, if and when it occurs is always fragile and temporary.

Stanley: A matter of mounting, some structure within which communication can continue for a while. And I say for a while because at some point that structure always becomes shaky, afraid at the edges and you're back in the stage of open argument. So, I thought I would try to explain how living in a world of argument works, especially in the context of people who want to believe, as I said a moment ago, that argument is special and unique or unordinary whereas agreement is ordinary. Agreement is an amazing achievement which very really is sustained.

Andy: So how do we just get rid of argument.

Stanley: Get rid of arguments. You can't get rid of it.

Andy: We don't want to just agree all the time and have a nice friendly communication.

Stanley: We do. Of course you're absolutely correct. That's what we want. We want to agree but what we find out often in our interactions with family members, with people in our various professional walks of life, with people that you engage with in the streets. What you find out is that certain assumptions that you were making about the way the world is shaped and about what it isn't is not appropriate to do, are not shared somehow by the person or persons you're talking to.

Stanley: That's a moment of unhappiness and distress. Where you realize that what you would assume to be the basis of agreement isn't really there. And then you have to go back and start to try to fashion it again. So argument is not something from which you can escape, and it's not something that you can bring to an end. It's only something that you might be able to manage.

Andy: One thing you talked about early on in the book on page nine and 10 here is a specific type of argument that goes, "Because I say so." Which you say is a version of the argument from authority. I thought this was funny because you'd have a little story in here about how this didn't work so well with your daughter. So, is that just a terrible argument to use or is there ever a time when parents might be able to successfully pull off an argument from authority?

Stanley: An argument from authority is always risky because usually the authority that is claimed depends on an agreement by the other party to submit to it, or at least to recognize it. And when problems occur and when parents find that the assertion or the invoking the argument from authority doesn't work, what is happening is that the whole fragile structure of interfamily respect is being exposed for what it is, a temporary almost fictional construct that can be shaken at almost any moment. And that's what happens when parents suddenly discover that all of the argumentative moves or verbal tricks that they've been accustomed to rely on don't work at a certain point.

Stanley: And it's then when you're tempted to do what I did in that little story that I told at the beginning of the book and that is to lock your child in his or her bedroom or some other act, which doesn't work either. But what you're driven to it by an inability to see how that fragile structure of agreement and the maintenance of civility in everyday life can be regained. It's a very hard thing to do.

Andy: So once you lose authority is there no way to get it back then you think?

Stanley: I think the best illustration from that book of the experience I'm discussing is the chapter on marriage and what happens in the course of a domestic argument. What happens in the course of a domestic argument is that at a certain point, scoring points becomes what each party is trying to do. And the more you succeed in scoring points, the further away from coming back to a moment when you can be in again to speak in a friendly way, it is. So in a way, the way to win arguments in a sense that will actually do all of the parties good is to be willing to lose the argument.

Stanley: Once you're in the middle of an argument, the last thing in your mind is a willingness to lose. You just want to beat the other person into the ground metaphorically, of course. So, you're going to seize on anything that comes to mind. So for example, in the middle of a domestic quarrel which might be about something that happened yesterday, you're going to dredge up something that happened 25 years ago or 20 years ago, or even five years ago.

Stanley: That is you going to be casting around for whatever verbal weapon you can lay your hand on. And then you want to hit the other party with that. Once you're in that mood or once you're in that mode, things are pretty bad. And it's very hard to get back unless a halt is called to the whole thing, just stop, let's get off the train or get off the very ground or whatever your favorite metaphor is. But that itself is hard to do. So living in a world of argument is extremely difficult especially when you want to use argument to win the argument or get out of the argument. It just won't work.

Andy: You talk in your chapter about political arguments, about convictions held at the level of underlying commitments and how once it gets to that point, they're no longer vulnerable to the marshaling of evidence. And you have this example of the Redskins football. Can you walk me through that and why is it that once it gets to that point, it's actually completely impervious to evidence?

Stanley: Because at a certain point, whether or not to retain the name Redskins for the Washington National Football League team becomes less a question of let's say, consideration for others or even a question of economic calculation on the part of the football team owners, becomes more a matter of defending your way of life. So at a certain point those who wish to remove the name Redskins from the football team believe that they are speaking for and against centuries of discrimination against native Americans.

Stanley: They believe that their cause is just and right, not only in a local sense but in a national and even in a global sense. And on the other side, those who wish to retain the name Redskins are speaking out in terms of the freedom to choose their own ways of speaking without governmental or public interference. If I want to call my team Redskins, why should anybody have the power to stop me from doing it. Or if I want to root for a team with the name Redskins, shouldn't I be allowed to do so, isn't this a matter of holding the American way. You see, the issues get ratcheted up quickly to finally each side feels that it's defending truth and civilization against the attacks and underminings of the other side.

Andy: And at that point, there's no amount of evidence that changed your mind because it's-

Stanley: And you will always hear that evidence is coming from the other side and you will look for and have no difficulty in finding motives that underlie that evidence. And you will question the source of that evidence or you will say at a certain moment that's actually evidence from my side. Once things become that interest as they have been in the context of that example there you are and of course today we have a similar situation or structurally similar situation in the person of Donald Trump.

Stanley: If you are a believer in Trump as the devil or as the corrupter of the nation and of civilization on the one hand or if you believe on the other hand that Trump has saved the nation from elitist and anti-American values, there's nothing that you're going to be able to hear from the other side as it will be regarded as evidence that you might consider because everything that you hear from the other side is something you hear from the other side and you know in your heart that the other side is evil. And there are a lot of people on both sides of what we might call the Trump divide who are exactly in this position and you probably know some of them.

Andy: It strikes me though that this happens a lot with an apparent team dynamic where these situations about little daily things turn into much bigger issues where it becomes a matter of you like, "You don't trust me." It's just whatever it is something stupid but it gets ratcheted up to this level where there's an impasse and it's fundamentally impossible to break through because you're both coming at it from different sides of this really ideological debate when it's actually really just a small issue of whatever happened.

Stanley: It's a small issue to which all the weight of the ideologies of the two parties has been detached and once that happens it's very difficult to back to the point of saying, "Wait a minute what we would talking about whether or not to go to the movies tomorrow." How did we get that to the cosmic coral we seem to be engaged in. And the other thing about... Not only about domestic arguments between husbands and wives or partners or arguments between parents and children but the thing about argument in general is that, quite often you're in the middle of one before that that is your present situation.

Stanley: As I put it in the book, [crosstalk] arguments don't begin in the same way that let's say a professional boxing match begins with the ringing of a bell and the two parties come out of their respective corners in a fighting stance arguments don't begin at all. At least they don't seem to begin, you suddenly find yourself in the middle of one before you know it.

Stanley: Pieces of advice that are useful, the ones that seem to me to be useful, draw back from the argument, declare a period of ceasefire, ask the other person to explain how he or she is feeling in a way that might lead you to get back in touch with the real person in front of you as opposed to the symbolic person that has been created by you in the course of the argument those kinds of strategies. I have at least the chance of working, dampening the argument down, if not putting out the fire at least reducing the intensity of the fire.

Andy: You said something interesting in there, you said something about the person that you've created in your mind since the start of the argument. And that's something that I had marked in here on page 99, you said that's the first and most important rule of domestic quarrels, their performances of personality creation. And then also you go on to say, the personalities they create form quickly and tend to stick around for a long time.

Stanley: That's right.

Andy: What exactly do you mean by that?

Stanley: What I mean is that, in order to engage in an argument with someone where you quickly arrive at a level of intensity, you have to cast the other person in a big drama in which he or she is the villain in order to do that piece of casting, you have to attribute certain negative features to that person. And in doing so, you build up a picture of that person which supersedes and in fact more or less obliterates whatever picture of the person that you might've had before the argument begins.

Andy: It strikes me that totally what has to happen during an argument you have to depersonalize the other person to a certain extent in your mind and build them up as the enemy a little bit. And so, that happens before you even realize it. As you were saying, you find yourself in an argument before you realize that it even started. So then, what do you do when you do realize it or is there a way to undo that casting that you done on the other person somehow?

Stanley: Of course, it will depend-

Andy: Or the one they've done on you?

Stanley: Depends to some extent and how far either of you have gone if you pulled out all stops and then said things which cannot be taken back often because they are in some sense true, but are so wounding in their truth that they threatened the fabric of the entire relationship. The great play by Edward Albee, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, is a textbook on how this happens and how arguments accelerate and how the stakes become and higher until you reach a dangerously approach that point where the next move will ruin the structure of the relationship for ever.

Stanley: And when that happens and it does happen that's when you get children storming out of the house or running away from home, you get parents instituting divorce proceedings. Now, in between the argument that reaches those heights and those disastrous conclusion's comes the possibility of therapy of mediation which of course involves third parties. So, there comes a point where you and your arguing partner have done such a good by which I mean bad job of creating the other as a demon that you have to have someone else come in, a third party neither you nor your who can attempt to reintroduce you to the person you knew before you made him or her.