Lisa Damour, PhD On The Emotional Lives of Teenagers

27:39but if this is your first teenager or you don't do this for a living, how would you know that? I think it's really hard. Yeah, it seems to break down into two categories. You have the teen who is on the emotional rollercoaster and there's lots of chaos and kind of externalization of emotions that get dumped on the parents. And then you have the young person that internalizes everything and says, I'm fine, goes to their room and shuts the door. So what are the differences in how you interface with those two archetypes that are on the kind of, I mean, it's all on a spectrum of course, but it would seem to me that there would be a differential in like how to think about and approach those two types of young people.

28:27So when I think about teenagers, I often think about them as talkers or not talkers, right? And parents in audiences, you can almost tell by the looks on their faces, who's got which type of teenager. So there are kids who come home and share a huge amount and their kids who come home and are very, very quiet. And that is hard on parents. And it's especially hard on parents when they can tell the kid is in pain. And so what I tried to introduce in this book was how we as psychologists think about emotion regulation, which is that we think about it as a two-sided thing. There's expressing emotions to get relief from them.

29:03and there's actually reining them back in, controlling emotions, which we put actually on equal footing in terms of their value to overall emotion regulation, which may come as a surprise to some people because we've really moved as a culture very much to the side of like, if there's a feeling, the best thing to do is to talk about it, maybe to excavate it, to talk it to death. Sometimes maybe, but we actually see there's a huge wide range of other options that would really be useful. But what I can say fundamentally back to your sort of these extreme examples is our ideal is that you see a little bit of both, both the capacity to gain relief by expressing emotions and the capacity to tame emotions when needed.

29:47And this is true both in the home, around garden variety, adolescent distress. It's also how we think clinically. if a teenager is all expression, if their emotions are running the show, calling all the shots, we actually think, how do we get these more tamed? How do we get these under control? And if a teenager is entirely reserved, shut down, bottled up, we think clinically, okay, what's it gonna take for this young person to find a way to express? So most of the time, kids are actually doing a little bit of both, back and forth. it's not comfortable for them all the time. It's not comfortable for their family all the time, but as far as psychologists are concerned, they're doing great.

30:30What we watch out for are the extremes. Yeah. So in the book, you kind of, you break this down into two different pieces. You have the management of emotions, and then you have the regaining of, you know, kind of control of their kind of emotional regulatory system or their equanimity. And then there's a whole kind of discourse around the, in the management of their emotions, how to discern when this is healthy versus problematic. And just because a teen comes home and like dump some crazy story on you and tells you you're horrible and slams the door, they're externalizing whatever is going on with them emotionally.

31:11That might be a healthy response to whatever's happening to not be reactive to that. that your job is to kind of be, just be placid in the face of that chaos as a stable force for that person and resist the temptation to solve the problem for the child. I think that's right. But what I would say is it's important that we have parameters around how emotions get expressed. So the kid may come home and be really angry and have had a terrible day. And I would never say they shouldn't be given and a lot of room to express their frustration and their annoyance with how the day went down. What we're really gonna train our attention on as psychologists is whether they express those emotions or tame those emotions in ways that bring relief and do no harm, or whether there's a cost to how they're going about it.

32:04So actually, if a kid comes home and just like salts the earth at home as a way to deal with the expression of their frustration, that's costly, right? They're tearing at their relationships at home. That's not something I would wanna allow, right? But that doesn't mean I'd want the parent to, engage with them full blast. But I think there may be room once, things have settled a little bit and cooled off to come back to that teenager and say, look, you have every right to be angry about what happened at school. Like I agree, like that's a pretty lousy thing. You can't express it in a way that damages relationships or hurts other people and you, or you, you can't express it that way.

32:43So here's how you can express it. You can say this, this, and this, and this. You can, if you wanna go out and like kick a soccer ball, if you wanna like, go scream into a pillow, like you can do all these things that have no cost, but you can't come home and lay waste to family life because you had a very bad day. Just like torch the house. And then the half-life of these things is always pretty short. Then it's sort of like, what are you talking about? Like everything's fine. I will tell you, I think the all time art of raising a teenager is not holding a grudge. I think that is really, time is different for them.

33:18I've always felt that teenage years are like dog years, you know, like a year for us is like seven for them. I think an hour for us is like seven for them. So we can still be really sore about something that happened and like truly they are so far past it. They don't even think about what happened. Like you're still thinking about that. Like they're 10 steps down the road, you know? So I think that if we're gonna enjoy our teenagers, which we should, I think a lot of it is saying our piece around behavior when we need to, but then meeting them where they are. And if they're in a better place, like let it go get there.

34:00What about the child who is internalizing everything, who's reclusive, you know, that often leaves the parent in a state of distress because they just don't know what's going on, right? Like they may think, well, that kid doesn't seem well-attuned to his or her environment, doesn't quite seem happy, but we don't really know what's going on. And that can be a real scary place for a parent. And then what is the typical kind of parent response to that? Where do parents go wrong in trying to decipher that and understand what's happening so that they can be of maximum service. Yeah, no, it's interesting.

34:38Sometimes I'll be with an audience and a parent will tell a story about their kid who just talks and talks and talks and complains and complains and complains. And then another panel will raise their hand and say, I wish my kid, I wish my kid were telling me what's going on. Because it is, as you described, it's worrisome to parents. So the first thing I would want to rule out, right? You know, I'm clinician. So we think about like, what do you wanna rule out in terms of how worried to be? So one is like, is the kid using substances? Like a lot, right? And when we think about ways that emotions get tamed, substances are extremely effective and extremely powerful.

35:14And that is one of the kind of high likelihood ways if a kid's gonna handle their emotions, tame them in a way that's gonna be costly, that's a very high likelihood way to do it. So first question I'd have is, is a kid abusing, right? Is a kid using substances in a way that's concerning? And then you deal with that. The other way that kids tame emotions that can be very problematic over time is by sort of chronic distraction. That they have an uncomfortable feeling and then they are on video games for hours. And distraction has its place in helping us maintain our emotional equilibrium. But some kids are working so hard to not feel things that they are constantly distracting themselves.

35:54And often technology is where this is happening. So much so that it starts to cost them in other areas, They're not making friendships, they're not getting their schoolwork done. So in terms of like levels of when to worry about a kid who's very reserved or not sharing with a parent, I would first worry about substances, worry about constant distraction and tackle those as the problems they are. Then they're the kids who just aren't big talkers, right? They're just not big talkers or they're very private. And there are a couple of ways that parents can think about how to change that with their kid.

36:27One is teenagers are organized around autonomy. They wanna become increasingly independent. And so it shouldn't surprise us that they may not be in the mood to answer our questions when we are asking them, right? If we're at dinner, like, okay, how was school? You know, what happened? It happens all the time. The parents are like, the kids like, fine, nothing, right? And so one thing I was so delighted to discover in writing this book is something that was happening in my home. And then I think a lot of families think is just happening in their home is that the kid who tells them nothing after school, at dinner, asking great questions, parents getting nothing, waits until the parent is in bed and then is suddenly standing there as chatty as can be.

37:13And when I realized this was like near universal, like this was happening in so many homes, I thought, okay, well, this is fascinating. And what I think is happening is the teenager is satisfying two needs at once. They wanna be autonomous, but they wanna connect with the parent. And so if they wait till we're in bed, they decide if there's gonna be a meeting, they decide the content of the meeting because they know we're not gonna bring up new topics at that time and they decide when it ends. So what I would say is maybe your kid's not a nighttime talker, but I have become increasingly aware there are kids who don't wanna talk when the parent wants to talk, but they will text with the parents or they will have conversations in the car that they need a lot of tight control over the conversation in order to have it.

37:57The other scenario that comes up is that the teenager doesn't wanna talk because the parent stepped in it. The parent did something when they did talk that made the kid uncomfortable about opening up. And when I've asked teenagers, like, you know that thing where you're clearly upset and your parents asking what's wrong and you're just shaking them off, shaking them off. They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, what's the deal? Like, what's the deal? And they're like, well, there's a few different reasons. So the reasons they give me, they say, well, sometimes it's because we know what you're gonna say.

38:34So I'm upset because I messed up my math test. And it's the math test that you asked me if I was ready for. And I told you I was, but it turns out I was not. And so if I tell you that that's the issue, I'm gonna basically get an I told you so. And I don't wanna hear it. So I can't tell you. Another reason they'll give me is they'll say, you're gonna blab, right? So I'm gonna tell you about something that's happening for me or a friend. And then the next thing I know, you're gonna be on the horn either with the school or with the neighbor or with your sister. And I did not mean for this to leave the house.

39:06And so I'm not telling you stuff. And then I thought this was so beautiful. And a girl said to me, here's the deal. By the time I get home, I am 90 % of the way over whatever I was upset about. And rehashing the whole thing from my parents is not gonna help me feel better. So I think we sometimes wanna be attentive that like they know us, we may have stepped in it. And if we have, we have to apologize and try to repair that. And I think teenagers can be pretty forgiving. If you're earnestly apologetic, I think you can open channels of communication. There's so much in that. Yeah, I mean, allowing the teen to set the parameters for these types of discussions, not trying to force them, trying to refrain from judgment or, or stepping on these landmines that are typically the things that cut off communication, resisting the urge to try to solve the problem or step in and intervene, or like tell some story about what happened to you when you were that age, which is like the worst.

40:09You wanna end the conversation. I would say that's the last thing they wanna hear. When I was a teenager is like the most conversation ending thing you can possibly say as a parent, I know. When I was a teenager. I know. I mean, I've just learned, because we have a quieter child and it's funny because just the other night, like that exact thing happened, like right when I was going to bed, you know? And you have to just, like you live for those moments because you can't compel them. So you have to like be in a place of sort of surrender around it. And then when they happen, you have to have the, you like have to have the awareness like, oh, okay.

40:48I have to turn on now because this is a fleeting thing. You know, it doesn't happen that often. It requires a lot of patience. It does, it really, really does. So here's how I think we summon that patience. First of all, this is really short-lived. And one of the things I'm so glad about is that I was practicing before I had kids and I had so many people I was caring for, so many parents say, oh my gosh, it goes so fast. Like they're out so fast because my personality is a bit more on the controlling side. And I know that if I didn't have that professional reminder all of the time of how short lived this would be, I know I would have been like, clean up your shoes, they're in the wrong place and let me go to sleep.

41:32I mean, I know I would have demanded more in that way. And so, and now I have a kid in college, right? And it's true. And so for me in those moments where I'm like, oh, really right now, I think, you know what? in three years, I would give my left arm to have you come in to talk to me, right? Like I'm not gonna know where you are at 11 o 'clock at night. So I think that helps. And then the other thing I think is more important than it's ever been is that the single most powerful force for adolescent mental health is strong relationships with caring adults. So we have to meet them more than halfway.

42:07We just have to. I think most parents are caring, but they don't know how to deploy that care in a helpful manner, right? It goes back to good intentions gone awry. So when they say, how was school, which I do every day, like I make all these mistakes. It's very, by the way, it's very refreshing that you spent your entire life studying this stuff still. Oh, God. You know, it gets it wrong. But yeah, of course, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I feel like they need to know that they're safe. I try to reserve judgment. Like to me, maintaining that open channel of communication is the most important thing.

42:52And the minute you inject any kind of like judgment into it or attitude about like a certain behavior or thing, like that's only gonna restrict, that's gonna, like you said earlier, it's gonna make them think twice about opening up to you next time. Yeah, it's funny. The thing, my favorite thing to do is to be with teenagers and just ask, what does it adults do that doesn't work for you? Or what is it that adults don't understand? And one thing I've been hearing from them a lot is don't compare us, don't compare us. I think so often, again, in a well-meaning way, parents are like, your brother didn't do that.

43:29Or why can't you be more like, or when I was a teenager, like I did it. and it just rubs them the wrong way so much. You know, Betty's son is doing great. Yeah, what's up with you? And again, I'm with you. I don't think any parent is setting out to do wrong by their kid. Like I think we are desperate to do right by our kids. And there's almost nothing in parenting that I would point to that is not well-intentioned. But the best thing about teenagers is that they will tell us straight up what does and does not work for them. and I think we need to take it seriously. So we talked a little bit about the managing of the emotions part, and then there's the regaining control aspect.

44:16How are teens, what are they looking to to kind of self-regulate? Like, is it taking a bath with essential oils or is it going on a video game for six hours or sticking their head in a bong? Like it can be all of these different things, right? And I thought what was really interesting in the book was, look, if a kid has a hard day and they come home and then there's one example of one teen who then plays a video game for an hour or whatever, and that's what he needs to kind of like downregulate. And then he gets what he needs out of it. And then he's ready to like focus on his homework or like, he's okay, right?

44:54That's very different from the person who can't stop scrolling or has a more malignant relationship to whether it's technology or substance or whatever it is. And so from the parental point of view, again, it goes back to how do you discern the healthy response versus the unhealthy one? So there's two ways to slice this. One is we really have to be deliberate about allowing taming efforts to be seen as a healthy response at all. Like I think our culture is so much defaulted right now to if my kid's upset, the script I'm operating on is they come home, they tell me what they're upset about. I give them good advice, they feel better.

45:36That's the script. Yeah, it's a terrible script. Or rarely, it just doesn't happen that often, right? So the first thing we have to do is actually expand our understanding of what the options are. So ways that kids can manage a bad day that are entirely acceptable in the canon of psychological research would be coming home and rolling around on the floor with the dog for a while, right? or coming home and going for a run because that helps them feel better or taking a shower or maybe hopping on a video game just for a little while. What we're always gonna measure is whether there's a cost associated, right?

46:12So there's a lot of ways that kids regulate emotion that first of all, we don't even recognize and value that I think we need to. And then if a parent starts to be uncomfortable, like, I don't know, they've been on the video game for a while, right? This is going on and on. The way to evaluate it is what's the cost of this, right? Is there work they're supposed to be doing? Have they been sedentary for a long time? Are they not seeing friends? And that's the measure. Like we just don't want there to be a price tag attached to what kids do. But the fun thing about caring for teenagers and getting to write about them is to really celebrate, like they're good at regulating emotion.

46:51And one of the big ones, huge in the lives of teenagers is actually music. You know, that they will come home and they'll use it both to express emotion and actually to contain emotion. So it happens all the time that if a kid is sad, like I would say most teenagers have a sad playlist, like they actually collect this music, that they will come home or wherever they are, they'll be sad and they will deliberately put on their sad playlist with the intention of crying alongside it to express the emotions so that they can get to feeling better faster. and it works beautifully, harmless, effective.

47:26The same teenager or other teenagers will sometimes actually have mood countering music. Like they'll be in a bad place or they'll have low energy. And so they have their upbeat or pump up or I had a teenager describe it as a yeah, yeah, yeah playlist. That was a great name. And so they're always using these extraordinary adaptive tools. And I think as adults, we too often miss it. And we think, why aren't they talking to us about their feelings? when in fact they've got such good stuff going on. How do you get them to be so open with you? Oh, well, first of all, I'm not their parent. Yeah, I mean.

48:01Yeah, second of all, they know it's time limited. I also think, and I'm sad about this. I also think it's not that often the teenagers encounter adults who are absolutely fascinated by them in a totally benign way. and I hope it is totally benign, I believe it is. We're pretty biased against teenagers as a culture. Like you can say about teenagers things you could and never should say, you shouldn't say about teenagers, about any other group, right? I mean, people are wholesale dismissive of teenagers. You know, they're so impulsive, they're so difficult. You know, I mean, it's extraordinary actually what we allow ourselves to say about teenagers and teenagers are well aware of that, that adults often cast a sort of, you know, unpleasant eye on them.

48:51And I am absolutely convinced that teenagers can smell at 300 yards, you know, adults who don't regard them, you know, with a whole lot of respect. And they can also smell at 300 yards adults who, honestly, I just love them. I love them. It's clear. I mean, your curiosity, your fascination with them. Yeah. It's very, it's disarming. Oh, well, and I think for teenagers, they're like, all right, lady, like you're like really asking. So we will really tell you. Right. Somebody just had to ask earnestly. Yeah. And you like seem to really want an answer and you're not gonna fight us when we tell you the answer.

49:26Right. I was speaking at a school recently to upper school, high school, and I heard, I had a great conversation with the teenagers. Like we had a great time, but I heard after the fact that they were like, oh, we have a speaker. Oh man, is she gonna talk to us about social media? Like that they were just waiting to just have a grownup come down on them. Like they're so accustomed to it. Right. So we can't pivot to talk about social media right now. Well, let's go back to the COVID thing. I mean, that was a big impetus for you writing this book. And obviously there's no shortage of press out there about what's happening with teens.

50:07That is a direct or indirect results of lockdowns and what everyone experienced, the rates of loneliness and depression and suicide, et cetera, are like through the roof, it's pretty alarming. So how are you thinking about this? Like, give me your take on what it is that teens specifically had to endure during that period of time and the sort of short and long-term impact that it's having on their development. Yeah, I mean, it was, I had in my home, I had a high schooler and elementary school student. So I was living with it in my home. And the isolation alone was torture for a lot of teenagers.

50:56They are just not designed to be stuck at home with their parents. It's really the opposite of what they should be doing. And we saw all sorts of things, right? Incredibly sad teenagers. we saw an explosion of eating disorders and huge anxiety that in some ways we've seen the aftermath of the anxiety or the impact of that more now that we're asking kids to be out in the world, right? When kids were required to be at home, they were anxious, but they weren't asked to do anything. So their anxiety didn't actually get stirred up. But we are seeing now across like all districts, like regardless of socioeconomic status, incredible school truancy or chronic absenteeism or you can call it a lot of things, but kids just not going to school.

51:40Like that is something we are continuing to see. So there were things we know we saw in the pandemic. There's some things we know we're seeing now. So we are seeing the school truancy question. I think we're still waiting on the data on what the longer term effects will be. There was a report that just came out that was very concerning that reported a lot of, it was the CDC report, a lot of loneliness, a lot of despair. What's tricky about that report is those data were collected in the fall of 2021. And they were asking about mood over the previous year. So when those data came out in February of this year, I went and actually looked at some writing I had done around that time in the fall of 2021 about where were teenagers.

52:23They were so miserable, like as a group, they were so miserable because what was happening for them as they were starting their third school year disrupted by the pandemic. And so even kids who were going back, they were often going back in masks, which they had strong feelings about. A lot of kids were really anxious about returning socially. A lot of kids were really scared about getting COVID. And even the kids for whom things on the surface looked really good, they were telling me they're gonna take it all away. Like we're gonna settle back in and it's gonna all get ripped away from us again.

52:56So I'm grateful for those data because they map onto what we were seeing at the time. And I think the thing that's so hard is there's such a long lag between the collection of the data and the release of the data. So I'm very eager to see, you know, what we find out in a year because anecdotally we're seeing like in general, kids who are able to go to school and are back at school in general, like they look pretty good, right? We have kids who continue to suffer tremendously more than there were before the pandemic, but there also was suffering before the pandemic. And we have kids who without question were knocked off of their developmental trajectory by the pandemic.

53:34But on the whole, a lot of teenagers are looking like teenagers, in the ways that I have recognized for my whole career. So we're still trying to figure it out. Right, so that study, I mean, I saw a study recently, I don't know if it's the same one that said something like six out of 10 girls were reported being persistently sad or hopeless, or something like 30 % of teen girls had contemplated suicide. I don't know if that's the same one. So it's reporting back from that period of time. So then the question becomes how resilient are they? Are they bouncing back or not? What can we learn and where might we be going wrong by reading too much into this, I suppose.

54:21That is a worry I have, which is when those data come out and a lot of the way it gets reported, leaves readers with the impression and these are fresh numbers. I think it's very scary to parents. And then I have concerns as a psychologist of like, well, if we terrify parents, that does not actually make it easier for them to serve as a steady presence in the face of adolescent emotionality. So there's this very delicate dance of both wanting to raise awareness, making sure we are incredibly attentive to warning signs and when we should be very concerned about teenagers and speeding them towards care versus also not - Projecting all of that.

55:02Putting everybody on the ceiling. Right. The other wrinkle to that also has to do with gender differences, which we haven't talked about yet. In the most general sense, girls are gonna be more likely to kind of report their emotions, right? Whereas boys process these challenging times differently and perhaps are more likely to be acting out than reporting that they're anxious or depressed or sad, right? So that also skews the viability of those data points. Yeah, right. I mean, so these are self-report studies. So they're asking about distress. The girls who were surveyed reported a great deal of distress.

55:47Exactly what you said, we would expect to see the corollary. One of the rules in psychology is girls collapse in on themselves under distress. us boys tend to act out. I don't know that you're gonna get a super faithful accounting all the time of boys describing all of the ways they were hard on their family or the people around them as an expression of distress. And so the girls do come out looking pretty bad relative to boys, but I'm not sure that's a very detailed or subtle or nuanced picture of what was happening for boys who also can mask their sadness just by withdrawal. Right, but even under the most kind of liberal or generous review of that study or those data points, it's clear like it's not great.

56:29No, it's not great. No matter how you split it, like it's a shit show and we should be paying attention and trying to understand what was driving that and how to kind of course correct that, right? Like similarly, we had a now 13 year old and it was really hard, really hard, like very lonely and very difficult. And of course, the isolation is gonna drive more screen time, more social media usage, which is then compelling that person to be in that mode of comparison. And these people are living their lives this way, but I'm over here and like that's driving low self-esteem. Like there's a lot going on there, right?

57:10So, social media is not benign in any of this. So, how do you wrap your head around that or speak about that when you go out and talk to kids in schools and in your counseling. So the social media research is complicated. The views on it are complicated. Here's my take on it. I have a lot of thoughts about it, but here's some. One is when I think about kids in the pandemic and social media, part of me is like, thank goodness they had a way to stay plugged in. I mean, can you imagine if during our own adolescence, we were stuck in the house like we were? Three channels. Three channels and one phone line, right?

57:52I mean, that would have been even worse, I think in many ways. So their ability to stay connected had value. the thing that made me nervous and continues to make me very nervous about social media is the algorithm driven nature of what kids are presented. And so that anything a kid, I think most people know this, but I think it's still worth articulating, actually anything a kid or that we spends time looking at or searches for or likes or comments on the algorithms driving these social media platforms will pick that data up and then present them more of that in the aim of getting them to not be able to look away.

58:31And what I think about with those algorithms are norms, that teenagers are very vulnerable to the norms in their environment. And so when I think back to the, like the eating disorders finding, where we just saw so many eating disorders in the pandemic, there's a pretty decent consensus that probably what drove a lot of that is that we have kids who are home, they have tons of time on their hands, they have tons of like energy to do something. so they do a little searching for fitness or weight control or whatever, the algorithms pick this up and start flooding their feeds with imagery related to dieting or advice on dieting.

59:11And in the absence of leaving the home, doing other things, looking at other people, this becomes the norm. And it no longer seems strange to ultra diet, do things that are actually really, really dangerous. And so when I worry about social media, what I worry about is that it can shift the norms for kids and change what they think to be typical. And so there were a couple of situations that I was aware of clinically where it was actually the older sister who went to parents about, I think it was in both cases, a 13 year old boy saying, you all need to know, he went down a white supremacy rabbit hole and is way down it.

59:55And the parents like didn't know, didn't really have a way to know. But for these boys who are home, nothing else going on, this becomes normed and things that should be horrifying start to just become kind of standard. Right, gets normalized. Yeah. Yeah, it's really scary. You know, obviously in the teen girl context, it's issues around body dysmorphia, et cetera, you know, that can be quite pernicious. But there's something particularly scary about the lonely disenfranchised young male teen who is looking for an identity and is vulnerable and stumbles upon whether it's Andrew Tate or some other kind of emblem of toxic masculinity that is then telling that person something that's nourishing them in a negative way, unbeknownst to oversight or parents or anything like that.

1:00:54I mean, this is pervasive, right? And that young person who can kind of unbeknownst to their parents or whoever for a period of time is down a certain kind of rabbit hole like that. This becomes a very volatile, potentially dangerous situation. Like Scott Galloway talks about this all the time, I'm like that, the lonely young man can be a very dangerous thing. And there is a certain type of crisis around that right now. Yeah, no, we're worried about that. And yet in the spirit of not terrifying parents and leaving it there, one of the things I would say is make sure you know what's on your kids for you page of TikTok, right?

1:01:34I mean, that there are ways for parents to acquaint themselves with what's - That's tricky though. I know. That is very, as a, like I can tell you, So, there's all kinds of Finsta accounts and like multiple accounts. I, it's very hard for a parent to like delicately dance around that. Like you want your child to have some autonomy and respect their privacy, not be invasive while also being able to kind of monitor that is easier said than done. It is true, it is true. The other thing I would say is delay delay as much as you can on social media. When I talk with high schoolers, they're like, we're not the ones you need to be worried about.

1:02:16It's the seventh graders. And I think that's often - Why is that? I think that they're, you know, seventh graders are, you know, 12 to 13, they're very concrete in their thinking. They're not necessarily able to stand back from what they're looking at and wonder like, what is behind this or why might this be happening? I don't think it's true that the high schoolers are entirely insulated from it anymore, but I also take them at their word that if you really wanna worry about this, like you should be worried about the seventh graders or the eighth graders who are going down these roads. And one thing parents can consider is when kids are asking for access, a lot of times it's so they can stay connected and be connected.

1:02:55And a lot of times having the ability to text their friends will go pretty far for a while. That when we give kids technology or we give kids phones, I don't think parents should feel like they hand over the whole thing at once. You can give, I have given a young teenager a phone that has no browser, no social media apps, the ability to text and ride that as long as you can while the brain is developing and perspective is coming in. Yeah, you talk about this in the book, like the young person is so desperate to get onto these social media apps that you're in a position of power to dictate terms, right?

1:03:32So you're like, okay, well, we'll do that. But then I'm gonna have to be, I'm gonna have to have the login credential. And so like, they'll agree to that because they wanna be on online so badly. Absolutely. I missed that whole boat by the way. Well, a lot of parents do, right? I mean, it's mostly it's a hazard to be a psychologist parent occasionally though, it gives me the leg up, right? Because I've seen these things before I have to do them in my own home. And I think truly what it is, is that kids wanna be able to show their friends they have the device. I mean, often like that is more powerful than I think a lot of adults realize.

1:04:06And so you truly can say, all right, you want the device, you can have the device, and it will have all these parameters around it and it also will not go in your bedroom, right? That's a great one to start with. And if you can ride that all the way through high school, that is fantastic. But if that has already been breached, good luck reversing that. It is very hard to get that horse back in the barn. I will be the first to admit. So all those parents of younger kids out there, this is a great rule to start with as opposed to try to implement later. And kids will agree to anything to get their hands on the device.

1:04:39So make the most of your leverage in that moment. Yeah, I often think about the ratio, like it's how you interface and use these things, right? Like, are you using them to create or to consume? Like in a very binary sense, like are you like on Photoshop and making cool photo, you know, sharing, making videos that you can share. Is there some kind of creative stimulation aspect to it where you're contributing or are you just receiving and consuming? And then beyond that on, you know, the kind of social piece, I found to your point about how teenagers are so creatively adaptive, like during the pandemic and even now I found like, our kids will just have FaceTime on with their friend and like, they're not, it's just on in the room while they're doing homework or doing whatever else.

1:05:28So they feel connected to somebody else, even though they're alone in their room. and maybe they'll talk to each other here and there, but it's just like this idea like, oh, we're together even though we're not together. Like that's a use case that I don't think any adult would have ever conceptualized, but I think that's a pretty common thing now, right? Absolutely. Which is cool. Like I think that's a good, like that's a cool workaround for that piece of technology. Yeah, no, it's very sweet. I know a lot of kids who study that way, and I've entertained it myself at times. So, you have a big bunch of work and you feel sort of isolated with it.

1:06:03If you weren't alone, you'd feel better. It's an interesting, I'll tell you where it takes a very interesting turn is it can make adolescent romances very wall to wall. You know, that when teenagers are dating one another, it's not uncommon for them to wake up, text each other, good morning, have each other on all the time, be in constant contact. I mean, honestly, vastly more connection than I have with my own spouse. in terms of just like - Right, like, sounds terrible. But - Well, they like it. But then what's interesting is if the relationship ends, I mean, the size of the hole it leaves in the young person's life is just enormous because they have had such pervasive connection.

1:06:54What about the notion of, you know, group identity and the politics around that. Like I just can't fathom being a teenager and being able to know what everyone in my class is doing all the time, you know, whether I'm included, whether I'm disincluded, and if I'm disincluded, being able to like see them out in the world doing that thing that I wasn't invited to do. And then in the comments section, everybody, you know, taking others down a peg and the bullying that happens there. Like it just sounds horrific. I know, I know. Don't you look at that and think, oh, we were so lucky. 100%. So lucky.

1:07:35Like we were just naive to all the things we weren't invited to and missed it all. The psychic pain that that must cause. And you must see that in your practice every day. I do. And I truly will say, you know, it's interesting. There are things that we can collapse that we don't wanna collapse. So we don't wanna collapse social media or technology. Cause like you say, Like these have a lot of facets that are interesting and often adaptive for kids. And we also don't wanna collapse teenager because truly 12, 13, 14 is so different from 16, 17, 18 in terms of their ability to navigate these things.

1:08:10So where I would say the really exquisite pain around what you're just describing, that's younger teens, 12, 13, 14, because they are still working so hard to establish identity and they are still trying to figure out where they fit in. and they don't have that solidified usually yet. And so it is exquisitely painful and they are watching that so, so, so attentively. Whereas typically, and this is a little delayed by the pandemic, but it's I think coming back to more the norms we've known before. By sophomore year, 15 years old, kids tend to be like, nope, I know who my friends are and I know what we're up to.

1:08:48And I'm not so anxious about what everybody else is doing. And so just in terms of trying to narrow the scope of when parents wanna be really attentive about this or when they wanna worry or when they wanna try to delay, delay, delay on access, it's not all of adolescence. It's I would say through seventh, eighth, maybe early ninth grade where that is the hardest. I'm just imagining the marginalized kid who isn't invited then goes home and compulsively goes online to see, to kind of bear witness to the thing that he was disincluded from. And that only feeds like a deeper sense of insecurity and lowering the self-esteem, et cetera.

1:09:34And yes, as you get a little bit older and you kind of emerge out of that, but that's gonna calcify, right? And then that's gonna become very difficult to repair once that sense of self-identity kind of cements. It could be, it could be. Whereas prior to that, sorry to interrupt, but like prior to that, yeah, they're just included, but they go home and they forget about it because they have other things that nourish them outside of the classroom. But to your point earlier, like you're never away, like you're always connected, you're always on. Yeah. And that piece, I mean, it's just so much information, right?

1:10:10To try to metabolize and take in. what I will say is thank goodness for the kids you're describing we are now back in a position where there could be activities that that kid could be participating in things that could be set up in terms of after school so maybe maybe it's not going great with the peer landscape at school but then I would say get that kid busy with other things right that they need to be in traffic patterns where they're around other kids where they may find other friends And part of what was so horrible about the pandemic is that all of that went away. And the other thing that went away that we don't talk about nearly enough is that part of what is so important for teenagers is actually connection with caring adults outside the home.

1:10:58That so much of what's good for teenagers happens with like the fabulous teacher, the fabulous coach or the great boss or whatever. And teenagers lost all that too in the pandemic. And so when we're looking for explanations of where things wanna arrive for teenagers, that's one that I think like deserves a lot more consideration than we've given it. Yeah. I think that's a really important point that the impact of, you know, coaches, mentors, teachers, like it takes a village kind of thing. And even before the pandemic, you know, we have seen the, you know, kind of exacerbation of isolation, the dissolution of the kind of village notion of how we live and certainly in Los Angeles, it's so dispersed.

1:11:46The notion of community is theoretical at best. So I think there's a general kind of denigration of that notion that COVID and the lockdowns and all of that just exacerbated. And now even on the other side of it, we still haven't, I mean, we're still kind of in the wake of it, right? Like still it's like, well, we'll Zoom for that instead of go to like we've acclimated to certain lifestyle habits because of that experience that I don't think are necessarily all that healthy and definitely not in service to the young people. I think that's right. So then if we think about, okay, well, so there's an opening.

1:12:27You know, I think about all of us looking at these youth mental health headlines, worried about the crisis. And what I would say is even if you're not yourself of raising teenagers, you can help with this, right? That there are ways in which adults can make meaningful connections with teenagers, either through mentorship or being a great boss or being an incredible neighbor or an incredible uncle, right? I mean, sometimes teenagers will have like really powerful relationships with family members who aren't their parents that will help them through incredible things. Sure, they need that because they can't hear it from their parents.

1:13:01Like the parents are not supposed to be the people who are kind of, let me sit you down and give you the life advice. They don't wanna hear from their parents, but they will hear it from that other elder that they sort of respect and maybe revere who just has that ability to connect with them that a parent will never be able to have. Yeah, no, I would say a huge percentage of my clinical work is saying the exact same thing that the parents themselves would say or have said. But they can hear it from you. But they can get it from me. Yeah, I mean, I'm like, I'm sorry that I need to charge you for this because you are covering this at home, but this, yeah, that's a lot of the work.

1:13:37Yeah, and when those moments arise and the kid is talking to you, another mantra that I always use is just tell me more. Like instead of, let me tell you how to fix this, or I can't believe you, like judgment, like not trying to solve the problem, not telling them what they did wrong, but just, oh, that must be hard. Like, tell me more about what that must be like. Like if I can, and I'm not saying I'm great at this, but when I can do that, like that seems to be something that will, create a little bit of a safe zone that will make the kid open up even a little bit more. Yeah, I'll tell you my version of that is I am, I always work with the assumption that teenagers have two sides, that they have a, the side that maybe did the dumb thing and it's impulsive and maybe immature and maybe self-centered.

1:14:28and they also have a side that is philosophical and broad-minded and you know an excellent self-advocate and deeply thoughtful and so even when a kid is telling me about something that feels you know like they should totally not have done that or you know like it was just a really bonehead move one of the ways I'll try to engage it is I'll try to talk to the broad-minded side about what happened. Like, gosh, that's so not like you. Like, what do you make of that? Like, how do you understand that you did that? And I find they usually rise to it. Like that the side of the teenager you talk to is the side you end up in conversation with.

1:15:08So if you come down on him, like, what was that? Well, then you're gonna get, you don't understand. And that reactive part of the teenager. And even if you don't see it, if you talk to that vastly more mature side it will usually show up. And how do you balance that against the idea that, you know, young people need guardrails. They wanna, you know, they feel more secure when they know there are rules and there's, you know, ramifications for breaking those rules. And not that anybody should be some kind of rigorous taskmaster, but there is wisdom in kind of reinforcing some kind of framework around what's okay and what's not.

1:15:47and there's ramifications for those breaches. I think they can live side by side. So when we look at the research and when we distill all of it on like what kids need at home, it's two things. They need warmth and they need structure. So I think you can actually bring both. So say a kid does something really that they should not have done. You can have the structure of saying, all right, that comes with consequences, right? You've brought, you know, it was a breach of trust. We gotta be able to trust you to let you go out and about. So you will be hanging out with us for the next couple of weekends.

1:16:18And then the warmth can come and be like, what happened? Like, that's so not like you. Like it's not an either or. Right. And I would just say, you know, if parents are like, where am I supposed to be in all of this? If they just keep going back to that idea, you wanna be warm. They wanna, you wanna feel, you want your kids to feel that you both love them and also actually like them. And you wanna have structure that there should be a predictability to family life, that the rules should make sense, that the rules should be enforced, that kids are gonna know what's gonna happen. And kids do like rules.

1:16:50Teenagers do like rules. They don't like loosey goosey adults. I think all the time about moments in my practice where a teenager would float in front of me something like, oh, we were over at Susie's house and Susie's mom will buy for us. And they put it out in this way, like, you know, and I would go, really? And they go, I know, it's so weird. I don't know why she does that. And I've learned that they'll often present something kind of neutrally to like check to see how you respond. And even when they've seemed to be neutral to like positive about it, if I've stayed with my gut and been like, what?

1:17:32They're like, thank you, right? They're so glad. I think of another example, I was caring for the kid of a pediatrician in my community. and it came up that she was having, her boyfriend was staying overnight in her bedroom and they were in high school. So in America, like that's not really very typical. And I said, oh, your folks are okay with that? And she said, I know, I don't know why they are. And she had presented it like, yeah, this is just kind of happening. And when I called the question, it turns out she was asking me a question and telling me about it. That's super interesting. Wild.

1:18:12Yeah. The best thing, here's the thing about teenagers. They are like so able to detect dishonesty and hypocrisy like so much better than at any point in life, like better than kids, better than adults. And they really, really respect honesty. Like they really respect it. And so sometimes if I'm doing an intake with a kid who's in my office because they've gotten themselves in trouble with drinking or something like that, I will say, are you worried about your drinking? Like that's usually how I'll start by asking. And sometimes kids will say actually yes, you know, and then we're off to one conversation.

1:18:52And sometimes they'll say, no, or I don't know. And I will say, I don't know yet how I feel about your drinking. I'm just going to keep you posted. But based on what you're telling me, I'm not so sure that this is working for you or that this is safe, what you're describing. And I'm amazed by how accepting they are of that. Like they would so much rather you play your cards face up, even if they don't like your cards, then have it seem like you're bluffing. Yeah, I mean, I think the bullshit detector is super finely tuned at that age and is very strategically and effectively weaponized against the parent at just the right time.

1:19:34Like, you know what I mean? I mean, like they know, because no parent's perfect, right? And teenagers are paying attention and they know a lot more about who you are and how you behave than you might realize. And, you know, don't, you know, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. And so when the parent comes down on the teen, don't be surprised when the barb that comes back is just, you know, absolutely savage. Yeah, and dead on. Right, savage in the most honest and like insightful way that will bring you to your knees. It'll be brutal. And I have in myself, I'm compulsively honest. Like I just like, and I think that's why I like teenagers.

1:20:18Cause I feel like if I'm doing right by them, like if they feel like I'm all right by them, then I feel like that I must be on the right. That's like, that's a very insightful thing to understand I think. Yeah, no, they have very high standards and you can lose their faith quickly. But it was interesting. I was at a school where I was asking kids what they wanted me to tell their parents when I met with their parents later in the evening. And they said all sorts of things that I thought were fair and I was writing them down. And one kid said, could you tell my parents to please remove all the screen time restrictions?

1:20:55And I said, yeah, I'm not doing that. And she was like, okay. Like she would have really thought less of me I was like, sure. I gave it a shot. Yeah, I was like, and she was like, okay. And so I encourage people to just play their cards face up with teenagers. One final thing I wanted to ask you about the COVID stuff before we move off of that completely is something I've noticed around just how teens are kind of processing and dealing with a low grade kind of chronic fear. Like if COVID did anything, it kind of taught young people like the world's a scary place. You should be afraid. There's this invisible thing out there that might harm you and you need to wear masks or stay at home or stay away from people.

1:21:41And then on top of that, policy decisions that were controversial and maybe we can't trust adults to do the right thing. And it creates a very insecure, kind of unstable perspective of the world as your mind is developing. and the kind of residue of that, I think still persists. Like, there are kids who even now it seems relatively safe or like, but they insist on wearing masks when they're outdoors and things like that. And I was like, what is going on? Like, this is like not a healthy way to kind of navigate the world thinking that a terrible thing could happen at any moment. And we should all be very afraid all the time.

1:22:25Like that has to be the mentality that would drive that kind of behavior. Yeah, I mean, I really don't know that we've wrapped our heads around how the pandemic rocked us. And I think actually for a lot of people it was a real loss of innocence, around like how the world operates. And I mean, I think so, so if we think back to like, I'd place it around March 13th, 14th of 2020 when you were living your life one way one day and then completely upended the next. So I think it has jarred teenagers. And I think there are kids who started to use avoidance and withdrawal as a way to manage that distress and that stuck.

1:23:06And then that can happen. Avoidance feeds anxiety. The more you avoid what you fear, the more you become afraid of it and continue to avoid. But I think there's also something even bigger than that, which is teenagers, like they follow the news. And unfortunately for them and for all of us, the news is with us now all day, every day. And they think about things like climate change. They think about gun violence a lot. There are a lot of kids who are really anxious every day in school because of fears around guns. And I know there's questions about like this mental health concern, the rising mental health concerns we're seeing.

1:23:44And is it the sort of the times and is it made? And people will say, well, but there was like, you know, we grew up in the Cold War. where there was always a sense of like, you know, possible nuclear war. And then there was the World War II before that. And I think, and so people will dismiss the kind of, you know, do me explanation for why teenagers are distressed. But I think like, okay, but when I was a teenager, the Cold War came to mind every once in a while, right? If I happened to read a paper about it, it wasn't all my - Except when the day after - Oh, that was horrible. Which is the worst and I'll never forget that.

1:24:17But okay, so that was a single exposure to media about it and like the jarring impact it had on us, right? Whereas kids now are - All day long, every day. All day long. When I say to teenagers, here's what you need to understand about why this is so stressful for you. I said, it used to be that there was the morning paper and the evening news and nothing in between. And they can't even believe it. And what a gift that was too. So I think that there's both the jarring reality of having a virus upend our lives, which is not something any of us, I mean, we knew theoretically, but like it was like Hollywood movie, it wasn't a real thing.

1:24:53But I also think we have to acknowledge that there are very frightening things that teenagers, I think in particular feel saddled with like school violence and also the climate crisis as it unfolds that they also are confronted with a lot in a given day. Yeah, it is a lot. And it's the persistent nature of it. Like it's just dripping into their awareness constantly all day long. And they're fed by algorithms that are prioritizing extreme hits like that. Yeah, yeah. So what do we do? So part of what I think is there have to be parameters around how much kids have their phones, right? And so this is why I love not having them in bedrooms.

1:25:44If you can set that up, why I love it when kids are busy, not over scheduled, but busy, doing stuff that just has them engaged, has them in theater groups, has them in sports, has them making things, has them helping in the community. We're not getting rid of technology in kids' lives. I think the goal so much in parenting is to make sure that it doesn't dominate a kid's day. One of the things that I loved that you initially ask a kid who comes into your office is how you're sleeping, right? But it's like, before we even do anything or talk about anything, like what does your self-care look like?

1:26:24Like, are you even able to, you know, be present with me? Cause you're not, are you overlooking like one of the most fundamental things about just being okay in your body? Yeah, no, it's, I'm almost hesitant to talk about sleep because I think everybody knows it. We've all heard it. We know we're supposed to do it. And yet the data on it are so ridiculously clear about it being the glue that holds us together. And in that story in the book, it's about a kid whose best friend has been killed in an accident. The kid is devastated, of course, and there's gonna be a lot of work to do to help him through.

1:27:01But I have learned clinically that when people are in crisis, especially, I will start with a question of sleep. And if they're sleeping, we will get down to work on working through the crisis. And if they're not sleeping, I will get down to work on figuring out how to help them sleep so that we even have a chance of getting them through. And I think that this is something that we underestimate. And one of the questions that comes up a lot now is like, what about kids where they can't get care? Like they actually need care and they can't get care and it's getting better, but it's still not great.

1:27:36And part of what contributed to the adolescent mental health crisis was both the surge in need And the reality that caring for teenagers is a highly specialized field. Very few of us do it. And it's basically impossible to scale up the workforce. And so the two together made for a really tough situation for teenagers. So there have been a lot of teenagers on wait lists. There still are a lot of teenagers on wait lists. And what I'll say to parents is, look, it's not a substitute for therapy, but make sure your kid is sleeping. Make sure your kid is physically active. Make sure they're eating well enough.

1:28:11have them do purposeful things, put them in positions where they're doing service or activities. These things don't take the place of a really good clinician doing really good work, but they go very, very far, often in both reducing mental health concerns and certainly in helping to prevent them. It's the low hanging fruit. I mean, if I'm not sleeping or I'm not exercising or eating right or hydrating or doing any number of those things, I'm gonna feel depressed and like shit. Absolutely. So we can go down a therapeutic rabbit hole, but like fundamentally, like if you correct those things, I'm not saying it's gonna solve somebody's, you know, mental health crisis, but at least it will get you to some kind of baseline.

1:28:54So you know what you're dealing with. Absolutely, absolutely. And what I love about that is first of all, we know it's true, like the data are so clear. And second of all, it is what parents can do at home. The parents don't have to feel helpless when their kid is suffering. It's hard when the phone's in the bedroom though. I know. Late nights. Okay, so let's hit this on. Let's hit this head on. If you're like, but my kid already has the phone in the room. I gotta get it out. Like, what can you try? Let me give you some suggestions. No over promising here, but some suggestions. I think first of all, none of us should have our phones in our rooms.

1:29:27I don't have my phone in my room. And so one thing a parent might do is to say, okay, we're making a family wide rule. Like it's all coming out for all of us. And of course the teenager will be like, no, no, no, no, no. And the parent might consider saying, look, it's bad for our sleep. It's bad for your sleep. Sleep is the glue that holds us together. For us to take it out of our room and not ask you to do the same, it'd be like we got in the car and we put on our seatbelts, but we don't ask you to put on yours. So you can make that case. The other thing to try, and again - Does that work? Well, I'm offering these humbly.

1:30:01I'm offering things, because I actually, it means enough to me that I don't wanna just write it off. Yeah, yeah. I think the other thing to try is to say, let's just do a two to three week experiment. Like sometimes teenagers will agree to an experiment. Like let's take it out of your room for a couple weeks and here's a clock radio to replace all of the things that you feel that it does. And then see if after a couple of weeks, there's not some agreement around this. Here's the other thing, teenagers like to know the why. And this is getting back to the bullshit detector. Like they like to know the why.

1:30:33Here's the why. Because I said so? No. That doesn't work? That will work. No, it'll work up to age 10. But now we're talking teenagers, right? So here's the why. We have data showing that you do not actually get as good as sleep in a room with technology in it. And the reason for this that the researchers surmised, and I think this is true, is that we are all so Pavlovianly attached to our devices that if they are present, we are deploying a degree of energy to not engage with them. And I have such a vivid memory of becoming aware of this when one of my daughters was in a preschool. Well, they were both in this preschool.

1:31:18I don't remember which kid it was. We're part of the weighed in for the preschool was there was a period of time where the parent was in the room with the child, but kind of reading quietly in a corner. And I would have my phone with me almost all the time. I knew it was tacky to look at it, so I wouldn't look at it, but I could feel myself resisting the impulse. And one day I left it in the car by accident. And I remember sitting in the room with her and being aware of how much more deeply present I was in the room because I had no option of touching my phone. Right, it removes that decision fatigue.

1:31:50And so researchers think that even while we are sleeping, if there is a nearby phone, a piece of our energy is being deployed on not engaging with that thing. And so we do not sleep as well. That's equal parts depressing that we have a lizard brain like that. And also alarming. I mean, it's a testament on just how powerful they are. Right? Yep. That's crazy. Well, that's good advice. I want to talk a little bit about dadding, being a dad. I love that you address this in the book. You know, of course I'm a dad. It's to my mind a little bit confusing about how to be a dad today because cultural mores have shifted quite a bit.

1:32:46So the model of like, you know, the generation that preceded us, like what my dad, you know, embodied as a father figure is now very different in terms of like expectations. You have to be, you don't have to be the provider, but there's sort of a, I'm gonna provide for my family and I'm gonna be the head of household. And I have to be strong and firm, but I also have to be emotionally available and I have to be able to go to all the school activities a Tuesday at one o 'clock in the afternoon. And it feels like you kind of have to be all things all the time, all at once, which as somebody I talked to a lot of dads and I think there's a lot of dads who are confused about how to fulfill all of those buckets and be an effective dad to a teenager.

1:33:40Yeah, well, it's interesting because on the one hand I hate the sense of anyone feeling so spread thin, right? Or having such a sense of like so much all at once and a really strong sense of obligation to try to meet it all and be so good at it. On the other hand, a way we could turn this a little is like how wonderful that dads are now under the umbrella of also being in the nurturing role. You know, how sad that there was a period where dads were not included in that tent, you know, of being a nurturer within the family. and what I would say is, again, our kids are not in the house that long.

1:34:27It's short, it's really short and I have a pretty high tolerance for the idea that in the 18 years or so that they're living in our homes, we're gonna be spread pretty thin and it's easier I think to tolerate that if you're like, this is really time limited, like I'm not doing this this long and then if there's a day where any parent of any gender is feeling like I didn't bring my A game at every single thing. What I would say is warmth and structure. Those are the two things we're trying to provide. I don't think you can get an A plus on both on any day because often you're doing one or the other, they're trading off against each other a little bit.

1:35:08So if you can go for like a B, B average, B minus average, B plus average, like on your warmth and on your structure, your ability to be present and engaged in a loving way with your kids, your ability to help create a predictable environment, kids will do the rest. Like I think one of the coolest things about my job is that sometimes I will, in school consultation work, I'll know a kid for a long time and then I'll meet the parent and I'll be like, wow, this kid is doing so well in light of who these parents are. Right, that's a recurring theme in the book too. It's like you meet with the kid and the parents are all freaked out.

1:35:48And you're like, actually the kid's got this dialed. And like you people are the ones who need to get your shit together. A little bit sometimes. And so what I hope parents take away from that is like a sense of reassurance of like, really? Like kids bend towards health. Kids are often fundamentally adaptive or if they're not getting it at home, they will get it somewhere, right? I mean, so many of us thrived in homes where life at home wasn't what it was supposed to be, but we found fabulous teachers or fabulous mentors. So I know for sure that guilt does not improve parenting and fear does not improve parenting.

1:36:23And so if those of us who are raising teenagers can try to keep those two things under control, we'll just do a better job. I think I'm like, I have an inner teen because I do the best that I can as a dad and then I misstep and I fuck up and like, oh, I didn't handle that great. And then I go on Instagram and I scroll through and I see, like there's a lot of super dads in my feed who post reels of them being amazing dads, doing amazing things. And then I feel like shit, I feel like terrible dad. And I'm like, I'm doing the thing that I'm like in my, I'm like trying to get my teen to stop doing.

1:37:04I'm no better than any of this. None of us are, okay. But so then again, like. Comparing myself. What a great way then to have a conversation with a teenager about it, right? That we're not above the exact same thing that we're wishing they would do less of, right? And that's how you actually have an effective conversation with them. I talk about this in the book, like having a conversation with a group of teenagers where I was like, oh man, you know, my relationship with social media, like it's like a slot machine. Like I'll go on and sometimes like I get lucky and I find something that makes me happy.

1:37:34And sometimes I go on and there's something that makes me miserable or often I go on and like, I'm just scrolling and scrolling and I don't wanna know what I'm looking for and I'm not finding it and I'm wasting time. I find those conversations with teenagers are the most fruitful conversations with teenagers because we are bearing the reality that we all struggle to manage these technologies well. And then you can actually have a real conversation. Yeah, I liked how in the book, you kind of address trying to establish parity between parents in terms of emotional availability, right? but like this idea that a kid will like pivot to one parent, like this is the person that I can open up to, but I can't to the other person.

1:38:19And then that creates all kinds of like communication confusion and it's sort of destabilizing. And I know that like, there's something, there's gonna be natural aspects to that. But as a dad, like trying to make sure that my kid knows that I'm available for that and trying to find ways of, getting in so that they feel safe talking to me just as much as they would their mom and not always being successful at that, but that was helpful. Good, I mean, there's always division of labor in families. That's okay. What I was kind of new to me in the research as I was working on the book was especially in what you're describing about the importance of dads being available to boys to talk about feelings.

1:39:07And we know that boys are socialized to not talk about emotion as much as girls are. And we know that that comes at a cost to them. And one of the things that came clear as I was working on the book is that for a lot of boys, especially around like middle school, as they're starting to consolidate a sense of masculinity, a lot of them decide that talking about feelings is a girl thing to do. And then say they're in a two parent heterosexual home, say it's only ever the mom who's actually talking about feelings and trying to have conversations with her son about feelings, it's so well-meaning, but it actually can reinforce exactly what the boy believes.

1:39:46Like see, look, it's a girl thing. And so as I was thinking through, like how do we help boys develop emotional fluency? Really, really like the men in their lives, whether it's a dad or teacher coach, any variety of men need to be the ones talking about their own emotional experiences and then asking boys about theirs, if we are going to work against the stereotype that feelings are for girls. That's such a powerful point, yeah. I stumbled upon it. Like I really had not thought about it until I sat down to work on this book. Yeah, the other kind of amazing thing that jumped out to me about boys was around your discussion relating to how girls sort of mature more quickly, like two years beyond boys at a certain stage of adolescence.

1:40:38But then you have these people in the same classroom and boys being competitive and then just getting trounced by girls because they're more developed than the boys. And then what that does to boys self-esteem, kind of telling them that they can't measure up to these girls and then their inability to communicate their emotions and their feelings, particularly to a male role model. and how does that bear fruit later in life? Yeah, no, that was a really interesting section of the book to write because I was looking at the data and I'm also looking at the phenomenology of kids I care for. And I'm like, look at this, like sixth, seventh grade, because of the two-year jump on puberty, girls are crushing boys academically because they have a neurological advantage.

1:41:25But on top of that, and we don't talk about this very much, they're also taller, stronger, faster. for the most part, like just on average. And so these poor, like, I really, I feel like I could have called the section, like it's really hard to be a sixth grade boy, right? I mean, because they're getting beat at recess and then they come back into the building and they're getting beat in the classroom. And, you know, it levels out, it changes over time. But in that juncture, it's really hard to be a sixth grade boy. And of course the girls are developing. And it's also the exact same moment where we see sexual harassment begin in schools.

1:41:59And so I thought like, well, this is really interesting because I can absolutely understand why a sixth grade boy who's getting it coming and going and made to feel small and feeling competitive and wanting to consolidate a sense of masculinity might feel like, well, one route to that is I'm gonna take these girls down a few pegs, you know, and comment in bullying ways that are sexualized. And the thing that was so interesting about writing that section, I was like, how has nobody said this before? Like, I can't be the first person. And so I - Right, and understanding that behavior doesn't mean that that's okay.

1:42:30Like that, you know? And that's like the seed of misogyny, right then and there, like in a very patent obvious way. It's almost like those two groups shouldn't be like in the same classroom being educated in the same place at the same time. It raises that question to be sure. But if we're not gonna go, if that's not the route, what we need to do, and this is the suggestion I make in the book, because we gotta make sure that these sixth grade guys, seventh grade guys, especially who might be smaller, just not on the front edge of puberty, have ways to feel good about themselves. We cannot just hope that they handle it well.

1:43:08That we need to find ways to put self-esteem in place. And another cardinal rule in psychology is self-esteem does not come from people telling you that you're good. It comes from doing things that you feel good about. And so there are things we can provide to middle school boys that, you know, where they can have meaning and they can have mastery that I would like to think might keep them from taking a wrong turn as they're trying to find ways to keep their self-esteem intact. Yeah, and just more broadly, that idea of a parent, like telling their kid like they're okay or they're doing good, again, a well-intentioned thing, but not as effective as making sure that their kid is being put in positions that are challenging, not too challenging where they have to toil and struggle a little bit and learn, get to the other side of it.

1:43:59That's what builds true self-esteem, not the affirmations of the parents who wanna, put a medal around every kid's neck and tell them that they're the most special thing in the world. Yeah, yeah, no, I agree completely. And I, again, back to kids bullshit detectors. I mean, I think in some ways it can feel like an insult if the kid knows they did nothing and people are celebrating. The final thing I wanna explore with you before I let you go is this very interesting era that we find ourselves in around gender, as you call it expansiveness, right? Like it does seem like I'm an old fuddy-duddy that we're in a period of time in which gender fluidity is something that is suddenly, if not ubiquitous is certainly a mainstream thing and more and more young people are identifying in new and unique ways.

1:44:58And there's a culture war raging around all of this. And I think it's disorienting for parents to try to understand it, perhaps more disorienting for young people, but it's certainly a fascinating phenomenon that is unprecedented, at least in our lifetimes, like I haven't seen this. And so I'm curious about like, is this something that's always been there, but just there hasn't been a culture permissive enough to allow people to be comfortable expressing themselves in this way? Is this something different? Is what's driving this? Help me make sense of what's going on. I don't know that I have answers.

1:45:40I mean, those are big questions that I think it's also new, it's all happened so fast. I think we're trying to make sense of it. I could tell you what I would watch out for though, which is a single explanation or anyone who wants to make it simple, right? I think there's probably a lot of forces at work that are changing this landscape. And it is, you are right. I mean, there's an incredible polarization around it. There's a lot of, you know, very, very vehement disagreement about how it should be addressed, how individual families should address it, what laws and policies should be around it.

1:46:18As I watch the controversies around it unfold, with people having very strong opinions about how we should respond when a young person expresses that the gender they were assigned at birth doesn't feel like the one that's right for them, what I always fall back on is how we think as clinicians, which is there's nowhere in the care of young people when a young person comes up against a difficulty in the world or not fitting into the world in a particular way that they've been assigned, there's nowhere that we feel that there's a single solution that is gonna be right for every kid. So whether we're talking diagnostic stuff, even something as comparatively simple as ADHD, right?

1:47:09Right. And not that gender expansiveness is a disorder, but just thinking in terms of like when clinicians are called in to try to help somebody through something, you should go run screaming from the hills. Any clinician who's like, there is one way we do this. We do this every way for every single kid. So what I think as a clinician is, you know, for every kid and family going through this, they deserve what we would give every kid, what we should give every kid for any concern that arises, which is a very careful consideration of the specific circumstances of that child, that family, the forces around them, the resources available to them psychologically and otherwise should be married with clinical experience, clinical understanding to try to figure out what the path is.

1:47:53most likely to be most useful path for that particular young person. And so as I hear these controversies unfold, I feel like anyone who tells you there's one way this should go down, I wouldn't trust that about transgender expansiveness or anything about a kid. And then that's how I try to think about it clinically. Yeah, I mean, there's policy disagreements about gender affirming care, and there's legislation around this sort of thing And then there's the whole debate around trans participation in sports and all of that. That's one thing. But then there's just the case of the kid who raises his or her or their hand one day and says, hey, I wanna be this and I wanna be called this.

1:48:40And the parent trying to understand that, every parent wants their child to be happy. Hopefully that child will be received with compassion and empathy and a real, true honest desire to understand. And in the appropriate case, therapeutic protocols can get introduced, someone like yourself. But I still think even with all of that, like from, and I'm asking you from the perspective of a parent, like how does the parent, really show up for a kid like that with the kind of competing concerns of like compassion, understanding, love, et cetera. you want the best for your child. And like, what is the responsible choice here?

1:49:25Particularly in the case of a child who's pushing for medical intervention, et cetera. Then it becomes like very real very quickly. And because I think there are a lot of people who are kind of contending with this right now, there's a lot of confusion about like how to really walk this path. Yeah. So there's a simple answer that is true, which is we do have data showing that for parents to take an affirming stance will be the thing that most protects that child's mental health. So what you're talking about being compassionate and attentive, that the data bear out, like in terms of protecting the mental health of that young person, that is the response that parents can bring that will make the biggest difference.

1:50:13then the question of affirming, right, can then start to go into very complex territory about what that means. And especially when we're talking medical interventions. And what I wish every parent had access to, but they don't, is, you know, we have university-based clinics where there are experts who have seen this may be your first gender expansive kid. They've seen hundreds of gender expansive kids. And the value of a good clinician is that they they have a lot of information to work with in terms of making recommendations. And they can see your child against a backdrop of a lot of kids and a lot of outcomes and trajectories over time and offer some wisdom to parents about how this may likely unfold or what the options are or what the complexities are.

1:51:02So what I would say is in the immediate, if we go by the data and we go by what protects kids' mental health, parents wanna be supportive. In the difficult details of what that looks like, I would never want parents to feel alone or that they have to figure this out from scratch or that they would have to figure this out without the wisdom of people who spend a lot of time thinking about this and have worked with a lot of families through similar situations. Are there resources or websites for parents who find themselves in that situation that are helpful? I think there are. I've got some resources that I mentioned in the back of the book around texts that are done.

1:51:45I myself am a big fan of university-based clinics. The nice thing about universities is that they tend to be very, very up to date on research. They tend to bring a very decent balance to their consideration of anything. So I would say that for a lot of things, you wanna be where they are training people. And so as a function of training people, they are staying very much on top of what's going on. So what I would say is for a parent in this position, if they can access a university-based resource center that will usually be the most reliable and the most current body of wisdom. Yeah, that's helpful, thanks.

1:52:24As we round this out, I guess the final question that I would have for you, with all of the kids that you treat and the many years that you've been in this and all the school you go and you speak all the time at these schools, you're interfacing with parents and young people, what do you think are the low hanging fruit of like parental mistakes? Like the things you just see all the time and you're like, haven't we gone through this? Like, come on, like what, you know, it's like the one thing that you wish parents, like if they were to take away one thing from this conversation, like stop doing that or maybe do a little more of this.

1:53:03I'm so glad you're asking. Here's what I would say. When kids come our way to tell us they are upset, which they often do. Teenagers, especially talkers are good at this. Overwhelmingly, all they want and all they need is for us to listen and be empathic in response for us to really tune in. The way I try to do this as a parent is if one of my daughters is telling me she's upset about something, I'll picture she's a reporter and I'm her editor and she's reading me the article of her distress. And that when she gets to the end of the article, I just have to produce the headline. Like I have to have listened so intently that I can distill it and summarize it and add nothing and give it back to her.

1:53:45So really all they want is that level of listening. And then truly, Rich, like the number one thing I say in my home more than anything is like, oh man, that stinks. Right? Just sitting and empathizing in response. That is overwhelmingly what teenagers are looking for. And so often, and I do this too, what they get instead is advice. like they tell us what's wrong. And we're like, well, you know. And my younger daughter said to me, she said, mom, I can tell from the look on your face when I'm talking to you, when you stop listening, you've come up with the thing you're gonna say to me by way of advice.

1:54:23And you're now just waiting for me to pause. Right, right. You're just like, okay, let me just wait until this is over. And then I'm gonna throw the zinger. Drop some wisdom on you. So what I would say is it's very rarely what they're looking for or what they want or need. And it usually actually ruins a moment that could be going quite a bit better. So curiosity plus empathy or just empathy is, I would say overwhelmingly the most effective and also wanted response when teenagers come our way with their distress. Beautiful, I love it. You are a gift. I think the work you're doing is so important.

1:55:00And I really appreciate you coming here today to share your wisdom and experience. You are the teen whisperer. Such an honor, such an honor to be here and with you. Thank you. Everybody pick up the emotional lives of teenagers. Also, Lisa has a podcast, Ask Lisa. Yep, the psychology of parenting. And what's great about that is that it's subject specific. So if you're a parent and you're like, God damn it, my kid did this one thing or like this thing happened. and I just don't know how to deal with it. You can scroll through her catalog and chances are, like it's a question that's come up that she's talked through and I have relied upon this resource successfully.

1:55:42So check that out. And anything else you wanna point people to? I have a website, drlisademore.com. And what I've tried to do is design it so that people can really find the resources they're looking for. I have it in six sections. And for every section, there are articles, podcasts, TV work I've done. I want parents to feel like that website is actually like a catalog of utility for them. Yeah, that's great. And you are here in Hell Lake, you spoke at a school earlier today, you came here and now you have to go back to that same school to like talk again. Like this is what you do. This is what I do.

1:56:18And I am so, so fortunate that this is what I get to do. Well, you're always welcome here. And thank you again and best of luck. and if I can be of service to you and your mission, please let me know. It's really great work. I so appreciate that. Thank you. Cheers. Peace. Bye.

1:56:40That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube and leave a review and or comment.

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1:58:02Portraits by Davey Greenberg, graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis, Dan Drake, and A.J. Akpodiete. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace, plants. Namaste.

1:58:54Thank you.