HOW TO SUPPORT YOUR TEENAGER- Part 1

In today’s culture we have teens who have significant challenges as well as parents who are more stressed.

Our teens lives are so much more complicated and mental health concerns for our teens are amongst the greatest for parents. There is a wealth of opinion, information, research, ‘should and should nots’ out there for parents about how to navigate parenting in the 21st century - it doesn’t escape me that a blog post intended to support parents may appear to add to this.

It can all feel so overwhelming.

As a parent myself, in moments of overwhelm I try to remember the idea of  ‘bringing it back to basics’ …for me, that means relationship.

This is not a revelational concept or thought, but as any parent of a teenager can tell you, maintaining a meaningful connection with your teen can be considered up there as one of the most challenging life experiences for a parent.

A strong and positive parent-teen relationship can have the most meaningful positive impact on our teens development and general wellbeing.

With this in mind here are some key ideas for fostering, strengthening and maintaining connection throughout the adolescent years:

1.     Understand what is happening to the teenage brain:

Understanding a teens brain helps us better understand our teens behaviour, responses, moods, decisions, capabilities etc

The teen brain is going through what Dan Siegel (professor of psychiatry and author of Brainstorm) calls ‘remodelling’, a process of changing activity and structure of the brain, of “pruning” and ‘myelin formation” (Siegel, 2013).

This means, the parts of the brain that aren’t getting used as much are pruned to make way for the strengthening (through Myelin formation) of the other neural pathways that will allow our teens to specialise in certain skills/knowledge areas. This is the time they can focus on their interests (for example soccer, playing music etc) and get better skilled at them. So, it’s a significant period of getting rid of neural connections that are not getting used while at the same time there is significant growth and strengthening of neural connections which help advance their skills (they get so much better so much quicker).

Another important aspect of teen brain development to understand is that the limbic part of the brain (responsible for social and emotional processes) is developing faster than the pre-frontal cortex (responsible for executive functioning- memory, organising- rational thinking, cognitive control etc). So, although we feel that as teens they ‘should know better’ because they are older, they are in fact still developing brains (which aren’t fully developed till approx. 25 years old).

We also know that dopamine (a neurotransmitter in the limbic part of the brain) is increased during adolescence. Dopamine drives motivation and reward seeking behaviours. This paired with the understanding that another neurotransmitter called GABA (responsible for inhibiting impulsivity) is switched off during this stage of development- allows us to have a better understanding of some of the behaviours we see in our teens like, risk taking, impulsive behaviour, reward seeking behaviour, low empathy, grumpiness, being disrespectful etc.

Knowing all of these things about the teenage brain remodelling makes us have more understanding around the kinds of typical behaviours we see from them like forgetfulness, disorganised, moodiness, impulsivity, monosyllabic ways of communicating, low motivation etc. It is hoped that by keeping this in mind, we can more appropriately respond to our teens.

2.     Encourage and create opportunities for real-time socialisation with peers in your home and/or in your company

Maintaining connection with caring adults is vital for healthy teen development- at a time when teens naturally prioritise peer relationships, they are still in need of healthy adult connections to help them navigate their way into adulthood.

This is not about supervising or monitoring because you don’t trust your teen, this is about normalising parent engagement with your teen  and your teens friends and showing that joy, fun and ‘good times’ can also be shared in these moments when parents are around. It shows your teen that you delight in them and enjoy their company.

This of course does not work if its forced or if its an expectation set by you as a parent! Its about creating more regular organic opportunities i.e. dropping them off somewhere and listening to music they like in the car, having friends over and making pizzas together etc

This keeps connection strong in the face of healthy individuation by your teen and is also beneficial for encouraging the development of social skills given they are interacting in real-time with others.

3.    Help your teen learn how to regulate their emotions

Heightened teen behaviours and big emotions are opportunities to connect and help our teens learn how to regulate their nervous systems. This is achieved primarily by modelling emotion regulation.

A good place to start in these times, is to remind yourself this is a normal part of development. Then tune in to your own nervous system status- is your hearty racing?  do you feel like you want to explode? taking a pause to notice this about yourself in itself can help your regulation. Do what you need to do to regulate in a healthy way.

Focus on using a calm voice- the power of a calm tone can instantly stop a situation from escalating.

Hold a safe space for your teen to talk, yell, cry etc – and just listen and validate their feelings….validate your teens moodiness and grumpiness etc.

Remember less is more, just be present and listen. You can use phrases like “its sounds hard” “that would have been really frightening” etc or just get used to being ok with silence.

There may be room to share with them what you have heard them say – it could be an opportunity to check if its accurate which really assures them you have been listening and want to get it right.

Help engage your teen in a regulating activity e.g. going for a drive, kicking a ball, play music in the household to shift the mood (i.e. play upbeat music and dance around if needing to lift from low energy- withdrawn, low mood etc-  or relaxing music if needing to move from high energy- anger, frustration etc), this will help to shift the neurochemicals in the brain and adjust the nervous system.

Collaborate with your teen to help them identify three go-to things that help them regulate. Doing this is helpful because when emotions are heightened its hard to think of things you can do (thinking brain is offline). So, this is a way to help your teen try to be ‘ready’ for these moments by knowing already what works to help them calm down e.g. listening to music, baking, kicking a ball, going for a walk, playing with a pet watching a funny movie/online for neurodivergent child etc. 

.......more to come in Part 2 of HOW TO SUPPORT YOUR TEENAGER...

References

Siegel, D. (2013). Brainstorm.  

Dent, M (2020)- From Boys to Men- Guiding our teen boys to grow into Happy Healthy Men

Bryson, T.B, and Siegel, D. (2012)- The Whole Brain Child

Havighurst, S.S. & Kehoe, C.E. (2021). Tuning in to Kids: An emotion coaching approach to working with parents. In Allen, J.L., Hawes, D.J. & Essau, C.A. (Ed.s), Family-based Intervention for Child and Adolescent Mental Health: A Core Competencies Approach.Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.