EP8: 3 skills that instantly boost your relationship with your t(w)een

Welcome back to the Teenage Guide Podcast. I am so happy that you're here each week. If you're just finding me, it's so great that you're, you're here, that you've found me somehow, some way. If you are a regular listener, I love it. I'm so grateful that you're here. I know you're busy. I know that you're low on time and energy, so it means a lot to me. So I have a question for you to start. Did you know that the number one way that you have influence in your tween or your teen's life is inside your relationship, in the way that you show up and in the way that you approach them and connect with them? So it's pretty important to focus on it, huh? Well, you're in luck because inside this episode, I'm going to share 3 unintentional yet common mistakes parents make That block closeness between you and your adolescent and what to do instead. So stay tuned. The belief that parenting a teen is destined to be terrible is outdated and it's unhealthy. If you're like most parents, you want your tween or your teen to be kind, confident, motivated, and with a trusting, respectful relationship between you two. But how? Do you have to read all the parenting books and take all the parenting classes? Does it have to be so complicated? The short, exciting answer: no. Hi, I'm Ashley Chandler, and in this podcast, I guide you through the proven mindset tools, strategies, and systems I've learned throughout my 18+ years as an educator and a coach for parents, tweens, and teens. The latest soul-to-systems research you must know Along with my personal experience as the mother of a tween and a teen to help you and your adolescent develop a bond and skills that last a lifetime. This is the Teenage Guide Podcast. So in the beginning, when parents become parents of teenagers, I like to say that we all go through what's what I call the great forgetting. We forget what it is like to be a teenager, and the memories we do have are not necessarily things are coming up roses, right? It's just a lot of big emotions, a lot of drama, a lot of feeling alone or just awkward, right? There's a lot more I could say here, but We go through this great forgetting of what that experience is like. And so inside this episode, I wanna remind you of what it was like to be a teenager and the 3 really unintentional but common mistakes that parents make that block connection so that you can go through a great remembering. You start to remember what it's like to be a teenager and you start to speak their language. You start to show up in the ways that they need and you stop making these very common— my heart is with you, no shame or blame, but now that you know better, you're going to stop making these common mistakes. The first one I called personalizing. A common phrase I hear when I coach parents is, how could they do this to me? Why do they do this to me? How could they do this to me after all I've done for them? In so many words, and I cringe when I hear this. So If you have thought this, it's natural. You've likely moved the sea and the skies for your kid day after day, and you deserve acknowledgement. So I'm here to acknowledge you. You're working so hard, you're trying so hard. Parenting is the most challenging job on the planet. But you've got to stop expecting them to shower you with praise or to take accountability perfectly throughout adolescence. We want it, but it's an unrealistic expectation. They may simply not have the awareness or the skill, just like you likely didn't at their age. I want you to ask yourself, was I great at appreciating my parents when I was a teenager? Was I great at validating their experience? No, you were not. So when you make their behavior personal, you take it on as if they're doing it to you on purpose. It is a major block to a close relationship. So you've got to practice digging beneath the surface of their behavior, not making it personal. For example, if they shut you out or they're disrespectful to you, instead of immediately declaring, you're wrong, how dare you, in one way, shape, or form, right? I want to encourage you to get curious why they are behaving in certain ways. And when you lead with curiosity, you practice becoming unoffendable. You attune to them and turn towards them, metaphorically or literally, in their messy moments. And when you do this, you create a bridge between you, you create what's known as emotional safety, which is a key tenet of secure attachment and a strong bond. So another way to think of this is our relationships across the board are mirrors. And our teens need us to hold up a mirror to them for them and their behavior. It's a counterintuitive approach, but the way to mirror back their behavior to them is not through your own emotional response or personalizing their emotions. It's mirroring back to them how you'd love to see them show up. It's by practicing your own emotional regulation. Getting curious and attuning to them. It's mirroring back to them that they're safe. This is when they're able to regulate their own emotions, drop their walls and defenses, and think clearly and logically about their own behavior. And this is when they'll reflect on and eventually get to the root of their own behavior, or maybe around their beliefs or perceptions of you and your wrongdoing that is unintentional. And this is the way that you'll create this deeper experience with them, is when their walls are dropped, when you get to the root, when you can both share your perceptions, how you're feeling without defense. And remember, this empowers them to be the hero of their own story in the moment, which is always what They want. All right, the second piece of this, the second most common mistake that's a block to a close relationship with your teen is what I call stress projection. As parents, we are holding so much and there will always be things that you could be triggered by in parenting. It makes me chuckle because literally there will always be things that you could be triggered by. That's one of the signature hallmarks of parenting, right? So within self-regulation, there are many categories of stress that each of us hold and impact our ability to respond versus react. And when you become aware of these categories of stress, you start to become highly perceptive of the ways your own relationship to what stresses you out impacts your reaction to them. In other words, when you become aware of the things that cause you to be stressed, you are less likely to project fear and control, 2 things that cause serious relationship breakdown with your twin or your team. So when you work with me inside my group programs or privately, we dive deep into each of these categories and my clients become their own experts in their lives. But I wanna give you an overview here of what to be aware of. One of the stress domains and stress categories is called biological stress. If you're the parent, you're likely somewhere around midlife. There's always exceptions, but when you reach midlife, I want you to think about all the things that are happening biologically for you: change in hormones, brain chemistry, your diet, your body temperature. So many different things that are happening biologically for you, and these all impact your ability to respond. Versus react. And these 2 things, respond versus react, are the keys to your emotional regulation, which significantly impact your ability to be close, to feel close with your team. Another category of stress, cognitive stress. This is difficulty processing different kinds of information. Depending on how, what other kinds of stimulus are in the room, Or what's happening to us, we may have difficulty processing depending on our sleep, depending on, you know, the level of stress in other categories. We could have difficulty processing, which makes us snappy or judgmental, which means that we are reacting and not responding. Another category of stress is called social stress. And this can be social situations from feeling isolated, Or alone to public speaking, right? There's so many different kinds of social stress. It might mean like you've just been out for the day in these stressful meetings and you've got annoying, thorny coworkers and you're feeling socially stressed from the day and that impacts your ability to respond versus react to your teenager. The next category is called prosocial stress and this is our ability to process And really regulate ourselves around other people's stress, right? World events, other people's emotions. This can be the walking on eggshells piece. Another category of stress is what I call soul stress, and this is the intangible stress humanity is experiencing related to our interconnectedness as beings. In this human experience. So when one of us gets hurt, we all experience hurt. We are all connected. The shootings, the mass shootings, war, social media trolls— these things impact us on a soul level. It's collective soul stress, and the 24-hour news cycle contributes to this. So again, all of these categories are actually interconnected. And they lie beneath the surface of our behavior in each moment. And the idea here is not to, quote unquote, stress you out by knowing them. It's to make you the master of your energy so that you do not project stress onto your teen. Because your teen doesn't know about them. They don't know that your reaction to them isn't about them. It's about that stressful meeting you just had or the fact that it's too hot in the room or the dog barking is triggering you. They think it's about them. So when you become aware of what dysregulates you, you can decrease it and meet your teen in the moment, show up for them in a way that builds connection. Another thing to keep in mind are the expectations or the fears that lie underneath the surface for most of us parents because at the end of the day, We really just want our kids to be okay. And that can come through fear and control as if they aren't okay. We are projecting our stress or our fear or our need for control as if they are not okay. And so releasing stress projection requires us to lean into not only what we can control, the 3D part of life, and then also lean into what we cannot necessarily control. Our direct relationship with the universe and with energy. And I call this the 5D life. This is filled with an intangible trust and faith that everything is working out for you and them all the time. And at some point, you can only control so much. And they are their own beings with their own purpose and path outside of you. So grounding in this allows you to release stress and lean into unconditional love versus fear. It's so powerful, you've got to practice becoming a stress reliever, not a stress projector. Hey there, I've got a real quick question for you. How would you like to know once and for all how to get your tween or your teen to do What they need to do without them talking back to you or breaking down or resisting or defending themselves, right? I mean, who doesn't want to know how to do this? It's the million-dollar question. If it seems impossible though, it's not. You just have to take a specific approach. So to make this real in your life, I wanted to make sure you saw that I have a free resource that's a game changer this back-to-school season. It's my Executive Function 101 video and workbook guide, and in just 10 minutes, you're going to have the solutions to the top 5 problems parents face in getting their tween or their teen to do what they need to do. In other words, to become leaders in their own lives, to manage their energy, responsibilities, time, and priorities. There are key things you've got to understand when it comes to them being able to do this, And how you can help them at home. So don't wait, if you haven't already, grab my Executive Function 101 video and workbook guide and be ready for insights and answers fast. In fact, dozens of parents have said this free guide was better than the majority of paid stuff that they've tried. So head to theteenageguide.com/EF, as in Frank, 101. That's theteenageguide.com/EF. /EF101. Or you can find it in the show notes inside this episode. I'm so excited for you to get your hands on this guide. Now back to the episode. All right, and we're back to the 3rd unintentional common mistake that parents make that can block a close relationship with Your teenager. Now this is a sneaky one because if you're listening to this, you likely know by now that you have to be the teenage guide versus the boss. And this one is what I call being the sneaky manager. It shows up in sneaky ways. We're trying so hard to be the guide, but we're still being the boss in some way, right? So for example, my client Melissa, she's been absorbing my coaching. We've been working together. And she came to me recently because she was worried about her relationship with her daughter. Her daughter wasn't opening up to her, she would become dysregulated really quickly, often becoming immediately defensive or shutting down or storming off, etc. And she said, I know I can be a taskmaster. But my husband travels all the time, we've got to get things done. And I don't do chaos. And when I can manage all the things, it helps me be less stressed. So in other words, her intention was coming from a loving place. She knows what needs to get done and what her daughter needs to do, and she wants to create an organized home with lots of opportunities to do different things, right? Managing this part helps her as the mom feel less stressed. But remember, thriving as the parent of a tween or a teen is more about you than it is about them. And that requires us to get clear on the best way to approach them. That requires us to get clear on our own behavior and then how it's influencing theirs. So she realized, although her intent was to empower her, her daughter to do the things that she needed to do, her approach was backfiring. It was actually blocking her ability to break through with her daughter. She was being a sneaky manager and she didn't even realize it. So it really boils down to your approach, which I guide you through inside my program Thrive, and I go deeper with it. But I really want you to understand, when you become the master of your approach, when you really start to Embody what it means to be a teenage guide and not a boss, you start to become aware of if your intention matches the consequences that you're experiencing. And if not, there's a good chance that you're taking a boss approach, which will only lead to resistance, breakdowns, or defensiveness from your teenager. So there we go. Those are the 3 things, the 3 keys to a close relationship with them. I'm going to repeat them here. Just know these are 3 very unintentional but common mistakes, and also approaches to have that close relationship with them, which is the number one way that you have influence in their life. So again, number one, personalizing. We do not want to personalize their behavior. It makes us the hero, it makes us the victim, and it's really not about us. We've got to become captains of our own ship, and we've got to practice holding up a mirror to them of the behavior that we'd love for them to exhibit, of how we'd love for them to show up. We want to demonstrate that as a mirror to them first. The second one, stress projection. We're holding a lot, parents. We all are holding a lot and true peace comes from the inside out. There's nothing on the outside that can bring us the peace that we're craving, okay? And there's many different categories of stress. Not all stress is bad. When we become aware of it, then we can decrease it. Then we can learn to meet our teenager where they're at and have the most power in the moment so that we can respond versus react. This is huge in creating— A super close bond with them. And the last one, we don't want to be a sneaky manager. We've got to become aware of the ways that our need for control or our need to have some sort of a plan or be the boss are kind of sneakily creeping into our day-to-day lives with them and start to loosen up the reins a little bit. Focus on what you can control. Also lean in to— once you've focused on that, you gotta lean into trusting and having faith that everything is working out for you. So that's it. If you like this episode, it would mean so much to me if you would like, subscribe, comment, review, rate, share, all the things. And remember that there are some really exciting things coming up. Inside the teenage guide, really, really incredible things. So if you haven't already, be sure to check out that Executive Function 101 guide that I listed earlier, and it's also in the show notes. I'll see you next time. I know you have limited time and energy, so thank you for being here, and kudos to you for investing in this time for yourself and for your teen. If you enjoyed this episode, I encourage you to continue the ripple effect And like, subscribe, review, and/or share with a fellow parent who could also benefit. Remember, the number one way that you have influence in your teenager's life is in your relationship with yourself and with them. So never doubt how much power you have because you are the teenage guide too.