287: ENCORE: Best of Ask Lisa: Confidence, Self-Esteem & Self-Compassion

0:00Dr. Lisa Damour: Friends, have you ever wished that you could get instantaneous answers to your toughest parenting questions? Well, now you can. I am thrilled to introduce you to Rosalie, my free AI-powered content guide that is designed to help parents just like you. So here's how it works. You go to my website, drlisademour.com, and ask Rosalie your question. Rosalie will give you a short answer based on my work and also guide you to the best resources from everything I've ever written and to the Ask Lisa podcast episodes that directly tackle the topic you're searching for. So whether you're wondering how to handle sibling rivalry or navigating a teen's screen time or just trying to figure out how to best support a child who's having a hard time with stress, Rosalie is available 24-7 for free to help you.

0:52Dr. Lisa Damour: Head to DrLisaDemore.com and try Rosalie today.

1:02Dr. Traci Baxley: Tell me a parenting issue everyone struggles with with tweens and teens, but no one talks about. Reena, I think a lot of people feel like they just don't know how to connect to their kid anymore. I'm Reena Nainan, and welcome to Ask Lisa, the psychology of raising tweens and teens. And I'm Dr. Lisa DeMoor.

1:20Dr. Sue Varma: We bring you science-backed strategies for managing anxiety, discipline, intense emotions, and more.

1:26Dr. Traci Baxley: We decode tough parenting issues with tips you can use right now. So subscribe to Ask Lisa, the psychology of raising tweens and teens, and join our YouTube community today. Just Google Ask Lisa Podcast. We're here to help you untangle family life.

1:44Dr. Sue Varma: Encore episode 287, Best of Ask Lisa, confidence, self-esteem, and self-compassion.

1:55Dr. Tovah Klein: friends if you've ever worried that you're not doing enough to help your kid feel good about

1:59Dr. Sue Varma: themselves this episode is for you in this best of ask lisa compilation we've curated my guidance on confidence and self-esteem we'll explore why kids confidence naturally ebbs and flows what parents can do to actively build lasting self-worth and why the way you talk to yourself in front of your kids really matters. Wherever your kid's at right now, I promise you this is going to give you something to hold on to.

2:26Dr. Traci Baxley: Clinical psychologist Dr. Lisa DeMoor has been helping parents of tweens and teens navigate this stuff for decades, and we've gathered her most important advice and insights on friendship breakups and conflict in one place so you can have them when you need them most. Your kid just got dropped by their friend group, or they're in the middle of a friendship blow up and you have no idea how to help. In this episode, you're going to hear exactly what's going on beneath the surface and what to actually say. I'm Rena Nainan, co-host of the Ask Lisa podcast. Clinical psychologist, Dr. Lisa DeMoor has been helping parents of tweens and teens navigate this stuff for decades.

3:06Dr. Traci Baxley: And we've gathered her most important advice and insights on friendship breakups and conflict in one place. So you can have them when you need them most.

3:25Dr. Traci Baxley: Before we can help our kids navigate friend conflict, it helps to understand why things can get so cruel in middle school friendships in the first place. In these excerpts from our original episode, 185, How Should My Son Deal With Trash-Talking Friends, Lisa explains the social mechanics at play here.

3:44Dr. Lisa Damour: The reason kids worry about social power in the middle school especially is that they have, you know, I think about this, like they've left the shore of the comfort of their family life.

3:55Dr. Sue Varma: They are working towards the shore of pure connections. They are very anxious.

4:00Dr. Lisa Damour: And unfortunately, Rena, in middle school, the shortest route to social power is to demonstrate the willingness to be mean because not everybody will do it. this kind of meanness among boys is often done like just joking, right?

4:16Dr. Sue Varma: Like there's a lot of just joking, which is a such a trap because what's said is hurtful, but if you react, you're being a baby. And so the kids on the receiving end of this are left with like these terrible choices of participating, pretending like it doesn't bother them, or showing that they're hurt, at which point they actually subject themselves to more punishment.

4:49Dr. Traci Baxley: One of the questions parents often face is, what's happening to my kid actually bullying, or is it just friendship conflict? That distinction between bullying and conflict really matters, both for how we talk to our kids about it and for how we respond. Lisa breaks it down in this short excerpt from the original episode, 166. My kid is being bullied. What should I do? I want to ask you, how would you define what is bullying and conflict?

5:17Dr. Sue Varma: So when we walk up to the question of what is bullying, the way that psychologists define it, and it matters to us to be very, very specific about this, is that bullying is when a kid is targeted by another kid or a group of kids and is unable to defend themselves. Everything else we call conflict. Kids not getting along at school or one kid's giving it on Monday, the other kid's giving it on Tuesday. That's conflict. We say, why do kids do this? Why do they bully? There's no one reason that describes all situations, but there are some things we see that explain why kids bully. Sometimes kids bully because it's how they're treated elsewhere.

5:59Dr. Sue Varma: They're being mistreated either at home or in another relationship. And they can start to sort of construct this idea of like, well, there's one of two spots you stand in. You're either the bully, you're either giving it or getting it, right? Sometimes we see kids who get drunk on the social power of it, Reena. Every once in a while, you'll come across a kid who either is willing to be mean or is willing to experiment with being mean. So it's some sort of weird social power is what you're saying.

6:26Dr. Lisa Damour: Yeah. Yeah. They just sort of get like drunk on power. And sometimes kids bully because they're bored.

6:31Dr. Traci Baxley: Just out of boredom? That's why they do it?

6:34Dr. Sue Varma: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know what? Nothing going on. Why don't we stir something up and start it? Right? So those are some of the reasons we see.

6:47Dr. Traci Baxley: In episode 194, how do I help my daughter get past an ugly rumor? We dove into relational aggression, excluding people and rumor spreading. Lisa's wisdom is something every parent of a tween or teen girl especially needs to hear.

7:02Dr. Sue Varma: You know, we call this relational aggression as opposed to physical aggression. and it's where kids use social forces to hurt one another. And relational aggression tends to take a couple forms. One is excluding, icing kids out, and the other is spreading rumors about them. When kids are willing to be mean, their classmates will sort of, you know, cower in the seventh grade, cower in the eighth grade, be nervous around that kid in the ninth grade. By 10th grade, kids are over it and they do not allow queen bees to make up rumors and tell lies. Queen bees or king bees, whatever you got in that grade.

7:46Dr. Sue Varma: Now that's the old schedule. One of the things that I am hearing across the board in schools is that the pandemic delayed the typical social trajectories we were used to. If I've heard one thing consistently from schools in the wake of the pandemic is, oh my God, the ninth graders feel like seventh graders. I think if we're really, really honest about kids in schools, we are still seeing pandemic after effects. No question.

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10:56Dr. Traci Baxley: even when it's painful to watch.

10:59Dr. Sue Varma: So one of the ways I've started to think about seventh graders is they are between the shores. So on one shore is, you know, being embedded in family life. Over there on that other shore is like adult friendship, usually like 10th grade, 11th grade, like you got your people. They're in the water between these shores. Okay. They're all looking for a raft to be on. This kid just got pushed off the raft. Okay. All his friends are looking around being like, I don't want to be next. I don't want to be next. I don't want to be the one pushed off the raft into the water. So I'm going to save myself and buddy, I hate that you are drowning, but if it's me drowning or you drowning, I'm going with you.

11:44Dr. Lisa Damour: And I have seen kids who try their hand at meanness, you know, just say something kind of cutting. And I've seen, And kids of all genders do this. This isn't just boys. And they suddenly discover all this social power flows to them. Everybody's scared of them now. And I've seen kids get, for lack of a better word, sort of drunk on power almost by accident. And they're like, this is amazing. If I just say a few cutting comments here and there, no one wants to be on my wrong side.

12:14Dr. Traci Baxley: So they get a taste of it and it feels really good and they keep doing it.

12:22Dr. Traci Baxley: If your kid has ever been iced out of a friend group, or if you're watching it happen right now, this is a clip you need. In episode 71, my kid was dumped by her friends, How Can I Help? A mom wrote to us about her 15-year-old daughter who has been dropped by her entire friend group with no explanation. Lisa does two things here. She gives parents a framework for helping their kid take it less personally, and she helps us figure out what to say.

12:47Dr. Sue Varma: So one way I have helped kids out of situations like this is to help them take it less personally, help it feel less personal,

12:58Dr. Lisa Damour: right?

12:58Dr. Sue Varma: Because of course it feels intensely personal. So the first thing a parent can do is to give the explanation I just gave. You know what, honey, maybe they are really struggling to find ways to feel connected to each other, and you have become the victim of their attempt to feel tight is to, you know, box you out. I think of friendship groups, certainly middle school, early high school, but honestly, Rena, right now, early high school looks like middle school socially. I mean, it is really not good.

13:26Dr. Traci Baxley: You're saying they're delayed because of not being in class and masks and all that. Totally.

13:30Dr. Sue Varma: Totally. I mean, we are seeing the kind of base bullying nastiness that we usually can check at the door by seventh or eighth grade is creeping well into ninth or 10th, which is its own misery. And this child would be in the 10th grade, probably. So what you can say is, you know, think about social groups as almost like chemical compounds. And every kid in the social group is an atom. And they have their, you know, chemical compound, they come together. Some compounds are more stable than others. So you know, those friendship groups were like, everyone gets along, and it's kind of happy. And you know, they sort of click along.

14:08Dr. Sue Varma: And then there are friendship groups, where the friendship group wasn't all that stable. And let's say there were four other atoms in this group, right, besides this child. And they decided, oh, I know how to stabilize. Let's kick out that atom and that will strengthen our bonds. We'll be this group of, you know, kids who come together around this, you know, strengthening bond of having kicked that atom out. So it can start to help us if we think about this girl who's been iced out as like she's now a free floating atom. And it's in the name of that former friendship group trying to strengthen their bonds.

14:43Dr. Sue Varma: The whole goal is to strengthen our bonds and to keep that atom out as a way of having, you know, an attempt at stabilizing our chemical compound with stronger bonds. So that's a start on how to think about it.

14:55Dr. Tovah Klein: I think the gift that parents can give adolescence is the gift of perspective. So when you are a 15-year-old and you have been dumped by your friends, it really feels like the end of the world. Like it really feels like there's no point to anything anymore. And that is a very powerful sense of just this is awful. How do I move forward? As a middle-aged parent, you know this stinks. It's awful. But it will be a really yucky chapter

15:28Dr. Sue Varma: in a very long book. We want to walk a very delicate line as adults in both validating how deeply upsetting this is for our kids or anything like this, and then saying, I want you to know I am 100 % confident that you will look back on this and it will be something that happened. It will not be the story that defines your life. So there are a lot of mornings that I'll like look at my to-do list for the day and be like, oh my gosh, I've got to do all of this. And in these moments, I've come across a hack that helps me reframe the entire thing and the hack is that I flip it and tell myself I get to do these things.

16:09Dr. Sue Varma: I get to do my to-do list. All right, where did I learn this? I learned this from Robin Roberts in her masterclass on effective

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18:06Dr. Traci Baxley: Okay, so we've been hearing about kids on the receiving end of friendship conflict. But what about when your kid is the one who needs to do the breaking up? This is its own minefield. In the next clip from episode 84, how do I encourage my tween to drop a bad friendship? Lisa talks us through what kids actually do when they want to leave a friendship, why those instincts usually backfire, and what parents can suggest instead.

18:32Dr. Tovah Klein: As adults, we don't tend to have our friendships in these, like, elaborated networks. Like, we have, like, this friend here and that friend there, and maybe a few times we've got a group of friends. But for kids, especially at school, all of this is happening in this complex web. And so if there's a kid that is a problem for you for any variety of reasons, it's not like you can just sort of, like, stop engaging with them. Because they are at your lunch table, right? Right. Or they're invited to all the same stuff you're invited to. And so, you know, this is a tough question that is very real. And I think so often as parents, when we hear about this, we're like, well, just stop hanging out with her.

19:10Dr. Sue Varma: And the kid's like, oh, would that it were so easy, right?

19:13Dr. Tovah Klein: They don't want to be in the friendship anymore with the kid who's in their group. And so they start to align the entire group against that child so as to excise the child while keeping all the other friends. I think that's often what happens when a kid is dropped unceremoniously from a group, is that someone in the group is like, I feel done with this friendship, but I don't want to lose all these other kids in the bargain, so we're going to do a gang up. One of the things that I hear about a lot is where one kid feels done, and the other kid continues to text and say, do you want to come over?

19:45Or can I come over?

19:47Dr. Tovah Klein: Or where there's a lot of asking and asking and direct, like, let's get together. And I've heard parents talk about like, oh, my gosh, it sometimes feels like there's a kid with a stranglehold on my kid, you know, like that they're always reaching out and my kid doesn't want it anymore. And my kid, you know, is trying to not be mean and doesn't want to be harsh with this kid but does not want to hang out, right? That can be really delicate. So if that's happening, I think one strategy that can help is to blame the parent.

20:21Dr. Traci Baxley: to be like, we're really busy tonight, I'm sorry.

20:25Dr. Tovah Klein: Or my mom's got something going on, I'm sorry. And answering, right? Getting back to the kid and not necessarily promising, I'll call you when I'm free. What I often see kids do is they feel super awkward. The kid who wants the friendship will say like, can you come over to my house or do you want to do something later? And what I've seen kids do for lack of a better strategy is they'll say, um, okay, sure. And then they'll cancel at the last minute. Or they won't respond at all. And I've cared for the kid on the other side of that who's like, it's super weird. Like I'm texting her and asking her over and she's not even replying.

21:04Dr. Tovah Klein: And I'm like, oof, like I get that, but it's not really okay. So another strategy I think that sometimes kids need is to say, oh, you know, we're really tied up. I'll let you know when I've got some more time or something like that and then leave it open, but give an answer. But blaming parents can be really helpful here.

21:27Dr. Traci Baxley: And to close out the friendship breakup side of things, here's a reframe I really love from episode 156. Is there a gentle way to drop a friend? Lisa reminds us that friendships having chapters is a normal part of life. And there's a way to move on that doesn't require drama or cruelty. It also doesn't make anyone the villain.

21:47Dr. Sue Varma: What I think we need to say to ourselves as parents, and we can also say to our kids, is just because a friendship isn't good forever doesn't mean it was never good. But we all have chapters in our life. Reena, you can point to chapters of friendships, people you were really close with and then you were less close with as different parts of your life unfolded. We need to remember that's true for us. That is true for our kids. It doesn't mean that kids are bad or mean or naughty or cruel. It's that these things evolve over time. One of the things that comes up in girl world, which I know pretty well, is this pressure to be authentic.

22:22Dr. Sue Varma: And I'm being two-faced is sometimes what you'll hear. If I'm nice to her, but don't want to include her on the weekends. And I would say, I think we need to disabuse our kids of the idea that this is two-faced. I think we're going to call it polite. And I think, Reena, honestly, we all do this as adults. You and I have worked in settings with lots of other employees, some of whom make us bananas, right? When they walk into the coffee room, we're not like, I won't speak to you because I don't find you pleasant, right? We're like, hey, how's your family, right? I mean, we keep it polite.

23:04Dr. Traci Baxley: And finally, a note for us parents. When our kid is hurting, our instinct is to march in and fix it. As you'll hear in this next clip from episode 98, my friend's kids are excluding my kid. What should I do? Lisa shares a reminder I think we all need, especially in those heated moments.

23:22Dr. Tovah Klein: We don't know very much about the complexities of kids' social lives, even when we think we do. And when I picture like a seventh grade lunchroom, for me, the activity in that lunchroom is happening in like 50 dimensions. And our kid comes home and tells us one or two dimensions. And any time we want to guide them or weigh in or maybe make a phone call, we want to remember we are 48 dimensions short of understanding what was really going on in that situation. And so our goal largely will be to ask questions, seek guidance, be open-minded. we very rarely have the whole story and we never want to forget that.

24:05Dr. Traci Baxley: Having issues with your good friends is really a normal part of growing up. One of the headlines Lisa shares about this issue is that kids need to know that they don't have to have a humongous social network. What Lisa says they really need is one good friend, a caring adult, and the reassurance that what they're going through is just a normal part of life. If this compilation was helpful, here's how you can go deeper. Every full episode we pulled from today is linked below. So if a clip resonated, you can listen to the whole conversation. And if you're new to Ask Lisa, we hope you'll take a look around.

24:40Dr. Traci Baxley: We put out new episodes every week on Tuesdays, and we've covered everything from screen time and anxiety to college pressure and how to talk with your teens who won't talk back. Whatever you're navigating right now. There's a good chance we've done an episode on it.

24:56Dr. Lisa Damour: Friends, next week marks the start of season seven and the return of new episodes. Things will be kicking off with an episode on executive functioning, all of those organizational skills that our kids need, and frankly, we need

25:08Dr. Sue Varma: to get this school year up and running and moving in the right direction. You're not going to want to miss it. I'll see you next week.

25:18Dr. Traci Baxley: Thanks for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to the Ask Lisa podcast so you get the episodes just as soon as they drop. And send us your questions to asklisa at drlisademore.com. And now a word from our lawyers. The advice provided on this podcast does not constitute or serve as a substitute for professional psychological treatment, therapy, or other types of professional advice or intervention. If you have concerns about your child's well-being, consult a physician or mental health professional. If you're looking for additional resources, check out Lisa's website at drlisademore.com.