The 1 Huge Mistake Parents Make With Angry Teenagers

I've been listening to a lot of parenting podcasts lately. Now, normally that's not a genre that I listen to, but because I've been on a lot of parenting podcasts lately, I've been listening to a lot of parenting podcasts because I think it's really rude to reach out to somebody if I don't know about them yet. So I listen to their podcast. I maybe find people who listen to them and make sure that I know who this is I'm reaching out to. It's also good to vet people ahead of time. I don't want my reputation to be tied up with like, you know, another reputation that's not matching with mine. So listening to this parenting podcast has been really interesting. And I think I might end up having to do a few different videos about this because some of the things that they're telling parents not to do, it never even occurred to me to do.

So let's just back up a little bit here and talk about adolescents and why it is that so many adolescents seem to hate their parents. Now, there's not just one reason, of course. Here, parents is kind of a strong word, but that's what my 14-year-old said. So my kids are 14 and 17. So I asked them, why are you such good kids? Why are you not fighting with me all the time? Why are you not arguing about everything? Doing all these things that I hear about teens doing. And my 14-year-old said, well, mom, you don't give us any reason to hate you. And I was like, okay, hate's a pretty strong word. And so I asked them more about it and they're like, yeah, like, okay. So imagine you're sitting there on your phone and someone says to you, get off your phone.

And you're like, okay, I'll do that in a second when I'm done. And they're like, no, I said, get off your phone. And I was like, ooh, that's rude. I'm like, yeah, see, that's what parents do. Really? That's what parents do? Turns out that's what parents do. Well, listening to these parenting podcasts, I'm hearing these kinds of things over and over again. I'm like, really, this is considered acceptable way to treat our teenagers. So let's start back to the foundation here and talk about adolescents as human beings and teens as human beings, because we're talking about making more humans on this channel. And when I named it making more humans, I was partly talking about literally conceiving and making more humans, but also we're raising these humans, right?

We're raising them into good humans. And so we need to be thinking about how do we want them to treat other people and how do we treat other people and do we treat them like that? And I'm sure most people watching this, no issues with that at all, but it's a filter that I think might be very useful for some people. And also when you're like watching other people's behavior, like flipping it around to see would this still make sense if we flipped it around to different people? This is something I learned years ago because I was a mom with a baby and a toddler and, and a husband, like so many other people. And I was working, my husband was a stay-at-home dad. I realized that I was getting up with the babies at night so that my husband wouldn't be tired during the day to take care of them.

Meanwhile, other moms I knew, like my friends who a couple of them are stay-at-home moms, they were getting up at night with the babies so their husbands wouldn't be tired for work. And I was like, well, wait a second. They're always, it's always us getting up. It's always the moms getting up no matter what it is we're doing the next day. So I started watching it with my patients because I took care of lots of young families. So I said, like, who gets up with the baby at night? And it was always the mom. And I was like, why is this? Why is it always the mom? Why are we more comfortable with the mom being tired so the dad's not tired, no matter what he's doing, putting that higher value on the guy's time and what he's doing during the day than the woman's time and what she's doing during the day.

Turns out, there's good research behind that. It's something that we do as a society—as most societies do—the same amount of time is more valuable when a man does it. And so I started just flipping everything. Would this make sense if it was my husband instead of me? Now I told him this and he was like, oh, well, we should just split it. So what we did is I took the first part of the night, stayed up late with the baby, and then he took the second part of the night, got up early with the baby. So that way we each got sleep. It was a little bit hard at first. I literally had to put my feet in the middle of his back and push to get him up out of bed because he just did not wake up. But over time he learned that if I pushed him out of bed with my feet, I wasn't being mean, which is what he thought at first.

The first few times he's like, why are you kicking me? And like, because the baby's crying. I don't, I don't hear a baby crying, but the one right next to us in this room. Listen, yeah, that took some, some practice. But once he got used to it, he would kind of figure out how to get the baby and go take care of the baby. So after that, we both started flipping it. We both started saying like, okay, if this were flipped, what would we think? So for example, I called one time for my husband's results for something because he wasn't available or whatever. No problem. They gave me the results over the phone. This was before HIPAA was quite as strongly enforced as it is now. The doctor called with my results and I had explicitly written on the chart, I work full time, please give my results to my husband.

They would not give him my results. Like I'd put his phone number, his name. They said, well, these are your wife's results. And he said, yeah, she said that she wanted me to get them and they would not give him my results. And like it was a thyroid test. Not a big deal thing, but like, I wanted to know my results of my thyroid test. And I wasn't available during working hours when they could give them to me. I was so annoyed that there's this double standard that like, no problems giving me his results. Huge issue giving him my results, which I kind of understand in, you know, abusive situations or whatever, but we're so used to women taking care of the health care of everyone in the family. It was considered kind of weird for him to do it.

Another thing we really noticed a lot was when my husband would like do anything with the kids, people would be amazed. He would get all the praise for like, he wore cargo shorts. So you'd have a bottle in his pocket for the baby. People thought that was like the best thing. You're such a good dad. And he's like for feeding my baby. Like that's it. All I'm doing is feeding my baby, but the standards are so low or the flip side, if I'd feel guilty about things. So if I'd be like, Oh, I was working this week. I don't know if I want to go out with my sister tonight. We'd be like, okay, flip that around. What if my husband was working all week and he wanted to spend an evening with friends? Would he feel guilty about it?

Probably not. So doing all these flip around things really useful in our relationship. And so when it comes to dealing with teens, a similar process can be very helpful to flip it around. So would I treat a friend this way? Let's say this was my friend sitting there on their phone on my sofa. That sounds, you know, some people are like, why would your friend be on their phone? All different reasons. I mean, my neighbor, two doors down and I we've known each other for over 20 years. Sometimes, you know, like if our air conditioning is down, I might hang out over there, or if I need to do laundry and my washer broke, I might hang over there. Or she might use our washer and hang out over here. You know, if she was doing laundry in my washing machine, she was sitting on my sofa and I wanted to chat with her, I wouldn't go up and say, put down your phone.

I would say like, “Hey, do you have time to chat?” And she said, well, actually I'm trying to read, watch this video right now. Or, ‘Hey, let me finish this up real quick.’ And I'd be like, okay, cool. Let me know when you're ready and then do something else. Like maybe look at my own phone or go get my knitting or, you know, pick something up or what I do something else. And then after a few minutes, I'd be like, “Hey, is now a good time?” Or she'd be like, ‘Oh yeah, of course. Sorry about that.’ And I'd be like, Oh, no worries at all. Right. And I'd sit down and chat with her. And then what I see happening with teens and I hear from my kids is happening with other teens because of course they get to see more.

When I'm there, people behave differently, right? We behave differently around other adults, but teens' parents just disregard that and will treat their kids the normal way, apparently. And they'll do things like put down your phone. I told you to put down your phone, put down your phone now. And the kid will be like, well, I'm like, can I finish this video? No, I want you to put down your phone. Like since when did we treat anybody that way? Much less somebody we loved. And some people will say, well, like, well, then what are boundaries? Well, I have boundaries with my friend. I don't know if we're mean about it. Like if she was constantly on her phone, when we were supposed to be spending time together, that would be different.

I'd be like, yeah, if you're always going to be on your phone, I don't want to do anything with you, but that's not the case. Yeah. My kids are on their phone. They're 14 and 17, but also I'm on my phone. Everyone's on their phone. That's normal. If I say, “Hey, do you have time to talk? They usually are going to have time for me. They might want to finish what they're going to do. They might finish the video they're watching, but they don't have to tune me out because I gave them agency. I let them decide when was the right time for them, giving them that flexibility to choose that lets them be in charge of themselves, because the reality is the only thing we can make kids do is when they're really little.

We can pick them up and move them. Right. And then pretty quickly we lose that. My son was super strong from a young age. Actually, both kids were very strong from a young age. I couldn't physically make them do anything. And of course when they're little, you can use threats or bribery, but that's not going to work forever. Why not just start giving them choices? That doesn't mean they get to run everything, right? They get limited choices, but they get choices that are acceptable. And as they get used to making their own choices, as they get older, they're pretty good at it. And I don't always agree with their choices, but you know what? In a few years, I won't have any control over it anyways. Now's the time for them to make their mistakes.

When I'm here as a safety net to help them out. And for the most part, they check in with me and they're like, “Hey, can I talk this through?” I'm trying to figure out what to do. And I don't tell them what to do. I say, okay, well tell me more about, you know, whatever the situation is. And then I might put in just like a little word of wisdom. Well, you know, you might think about the future, what would happen in a year, whatever the situation is. I mean, ‘Oh yeah, that's a good idea.’ I leave it at that. I don't tell them what to do, but I gave them information they can use to make a good decision. Now, of course, their brains are rewiring. They're still figuring things out. They haven't had a lot of life experience.

They're going to make some bad choices. Don't we all? I mean, let's be honest here. We've all, not just when we're young, also when we're older, but somehow we excuse those bad decisions. There's no difference between our bad decisions and theirs. So they have less experience. So giving them those opportunities and being patient with them gives them that space to be their own people. And then there's nothing to rebel against, which is the other thing that my kids told me as we were talking about this. I was like, okay, so how come you weren't rebelling? You guys are like super nice and you're helpful. And when I ask for something, you just take care of it. I don't even have to ask—you guys will refill my water bottle.

Or if you're eating, you'll be like, “Hey, do you want something?” Like you're super nice. Why aren't you rebelling? One of them said, well, mom, you completely ruined the rebelling thing. I mean, what would we rebel against? We can't upset you. If we went against what you want, then we'd be unhappy because what you want is for me to be happy and to do what's right for me. What would I do? Like give up the stuff I love in order to rebel? Why would I do that? And that was so good to hear. So let's all ruin the rebelling and make it so that the best thing is just to get along and live a good life. Do the things we love.