Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #132 Battling Teenager Mood Swings

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#132 Battling Teenager Mood Swings · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

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  Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast, the podcast for the time
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  Speaker 1: poor parent who just once answers. Now, I'm doctor Justin
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  Speaker 1: Coilson and I'm joined by Luke and Susie. They've got
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  Speaker 1: three young boys. I've got six young ish through to
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  Speaker 1: oldish girls. And in this conversation I had a chat
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  Speaker 1: with Luke and Suzie about big mood swings.
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  Speaker 2: Wilson always great to chat to you, and Carolyn wants
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  Speaker 2: to talk to you too. She sent through a question
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  Speaker 2: asking about teenage mood. Literally the words are just teenage
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  Speaker 2: mood swings and how to deal with depression in your child.
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  Speaker 2: And this is kind of the year where I think
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  Speaker 2: if our children are struggling mentally and emotionally, it's going
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  Speaker 2: to show up this year, right probably.
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  Speaker 1: I read the funniest meme that I've seen in ages
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  Speaker 1: around the coronavirus just recently. It said something like the
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  Speaker 1: biggest waste of money ever my twenty twenty planner.
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  Speaker 3: So true, throw that in the rubbish bin.
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  Speaker 1: But the problem is, you know, when you've got a
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  Speaker 1: teenage girl, or when you've got a child, or a partner, husband,
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  Speaker 1: wife's spouse, whoever it is in your life that matters
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  Speaker 1: to you when they're feeling lousy. What tends to happen
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  Speaker 1: is their moods can cease or regulation of emotions is
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  Speaker 1: a really big challenge, and when stress and duress are increased,
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  Speaker 1: that regulation of emotions becomes even more challenging.
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  Speaker 3: Is it justin the life experience to know how to
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  Speaker 3: regulate the emotion or is there something sort of physical
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  Speaker 3: or more chemical into what's causing the mood swings.
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  Speaker 1: It's both, So there is a developmental trajectory of emotional regulation.
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  Speaker 1: Researchers have found this for years and years and years.
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  Speaker 1: We know if I mean, anyone who's been a parent
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  Speaker 1: for more than five minutes knows that a brand new
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  Speaker 1: baby has zero emotional regulation. They just don't have it.
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  Speaker 1: And that's because the brain develops from the bottom to
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  Speaker 1: the top. That is, from the brain stem up through
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  Speaker 1: the cerebellum, all the way through that limbic system and
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  Speaker 1: all the way to the very top where the cortex.
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  Speaker 1: But it also at the same time is developing from
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  Speaker 1: bottom to top, I mean that brain stem, cerehbellum. That's
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  Speaker 1: all about respiration and balance and keeping the heart beating
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  Speaker 1: and making as breathe all that kind of thing. It
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  Speaker 1: also goes from back to front. So at the back
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  Speaker 1: we've got what we call our o ecipital lobes. That's
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  Speaker 1: where our eyes get all their information and processing and
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  Speaker 1: all that thing for our site. As we move towards
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  Speaker 1: the front, so right in the middle of the brain,
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  Speaker 1: something that starts to develop as our children grow. You know,
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  Speaker 1: by the time they're two, we call it the Terrible
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  Speaker 1: twos for a reason. They're big, they're mobile, they're starting
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  Speaker 1: to use their words, but not when they're becoming emotional,
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  Speaker 1: because the emotional brain is just starting to really kick in,
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  Speaker 1: and it's not until maybe four or five that they
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  Speaker 1: start to get a bit better at it. And usually
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  Speaker 1: by about the age of eight or nine, developmental psychologists
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  Speaker 1: will say, well, the kids have now got a reasonable
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  Speaker 1: grasp on what we call emotional regulation. My favorite example
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  Speaker 1: of this, by the way, is Walter Mitchell, very very
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  Speaker 1: very famous psychologists did this study with marshmallows. You might
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  Speaker 1: have heard of it, Yes, the marshmallow challenge. Yeah, that's it.
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  Speaker 1: So for those who are not familiar with it, Walter
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  Speaker 1: Michelle brings a child into the lab, usually around it
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  Speaker 1: about the age of four, maybe five or six, of
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  Speaker 1: the oldest puts a marshmallow on the plate in front
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  Speaker 1: of them and says, I've got this for you. Oh,
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  Speaker 1: but by the way, I've just got to pop out
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  Speaker 1: of the office. I'll be back in a minute. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: i'll be a few minutes. If that marshmallow is still
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  Speaker 1: there and you haven't eaten it, when I come back,
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  Speaker 1: I'll give you two instead of just the one. And
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  Speaker 1: then he walks out. This is a classic self regulation
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  Speaker 1: how much willpower do you really have? Kind of experiment,
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  Speaker 1: and his research shows that people who are able to
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  Speaker 1: regulate their emotions better children go on to lead more
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  Speaker 1: successful lives. And that kind of makes sense, right. If
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  Speaker 1: you can't regulate your emotions, you can't sit in class,
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  Speaker 1: you can't study, you can't learn if you can't regulate
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  Speaker 1: your emotions. Somebody says or does something that you don't
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  Speaker 1: like and you lash out, you say horrible things to them.
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  Speaker 1: You can't keep a job, you're going to become a criminal,
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  Speaker 1: you'll end up in jail, you'll take drugs, all those
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  Speaker 1: kinds of things in worst case scenario because of a
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  Speaker 1: lack of regulation.
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  Speaker 3: And if you're struggling to regulate your emotion, watch those
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  Speaker 3: videos because that will make you laugh because they're amazing.
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  Speaker 1: They're so much fun. And you see these kids doing
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  Speaker 1: their best to not eat the marshmallow and they're just
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  Speaker 1: having the tiniest nibble, or they're turning the back on
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  Speaker 1: and saying I'm not going you know, all that.
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  Speaker 3: Sort of stuff, or they're poking them on the desk
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  Speaker 3: and then poking the marshmallow.
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  Speaker 2: We move up into the teenage years. They're now breaking,
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  Speaker 2: it's still developing. We have the added addition of knowledge
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  Speaker 2: that's coming in and maybe to an extent, and understanding
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  Speaker 2: that we know more than we actually do at that point.
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  Speaker 2: I knew everything when I was a teenager. I know
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  Speaker 2: wayless now. And there's these strong mood swings. Hormones are raging,
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  Speaker 2: and then there's the pressures of society, and we are
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  Speaker 2: seeing a large number of anxiety, depression, and stress showing
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  Speaker 2: up in our teenagers. So what do we do as
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  Speaker 2: parents to try and help and support and create as
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  Speaker 2: much stability through that time.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, So this is where it gets really interesting, because
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  Speaker 1: by around about the age of eight or nine, our
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  Speaker 1: kids should be able to have a reasonable grasp on
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  Speaker 1: their emotional regulation. Having said that, I know plenty of
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  Speaker 1: adults that still struggle with this right but in their
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  Speaker 1: teen years we talk all about how their brain isn't
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  Speaker 1: fully developed. It actually is over developed. The prefrontal cortex,
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  Speaker 1: which is in charge of planning, has too many neurons
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  Speaker 1: and as a result, it has to go through what
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  Speaker 1: we call a synaptic pruning process to get rid of
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  Speaker 1: brain cells so that it can become more efficient. Because
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  Speaker 1: the prefrontal cortex is not efficient. That emotional brain, it's
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  Speaker 1: reved up, red hot, and ready to go, and that's
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  Speaker 1: clashing with this other adolescent developmental necessity, and that is
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  Speaker 1: that they're supposed to start to separate from us as
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  Speaker 1: their parents and be who they are now. Something like
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  Speaker 1: a coronavirus pandemic where people are in isolation, or they're
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  Speaker 1: being locked down, or families are being forced back together,
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  Speaker 1: is terribly hard for kids once they're in adolescents because
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  Speaker 1: they're now under our umbrella again, but they don't want
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  Speaker 1: to be, and so this just inflames it. It makes it
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  Speaker 1: even harder. The great challenge for us, therefore, is to
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  Speaker 1: be able to who work with their emotional mood swings
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  Speaker 1: and help them to stay regulated. So I can give
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  Speaker 1: you a bunch of tips about how we can do
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  Speaker 1: that might.
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  Speaker 2: Be helpful, That would be fantastic.
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  Speaker 1: I just think that that context is really important, though,
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  Speaker 1: that developmental context, because when we understand that all of
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  Speaker 1: this is happening to our children and they can't do
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  Speaker 1: anything about it. I mean, that's what Luke's initial question was.
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  Speaker 1: Is this physiological? Is it psychological? Is it social? What's
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  Speaker 1: going on? Well the answer is yes, it's all of that.
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  Speaker 1: So as a parent, if I've got a child who's
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  Speaker 1: having a really big mood swing, rule number one is
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  Speaker 1: that I've got to keep it together myself.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, that's just back on us.
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  Speaker 2: So how do we do that bit?
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  Speaker 1: Well, you know, emotions are contagious, so there's speculation. Researchers
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  Speaker 1: aren't quite sure, but some people think that there's these
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  Speaker 1: neurons in our brain that we call them mirror neurons
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  Speaker 1: because they pick up on what's happening socially around us,
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  Speaker 1: and we calibrate ourselves to the emotional mood of another person.
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  Speaker 1: So if somebody comes boring into the living room saying
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  Speaker 1: I hate you all, that's not fair. What are you
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  Speaker 1: doing to me? We automatically our mirror neurons go red alert,
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  Speaker 1: and we come back and say, what do you mean,
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  Speaker 1: what's going on? And we actually match their energy. We
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  Speaker 1: might not match their exact emotion, but it's fair to
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  Speaker 1: say that the emotional energy of another person is very,
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  Speaker 1: very easily caught. So what do we do, Susie when
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  Speaker 1: this happens. We do this thing that I talk about
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  Speaker 1: all the time. We get curious, not furious, We understand,
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  Speaker 1: not reprimand we explore, we don't explode. And the best
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  Speaker 1: way to do that is to reflect to our child
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  Speaker 1: what we're seeing. You seem really upset, you seem to
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  Speaker 1: be really struggling, you seem to be really challenged, you
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  Speaker 1: seem to be really down, you seem to be really frustrated.
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  Speaker 1: It's that simple. You say you seem to be and
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  Speaker 1: then insert the emotion that is your very best guess
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  Speaker 1: if you're wrong, they'll say no, I am not, and
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  Speaker 1: you'll say, oh, I'm so sorry, I misread that. What
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  Speaker 1: is it that you're feeling? So that's kind of what
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  Speaker 1: we're doing. That's step one, keep it together, Step two,
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  Speaker 1: give their emotion a name, and step three. I mean
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  Speaker 1: there's a lot more that we could talk about. But
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  Speaker 1: I think step three to sort of move towards a
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  Speaker 1: conclusion here is that as we reflect their emotion, we
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  Speaker 1: simply say, well, that must be really tough. How can
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  Speaker 1: I help?
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  Speaker 3: Now?
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  Speaker 1: It won't always work that way, but if we can
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  Speaker 1: be moving towards that point that we just want to
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  Speaker 1: listen and then offer to help and take our time
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  Speaker 1: get into their helping bit, make sure that they feel safe, comfortable,
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  Speaker 1: and heard before we get to the how can I
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  Speaker 1: help a bit. That's where we overcome things like the
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  Speaker 1: mood swings, and that's where we can kind of get
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  Speaker 1: into this conversation where a child might be feeling depressed
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  Speaker 1: and say, you seem to be really flat lately. You
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  Speaker 1: seem to be really struggling. What can I do to help?
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  Speaker 1: I might say nothing, You say, all right, well I'm
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  Speaker 1: here if you need somebody to listen, and maybe that's
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  Speaker 1: enough just to get things going.
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  Speaker 3: There's a conversation Susie and I had recently, not around teenagers,
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  Speaker 3: but around dealing with people, and my point was that
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  Speaker 3: often everyone wants to correct bad behavior by making sure
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  Speaker 3: they know that their behavior is bad right. Sometimes like
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  Speaker 3: the desire is to be safe and heard right, what
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  Speaker 3: you were saying before, and that rather than having to
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  Speaker 3: point out everything they've made a mistake on, to actually go, well,
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  Speaker 3: how do I defuse this by going, let me acknowledge
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  Speaker 3: where you're at and let me say that it's okay
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  Speaker 3: because we're going to move in a different direction. We
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  Speaker 3: don't have to escalate it, we don't have to mirror it.
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  Speaker 1: Being in a rush to fix things seems to create
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  Speaker 1: some really big challenges every now and again. You see
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  Speaker 1: in the media people often police end up in the
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  Speaker 1: media because there's this rush to respond and stamp out
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  Speaker 1: a problem. Now, I'm not making a commentary on the police,
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  Speaker 1: because I can't imagine how stressful that job must be,
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  Speaker 1: but I do know that if a child in my
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  Speaker 1: home responded to me the way some people in public
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  Speaker 1: respond to the police, my response to my child in
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  Speaker 1: my home would have to be different. My response to
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  Speaker 1: my child would have to be you seem to be
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  Speaker 1: really upset, you seem to be really struggling, and I
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  Speaker 1: want to understand what's going on for you so that
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  Speaker 1: we can move towards a positive conclusion of a positive
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  Speaker 1: outcome for you. That seems to be a better way forward.
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  Speaker 1: And if you've got a child who's having these big
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  Speaker 1: mood swings. We call this emotion coaching. That's what John Gotman,
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  Speaker 1: the great marriage and family researcher, has called it. And
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  Speaker 1: there's all sorts of different ways that we can do it.
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  Speaker 1: There's a handful of different models, but essentially they all
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  Speaker 1: converge around this same thing. When somebody's having an emotion,
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  Speaker 1: you don't try to stop the emotion. It's kind of
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  Speaker 1: like a train going through a tunnel, and rather than
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  Speaker 1: waiting for the train to come out the other end
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  Speaker 1: of the tunnel, you're going to dig through the middle
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  Speaker 1: of the tunnel and rip the train out through the top.
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  Speaker 1: If we just let the train ride its way through
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  Speaker 1: the tunnel, it will come back out into the daylight,
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  Speaker 1: and the sun will shine again and everything will be okay, beautiful.
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  Speaker 2: I love that picture. Doctor Dustin Kilson, you're bringing the
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  Speaker 2: wisdom from Happy families dot Com today. You thank you
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  Speaker 2: so much for your time.
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