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Your Teen Is Hurting: How to Get Them to Open Up · The Parent Tap

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: When they're cutting, it's a manifestation of how much emotional suffering is going on for them.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you're drowning in a stormy ocean, it's going to be very difficult to save your kid who's also drowning.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: What's the first thing a parent should do when a teen is escalating before any advice or consequences are thrown out?
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: You escalating is just going to cause more escalation.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's adding fuel to the fire.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so the thing to do is something that's very, very hard to do, which is actually to do the opposite.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because in the same way that like attracts when you're escalating, also attracts when you're de-escalating.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that you being in a regulated state of mind is going to be the critical thing to do.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's much, much harder to do than to say.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: But typically speaking, unless your dysregulation helps your teen who's sort of escalated, it's just not going to work.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so that ability to take a pause often allows your brain to think about whatever's going on in the present moment.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: What do you say about big emotions versus a real warning sign?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like how do we know if a kid is just being a kid or having those regular emotions, or if there is something more there we need to be worried about with self-harm coming up?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: What do parents need to be aware of?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: I always look for changes in patterns.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: So if a child comes home every single day and slams their door and storms up to their room, after a while you could just say that's that behavior.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: You might want to speak to your kid about it, say, hey, look, I've noticed this pattern of you coming home from school and slamming the door and going upstairs.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: That could be a multitude of things.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: It could be that they don't like biology at the end of the day.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: It could be that the kids on the bus are mean.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: It could mean a whole bunch of things.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And ideally, you get that information.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: But let's just say that they come, they come upstairs, they I'm sorry, they come to the house, they start storming up the stairs, they turn around and they tell you that they hate you, they go upstairs and slam the door and don't come down for dinner.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now you've seen a change in behavioral pattern.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: So when I see changes in behavioral patterns, more isolation, more school refusal, more secrecy.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the kid is always angry and now they've stopped being angry.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: But whenever I see a change in behavior, that's when I start to pay even more attention.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say we do realize a kid's been harming themselves or doing something that's out of the norm.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: What's our next step to take?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if it piggybacks onto your first question, what happens when your child's really upset?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a manifestation, whatever their behavior is, is a manifestation of whatever's going on in their head.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: The child is not trying to be difficult.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: The child doesn't wake up in the morning saying, I really want to piss my parents off.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: The child is trying to deal with something or try to get something across.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have other ways that can help them do so.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe they're trying to reduce emotional pain.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're trying to communicate something.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing is to notice it.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to be upset.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Say you notice it, your kid is cutting, you're going to be upset.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: But if you say that is a manifestation of my child's suffering, let's say, for example, the child has asthma and they're wheezing.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Wheezing is a manifestation of their difficulty breathing.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Or let's just say that they've got low blood pressure.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Falling down is a manifestation of low blood pressure.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: So when they're cutting, it's a manifestation of how much emotional suffering is going on for them.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's just a symptom of whatever's going on.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And for you to tell someone that cutting is bad, it would be to tell someone that wheezing is bad or low blood pressure is bad.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: But you don't want that to be the tool that they use to address their suffering.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to understand what the suffering is before you can even begin to address it.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: So step one is to be regulated before you go and have a discussion with your kid.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Understand that you're going to have a very difficult discussion, and then be really curious about what's going on in the child's life.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you show disdain, if you show disrespect, if you show judgment, the child's very likely to hide the behavior from you in the future.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then you'll think that you addressed it, but they're just doing it in secret.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: And like you mentioned, it's easier said than done.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Great advice.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: But how do you, let's say you are short-tempered.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: For instance, sometimes I'll lose my handle real quick with my kids, two and a five-year-old.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: My five-year-old's neurodivergent.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes there's a little bit extra challenges there.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: How do you keep your cool when the kids are going crazy?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Every night is just one of those chaotic moments inside.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: What should I be doing differently that I'm not already doing?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this when you say something like you've got this like habit of blowing up under certain circumstances, the minute you recognize something's a habit, it's no longer a habit, it's a choice.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so one thing is if you know yourself, if you're paying attention to yourself, if you say, I have a tendency to do this, that's a first step.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because that what that means is that you're likely to go into your next situation and do the same thing unless you practice doing something else.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: So let's just say that every day at six o'clock, your kid is having a really hard time.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then you go there and then you lose it with your child, and then the next day is the same thing, the next day is the same thing.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now you've got a much older brain than your child.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: You're aware of that pattern.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: So the next time you could say, okay, now I'm aware, that's a choice that I'm making.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: I can start making a choice earlier on in the day.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I can start anticipating my kid's going to have a really difficult time at six o'clock.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is the time now at five o'clock to start regulating myself.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, there might be other things going on in life that you have to deal with, but it's knowing yourself.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is where mindful parenting comes in.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's like saying, wait a second, that is my tendency.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: So now, of course, you might have situations that you didn't predict, but if there's a pattern, recognize the pattern and change some of the behaviors in that pattern before it gets to that point.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's that's so good.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that kind of puts the onus on me as trying to figure that out ahead of time and not have to react in the moment.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because I feel like when I'm reacting in the moment, that's when they kind of got me discombobulated, flustered, whatever word you want to use.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like that's me in that moment.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so to sort of like pre-game for that or prepare for that, it seems like that's the key.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Is that is that what I'm understanding?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you're it's it's much better to say, to prepare for stormy weather ahead and say, you know what, I don't think we should go swimming today because it's really difficult out there.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you say, Oh, I see my kid like really struggling, you know what, let me calm down, let me prepare myself, let me put on all the safety gear, let me put on the wetsuit, let me put on a circle so that when I get there, I'm prepared to deal with that situation in storm waters.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it's anticipating, but not getting yourself caught up every single time in the same situation.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because and and then the onus is on you.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because how could you say to a five-year-old, I need you to be more rational than your father when the grade isn't fully developed?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good point.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds silly when you say it out loud, but it's like sometimes you expect more from your kids.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, why are you guys doing this every night to me?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's I try to rationalize with them, but then you step back, you realize, oh, wait, it's a five-year-old.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: And not only a five-year-old, it's a neurodivergent five-year-old.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like you're not you're not connecting there.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: You talk about labels, like shame labels.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like sometimes we'll walk into our kids' room, we see it messy, we'll be like, oh, you're lazy, or a kid's crying all the time, you're dramatic, like unfortunately, I fall into this.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes that happens.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, how does those how do those words harden a kid's identity?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the when a child has limited language, a few words, maybe a hundred words, 200 words.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if you were to hear you're disgusting as an adult in the context of 20,000 words, you could contextualize it.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: You could say, okay, that's a word I don't like to hear.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's very unpleasant, and I'm going to speak to that person about it.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: But when a child has a limited vocabulary and one of the words it hears is lazy, is messy, it's whatever critical word you want to use, that's encoding.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem is that's encoding from one of the most important people in their life.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: So one thing would be to say some distant neighbor says the same sort of thing, and they can come back to you and say, hey, that neighbor called me that thing.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then you could you can process that with your child.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: But the relevance of that neighbor saying it is not going to be as powerful as one of the primary caregivers using that same language, like my dad thinks that I'm lazy, as opposed to some other irrelevant person.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the encoding is that those words are a larger percentage of the child's turtle vocabulary and it's coming from a very irrelevant person.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, no, no, it definitely does.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, with adulthood, you might have some capacity to sort of stand back from the pain of it.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have a spouse who tells you that they love you, if they have you have some friends who tell you they love you, it can mitigate that because you can sort of put it into context.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I mean, I think that there are some wounds that are just very difficult to shake off.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the scars are always there, even if they're imperceptible to the rest of people.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing is the caveat here is that it depends also on the sensitivity of the person.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a highly sensitive child whose parent never told you I love you, you're much more likely to be impacted than somebody who's not that sensitive who doesn't care.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that hits hard.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so I want to get on screens and dysregulation.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Are phones feeds gaming making emotional storms worse?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Or are they simply where kids go to cope with the world?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Both and.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I have kids who suffer, who doom scroll.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: They just like look at sort of negative video feeds and they think, okay, well, at least my life isn't that bad.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: There's some who use it as distraction from whatever's going on.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like I wasn't invited to a party, but I'll just watch cat videos.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then in some situations, screens can actually aggravate the situation because maybe you see somebody who's better looking than you, or stronger than you, or smarter than you, or wealthier than you, and you kind of begin to feel that you're a loser, feel that life is never going to give you those advantages, and then you start judging yourself.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, so, but of course, I mean, there's other situations where people can get some good ideas.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: I recently got some good ideas for planting roses, and I planted a rose, and it's actually it's sitting out outside of my house, and I can see it from here, and it's looking pretty damn beautiful.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: So in that situation, I feel pretty good about myself.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: So there are situations, depending on what the feed is, what the algorithm is, you're either going to get like a lot of posity or a lot of negativity or a lot of neutrality.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a good point.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: And how do you take away that device?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say it is causing issue.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: How do you do it without triggering a big blow up?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Even this is what I struggle with, even with my two-year-old.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because I take his job sometimes for like I use it to kind of like entice him to get in the car in the morning for school.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: I have to take it away.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it's tough.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do you sever those ties with like their devices if you realize it is causing an issue?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think also it depends.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: If somebody were to say, How would I take away Ryan's device?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: What how would I do that?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'd have to, I don't know, sit on you and get like some NFL football players to just rip it out of your hand.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, of course, you can be very aggressive about it.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, with a two-year-old, you've created the monster.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: You have fed the monster.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: So if you think a little bit about every time you're going down the candy aisle, the kid throws a tantrum, and so you get you buy candy.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: You're your child has just trained you to go down the candy aisle and buy candy.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so the idea is to stop buying candy, and then what's going to happen is the child's going to have a mega tantrum.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: We call that the extinction burst in psychological terms, and which means that there's a massive increase in activity.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because it used to help in the past and now it's not doing it.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so what so if you were to say, I'm going to take away my two-year-old's tablet because I want the child to settle on the way to preschool, you would take it away and you would tolerate a day's worth, a week's worth, a month's worth of yelling and screaming.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: And because otherwise, if not, it's the your child is teaching you what to do, which is to continue to give them the tablet.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're not going to put the behavior on extinction, if you don't want that behavior to end, or if you don't have the fortitude to be able to go through with the experiment, then don't do it in the first place.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because otherwise the child just learns that it has to escalate even more in order to get what it wants.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we definitely do it to ourselves.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so ripping off that band-aid, going cold turkey is like it's it's it sucks, but it's necessary, I suppose, if you don't want to keep going down that path, right?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's right.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Or just say, I'm going to keep going down this path.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just continue to do it.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and just accept it.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Just accept that you've you've done this and and this is what you're gonna do.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: And okay, move on.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just don't fight yourself.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Don't don't bite yourself.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Either just either do it, rip off the band-aid, go through the extinction burst.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be painful, or just say, you know what, I've lost this battle.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Moving on.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've lost a lot of battles.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sensitive children are different from non-sensitive children.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: So there's just so many variables.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think dads are getting wrong about emotional pain that kids go through?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like, are they are they handling us wrong in general, or are we just not wired to kind of be like the mother, like as a matronly, like the mother?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is that like is that something that you're seeing with with fathers in general?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think definitely that as a generalization, it's a big, big generalization.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not always true.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Women tend to be more sensitive than men.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: So men tend to be more on the if you think about autism spectrum and you think about conditions like with high emotionality, like borderline personality disorder.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: So men tend to be more on the spectrum-y side with lower emotional range, and women tend to be on the higher emotional range.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And again, there's it's neither good nor bad, but that's just it.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: If if your ability to tolerate a toothache is whatever, whatever it is, some people might be able to tolerate a toothache much differently from other people.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: So if a child says that they're in a lot of emotional pain, let's compare let's compare emotional pain to how fast a car can drive.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got a golf cart, you've got a standard mini, and you've got like a Porsche or something like that.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like to the person who drives the golf cart, they don't know what it's like to drive at 120 miles an hour.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so when they try you can't explain that to the golf cart person, like this is what it's like.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of, well, I don't know, because I can only go 20 miles an hour.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: So when a person, when a kid is trying to explain emotional pain and emotional sensitivity to somebody who doesn't completely get it, all they can know if they're not emotionally sensitive, is that it's a lot more than what they're experiencing, and it causes them so much pain that at times they want to use self-injury and god forbid, suicidal behavior to address that emotional pain.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's so important to address.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so and so what drew you to work with teens like in their hardest moments?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: I I think I'm a child at heart.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I tell a lot of dad jokes, I'm very sarcastic.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: I also teens believe that they can make a difference in the world.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I like to think that I believe that as well.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: They keep me young.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: I turned 62 this year, and I don't know, I feel as young as I ever did.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: So so I think you're saying have kids.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: I told you well, well, but as long, but as long as you can see how awesome they are, as long as as long as every single little thing that they do doesn't turn your hair white.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And and and you were a kid too at one point.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like you also got into your own stuff.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: And they're gonna do that.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: I still hear about it from my parents.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it's better to be curious than to be confrontational.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: It is, it is.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And like you said, the the for me, it's the wonder of kids.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you think about, if you think about all the royalty that ever lived in the history of the of the planet Earth, ever since recorded history, that our lives today are better than almost any monarch that ever lived.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: That we have, like, I don't know when hot and cold running water as a standard luxury happened in most in most places, that you had a warm bed, that you had central heating, that you had gas stoves, that you had electrical appliances, that you had phones that could tell you where to go and planes that can take you from place to place.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're much, much better off today than we've ever been.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: But we can also decide to focus on all the things that aren't working out.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to know how to reset after losing your cool tonight, click that video on your screen right now.