Change Your Brain Every Day - Is it Normal to Have Problematic Teenagers? Part 3 of An Interview with Dr. Jim Fay

Episode Date: March 30, 2017

Problematic teens are normal. At least, that's what many parents think. But today, we're going to find out if there's any basis to say if it is indeed a normal, helpless case or if there's anything we can do to resolve this. 

Hi, I'm Donnie Osmond, and welcome to The Brain Warrior's Way, hosted by my friends Daniel and Tana Amon. Now, in this podcast, you're going to learn that the war for your health is one between your ears. That's right. If you're ready to be sharper and have better memory, mood, energy, and focus, well then stay with us. Here are Daniel and Tana Amen.

Welcome back to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. I am here with Tana and our very special guest, Dr. Jim Fay is with us. He is the author of Parenting with Love and Logic, the co-founder of the Love and Logic Institute, where they have courses and lots of support for you. And today we're going to talk about teenagers, parenting with love and logic for teenagers. And it's very important for me to say that it is not normal for teenagers to be problematic all the time. There's actually a big study in Chicago where a third of teenagers never had any problem. Another third, it was periodically they would have a problem, but there's a third of teenagers where they would have significant problems, runaway, drug abuse, school failure, and so on. They often get held up as, well, adolescent years are normally tumultuous. So that's the mantra I hear from a lot of parents is this is normal.

And that is often the excuse not to recognize when there are significant problems. Yeah, that's a huge cop-out. But which teenagers do you hear about all the time? Right, the ones with problems. You hear about the troubled ones. Exactly. Often it's so clearly brain problems can contribute. You know, if you have undiagnosed depression, ADHD, having a traumatic brain injury. And being somewhere on the autistic spectrum.

But even those kids who have brain issues, parenting. You know, it's funny, Dr. Fay, when I was doing my child psychiatry fellowship, they actually taught me to do play therapy with ADHD kids. And I hated the children, I mean, because they didn't get better. And we'd spend an hour playing war and nothing changed. And then the second year, I was involved in parent training and all my kids got better. So it was clear to me that putting smart parenting skills into families was one of the most effective things I could do for kids, including teenagers. Talk about your experience with parenting with Love and Logic for teens. We have so many Love and Logic parents who tell us that the teenage years are really

a joy. Yeah, they are for us. It's fun to be around and all that. But they also have a lot of questions about how much does a kid need to be involved with the family and that kind of thing. And we're strong believers that kids need to belong to a gang, you know, the family gang. And we're all in this together trying to survive this world and get through it. So chores become very important that they continue through those teen years. I'm a strong advocate that each child in the family, by the time they're about seven, eight years of age, are responsible for one family meal per week.

And that is planning it, cooking it, serving it, and cleaning it up. And it's funny how the kids, well, I shouldn't be a slave around here. I don't like to cook. And before long, you find out they're really enamored with cooking. But what I think it really is, and I know it really is, is they're meeting a very basic need. You know, when Maslow gave us the hierarchy of basic human needs, he told us limits, you know, physical and emotional safety, love and affection, healthy amounts of control. And this one that gets discarded so often in families is a sense of being an important valued member of a family

and if a kid lives like an honored guest in the home why should he have any attachment to this place you know it's just a rental place for him interesting like a rental car yeah you know love that that's so interesting because our daughter actually likes doing chores. And we think part of it's because she now feels competent. She likes being in charge of her own life. She's still strong-willed, but now it's directed in a positive way. And those chores give her a sense of purpose and she is good at it. And she knows she's good at it. And she's a little worker bee. So I think a lot of it has to do with the attitude. Yeah. So by the time kids are teenagers, I always say to them, I hope that you get so good at your chores. We call them contributions to the family, but I hope you get so good and so fast at those

things that they don't interfere with any other life that you want to have, you know, your work life, your social life or whatever. But still, your family life comes first. And if we're paying kids to do the chores, they're not part of the gang. So we have chores that they do for free, just like I don't charge the family to take care of the bills and all that. And I don't charge them to drive the car. I don't pay my kids to do those. But we do put a list on the refrigerator of the parents' most hated chores up for bid. And they can bid on those chores if they want to earn extra money beyond their allowance. Yeah, that's exactly what we do. Yeah. The only problem in our house was we were teaching about a free market economy.

So the neighbor kids knew that that list was there too. And if they outbid our kids, so be it. Oh, that's funny. Oh, that's really funny. So you would allow the neighbor kids to make the money instead. Kind of intact there. That's awesome. That's awesome. Let's spend some time and talk about technology. It is such a huge issue. I had a patient recently who was sending

inappropriate pictures, a really pretty 12-year-old girl sending completely inappropriate pictures to a boy. Well, that's actually a very common thing. That's actually, sadly enough, not considered that big of a deal with a lot of kids now in our culture because they don't understand the consequences. Oh, yeah. So that's why during our first session we talked about the goal of Love & Logic is to raise kids who have a little voice in their side, their head. It says, I wonder how my next decision is going to affect me.

And if we have trained our kids from early childhood to listen to their peers, and that's what happens to a lot of parents. They actually go through a training session with their kids to train their kids only listen to their peers. And the way they do that is in the early years, while the brain is in formal operations, they're saying to the kids, do it because I said to, do it my way or else. And then when the kids make a mistake, they say, you should have listened to me. So they're locking that in for about 11 years. Listen to a voice outside your head. Then the brain starts to make that switch where it starts to deal with abstract thinking and all of that. And at that time, the kid says, wait a minute, I can think for myself.

I'm not going to listen to these people anymore but they're so trained that they have to listen to a voice outside their head and the only other one available is what the other teenagers right and I've had parents say to me I just don't understand it he's changed so much and I say nah didn't change. He used to listen to a voice outside of his head. Now he just listens to a different one. Yeah. Yeah. That's not an issue we have. So that's, how does that apply to technology? It's a huge, it's a huge issue. Yeah. Our daughter is so strong. She, uh, she's sort of the leader. I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. Um, let him finish. Cause I would love the, what guidelines would you give parents?

Well, the guidelines in a healthy family are, this technology is around. It has great benefits. There are a lot of problems that can happen. We want two things here we want the kids first of all to know that they're welcome to have that technology as long as it doesn't become a problem that's the first thing I want to work with them on so when we see it becoming a problem that's when we need to step in and hopefully we won't have to. So what kind of things do you suppose could cause a problem? And one of them would be if

at the dinner table, I only see the top of your head, that's a problem. If it interferes with family life, it could be a problem. And the other thing I want to do is to instill in my kids early. And when I say early, that means before tomorrow, because it's never too late to do these things. But I want to get the kids to believe that their parents are really, really wise. Would you like to know how to convince your kids that you are really wise? Please. And the way you do that is when they're going to do something that you think is wrong, never say, hey, don't do that. Because our next words are usually why they shouldn't do it.

If you do this, this will happen, this will happen, this will happen. And any kid worth his salt will say, no, it won't. I'll be okay. And they're likely to do it. So I want to say to them, oh, I don't think I'd do that. You know, if I did that, here's an example. I don't think I'd go out there and mouth off to those bigger, stronger kids. You know, if I did that, I might get a fat lip or a bloody nose, or I might have to carry

my tooth around in an envelope for a week. So then you drop it. And then you secretly pray early in life while the price tags are affordable, that they go out and do it anyway. And then right when this other kid provides all this training for them, they say to themselves, wow, I think my dad said this might happen. My dad must really be wise. So if they hear that often, oh, I don't think think i do that because they don't have anything to fight right they can't fight you when you say you're not going to do it they can only fight you when you say don't you do that so now by the time they're getting to the point where they can misuse this uh technology and be self-destructive in the aftermath,

we can say, oh, I tell you, I don't think I would be doing that. And then say, what do you think? And that's where they might just happen to listen to us. You know, it's interesting you say that because we, and I learned a lot of this, you know, over time by doing this, implementing these strategies. One of the things that I took on as my daughter came into her teenage years, where we live, kids tend to be almost overly sheltered

when they're really young. And then all of a sudden they're acting out when they're in junior high and high school. And so what I figured out through all of this was that my job is not to shelter her. It's to teach her to respond appropriately, out when they're in junior high and high school. And so what I figured out through all of this was that my job is not to shelter her. It's to teach her to respond appropriately, help her to learn to respond appropriately to when things do happen, as opposed to hiding them from her. And so when it comes to technology, I have the unfair advantage of the fact that we see troubled

kids. And so we have those stories and we share them with her and we share what's going on, problems that can happen. But we were brutally honest. So it's like, you're going to come across porn on the internet. You're going to encounter these problems, X, Y, and Z. And I have to trust enough that you're smart enough to know that if you see a photo or you see something that is inappropriate, you are intelligent enough to respond appropriately as opposed to, oh my gosh, you have to stay away from that because you can't shelter them from it. You can't. You can't shelter. It's going to be there. It's going to be right in their face. So what are some quick tips? One of the things we do for parents is help them understand when their kids are ready for a lot of these temptations. And the way we do that is, let's suppose they want to go off to this party and you're worried

about drugs, alcohol, and different things like that going on there. We don't say to them, no, you can't do that. You're not old enough. You say, well, I wonder if you're ready for something like that. Tell me what your plan is if somebody suggests this, this, or this to you. Well, what do you got in mind? And they say, oh, you know, I don't do that. Well, that's not a plan. So they're not ready. They say, well, I just tell them it's stupid. And you'd say to yourself, well, you know, I can't say that to my best friend. I don't know how a kid can say that to his best friend. So not ready.

But if a kid says, well, you know, I just, here's what I tell them. I tell them this. I tell them this. I tell them that. Then they've got a plan. They've got a fallback position, and you can feel pretty confident. I remember one time my parents said to this kid, I'm trying to remember how this all went.

He said, oh, you know, I don't think that's going to be a problem at the party. The kid offered me drugs. I just tell them that my parents are so paranoid about stuff like that, that they knew that I was even talking to you about it. They would already be draining my savings account for college and putting me in rehab. You know, a kid like that,

you're not going to worry about him. Right. So our daughter, she's 13 and she was at school and they, a word got out that there was going to be first party with that age group, 13, where there was going to be alcohol. And she's really funny. She is one of those kids who will tell her friends how dumb it is. But to a whole group, she basically told them how disappointed she was, that she had higher hopes for them as her friend

group. And it was hilarious. This is why they call her mom. And then she went on to tell them about all the reasons they shouldn't go, the consequences. And a couple of the kids actually listened to her and didn't go. So if you do this early enough and your kids are strong enough and I think develop that voice in their head like you're talking about, you just might end up with a kid who's a leader like that. And if not, then it's great to be able to have them voice that plan like that. And if not, then it's great to be able to have them voice that plan like that. Because I think it is hard for kids with most of them succumb to that peer pressure. Oh, yeah. I hope your daughter runs for president. I know. We do too. I'll vote for

her. Yeah. Well, this is so helpful. When we come back, we're going to talk about parenting with love and logic for young adults. Huge issue. The average age children leave home in the United States is 26. So there's really parenting beyond 18. Stay with us. We're here with Dr. Jim Fay, author of Parenting with Love and Logic. You can learn more about his work at loveandlogic.com. Thanks for listening to today's show, The Brain Warrior's Way. Why don't you head over to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. That's brainwarriorswaypodcast.com, where Daniel and Tana have a gift for you just for subscribing to the show. And when you post your review on iTunes, you'll be entered into a drawing where you can win a VIP visit to one of the Amen clinics.

I'm Donnie Osmond, and I invite you to step up your brain game by joining us in the next episode.