Communicating with Apathetic Teenagers by Joseph Greeny

I feel as parents, we often lost sight of the fact that we are NOT raising children and are in fact raising adults and I also feel we tend to forget that our children will be EXACTLY what we taught them to be. One of my favorite quotes states "that we often complain about the younger generation as if we had nothing to do with who they are". Very powerful words! 

I am consistently stating to the parents I work with who complain that their child doesn't listen when they try to help, that it could have something to do with your connection to them. The sharing of DNA does guarantee the sharing of deep thoughts and feelings, that is a privilege you have to earn...even from your own child!

If you have made no effort to truly build an emotional bridge from you to your child and have only "demanded" to get what you want based upon the fact that you are the parent, you are not only wasting your time, you are doing further damage to an already fragile relationship. Would you share your deepest secrets with a neighbor if they just walked up and asked for them? Probably not because while you "know of" that person, you don't "KNOW" that person. Anyone can put the initials "Dr." in front of their name, but they don't mean anything unless a person has earned them. The terms "mother" and "father" are no different. They are nothing more than titles unless you put in the work required to make them mean something.  

I came across this article and found it to be greatly informative and extremely insightful to those who are parenting teenagers and of course wanted to share it. Please note, I DID NOT write this article and am only passing on it's benefit...

Communicating with Apathetic Teenagers
By Joseph Grenny

Dear Crucial Skills,

I just watched Joseph Grenny's "How to Hold Those You Love Accountable" video and although I thought it was good, I would like to know how to deal with teenagers who don't see things as clearly. Both kids in the example well up in tears and seem extremely mature in their response.

What happens when you take this same approach and they just roll their eyes, say they don't want to talk about their feelings, and to just get on with it? What about when they've heard it all before from adults who really wanted to empathize and they simply like doing drugs or throwing parties? They see the benefit (popularity, hot girls, easy rush, etc.) and wish the old folks would just stop nagging. They're right and you are wrong. What do you do then?

Signed,
Giving Up

Dear Giving Up,

With your permission I will speak very personally. You are asking a question that strikes at the heart of what parenting has meant to me. My opinions about your situation have been informed by twenty-seven years of learning to have intimate relationships with imperfect people. People like me.

For those who haven't seen the video, I shared a story of a young man at an alternative high school who was addicted to drugs and was caught using them in school. I also described how one of my teenage children threw a massive party at our home while my wife and I were away. The point I wanted to illustrate is, if we try to address accountability with those we love in the absence of emotional connection, we often provoke defensiveness. However, if we pay the price to connect emotionally first, they are more likely to feel naturally accountable for the effect their actions have on others. True accountability is the fruit of emotional connection. Anything less is little more than compulsion.

Trust me, my life hasn't been a series of photo ops. It's been more valley than peak. I feel your pain when your best efforts seem to yield no influence. And I know the agony of watching those I love squander sacred potential. So, what do you do when, in spite of your best efforts to empathize, connect, listen, and validate others, the result is a shoulder shrug? Here are my beliefs about how to create healthy relationships with imperfect people.

1. I am responsible for influence, not results.

The instant I measure my "success" by others' choices, I am living a lie. The lie is that I can—or should—control others. I can't. I shouldn't. The very wish to do so is the root cause of every form of misery for myself and others. It leads to anger, despair, depression, compulsion, and pride. During our children's infancy, we parents get seduced into the delusion that we can mold them as we please. The truth is, we are responsible to offer a worthy example, provide coaching, give support, and surrender the rest.

2. Everyone learns on their own schedule.

Over the years, I've created enormous stress for myself and family members by unconsciously planning the lives of my children on a normative schedule. I had tacit expectations of where they should be by age eight, twelve, sixteen, eighteen, and so on. Mind you, I wasn’t aware I was doing this. It was more of an expectation I absorbed by comparing myself with "successful" parents around me. It wasn't until one child after another deviated from that plan that I became aware I had it in the first place. It showed up in feelings of panic or discouragement. It showed up in behavior like bargaining, bribing, and criticizing. I have arrived at a very different place today. I feel an immense respect for the uniqueness of each of my children. I have enormous faith that they are learning creatures and that they each need to learn in their own way and on their own schedule. If you'll allow a very personal aside, I also believe this learning schedule exceeds this life. I get to take part in that learning at times, but my role is much smaller than the illusory one I have so often coveted.

3. Influence can only be granted, not taken.

My children grant it to me at their pleasure—and tend to do so only when they believe they can trust my intent. In the worst of cases, children surrender enormous influence because we've convinced them of their own incompetence. They adopt every habit and aspiration we advocate because they can hardly distinguish the boundaries of their own identity from ours. The other extreme happens when they resent your attempt to violate their agency so much that your attempts to control become the issue. You unintentionally impede their ability to learn from their mistakes because they are distracted by their resentment of your intrusions into their choices.

Healthy influence happens when children are fundamentally convinced your only intent is to help them accomplish their own worthy goals, not to impose your own. This redefines parenting as a process of enabling their discovery of their own uniqueness, worth, and mission. And it gives you a small but privileged view of that unfolding. At times they'll make monumentally stupid decisions (as did you and I). With adult children, we slow their learning when we either fight these choices or rescue them from them. Instead, our role is to help them know we believe in them, and be ready to offer feedback and counsel when—and only when—they give us permission to do so.

I hope you don't hear any of this as glib. I know the pain of parental disappointment—and even agony. I've come to understand, at times, that making the choice to love is making a choice to suffer. But that suffering need not turn to misery if I understand my role. When I do, I increase the likelihood of experiencing the surpassing joy that comes from being such an intimate part of another person's life.

With love,
Joseph

 

Self-Regulation In Children: Finding The "Why"

Self-Regulation is still a fairly new concept, but research has consistently demonstrated that effective Self-Regulation is a vital skill necessary for reliable emotional well-being. However, like other skills, it is not something we born with and instead, develop over time.  As we grown and learn, we develop control over our emotions, over our behaviors, and determine how best to respond to certain situations. Since emotion very much drives behavior, it’s important that we understand the concept of Self-Regulation as it pertains to both behavior and emotion.

Looking at the behavior aspect, Self-Regulation is defined as the ability to act in your long-term best interest with your deepest values on a consistent basis. What we often face in our day to day interactions, are violations against our deepest values which creates feelings of guilt, shame, and anxiety. Not only are these the antithesis of “overall emotional well-being”, but they are feelings that will drive negative behavior. If we look at it in terms of emotions, Self-Regulation is defined as the ability to calm yourself when you become frustrated or upset as well as uplift yourself when you feel sad or down. With all that being said, in order for a person to understand Self-Regulation, they must also understand the basic foundations of emotions, more importantly, feelings. To put it bluntly, emotions “move us” and prepare us for action. Bottom of Form, but regardless of the action intended, all emotions will have the same three motivators: Approach, Avoid, or Attack!

1. Approach is driven by a desire to get “more”…More of anything. Emotionally speaking, you will see this in a form of things such as enjoyment, compassion, love, interest, etc. Behaviorally speaking it will appear in positive ways such as negotiation, cooperation, encouragement, protection, etc.
2. Avoid is driven by the desire of wanting to get away with something and in turn you will automatically lower its value or purpose in your life. Behaviorally speaking, this will appear in the form of ignoring, dismissal, or rejection.
3. Attack is driven by exactly what it sounds like. A desire to criticize, insult, demean, harm, dominate, or destroy something or someone. Emotionally speaking, this appears in forms of anger, contempt, even disgust and behaviorally speaking you will see it appear through manipulation, demands, threats, and even bullying.

So what are feelings? Feelings are the most misunderstood component of emotions simply because they are complex and ever-changing. Our moods can be affected by the weather, physical states such as illness, our environment or people in it, psychological responses such as depression, and numerous other things. As humans, our tendency is to avoid actively focusing on feelings and instead just the overall mood…in other words, we “feel”, but we don’t “think” about what we feel. The thought process behind our feelings typically only comes when someone asks us specifically, “what are you feeling?” The problem with this question is that when we focus solely on anything, it just makes it more intense for us and since we tend to already be uncomfortable by what we are feeling, increasing the intensity, is only going to be more upsetting. In regards to Self-Regulation, this creates a problem because it’s really only attainable when the person’s feelings are not distorted through overall amplification.

So let’s put all of this into context…

When a person simply states “I feel bad” all the attention is aimed towards the “bad” feeling alone and typically there is an automatic need created to justify and/or explain the “bad” feeling i.e. putting the responsibility of the feeling on another person or situation. In other words, they begin “blaming” instead of “identifying”! However, if you encourage them to focus on a statement such as “this is the reason I feel bad” it will help to keep them focused on what’s truly wrong as opposed to generalizing and/or fabricating.

Feelings are important because feelings drive behaviors, but they are not the MOST important aspect. When the “why” of the feeling is not found, it is harder to create beneficial behavior. Put another way, every behavior has a reason so the key is to “find the why” in the feeling that in turn is behind the behavior. When we are talking about children, how we view their actions needs to always be put into context. Not every behavior can be disciplined out of a child and in fact, very few can. As I stated, our behaviors are driven by our emotions so the only way a child will be able to alter their undesirable behaviors, is to first understand what caused the feeling that is driving it. With that being said, a person’s ability to Self-Regulate is something that we as society take for granted, just as we do so many things about human nature. We too often forget “that a person cannot demonstrate or display that which they were not taught”.  Meaning, children are what their parents teach them to be so when a child misses out on certain life skills, how do we expect them to do it as an adult? So as parents and caregivers, we need to assist them in learning to identify “WHY they feel bad” and not just “they feel bad”. Knowing how to calm oneself is an important and necessary life-long skill so the more opportunities children have to address inappropriate situations, the more it will create in them the ability to identify/verbalize their own “whys”. Overall, this will lead to children who are able to modify their own undesirable behaviors as opposed to relying on an adult to emotionally rescue them when their feelings make them uncomfortable.

My Own Personal Thoughts On The "Ebola Crisis"

I will state from the beginning, that if anyone finds this offensive or rude, then I do apologize, but again, these are my thoughts and my feelings, therefore no one is required to believe them, trust them, or follow them.

Of course we know that right now, based solely on media coverage, that Ebola has become not a HEALTH epidemic, but a FEAR epidemic of monumental portions. Why? Because we are human beings wired for immediate mass hysteria of the unknown! Even looking at the facts, that there have been only THREE confirmed cases in the U.S., it in no way sways people from complete breakdown about this disease. If fact, a recent poll that was conducted showed that approximately 40% of the population view Ebola as a “moderate to severe health risk”…THREE PEOPLE folks!

Now here is another interesting fact, how many people know what Enterovirus D68 is? Typically speaking the only people who are aware of what this is are people with small children. This particular virus causes respiratory problems, often severe, and in rare cases, has even caused children to develop muscle paralysis, but even that has no concrete scientific proof of causation. To date, approximately 600 children, in 45 states, have been infected. Now most have recovered quickly, but there have still been 5 deaths so naturally there is a great deal of anxiety among parents in the U.S.

Here is the question, are we essentially worrying too much about both of these diseases? Here is the reality and the answer…YES! Unequivocally YES! The actuality is that we are not nor have we ever applied the panic where it should actually be when it comes to diseases that are FAR MORE LIKELY to cause serious damage to the U.S. population. For example….INFLUENZA!  Everyone should be aware that Flu season is upon us. What everyone may not be aware of is that is that the Flu kills THOUSANDS of Americans and puts HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS in the hospital. Yet never do you see the level and magnitude of widespread panic and chaos that we have seen in the last month.

According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), the average annual death toll from the Flu, between the years of 1976 and 2007, has been MORE than 23,000!!!! What’s more insane, at least to me, is that there ARE preventative measures and even a VACCINE for the Flu while there is nothing for Ebola or Enterovirus D68. The bigger reality is that actually trying to force some public panic over the Flu, as has been done with the other two, might actually help increase awareness as well as people taking preventative measures. Nope, here we are with the media creating "circus level craziness" over two diseases that are highly unlikely to ever reach the level of panic they are currently garnishing and truth be told, when it comes to Ebola, at this time, the only people who are truly at risk, are health care workers!

Ebola and Enterovirus D68 are nothing more than novelty items right now. Just like the new toy at Christmas that every child wants or the newest cell phone/electronic that every adult wants. Meanwhile, the Flu has basically become the first IPod ever produced or toys from the 80’s...you know, “been there, done that”. It’s people's familiarity with it that causes them to not be scared of it. Numerous studies have been done to show, people will underestimate the overall risks of the everyday, common place hazards of life, while at the same time, INCREDIBLY overestimating the overall risk of those events that are out of the ordinary. To put it plainly, as I have said many, many, many times, “We always fear what we don’t know!”  People will turn themselves inside out with worry about a plane crash, while driving everyday like they are on automatic pilot when every study shows you are more likely to die in a car crash or even walking that on a plane.

All of this fear, while understandable is absolutely, 100% irrational. We have all heard that you should never stress or worry about that which you can’t control because it is wasted energy! Ebola is no different! There is no vaccine, it is not spread through the air, but we do know that it’s probably a good idea to stay away from anyone who has been to South Africa in the last 21 days. The Flu on the other hand is spread through the air, can kill you and does kill thousands every year, but also has several preventative measures. People, we survived small pox, we survived polio, we survived NIHI, we even survived the turn of the new millennium, which if you will remember, EVERYTHING was saying then that it was going to end the world, just like people believe now!

I also want to add for those who don’t know, for those who think that hospitals are not taking this seriously, hospital protocol says there are two questions that are asked to anyone who presents with the possibility of having Ebola. The first being if they have flu like symptoms because that is what you will see and the second is, if they have been in contact with anyone who has traveled to South Africa or if they themselves have, in the last 7-21 days. If both of those questions are asked, they are immediately quarantined and tested. It is because it takes 7-21 days for symptoms to appear and if by chance they have been to Africa or been around someone who has, but if was longer than 21 days ago, they are clear, it’s just that simple. That's a fact, that's science, there is no getting around it!