How to parent a teen from a teens perspective
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one morning shortly after my 13th
birthday i walked out into the living
room and saw my mom reading one two
three magic teen
communicate connect and guide your teen
to adulthood by dr thomas w fallon
my first thought was that she doesn’t
need to be reading this she knows how to
pair me i’m not going to change
yeah i was wrong
the next week i was thinking to myself
what if i wrote a book about parenting
wouldn’t that be interesting
i bet every parent like to know what
their teen’s thinking about their
parenting so when this opportunity
popped up i thought this would be a
perfect topic to talk about
we’ll start with technology because
technology is an area where teens and
parents
usually don’t get along
mostly because of the difference between
technology from today and with my
parents routines
in my opinion i think a child should get
a phone based off of the environment so
what i mean by that if your child lives
in iowa kids usually don’t need a funny
engage but for kids who live in new york
city they have to walk to school and
give boon the city so it’s more
important to have a phone at a younger
age for safety purposes
there’s age but there’s also time to
consider for me i think the talmud
should be anything that the parents can
handle what i mean by that if you are
spending 12 hours on your phone and tell
your kid only a one hour screen time
there’s a problem
don’t set timelines for a kid if you
can’t follow them too i mean come on
parents have a little fairness atonement
should be anything that you can handle
in order to understand your teen you
need to understand what your teen thinks
of you
some teens describe their parents as
certain stereotypes these stereotypes
fall into two categories the boss and
the lucy goosey
the boss is a strict parent that you
might hear saying what i say goes and
when you make the money then you can
make the rules the lucy goosey lets
anything slide for example a team could
stay up all night but the lucy goosey
won’t have a problem with that
also a lucy goosey could also be okay
with one thing and be strict on another
for example a team could have a very
strict bedtime but have as much screen
time as they like
the parent that i like to see is not the
boss nor the loosey goosey but in the
middle i call this parent the listener
the listener gives directions but let
their teen have options the boss and the
lucy goosey aren’t bad parents but the
listener takes the good out of these two
and then leaves the bad
imagine your teen wants to quit the
basketball team and get a job at
mcdonald’s the listener would ask
questions before the team would make a
decision
the listener would also give directions
on places to work if they didn’t want
them to work that place
but how can you listen to your teen if
he or she is so mad or how can your teen
listen to you if you’re so mad let’s
talk about emotions
so emotions we all have them but teen
emotions are very special according to
marwa azab in our phd article why are
teens so emotional the part of the brain
that controls the emotional system is
called the limbic brain structure the
limbic system is slower to develop than
our logical system
it takes some time for a teen to connect
your emotional system and her logical
system
basically when i’m feeling sad or mad
the emotions feel very intense
when i’m feeling sad or mad it feels
like a wave is just crashed into me
i’m not thinking why i’m sad mad it’s
just there
one day after tense practice i was
thinking to myself
i don’t really want to join the team it
was a lot of work and it was every day
so i asked my mom about in the car
she said that we’re committed to the
team
and all of a sudden i started crying i
couldn’t stop that wave emotions just
hit me and i cried all the way home and
my mom was so calm about it that made me
even more mad
i was expecting my mom to get really mad
at me but when she didn’t that got me
really mad
when i got home and calmed down i was
thinking about what just happened i just
had my first mood swing and i didn’t
even know it
so what i learned about parenting from
my first mood swing is that when your
teen is experiencing a wave emotions the
key for parenting is to stay calm
if you stay calm your teen’s way of
emotions will pass and they’ll realize
that they’re being silly
but if you fight back your teen actually
has a reason to be mad they won’t think
about how they just had a mood swing
they’ll think about how you just yelled
at them
so parents if your teen’s experiencing a
mood swing stay calm and realize it’s
not you it’s emotions
as a beginner team i’m starting to learn
about emotions understanding technology
and seeing different types of parents i
also understand since i’m the oldest my
parents are freaking us out too
and by the way i love my parents and
this is not about how bad they are
parenting this comes from a variety of
places and my realization on wow it’s
really hard a parent routine
we all experience like what is to be a
teen with a little bit of listening
we’ll all get to the finish line
thank you
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you