Speaker 1: Welcome to Go, Ask Alli, a production of Shonda Land
Speaker 1: Audio and partnership with iHeartRadio. I think like evaginas have
Speaker 1: a lot to say. I think we should let them
Speaker 1: spay out of it and they'll just talk. Yes, one
Speaker 1: of the hardest things to absorb for those who are
Speaker 1: new to these kinds of fights. Again, if we want
Speaker 1: all of them, we wouldn't be here. If you see
Speaker 1: a monster, don't try to run away, step right up
Speaker 1: to it and say, what do you have to teach me?
Speaker 1: Why are you? In my mind, I want to be
Speaker 1: the person who has cancer and doesn't run a marathon,
Speaker 1: Like do I have to work that hard? No, it's
Speaker 1: the best excuse not to run a marathon. Welcome to
Speaker 1: go ask Alli. I'm Alli Wentworth. We are dealing right
Speaker 1: now with a national mental health crisis for teenagers. That's
Speaker 1: just a fact. I work with such organizations as the
Speaker 1: Childmine Institute, and suicide rates have skyrocketed, emotional states have plummeted.
Speaker 1: Teens are suffering right now, and I think they're suffering
Speaker 1: for so many reasons for the climate crisis, political unrest,
Speaker 1: global pandemics reoccurring. Not to mention their own stuff that
Speaker 1: teenagers deal with just by being teenagers. So I think
Speaker 1: it's important for us as a collective to understand how
Speaker 1: teenagers work, how they think, and how to scaffold them
Speaker 1: in a very difficult time. You might recognize our guests today,
Speaker 1: Doctor Lisa Damour, join me during the height of the
Speaker 1: pandemic in the first season of Goask Galley to talk
Speaker 1: about teens under pressure. So as a reminder, Doctor Damour
Speaker 1: co hosts the Ask Lisa podcast, writes about adolescents for
Speaker 1: The New York Times, appears as a regular contributor to
Speaker 1: CBS News. Is recognized as a thought leader by the
Speaker 1: American Psychological Association, and works in collaboration with Unisuff. She's
Speaker 1: the author of two New York Times bestsellers and her
Speaker 1: brand new book out this week, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers,
Speaker 1: Raising Connected, Capable and Compassionate Adolescence. I'm so glad she's here.
Speaker 1: Just a quick heads up that we talk about the
Speaker 1: current adolescent mental health crisis at the beginning of the episode.
Speaker 1: Suicide and suicidal ideation are part of that. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to avoid that part of the conversation, please get
Speaker 1: ahead to the five minute point now. Hello, hi Aley,
Speaker 1: you are the perfect guest for me today because not
Speaker 1: only did I read your book, but I have a
Speaker 1: seventeen year old who before Christmas came home and said,
Speaker 1: somebody in my peripheral social circle jumped off a building
Speaker 1: in New York. And then this morning I got a
Speaker 1: text from her and she said, another person in her
Speaker 1: peripheral social circle who's at boarding school, killed themselves today.
Speaker 1: And one of the questions I've been asking some of
Speaker 1: my close female friends lately is did we not notice
Speaker 1: it as much when we were younger because of the Internet.
Speaker 1: Now are we much more aware of this? Or are
Speaker 1: we in a mental health crisis right now with our
Speaker 1: teens and people are actually taking their own lives? Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're just gonna hit the ground running, right, Welcome
Speaker 1: to go. Ask Allie. Absolutely, and I'm so glad, No,
Speaker 1: I really am so suffering is not new, and I
Speaker 1: think you are right that in the past there were
Speaker 1: probably a significant percentage of suicides that no one ever
Speaker 1: knew were suicides, that it was not talked about as much,
Speaker 1: that it was cloaked much more. And there has absolutely
Speaker 1: been an important and helpful move away from not talking
Speaker 1: about suicide when it happens, and really trying to be
Speaker 1: more and obviously in the name of trying to help
Speaker 1: people who are suffering know that they can should get help.
Speaker 1: We are also side by side without seeing an uptick
Speaker 1: in suicides. And the problem with the suicide data it
Speaker 1: takes a very long time actually for suicide data to
Speaker 1: be delivered, so we were seeing an uptick before the pandemic.
Speaker 1: There's a whole lot of questions about the impact of
Speaker 1: the pandemic on adolescent suicidality that are largely unanswered. And
Speaker 1: so I think then to answer your third question about like,
Speaker 1: are we in a mental health crisis, that for sure yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that for sure yes, And I want to actually just
Speaker 1: unpack a couple sides of that crisis. So one element
Speaker 1: is that the pandemic was horrible for everyone, and horrible
Speaker 1: for teens in a very specific way, in a very
Speaker 1: universally specific way for teenagers, which was, you know, teenagers
Speaker 1: have two jobs. One is to become increasingly independent and
Speaker 1: the other is to spend as much time as possible
Speaker 1: with your friends. And the pandemic hamstrong both of those jobs.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't matter who you were as a teenager,
Speaker 1: very few teenagers enjoyed the pandemic. Many of them suffered
Speaker 1: greatly through it, and then of course some suffered enormously
Speaker 1: through it for any variety of reasons. So that has
Speaker 1: contributed to a very worrisome rise in adolescent mental health concerns,
Speaker 1: no question. I mean so much so that the Surgeon
Speaker 1: General put out a special report on it, which isn't
Speaker 1: something that typically happens. One of the things that I
Speaker 1: think as we talk about crisis, one of the things
Speaker 1: that we also want to address is we don't really
Speaker 1: have the workforce to care for all of these teens
Speaker 1: having all sorts of significant mental health problems. Treating teenagers
Speaker 1: is actually highly specialized work, is actually pretty rare work,
Speaker 1: not that many of us do it, and so we
Speaker 1: have this sort of double whammy of this huge uptick
Speaker 1: in adolescent distress. And it's not like, I mean, even
Speaker 1: people with tremendous resources, much less, people who do not
Speaker 1: have access to tremendous resources are having a very hard
Speaker 1: time finding care for their kids. And so it's bad
Speaker 1: enough to the teenagers suffering, but it's made much worse
Speaker 1: by the fact that getting good care for your kid
Speaker 1: is actually very, very hard and so then parents are
Speaker 1: sort of left looking at their kid thinking, my kid
Speaker 1: is really having a hard time. I'm on a waiting list.
Speaker 1: I can't get them in, And so I don't use
Speaker 1: the word crisis lightly. I actually tend to be on
Speaker 1: the side of offering reassurance. But we have ended up
Speaker 1: in this real kind of the crosshairs of increased out
Speaker 1: of lescent distress and then not enough clinicians to treat them.
Speaker 1: And the reality is, not only is it specialized work,
Speaker 1: it takes a long time to get good at it,
Speaker 1: Like I mean, to get trained teach to take care
Speaker 1: of teenagers takes a long time. So it's not like
Speaker 1: we can suddenly, like magically increase the percentage of clinicians
Speaker 1: who take good care of teenagers. You know that that
Speaker 1: takes a decade to make happen, or twenty years to
Speaker 1: make happen. So that's where we're finding ourselves. And it's
Speaker 1: really scary, the flip of it. Just so that we
Speaker 1: don't feel like we're lost in the Miyer here. Part
Speaker 1: of why I wrote this book is that I know
Speaker 1: from nearly thirty years of treating teenagers that the adults
Speaker 1: in their immediate environment can do so much to support
Speaker 1: and protect adolescent mental health. And I have to tell you, Ali,
Speaker 1: we are not going to find our way out of
Speaker 1: this mental health crisis for teenagers by suddenly getting more
Speaker 1: teenagers into more therapy for all the reasons I just mentioned.
Speaker 1: We're going to find our way out of this by
Speaker 1: improving the quality of the relationships between teenagers and the
Speaker 1: adults in their immediate environment. And that's why I wrote
Speaker 1: this book, which by the way, is crucial, I think,
Speaker 1: because they're in the home with these adults and these people,
Speaker 1: and there's no handbook for it, certainly not for parents,
Speaker 1: but there's much needed understanding. And my favorite word with
Speaker 1: teenagers is scaffolding. That needs to be done. And so,
Speaker 1: first of all, thank you for writing this book. And
Speaker 1: let's get into a few of the things that you
Speaker 1: talk about, because they're they're all incredibly important things. One
Speaker 1: of them you write about, emotion is the enemy of reason. Well,
Speaker 1: so I write about that is actually one of three
Speaker 1: myths that circulates about emotion. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that inspired me to write the book was an awareness
Speaker 1: of how much misunderstanding there is about distress in general,
Speaker 1: and adolescent distress in particular, and we have found ourselves
Speaker 1: as a culture I think, terrified of teenagers being upset,
Speaker 1: which I understand how we got there. It's not a
Speaker 1: great position to parent from, because if you know a teenager,
Speaker 1: you know they get upset, like yes, on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: if not several times. It's very emotional. Yep. I mean,
Speaker 1: the jokes are endless about you know how horrible teenagers
Speaker 1: are so yep and so and so. Then that doesn't
Speaker 1: help us if we're scared of how intensely emotional they are.
Speaker 1: So one of the myths that I tackle right out
Speaker 1: of the gate is that emotion does not often undermine reasoning,
Speaker 1: Emotion usually supports reasoning, and that we don't have to
Speaker 1: be scared of our kids emotions in terms of thinking
Speaker 1: like it's going to make them make terrible decisions. What
Speaker 1: I offer in the book is a metaphor I learned
Speaker 1: from a colleague of my name, Terry, another psychologist, who says,
Speaker 1: you know, here's how we should think about emotions. Each
Speaker 1: of us has a personal board of directors, and emotions
Speaker 1: get one seat on our board of directors. Would you
Speaker 1: allow me to read this because I have it? Book
Speaker 1: barked I would love it, okay. So, according to Terry,
Speaker 1: when it comes to decision making, we ought to view
Speaker 1: our emotions as occupying one seat on our personal board
Speaker 1: of directors. Other spots in the board might be held
Speaker 1: by ethical considerations, our personal ambitions, our obligations to others,
Speaker 1: financial or logistical constraints, and so on. Ideally, these board
Speaker 1: members will work together to help us make careful, informed
Speaker 1: choices about how we conduct our lives. In this metaphor,
Speaker 1: emotions have a vote, though it's rarely a deciding one,
Speaker 1: and they definitely don't share the board. Yep, And I
Speaker 1: think that I want really in writing this book, Alley,
Speaker 1: my goal is like, let's bring negative emotions back into
Speaker 1: the fold. They have a place in our lives. They
Speaker 1: are unavoidable, They're happening whether we want them to or not.
Speaker 1: And really figure out how they serve us, how they
Speaker 1: actually often promote good thinking, how they often promote maturation
Speaker 1: and adolescence. To really move us out of like kind
Speaker 1: of being crouched in a defensive posture of like please
Speaker 1: don't let my kids get upset, I want us to
Speaker 1: think about where does negative emotions fit into the lives
Speaker 1: of our teenagers and actually ourselves. And then my goal
Speaker 1: in the book is to give parents like just tons
Speaker 1: and tons of strategies to help their kids when their
Speaker 1: kids are having negative emotions, but not to help parents
Speaker 1: prevent or quickly dispel negative emotions. Right, And you talk
Speaker 1: also about teenagers trusting their gut, because it's actually something
Speaker 1: I've used in my parenting with my kids, because I
Speaker 1: never wanted to instill the idea that you don't know
Speaker 1: anything you're a teenager. You listen to me, you know,
Speaker 1: I know, I know. In fact, my children have great instincts.
Speaker 1: They can figure out if something's dangerous or unsafe or etc. Etc.
Speaker 1: And so I love that you talk about it in
Speaker 1: the book, But tell me more about teenagers trusting their gut. Well,
Speaker 1: so that's you know, bringing this board member in, listening
Speaker 1: to what this board member has to say, paying attention
Speaker 1: to it, and like you say, really empowering adolescents like
Speaker 1: tune into yourself. You've got good instincts, pay attention to
Speaker 1: those instincts, and we can count on those almost all
Speaker 1: the time with teenagers. Okay, but here's the limit. And
Speaker 1: for every myth I offer, I also offer it except
Speaker 1: for when it's true. Okay. So here is the one
Speaker 1: thing that is unique about teenagers. Their judgment is compromised
Speaker 1: far more than child judgment or an adults judgment under
Speaker 1: situations that are really loaded socially and emotionally, so like
Speaker 1: a party. And so one of the other things that
Speaker 1: I unpack in that section is that you need to
Speaker 1: think in advance with your kid about the decisions are
Speaker 1: going to make in charged situations. So if your kid
Speaker 1: has headed out to a party and you're like, all right,
Speaker 1: you're going to the party, I'd really rather you not drink,
Speaker 1: your kid at five o'clock may be like, I am
Speaker 1: definitely not going to drink. That is definitely my plan,
Speaker 1: and they are telling you the truth. That same wonderful
Speaker 1: young teenager may get to the party and like the
Speaker 1: kid they have a crush on his drinking, and the
Speaker 1: kid they have, you know, they want to hang out
Speaker 1: with his drinking and they may very well join in.
Speaker 1: So what we want to do is make a distinction
Speaker 1: between what we call cold cognition conditions, which is like
Speaker 1: the light of day and in your kitchen and talking
Speaker 1: to a grown up under not charged emotional moments, and
Speaker 1: hot cognition conditions, which is at the party. And the
Speaker 1: bottom line is, if you really want reasoning to look
Speaker 1: good in teenagers under those really loaded circumstances, they usually
Speaker 1: need to go in with a plan. And I would say,
Speaker 1: and I wonder what if you would back me up
Speaker 1: on this, that when it comes to teenagers, the social
Speaker 1: life is kind of the overriding thing that sort of
Speaker 1: controls a lot of their emotions. Because I feel with
Speaker 1: my teenage girls, either they have social anxiety or they
Speaker 1: are consumed with being popular. You know, it all sort
Speaker 1: of stems around the umbrella of socialization. Are you finding
Speaker 1: that with teenagers? Yeah? The way I would say it
Speaker 1: is if a kid doesn't have friends or their social
Speaker 1: life isn't going well, everything else is going to come
Speaker 1: second to that. Even if what they've got one really
Speaker 1: good buddy, that's often enough for kids. Until that's in place,
Speaker 1: they can't really focus on anything else. And a kid
Speaker 1: who doesn't have friends or is in constant social dilemma
Speaker 1: or drama, that's a situation that needs to be addressed
Speaker 1: just because it will take up all their bandwidth and
Speaker 1: it will be absolutely running the show. And talk to
Speaker 1: me about you talk about difficult emotions are bad for teens.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of difficult emotions that teta. Okay.
Speaker 1: So that's the second myth, Yes, And the reason I
Speaker 1: put it in in that way is that I started
Speaker 1: to detect something in my clinical work and my conversations
Speaker 1: with parents that I thought, is this really there? But
Speaker 1: it really was there, which is I started to hear
Speaker 1: from parents a sense that painful emotions would damage their kid,
Speaker 1: that if their kid was deeply distressed, that would somehow
Speaker 1: do lasting harm to their child. You know, certainly a
Speaker 1: lot of what teenagers do can look like that, even
Speaker 1: though it is actually not doing damage. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I think about, you know, those moments like when our
Speaker 1: daughters are thirteen, right, thirteen is so powerful, right, And
Speaker 1: I have been with you know, my kid, you know,
Speaker 1: other people's kids when their thirteen year old is like
Speaker 1: totally beside themselves, like sobbing, like bent over, doubled, you know,
Speaker 1: curled in a fetal position on the floor, often over
Speaker 1: things that you know, a week later you're like, I
Speaker 1: don't even remember what it was, and the kid doesn't
Speaker 1: remember what it was. But in the moment, it is harrowing.
Speaker 1: It is terrifying to the kid, and if you love
Speaker 1: that kid, it is terrifying to you. And so I
Speaker 1: get it. My parents think like, this can't happen, that
Speaker 1: cannot be good for my kid. That must be harming
Speaker 1: my kid to be at that level of distress. And
Speaker 1: what I want everyone to know is, for the most part,
Speaker 1: teenagers are actually built to handle a very high level
Speaker 1: of distress, even curled on the fetal position, in a
Speaker 1: fetal position on the kitchen floor level of distress for
Speaker 1: most kids most of the time, and that adults don't
Speaker 1: need to be worried that that's going to harm or
Speaker 1: damage their kid. Most kids have ways to get themselves
Speaker 1: through it, take the benefit of our comfort. Psychological defenses
Speaker 1: can kick in a healthy way to actually help to
Speaker 1: bring it down a few notches. But it's very scary
Speaker 1: if you, as a parent, think my kid can't get
Speaker 1: there because they will be permanently harmed. Now there is
Speaker 1: a line, and so here's the It's not true until
Speaker 1: it is right. So it's not true that emotions harm
Speaker 1: kids until they do. And the line that we cross
Speaker 1: is under conditions of trauma. So trauma does damage, and
Speaker 1: trauma is when people face an emotional experience that is
Speaker 1: so overwhelming that it blows their coping out of the water,
Speaker 1: that it's shattering to them. Trauma is rare comparatively, but
Speaker 1: it occurs. And so what I detail in that section is,
Speaker 1: you know, most of the time, even when your kid
Speaker 1: is super upset, you don't need to be worried as
Speaker 1: a parent. It's not fun to watch, it's very painful,
Speaker 1: but you don't need to be worried about lasting damage
Speaker 1: up to the line of trauma. If psychologists could get
Speaker 1: rid of all trauma in the world everywhere, we would
Speaker 1: in a minute. And so that's what parents need to
Speaker 1: be paying attention to. And I think that the distinction
Speaker 1: I'm always pushing on is is your kid very uncomfortable
Speaker 1: or are they in a situation that is unmanageable? And
Speaker 1: we as parents are most useful to our kids when
Speaker 1: we are making that distinction and can recognize my kid
Speaker 1: is super comfortable, but it is not unmanageable, and then
Speaker 1: letting that unfold with our loving support as opposed to
Speaker 1: jumping in and trying to prevent any distress. Well, the
Speaker 1: biggest thing I see with parents is they want to
Speaker 1: fix it in the moment they want to make it okay.
Speaker 1: I will call that mother and I will ask or
Speaker 1: why you weren't invited, or you know, all the many
Speaker 1: parenting fails. I particularly see that with fathers. They just
Speaker 1: want to fix it and make it okay immediately. And
Speaker 1: the other thing I've noticed with adults is they internalize it.
Speaker 1: Now that could be because there's something in their past
Speaker 1: that it provokes, but they internalize whatever their teenagers going
Speaker 1: through and it starts to affect them emotionally, which I
Speaker 1: have in my twenty years now of being a parent,
Speaker 1: I have learned to not internalize it because I can't
Speaker 1: be going through it vicariously while my teenagers going through it.
Speaker 1: But it's a very hard thing to separate, it is.
Speaker 1: And there's that old saying, you know, you're only as
Speaker 1: happy as your least happy child, and I think that's
Speaker 1: a saying for a reason. You know that we love
Speaker 1: our kids, and when they're in distress, we're in distress too,
Speaker 1: And so I think what you're laying out though, that
Speaker 1: it's better if we can maintain a little distance. I
Speaker 1: think it's true. And let me give you some reasons
Speaker 1: for that. Number one, just for our own ability to
Speaker 1: get through our day and do our jobs and all
Speaker 1: the things we mean to do, like we need to
Speaker 1: be able to function. Also, at least as important to that, though,
Speaker 1: is our kids need to see that we are not
Speaker 1: as flipped out about it as they are. You know,
Speaker 1: say I'm fifteen and say something really ruined my day,
Speaker 1: and I come home and I'm like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: you're not going to believe what's happening. And I describe
Speaker 1: what's happening, and my parent meets me right, there is
Speaker 1: as upset is is grabbing for the phone. Everything you
Speaker 1: describe the experience for the teenager is, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I came home thinking I had a fifteen year old
Speaker 1: sized problem and it turns out I have a fifty
Speaker 1: two year old sized problem. Like that's scary. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: what I would say is, sometimes i'm parenting we are
Speaker 1: faking it. And by faking it, I mean we're faking
Speaker 1: common right that we're actually pretty stirred up inside. But
Speaker 1: I will say, do what you can to try to
Speaker 1: be a steady presence for your child, so you're not
Speaker 1: diminishing their distress, you're not minimizing it. You're not telling
Speaker 1: them to just pull it together. Try to be a
Speaker 1: steady presence, either all the way to the core or
Speaker 1: at least on the outside, so that your kid doesn't
Speaker 1: have that added layer of thinking. This is even worse
Speaker 1: than I thought, because my mom, who has seen it all,
Speaker 1: is freaking out. This must be really bad. Right, There's
Speaker 1: a lot more to come after the short break, and
Speaker 1: we're back in your opinion, our adolescents fragile emotionally. I mean,
Speaker 1: you seem to think they're pretty resilient. I do. And
Speaker 1: that's the third myth, right, that emotional is fragile, right,
Speaker 1: And I think that that's so hard as a parent
Speaker 1: of a teenager, because they are so up and down,
Speaker 1: and their ups are so high and their downs are
Speaker 1: so low, that it's very easy to look and think
Speaker 1: like that person does not seem psychologically stable at all. Right,
Speaker 1: And what we want to make the distinction between is
Speaker 1: emotional and fragile. These are two different things. Most teenagers
Speaker 1: are just really emotional, that's how they're built. Some teenagers
Speaker 1: are fragile, and we should worry that a kid is
Speaker 1: fragile if they are coping with emotions in ways that
Speaker 1: are just destructive, if they have experienced trauma, which is
Speaker 1: a shattering experience if they are isolated and alone and
Speaker 1: unable to process their feelings in any way that is useful.
Speaker 1: There is fragility in the world of adolescent emotion, but
Speaker 1: it's rare, and most kids just have really big feelings
Speaker 1: that kind of rock the whole house. Sometimes I wonder, now,
Speaker 1: like in our culture, are we throwing too many drugs
Speaker 1: and sort of faux coping things at our kids. I
Speaker 1: find that kids that are just hormonal or dealing with,
Speaker 1: you know, teenage angst, suddenly everybody's on antidepressants or ADHD medicate, Like,
Speaker 1: have you found that that our culture is quick to
Speaker 1: medicate what could be just emotional teenage stuff. What we
Speaker 1: know is that we sort of over medicate and we
Speaker 1: under medicate. That there are kids who are getting more
Speaker 1: medication than they need, and their kids who really deserve
Speaker 1: good psychiatric treatment and are not getting access to it.
Speaker 1: One of the things I lay out in the framework
Speaker 1: of the book is a concern that we as a
Speaker 1: culture have become pretty terrified of negative emotions, and I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I lay out sort of my reasoning for
Speaker 1: why I think we got there, One being that we
Speaker 1: do have access now to a very wide range of
Speaker 1: medications that are supposed to and often do help with mood.
Speaker 1: And I do not think this is the only reason.
Speaker 1: And I will say I'll be the first to say
Speaker 1: that medications can and do save lives, and we could
Speaker 1: not actually work clinically without them. But I when I
Speaker 1: look at the numbers in terms of how quickly they
Speaker 1: rose for the use of psychiatric medications, especially when prozac
Speaker 1: became available and was vastly more safe than anything before it,
Speaker 1: I do worry that contributed to a sense of your distress.
Speaker 1: We can make it go away. And the other place
Speaker 1: where I really point the finger is actually the wellness industry.
Speaker 1: I worry that the wellness industry has, either deliberately or not,
Speaker 1: but somehow shared with our culture of the message that
Speaker 1: there is some zen out there that you can get
Speaker 1: to and stay at, and if you just have all
Speaker 1: the right practices or products or oils or apps or whatever,
Speaker 1: that they can actually keep you from feeling distress. And
Speaker 1: that is not true. The impact on adolescence, though, is
Speaker 1: that I now take care of teenagers who feel like
Speaker 1: they're failing a wellness when they're actually just having a
Speaker 1: really bad week, and that's not helping them that I'm guessing,
Speaker 1: particularly with girls, because girls are so there's body image,
Speaker 1: there's and then of course, you know, we could do
Speaker 1: eighteen hours on technology, so then they're seeing on Instagram
Speaker 1: that if you're having a eucalyptus bath, you're going to
Speaker 1: be okay. It's interesting. I haven't thought about the wellness industry,
Speaker 1: So let me go to gender, because there is a
Speaker 1: difference between female and male adolescents and what they deal
Speaker 1: with individually, you know. So what's interesting to write about
Speaker 1: gender these days because the way kids talk and think
Speaker 1: about gender is very different from how our generation talks
Speaker 1: and thinks about gender. And you know, there's a part
Speaker 1: of me that's like, does it even make sense, you know,
Speaker 1: to sort of lay out these gender differences we see
Speaker 1: in terms of the experience and expression of emotion. But
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is that we do continue
Speaker 1: to have patterns along which we socialize boys and girls
Speaker 1: in terms of their experience and expression of emotion. We
Speaker 1: continue to have rules for the expression of emotion. Boys,
Speaker 1: especially police the heck out of each other about what
Speaker 1: they are and are not allowed to express, and these
Speaker 1: very much impact the lives of kids, regardless of how
Speaker 1: they dinner gender identify right, that they are still swimming
Speaker 1: in a soup where girls and women are allowed to
Speaker 1: feel vulnerable and anxious and boys and men are allowed
Speaker 1: to feel tough and you know, tough and angry, right,
Speaker 1: And that shapes our world and shapes how we parent,
Speaker 1: and we need to be mindful of it. I will
Speaker 1: say my favorite Like, sometimes psychology findings just like amuse
Speaker 1: me tremendously, and there was one that I just I
Speaker 1: was like, I was like, I love this. I also
Speaker 1: loved that someone thought to ask. So one of the
Speaker 1: findings I came across I didn't know that until I
Speaker 1: was researching the book is that when they're younger, boys
Speaker 1: express more anger, but an adolescence, actually girls express more
Speaker 1: anger than boys do. But there's one form of anger
Speaker 1: where girls are always ahead of boys, and it's in
Speaker 1: their expression of disdain. As the mother or two daughters,
Speaker 1: I was like, that's amazing, right, as a mother of
Speaker 1: two daughters. Yes, that's interesting. Yeah. And then you know
Speaker 1: you talked too about not only gender bias, but race
Speaker 1: gender bias as well, because we in the past, certainly
Speaker 1: when I was growing up any book on parenting or
Speaker 1: adolescence was very very generalized. You know, it was just
Speaker 1: like all adolescens this adolescence that, But it's not true. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I spent time on in
Speaker 1: the book is the adultification of black adolescence that we,
Speaker 1: yes we meaning largely white audiences, white viewers, White people
Speaker 1: tend to view Black adolescence is older than they are,
Speaker 1: and then there ends up being this particular gender breakdown
Speaker 1: about what that means. So what we see from study
Speaker 1: after study is that we tend to view black boys
Speaker 1: as being somehow more dangerous or more aggressive, less endowed
Speaker 1: with childlike innocence, less deserving of protection, and we tend
Speaker 1: to view black girls as being more sexual or sexualized.
Speaker 1: And this has, you know, an extraordinarily sort of specific
Speaker 1: form of racism that unfolds and has extraordinary impact on
Speaker 1: black teenagers. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I have a
Speaker 1: friend who's married to a black man and has biracial kids,
Speaker 1: and she says, how I parent my black sons is
Speaker 1: very different from my white friends and their sons. She said, there,
Speaker 1: you know, racism is so prevalent, but I have to
Speaker 1: teach him other things that a white parent doesn't have to.
Speaker 1: I have to teach my sons when a cop pulls
Speaker 1: you over, you keep your hands on the steering wheel,
Speaker 1: or people will cross the street at night, and these
Speaker 1: are all the things, And she says, I have to
Speaker 1: educate my boys that way. I'm not doing them any
Speaker 1: service by pretending that is not a glaring part of
Speaker 1: our culture. Absolutely, And I spent time in the book
Speaker 1: researching and then writing about what parents of black teenagers
Speaker 1: called the talk, which is what you're describing right, the
Speaker 1: conversation where they have, you know, say, looky, you may
Speaker 1: be doing something totally ordinary and benign. Your life may
Speaker 1: be on the line if the wrong person season gets
Speaker 1: the wrong idea about it. And the chances of that
Speaker 1: happening because of the color of your skin are actually
Speaker 1: accelerated and high, and you need to do everything in
Speaker 1: your power to stay safe. And I felt so humbled
Speaker 1: and aware of how I cannot really fathom what it
Speaker 1: is like to be on either side of a conversation
Speaker 1: with a young often these are young teenagers about this year.
Speaker 1: You know, potentially lethal outcomes of walking down the street
Speaker 1: with your friends, and how do how do black girls,
Speaker 1: black adolescents push up against this bias that we have.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are role models, you know, there are
Speaker 1: great women like Michelle Obama that you know, are a
Speaker 1: lot more prevalent in our culture. Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 1: it's really on white people. Yeah. I feel like the
Speaker 1: solution is a white person's job. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: really do. And and it was interesting, Alie. I was
Speaker 1: working on the discussion guides, you know, I write discussion
Speaker 1: guides to go with the books, and you know, I
Speaker 1: just if you're a black family, you know, did this
Speaker 1: feel like you did justice to your experience? And if
Speaker 1: you're a white family, what are you doing about this? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So I'm hoping that it flusters wonderful, wonderful discussion about
Speaker 1: whose job it is to address racism? Right? Risk seeking?
Speaker 1: That is the biggest I think one of the biggest
Speaker 1: issues with adolescence. You know, one of the fears with
Speaker 1: teenagers is and this kind of goes with trusting their gut,
Speaker 1: is that they have no they have this invincibility that
Speaker 1: they're going to make bad decisions, that they're going to
Speaker 1: be in harm's way all the time. So teenagers, much
Speaker 1: more than kids or adults, are drawn to novelty and excitement.
Speaker 1: It's just how their brains are made. They're just they're
Speaker 1: looking for something kind of new and fun, and unfortunately,
Speaker 1: new and fun can be something like skateboarding, which would
Speaker 1: be on you know, a great version of new and fun,
Speaker 1: or it can be something like a drug or you know,
Speaker 1: driving really fast. You know. So is this about boundaries.
Speaker 1: It's about understanding boundaries. It's about being realistic about how
Speaker 1: teenagers are built. And I also think though, it's about
Speaker 1: giving them ways to satisfy that drive towards novelty and excitement.
Speaker 1: Kids do need opportunity to do things that are novel
Speaker 1: and exciting and maybe a little bit thrilling and maybe
Speaker 1: even feel as much as the parent can stomach like
Speaker 1: a little bit dangerous, like you know, like skateboarding or
Speaker 1: like you know, getting into a sports it feel like
Speaker 1: they've got some kind of thrilled to them. But we
Speaker 1: also really want to be realistic that we want to
Speaker 1: do what we can to supervise the scary stuff, and
Speaker 1: that supervision matters. That when we look across societies and cultures,
Speaker 1: what we see is that teenage brains are changing in
Speaker 1: the exact same ways across all cultures, But you don't
Speaker 1: see giant shifts in accident rates in every culture. In
Speaker 1: cultures that are more constrained, that have more supervision, where
Speaker 1: the norms are different, teenagers don't have the same kind
Speaker 1: of frightening outcomes that we sometimes hear about in the US.
Speaker 1: So how we supervise kids, the expectations we set matters.
Speaker 1: But more than anything, I think how we talk with
Speaker 1: kids about risk is something that we want to be very,
Speaker 1: very mindful of. And my general advice, and I can
Speaker 1: spend this in forty directions, but here's the general advice.
Speaker 1: Say to your kid, don't worry about getting caught, like
Speaker 1: the chances of us catching you are actually pretty low.
Speaker 1: Worry about getting hurt, right that you really want the
Speaker 1: emphasis to be on whether or not they are safe,
Speaker 1: not whether or not they're going to get away with it.
Speaker 1: And I think sometimes adults unwittingly get the conversation going
Speaker 1: in the like don't let me catch you, you know, direction,
Speaker 1: to which she is like bango, check, yeah, I won't
Speaker 1: let you catch me exactly. So really, safety goes everywhere
Speaker 1: your kid goes. And so even in raising my own adolescence,
Speaker 1: you know, when they would come home. When I remember
Speaker 1: my eighth grade daughter when she was like, she's now
Speaker 1: in college, but when she came home, she's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, some kids are starting to smoke some weed.
Speaker 1: And I would say, oh, man, that makes me so
Speaker 1: worried for them from the neurological standpoint, right like, because yeah,
Speaker 1: that's going to go with them everywhere they go, caught
Speaker 1: or not caught, like they have that problem. And I
Speaker 1: think the more that we can just always center our
Speaker 1: concern on safety, not getting busted right, making us look
Speaker 1: bad as parents, you know, any of those things. It's
Speaker 1: funny because I sort of fell into this way of
Speaker 1: dealing with it with my own daughters, which was I
Speaker 1: told them stories about myself, you know, and I said, oh,
Speaker 1: I was. It was I was at boarding school and
Speaker 1: I needed attention, and I, you know, the older, mean girls.
Speaker 1: I was trying to impress them. And so I took
Speaker 1: a dare and I hitchhiked on the Massachusetts Turnpike in
Speaker 1: my nightgown. And you know, my daughters were horrified. They're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that must have been so scary. And
Speaker 1: I said, you know, it wasn't scary at the time
Speaker 1: because I felt like, just had this idea nothing bad
Speaker 1: would happened to me and I could just do whatever
Speaker 1: I want. And I was my drive to prove to
Speaker 1: these girls that I was cool was much stronger than
Speaker 1: the part of my brain that said this is really
Speaker 1: stupid and unsafe. And so I would tell them these
Speaker 1: cautionary tales and they were they were like the parents going,
Speaker 1: that is so dangerous, you know, even smoking cigarettes. They're like,
Speaker 1: I can't believe you smoke cigarettes. That's so stupid, mom,
Speaker 1: why would you? And so I sort of discovered a
Speaker 1: way in and by the way, there's a plethora of things.
Speaker 1: I didn'ts it, but we got a lot to work
Speaker 1: with you. Yeah. So, because I didn't want to be
Speaker 1: the parent that was like, don't you do this, don't
Speaker 1: you do this? I decided to go Listen, I did it,
Speaker 1: And boy am I lucky that I'm standing. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and that's the thing, because you're not saying, boy am
Speaker 1: I lucky? Nobody caught me like, boy, I'm lucky at
Speaker 1: and get hurt, right, and that like, as long as
Speaker 1: the center is on safety, the conversation is neutral and
Speaker 1: it's not about you know, whether or not a grownup
Speaker 1: knows you're doing it, which you know, what I find
Speaker 1: is the less mature kids are like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: can we get away with it? You know? And that's
Speaker 1: not how you want your kid reasoning. I mean, again,
Speaker 1: these are my kids, and it worked for them. But
Speaker 1: I never gave them a curfew. And I said, because
Speaker 1: I felt like I was immediately saying I don't trust you,
Speaker 1: you better be back here by midnight because I don't
Speaker 1: trust you and you're gonna do something wrong. And I said, look,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to give you a curfew. You instinctually
Speaker 1: should know when a good time to leave whatever you're
Speaker 1: doing is. You should also feel what the right time
Speaker 1: is where you're not in danger. We live in New
Speaker 1: York City, so you know, leaving at two o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning, it's probably not the safest time to look
Speaker 1: for a cab or take the subway. So and again,
Speaker 1: these were risks for me as a parent because I
Speaker 1: didn't know how they were going to play out. But
Speaker 1: I wanted to approach parenting with the idea that we
Speaker 1: were kind of all in it together and that I
Speaker 1: initially trust them with everything. I think the instinct behind
Speaker 1: that is so good because what you're basically saying is
Speaker 1: when I'm not with you, you're in charge of your safety.
Speaker 1: Like there's nothing I can do from where I sit
Speaker 1: to keep you safe. You're You're the one. And that's
Speaker 1: what we want teenagers to think when they're out and
Speaker 1: about is I'm in charge of my own safety, Like
Speaker 1: I have to make choices that are going to keep
Speaker 1: myself safe. Yeah, and it's time for a short break.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to go. Ask Alli, I wonder how teenagers feel,
Speaker 1: you know. I know parents that track their teenagers, you know,
Speaker 1: on their phones. They know where they are at all time.
Speaker 1: I mean, do teenagers feel safe knowing that their parents
Speaker 1: are tracking them or is that just another thing that
Speaker 1: they're trying to pull one over. Well, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: on the top of tracking, I think it's one of
Speaker 1: the most polarizing and olive parenting right their parents who
Speaker 1: were like, why would you ever do that? And their
Speaker 1: parents who were like, why would you not do that?
Speaker 1: And they are strong in their views. It really is.
Speaker 1: It's really powerful. So from the safety perspective, it's a
Speaker 1: mixed picture. Right. So the times when I have seen
Speaker 1: it work well in families is when the kid is
Speaker 1: okay with it and on board with it, because if
Speaker 1: kids don't want to be tracked, they can just like
Speaker 1: turn off their phones, re leave their phones somewhere, or
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, like, yeah, there's lots of ways
Speaker 1: kids get around it. But I have seen kids use
Speaker 1: it when they are like, come get me, and they
Speaker 1: just send their parents their location or the parent can
Speaker 1: just look up the location very quickly, and so it
Speaker 1: can be part of a partnership of safety with the parent.
Speaker 1: I've actually cared for kids where the kid actually had
Speaker 1: a significant medical concern, either a very significant allergy or
Speaker 1: type one diabetes or something like that, and tracking was
Speaker 1: a key part of making sure that kid was safe
Speaker 1: because if the kid wasn't responding. What I worry about
Speaker 1: with tracking, and this gets back to where we were talking,
Speaker 1: is it muddies the question of who keeps that kids
Speaker 1: safe when that kid is not with you, And I
Speaker 1: worry that it somehow might suggest to the kid, no,
Speaker 1: I got you tracked, I'm watching you. That doesn't make
Speaker 1: the kids safe. But you're at home, the kid is
Speaker 1: wherever they are. When the kid is not with you,
Speaker 1: they are in charge of their safety. And if your
Speaker 1: kid cannot manage their safety when they're not with you.
Speaker 1: They probably shouldn't be out and about going to unsafe places,
Speaker 1: Like I think that we want to keep it there.
Speaker 1: It feels like you have a baby monitor, but the
Speaker 1: baby's twenty blocks away with the curtain string around its neck.
Speaker 1: What are you doing twenty blocks away? Yeah? It seems
Speaker 1: a fool's errand yeah, yeah, but I sympathize with both sides.
Speaker 1: I really do. And I'll tell you one thing I've
Speaker 1: learned Alie is a lot of kids track their parents.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of kids actually want to know
Speaker 1: where their folks are. And so in the families that
Speaker 1: I've talked to, the parents like, well, at track her,
Speaker 1: but she tracks us Like they want to know where
Speaker 1: their parents at work, at home, coming home soon. So
Speaker 1: it's it plays a very fascinating dynamic and family life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. We don't get tracked. We get a lot
Speaker 1: of texts where are you are you home? What are
Speaker 1: you doing? Are you going out to dinner? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: there's there's at least an interest in where we are
Speaker 1: or what we were doing. Um, you talk about sleep,
Speaker 1: and so I feel like hormones are a big part
Speaker 1: of what's going on without a lescence. But I also
Speaker 1: think sleep is. And one of the arguments I used
Speaker 1: to have with my husband was our eldest daughter needed
Speaker 1: a lot of sleep. She needed sleep because her brain
Speaker 1: was tired, because she's anxious, because she needed to socially recharge.
Speaker 1: Whereas my husband was like, Okay, it's been eight hour,
Speaker 1: it's like time to get up, go for a walk,
Speaker 1: do your homework. That the so tell my listeners your
Speaker 1: feelings about sleep. So, first of all, teenagers on average
Speaker 1: need nine hours of sleep at night. Good. I won
Speaker 1: that argument. You want you're right, You're right the whole time.
Speaker 1: Here's a deal on sleep. It can feel so boring
Speaker 1: to bring it up, and it can feel so unfriend
Speaker 1: to make an issue of sleep when we talk about emotions,
Speaker 1: but it is the clue that wolds human beings together.
Speaker 1: And then one of those studies I quickly described in
Speaker 1: the book is like and it's a very easy study
Speaker 1: to do. They know, they took a bunch of teenagers,
Speaker 1: they let them sleep a whole bunch, and then they
Speaker 1: had their parents raped their mood in the subsequent days.
Speaker 1: They took a bunch of teenagers, they let them sleep
Speaker 1: six hours a night, and they had their parents raped
Speaker 1: their moods in the subsequent days, and of course the
Speaker 1: kids who had not slept, they were snarky, they were unhappy,
Speaker 1: they were held together with scotch tape. They were falling apart.
Speaker 1: We know this. So if your kid is really it's funny.
Speaker 1: In my family, my husband called it ropey, meaning like
Speaker 1: at the end of their rope, you'd be like, oh man,
Speaker 1: she's really ropey. Put her a bit. If your kid
Speaker 1: is really ropey, your first question should be how much
Speaker 1: sleep are you getting? And if it's not nearly enough,
Speaker 1: start there and I will tell you clinically, Ali, I
Speaker 1: actually cannot evaluate somebody in my practice until I know
Speaker 1: they're getting enough sleep, because sleep deprivation looks like cayang ziete,
Speaker 1: it looks like depression, it looks like, you know, all
Speaker 1: sorts of things. And so I really will make sleep
Speaker 1: a priority from a sheer like diagnostic standpoint, like that's
Speaker 1: the only way I can figure out what's going on.
Speaker 1: So sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, bleep. It's the place to start.
Speaker 1: If your kid is having a hard time, and if
Speaker 1: they're not sleeping, you need to look into it because
Speaker 1: there are maybe a problem. Yeah, and it's interesting. I
Speaker 1: was talking about it with a clinical colleague the other
Speaker 1: day about you know, the importance of sleep and and
Speaker 1: she made an excellent point. She was saying, you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting, like you'll take someone into your practice, you'll
Speaker 1: discover they're not sleeping, and you'll make sleep, you know,
Speaker 1: a priority. And some people they realize it's important and
Speaker 1: they're able to suddenly make it happen. Some people actually
Speaker 1: can't make it happen, and then that becomes the focus
Speaker 1: of the clinical work, like what is getting in the
Speaker 1: way of you being able to fall asleep or to
Speaker 1: do the things during the day that are necessary to
Speaker 1: allow sleep. So it's really a question of how much
Speaker 1: support is needed to sleep happen. And some kids may
Speaker 1: just need a nudge and some kids may need it
Speaker 1: a full on, you know, serious program. Yeah, but the
Speaker 1: bottom line is sleep's got to happen before anything else
Speaker 1: is going to happen. Yeah, I mean, sleep is as
Speaker 1: vital as food and oxygen. Absolutely opening up. So the
Speaker 1: biggest issue I think parents have with adolescence is they
Speaker 1: don't open up to me. I can't talk to them
Speaker 1: all this information in Lisa's book is amazing. But I
Speaker 1: can't get my kid to talk to me. I call
Speaker 1: it the fines. Everything's fine, fine, fine, What is the
Speaker 1: best approach to get your teenager to talk about anything?
Speaker 1: About anything? So for kids who don't talk because other
Speaker 1: parents will be like, oh my god, my kid tells
Speaker 1: me everything's overwhelming, I'm you know, but I really do
Speaker 1: feel like there's a couple of camps here. Yes, there is,
Speaker 1: and there really is the like I can't get an answer.
Speaker 1: I have one of both. Yeah, it's fascinating. Here's the
Speaker 1: rule ali to meet them on their terms. You got
Speaker 1: to be willing to talk when they want to talk.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I talk about in this book,
Speaker 1: which I discovered quite by accident and have since discovered
Speaker 1: to be entirely universal almost to families facing teenagers, they
Speaker 1: want to talk when we're in bed. Ye, your kids
Speaker 1: do this. Yeah, but like you know, like you might
Speaker 1: ask all the best questions at dinner and they shake
Speaker 1: you off, shake you off, Fine, fine, fine, Okay, you're
Speaker 1: finally in bed. You're finally shutting it down. This happens
Speaker 1: in my home too, And suddenly like there your kid
Speaker 1: is and you're like why now, And then they are
Speaker 1: talking and talking and talking, and in my own home,
Speaker 1: my husband's like, go to sleep, and I'm like, sh
Speaker 1: it's our moment. So one of the things I unpack
Speaker 1: in the book is like, why do they do this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the reason they do this is that teenagers at
Speaker 1: their marrow want to be autonomous. They don't want to
Speaker 1: be working on our timeline and our agenda. Like that
Speaker 1: is the nature of being an adolescent is you're driving
Speaker 1: towards independence. And this these late night visits allow them
Speaker 1: to satisfy both the wish to be on their own
Speaker 1: agenda and their wish to connect deeply with us. And
Speaker 1: in the late night visits, they decide if there's going
Speaker 1: to be a visit and what time it's going to start.
Speaker 1: They decide what the agenda will be. Because here's what
Speaker 1: I have also learned universally, we do not bring up
Speaker 1: new topics at that time of night. We do not
Speaker 1: ask a lot of questions at that time and night.
Speaker 1: We just let them talk. Right. Actually, had to kids
Speaker 1: say to me, Oh, it's way better to talk to
Speaker 1: my parents at night because they like, don't ask so
Speaker 1: many questions. And I'm like because they're trying to shut
Speaker 1: it down. Why they're not asking questions exactly. And then
Speaker 1: when they want the meeting to end, they just walk
Speaker 1: out or they say, all right, I'm gonna let you
Speaker 1: guys go to sleep. It lets them be in charge
Speaker 1: of the dynamic. And so what I would say to
Speaker 1: parents of teenagers is you're going to lose some sleep
Speaker 1: raising an adolescent one way or another. If they want
Speaker 1: to talk at night within reasonable limits, adapt yourself to that,
Speaker 1: or go to bed earlier. Don't expect that they're going
Speaker 1: to want to talk when we want to talk. That's
Speaker 1: just not how they're built. So adapt to their agenda
Speaker 1: as much as you can. You know, I get it,
Speaker 1: like I don't like I want to go to sleep,
Speaker 1: but I also feel like they're not in your house
Speaker 1: that long. Yeah, the time will come when you can
Speaker 1: go to bed whenever you want. No one's going to
Speaker 1: walk in. Yep, they are trying to connect with you.
Speaker 1: Take the invitation a little sleep here. If you knew
Speaker 1: how many times somebody walked into our room when we
Speaker 1: were literally the lids are falling and I hear I'm anxious,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, okay, all right, let me, sit up,
Speaker 1: buff the pillow. What's going on? What are you anxious about? Ye?
Speaker 1: So I think that's great advice. I think your whole
Speaker 1: book is great advice. I've asked you a million questions
Speaker 1: about how to deal with her out of lessons, So
Speaker 1: now it's your time, Lisa. You get to ask me
Speaker 1: a question about anything. Okay. I thought about this and
Speaker 1: thought about this. Okay, okay, good. I'm going to give
Speaker 1: you three. You can choose one. Oh that's not much,
Speaker 1: I thought, Oh my god, nobody's ever done that before.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Okay. So I'm a psychologist, so I ask
Speaker 1: questions for a living right, and often very ones that
Speaker 1: are meant to be quite evocative. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: ask you one that's in the psychology camp, and it
Speaker 1: is what's your earliest memory? Another one is what's a
Speaker 1: point in your parenting or a moment in your parenting
Speaker 1: that you're really proud of? Like you know how we
Speaker 1: have those moments as parents were were like I really
Speaker 1: crush that. What's one of those? And then if you're
Speaker 1: like I don't want to talk about deep psychological things,
Speaker 1: here's another thing I think about a lot. If you
Speaker 1: could only eat one kind of cuisine for the rest
Speaker 1: of your life, like Japanese or Mexican or Mediterranean? Like
Speaker 1: what would you choose? Okay, I'm gonna answer all three, Lisa. First,
Speaker 1: is the earliest memory I have is my parents were
Speaker 1: divorced when I was one, and my early memories are
Speaker 1: sort of feeling a little alone and abandoned is sort
Speaker 1: of a strong word for it. So my earliest memories
Speaker 1: are when we had a dog, and so I connected
Speaker 1: to the dog. The dog was like, now I understand
Speaker 1: what a an emotional support animal is because I kind
Speaker 1: of used it as a toddler. And I remember once
Speaker 1: I must have been four years old, and my dog
Speaker 1: got hit by a baseball bat and he was fine,
Speaker 1: but I put him in my bed and put the
Speaker 1: covers over him and everything, and I slept on the
Speaker 1: floor like a dog, and I just while I always
Speaker 1: remember that like it, I was literally curled up like
Speaker 1: a dog on the floor. So that kind of informed
Speaker 1: sort of how I view humanity and animals in general.
Speaker 1: But I also felt so bad that my dog had
Speaker 1: been hurt that I had to give him my bit
Speaker 1: parenting pride. I have to say, there's been a few
Speaker 1: and there's been more parenting fails, but say, in my
Speaker 1: fiftieth birthday, my now twenty year old wrote a five
Speaker 1: page letter to me. First of all, the fact that
Speaker 1: a letter was even written, that she took the time
Speaker 1: to do that, and it is the kindest. It's one
Speaker 1: of those letters where not only should she get me,
Speaker 1: but she thanked me for things that I never thought
Speaker 1: had sunk in. And she talked about how I was
Speaker 1: as a person and as a mother, and it was
Speaker 1: so overwhelming and so confirming. And I framed it and
Speaker 1: it's in my bathroom, so I read it every day.
Speaker 1: I just it was to me. I went, Okay, I
Speaker 1: may have done this, that and the other, but you know,
Speaker 1: this letter is confirmation that I'm not a complete scrow up.
Speaker 1: So that was that was it was literally written out
Speaker 1: and presented to me. Yeah, that was very nice. And
Speaker 1: the cuisine, I have to say, I love Japanese food.
Speaker 1: I just love it. Yeah, I do. That's where I
Speaker 1: usually landed. Yeah, because you know the raw fish thing,
Speaker 1: if that got old. I love tempora, I love Japanese salads,
Speaker 1: I love seaweed. So I think I could live with
Speaker 1: Japanese food for the rest of my life doesn't mean
Speaker 1: I wouldn't crave a cheeseburger down again, but if I
Speaker 1: had to really commit to a cuisine, that would be it.
Speaker 1: There you go, Yeah, Okay, I love it. Thank you.
Speaker 1: That was fabulous. Thank you. So recently, I just finished
Speaker 1: the first season of the ABC show called The Parent Test,
Speaker 1: which I pushed back on a lot because I think
Speaker 1: there isn't just one parenting style, you know, It's really
Speaker 1: up to so many things. It's up to the environment,
Speaker 1: the kids. But it did evoke a lot of conversation,
Speaker 1: which I think is important as parents to have the conversations,
Speaker 1: and this book will definitely do that. So thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Thank you so much for having me and
Speaker 1: for all you do for families. If you or someone
Speaker 1: you know is having suicidal thoughts, please text or dial
Speaker 1: nine eight eight on your phone for the Suicide in
Speaker 1: Crisis Lifeline. Thank you for listening to go ask Alli.
Speaker 1: And thank you to Lisa Damore who has written this book,
Speaker 1: The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, which is truly a new
Speaker 1: handbook on raising connected, capable, and compassionate adolescents. And one
Speaker 1: of the big things I pulled out of it was
Speaker 1: that we have to allow our teenagers to trust their
Speaker 1: own instincts. And there are so many other great tidbits
Speaker 1: in it. Oh, I'm excited for everybody to read this book.
Speaker 1: Check out doctor Damour's podcast Ask Lisa and find her
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Lisa dot de more. Her new book,
Speaker 1: As I Said, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers Raising Connected,
Speaker 1: Capable and Compassionate Adolescent is out this week. And if
Speaker 1: you want more information on what you've heard on this
Speaker 1: episode and links to her other books, check out our
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Speaker 1: Go ask Alli and follow me on social media on
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