Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #1167 - Help! My Teen Only Speaks in Monosyllables

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#1167 - Help! My Teen Only Speaks in Monosyllables · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

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  Speaker 1: What do you do when you've got a teenage girl
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  Speaker 1: thirteen years old who's just stopped talking to you. All
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  Speaker 1: of the responses are monosyllabic. You're trying so hard and
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  Speaker 1: getting absolutely nowhere. Today we answer that tricky question. Welcome
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  Speaker 1: to the Happy Families Podcast, Real Parenting Solutions. Every day
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  Speaker 1: on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. We are Justin and
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  Speaker 1: Kylie Cole. Soon and every Tuesday on the pod, we
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  Speaker 1: answer your tricky questions. If you'd like to submit a
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  Speaker 1: question about family relationships, the kids, well being, screens, discipline,
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  Speaker 1: you can kind of ask us pretty much anything at all.
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  Speaker 1: Submit your tricky questions via our super simple system at
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  Speaker 1: Happy Families dot com dot a. You just go to
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  Speaker 1: the website, scroll out to podcasts, click the record button
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  Speaker 1: and start talking. Lisa from Sydney submitted this one.
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  Speaker 2: I have a thirteen year old girl who refuses to
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  Speaker 2: answer me in anything other than a monosyllabic way. I
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  Speaker 2: was wondering if you have any tips, tricks, or techniques
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  Speaker 2: to initiate conversations that help her open up so that
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  Speaker 2: we can really start to have some of these important conversations.
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  Speaker 2: I've tried everything, and I'm getting a little desperate.
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  Speaker 1: So Kylie, assuming typical development is going on here, my
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  Speaker 1: thoughts are we wouldn't know anything at all about teenage
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  Speaker 1: girls who get a little bit surly, who don't want
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  Speaker 1: to talk to their parents, and who start to push
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  Speaker 1: everyone away. Having raised five kids through that thirteen year
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  Speaker 1: age bracket.
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  Speaker 3: Now you make it sound like it was in the past.
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  Speaker 3: Are we not still going through it?
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  Speaker 1: Two teenagers would want to go maybe a little bit
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  Speaker 1: a there's a reality And Lisa, this might be hard
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  Speaker 1: to hear, but I believe that we get to do
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  Speaker 1: the majority of our parenting prior to the age of
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  Speaker 1: twelve or thirteen. Time time your child is thirteen, influence shifts.
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  Speaker 1: Kids start to focus more on what their peers are
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  Speaker 1: saying and doing, and they certainly move away from us.
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  Speaker 1: Some estimates suggest that by the age of thirteen, we
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  Speaker 1: have done seventy five to eighty percent of our hands
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  Speaker 1: on parenting. The kids get older, they spend less time
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  Speaker 1: with us. We spend less time with them. They get jobs,
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  Speaker 1: they're involved in extracurricular stuff, and it just disappears you've
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  Speaker 1: got nine hundred and thirty six weekends when you put
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  Speaker 1: it like that.
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  Speaker 3: It feels like such a harsh reality. I think about
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  Speaker 3: the person I was in those really young years. I
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  Speaker 3: was completely deprived of sleep, exhausted, not the best.
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  Speaker 1: Persons when my most ends on I.
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  Speaker 3: Would like to be, And yet you're telling me that
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  Speaker 3: that's when I have the most influenced.
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  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, the first couple of years are particularly tough.
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  Speaker 1: But you think about it in terms of weekends. Like
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  Speaker 1: I said, nine hundred and thirty six weekends across eighteen years.
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  Speaker 1: But once the kids turn thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, they start
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  Speaker 1: getting jobs, they spend more time with their friend. From
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  Speaker 1: the age of thirteen, that nine hundred and thirty six
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  Speaker 1: weekends is now to two hundred and sixty weekends. By
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  Speaker 1: the time they're fifteen, that's one hundred and fifty six weekends.
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  Speaker 1: And that's assuming you get to spend every weekend with them.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, I would say to Lisa, this is you're
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  Speaker 1: right on the casp here. This is the tipping point
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  Speaker 1: around age thirteen where moving into healthy, strong relationship sort
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  Speaker 1: of status is increasingly important, and yet it is increasingly tricky.
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  Speaker 3: You won't read this in any parenting book, but a
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  Speaker 3: couple of months ago, one of our girls was going
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  Speaker 3: through this exact situation, and I thought, you know what,
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  Speaker 3: she needs to know how this feels, and so I
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  Speaker 3: actually returned to the favor back.
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  Speaker 1: Oh no, you haven't told me about this. This didn't
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  Speaker 1: show up in our older bit. It's tomorrow conversation. What happened?
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  Speaker 3: I just gave you one word answers. Whenever she asked
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  Speaker 3: me anything, I just said yep NP. Really she got
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  Speaker 3: so frustrated with me within about half an hour of
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  Speaker 3: her trying to have a conversation where I wouldn't give
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  Speaker 3: her any other answer. She's like, Mom, why are you
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  Speaker 3: talking to me? And I kind of looked at it
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  Speaker 3: and I said, you know what, I said, this is
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  Speaker 3: what it feels like. I said, I try so hard
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  Speaker 3: to have honest, open conversations with you, and this is
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  Speaker 3: what I get. It doesn't feel nice.
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  Speaker 1: Well, that wasn't in my list of things that we
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  Speaker 1: can encourage me to know. But do you know what
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  Speaker 1: this is hard for me to say. You can hear
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  Speaker 1: me stammering and stumbling as like kind of try to
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  Speaker 1: spit it out. But sometimes the kids just the reality
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  Speaker 1: is okay. So sometimes this is personality. Sometimes kids says,
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  Speaker 1: they get older and go through their developmental phases, they
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  Speaker 1: do quiet down, they do sort of step away, they
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  Speaker 1: do want to be in their own head a little bit.
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  Speaker 1: But sometimes they are just being really temperamental and really
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  Speaker 1: ego centric, and really arrogant and entitled. Sometimes that's what
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  Speaker 1: they're doing.
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  Speaker 3: Sometimes I think they actually don't know what they feel like.
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  Speaker 3: For me, I know that so often when I feel
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  Speaker 3: emotionally flooded. And you're laughing, but the reality is, for
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  Speaker 3: a teenager, there are so many emotions going through their
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  Speaker 3: head at any given time, regardless of whether you're a
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  Speaker 3: catalyst to it or not.
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  Speaker 1: I'm laughing because I'm thinking about my last fifteen years
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  Speaker 1: raising teenage girls.
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  Speaker 4: So much emotions and much emotion, And for me often
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  Speaker 4: what was going on is that my head was so
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  Speaker 4: full of emotions, and the funnel to get those emotions
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  Speaker 4: out narrows right in my head massive.
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  Speaker 3: But then you get down to the actual narrow part
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  Speaker 3: of your funnel and I couldn't get anything out because
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  Speaker 3: I didn't know which one needed voicing.
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  Speaker 1: I'm making fun of it, but having watched it, what
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  Speaker 1: I do know is that in those moments, the times
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  Speaker 1: that we have turned towards our children, we've embraced them,
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  Speaker 1: or we've shown some compassion, recognized that there might be
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  Speaker 1: awesome suffering going on that we hadn't previously seen. It
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  Speaker 1: makes all the difference. And so as much as we
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  Speaker 1: can laugh about how much of an emotional cyclone teenage
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  Speaker 1: girls psycho cyclone in each cyclone, the reality is when
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  Speaker 1: when a child is not responding, when a child is
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  Speaker 1: pushing back, when a child is giving you big reactions,
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  Speaker 1: they usually don't need to be reprimanded. They need to
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  Speaker 1: be understanded.
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  Speaker 3: Understand.
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  Speaker 1: While I was trying to make it rhyme, get curious,
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  Speaker 1: not furious, I understand, don't reprimand export I thought I was.
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  Speaker 1: I realized where I patted myself into this corner where
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  Speaker 1: something wasn't going to rhyme or alliterate.
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  Speaker 3: Gosh, well, just to finish and round off my story, right, well,
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  Speaker 3: I definitely wanted to paint a very clear picture of
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  Speaker 3: what I was experiencing. The most important part out of
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  Speaker 3: that process was as soon as she snapped and realized
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  Speaker 3: to what was going on, we were able to sit
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  Speaker 3: down and have a really good conversation. And I actually
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  Speaker 3: haven't had that behavior.
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  Speaker 1: Since yeah, sometimes letting the kids know that something's not acceptable.
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  Speaker 1: My preference is just to say, I'm going to give
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  Speaker 1: you another chance to say that to me a little
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  Speaker 1: more politely.
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  Speaker 3: Sometimes I think you just need to see it. You
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  Speaker 3: actually talked, to have the visual you need to kind
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  Speaker 3: of recognize, Oh, hang on a sec that's how she
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  Speaker 3: perceives this, Or yeah, I wasn't doing it out of malice.
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  Speaker 1: So Lisa, that's a couple of options. After the break,
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  Speaker 1: I give you another five. Okay, we're talking about Lisa
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  Speaker 1: and her monosyllabic thirteen year old doesn't really want to talk,
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  Speaker 1: really struggling. We've covered off you can give her a
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  Speaker 1: bit of her own medicine. We've also talked about empathy,
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  Speaker 1: kindness turning towards and compassion, and we've highlighted the personality
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  Speaker 1: changes that can occur around this age and the developmental
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  Speaker 1: reality of being influenced by friends.
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  Speaker 3: I'd never be a teenager again. You could not pay
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  Speaker 3: me enough.
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  Speaker 1: In the front of Misconnection, the book that I wrote
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  Speaker 1: about raising teenage girls, I've got this amazing quote from
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  Speaker 1: Harry Potter and The Curse Child. That's the book that
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  Speaker 1: Rolling didn't write that became the stage play and Draco
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  Speaker 1: malfoy is talking to Harry Potter. They're both adults, they're
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  Speaker 1: raising their own kids, and Draco says, this beautiful thing,
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  Speaker 1: and it says so succinctly. People say parenting is the
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  Speaker 1: hardest job in the world. It's not growing up is Yeah. So,
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  Speaker 1: here are some other solutions that could be helpful if
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  Speaker 1: you have a teenager who's not talking. First of all,
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  Speaker 1: don't worry about having conversations. Don't try to force conversations.
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  Speaker 1: Force creates resistance.
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  Speaker 3: Well that's kind of where I was going, right.
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  Speaker 1: Right, kind Yeah, nah, rebuild the relationship by spending time together.
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  Speaker 1: Kids spell love t im, So find a way to
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  Speaker 1: spend time in a way that feels good for her.
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  Speaker 3: So this this, that's tricky, and it goes back to
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  Speaker 3: child development. When you think about a toddler, when they
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  Speaker 3: first start exploring and playing, they don't actually play with
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  Speaker 3: other people. They play all by themselves.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, they call it parallel play.
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  Speaker 3: And then as they progress, they then start playing by
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  Speaker 3: themselves next to other people. And when our teenagers are
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  Speaker 3: in this flux, they're not ready for whatever reason, they're
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  Speaker 3: not ready to socialize.
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  Speaker 1: Doesn't play well with us.
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  Speaker 3: They don't play well with that sex exactly right. So
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  Speaker 3: finding something that you can do where you can essentially
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  Speaker 3: play individually, side by side is a really wonderful way
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  Speaker 3: to start to rebuild and reconnect.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's what I was going to say, fun
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  Speaker 1: and games. Her ideas doing things side by side, not
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  Speaker 1: face to face. That's my next tip. The next one
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  Speaker 1: that I want to point to is this, choose your timing.
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  Speaker 1: If a conversation needs to be had, there are sometimes
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  Speaker 1: where it will work very well and sometimes where it
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  Speaker 1: will work quite poorly.
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  Speaker 3: Indeed, how good are you picking your timing?
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  Speaker 1: I feel like this is a loaded question. Just because
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  Speaker 1: you know something doesn't mean that you do it all
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  Speaker 1: the time.
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  Speaker 3: I thought you were going to say, just because you
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  Speaker 3: know something doesn't mean you have to blurt it out
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  Speaker 3: as soon as they walk through the door.
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  Speaker 1: I am not very good at withholding, am I. If
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  Speaker 1: something's on my mind, let's just talk about it now,
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  Speaker 1: let's just deal with it now, let's.
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  Speaker 3: Just let's just fix it. Let's just fix it.
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  Speaker 1: I'm getting better at kicking things down the road. I'm
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  Speaker 1: getting better at pausing, waiting till the right time, sitting
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  Speaker 1: in the discomfort for a little longer till everyone's emotions
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  Speaker 1: have settled.
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  Speaker 3: So timing is so important, not just for your teenager, though,
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  Speaker 3: it's important for us because we're processing at the same time. Right,
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  Speaker 3: And if there is a particularly challenging conversation, if we're
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  Speaker 3: fueled with emotion, where is this conversation going to lead nowhere? Positive?
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  Speaker 1: Right? So high emotions equals low intelligence. I'd be looking
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  Speaker 1: for this, though. I'd be looking for when my daughter
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  Speaker 1: is talking. So I might have a child who is
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  Speaker 1: refusing to talk to me, but we come together for
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  Speaker 1: our family meal and she's laughing and playing with everybody
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  Speaker 1: else and having a great time singing songs or talking,
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  Speaker 1: which means there may be some conflict between us, or
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  Speaker 1: maybe now is a good time because the emotions have
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  Speaker 1: settled and we can catch up just briefly. I usually
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  Speaker 1: find the car or bed or just going for a
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  Speaker 1: walk at the best times for these conversations.
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  Speaker 3: One of our children really really struggled to have conversations,
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  Speaker 3: any kind of conversation. She could talk to her friend
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  Speaker 3: about every four hours, for hours and hours and hours
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  Speaker 3: about any Disney movie. She could recite all of the
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  Speaker 3: lyrics of any song. She just loves to talk, but
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  Speaker 3: when it came to anything that required a bit of herself,
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  Speaker 3: the vulnerability, which she really really struggled. And I one
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  Speaker 3: day decided that this kid loves writing. She absolutely loves writing.
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  Speaker 3: She would write pages and pages as she tried to
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  Speaker 3: create news stories and things in her head and put
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  Speaker 3: them down on paper. And so I created a little journal,
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  Speaker 3: an opportunity for me to write her a letter and
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  Speaker 3: tell her what I was thinking and how I was feeling,
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  Speaker 3: how much I loved her, and the things that I
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  Speaker 3: saw in her that I admired. And slowly but surely,
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  Speaker 3: she not only started responding, but she started opening up
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  Speaker 3: and I just acknowledged her. I recognize that having conversations
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  Speaker 3: sometimes were hard, but this was a beautiful way for
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  Speaker 3: me to connect with her in her time, in her language.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it works so well. A couple of other things.
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  Speaker 1: A couple of weeks ago, on January twenty five, our
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  Speaker 1: special Weekend edition an interview with Charles Dowheck, New York
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  Speaker 1: Times best selling author, Pulitzer Prize winner. We talked about
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  Speaker 1: deep questions, rather than saying how is your day or
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  Speaker 1: what's going on, asking questions like what do you admire
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  Speaker 1: about your friend or how did that affect you? Or
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  Speaker 1: what was the most challenging thing you went through today
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  Speaker 1: at school? Or who did you help? Because we want
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  Speaker 1: to get into contribution rather than ego, or what's your
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  Speaker 1: favorite memory? Just asking questions, what are you looking forward to?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah?
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  Speaker 1: Asking questions that are meaningful tend to inspire better conversations.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, we've talked about already, matters like choosing your
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  Speaker 1: timing and making sure that they're happy to be in
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  Speaker 1: your space. But I would go back and have listened
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  Speaker 1: to that conversation with Charles Duhig episode one one six
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  Speaker 1: zero on the twenty fifth of jan especially a little
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  Speaker 1: bit about deep questions Lisa. I think it will be helpful.
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  Speaker 1: Two last things. We've approached this question with very little
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  Speaker 1: information from the voice note that's been left. We don't
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  Speaker 1: know if there's something more serious going on. We've taken
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  Speaker 1: a fairly standard developmental approach to this, but it could
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  Speaker 1: be serious. We're not trying to frighten anybody, but it's
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  Speaker 1: important that we have medical checkups, that we're checking phones,
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  Speaker 1: making sure there's no bullying going on. Maybe a phone
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  Speaker 1: has come into her life and you've just lost your
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: daughter to her phone and she wants to be on
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  Speaker 1: that all day and night. Maybe there aren't appropriate boundaries.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe she's just tired. So we want to make sure
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  Speaker 1: that we're considering some of the more serious things that
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  Speaker 1: it could be. Generally it's not, but we have to acknowledge.
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  Speaker 3: That, just like our daughter who didn't want to talk
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  Speaker 3: to us and really really struggled until I started writing
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  Speaker 3: things down with her, they do grow out of it,
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  Speaker 3: they do move through it, and if you will be
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  Speaker 3: consistent and persistent over time, your relationship will continue to grow.
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  Speaker 1: Lisa, there is hope. We promise. We've been through it
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  Speaker 1: with five soon to be six of our own, and
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  Speaker 1: it does get better.
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  Speaker 3: You do get there.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: If you'd like to submit a tricky question, we have
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: our super simple system at happy families dot com dot
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: you scroll down to podcasts, click the record button, start talking.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: We answer another one of your tricky questions next Tuesday,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: and we love, we just love love hearing from you.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin Rulan from
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Bridge Media. If you like more information and resources to
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: make your family happier, visit us at happy families dot
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: com dot You