The Real Reason Your Teen Isn't Talking to You

Hey, I'm Ashley Chandler, The Teenage Guide, and for nearly 2 decades, I've worked inside middle schools and high schools and with college-age students and family living rooms, helping hundreds of families. Go from daily conflict and closed doors to real connection with their teenager. I speak parent and I speak teen, and I create a bridge between you that a lot of other methods can't and won't. If you're navigating adolescence in your home and a version of yourself you're still becoming, you're exactly where you need to be. Let's reimagine the teenage years with science and soul at the forefront. This is The Teenage Guide Podcast.

Hi there, and welcome back to The Teenage Guide Podcast. I'm Ashley Chandler, and today I'm gonna be talking about the thing that is on all of our minds a lot of the time, but is still a great mystery: your teenager's Social world, specifically what's really going on, what they're really navigating, and why they aren't opening up to so many of you, and what so many teens are not telling their parents. What I've learned after nearly 2 decades of working with adolescent humans is that their friendships, their different social life, the social bubble that they experience at school, all the different nuances of it, it oftentimes matters just as much as grades, if not more. And so many parents are flying either partially or completely blind to their teen's actual social life once they hit adolescence. So this episode is for you if you watch your teen come home and they say, I'm fine, and you know they're not. You notice they don't get invited to specific things that you might know are happening. You watch them hanging out with a specific crowd and you can just tell these aren't their people, or they are hanging out with people and you think to yourself, what's actually going on in this group? There's a lot of secrets or surface level, and they lock themselves in the bedroom. And so you have a hard time really knowing and they close up when you ask. So I wanna start with a question. When was the last time that your teenager actually came to you And shared what was really happening in their social life. So not the surface stuff, but the real stuff. The social dynamics that are causing them stress and why. The thing their friend said that actually hurt them, or the friendship that's quietly falling apart and they don't know why. These are all different instances of things they go through that aren't surface. They're real. Maybe they feel lonely, but they don't use those words, but the loneliness that they might feel, Even if they're technically in a group, that is also very real. The pressure, the curiosity, or the frustration that they often feel around things like vaping, alcohol, sex, even having a relationship. And so just even calling out, like, in that place, there's like this grieving that happens for parents where they want to be included. They wanna know what's happening. But they aren't being included. And they're often left like wondering why, you know, they don't know the right way to approach a certain situation to get your teenager to actually open up. The grief is real. It makes complete sense. And it's not evidence that somehow you're failing as a parent. It is simply information. And we can work with information. We can build on information because when we understand it, From this perspective that I'll share in today's episode, everything can change. Doors can open that were once closed. So to start, one of the reasons why your teenager may be not opening up to you about their social world has actually very little to do with you and more to do with the fact that this is developmentally appropriate. From a developmental standpoint, they need to push away from you. They need to separate from you and form their own social world, make their own separate connections. In order to survive without you. It's part of growing up. It's part of adulting. They have to be able to separate from you and the world you've created so that they can create their own world from a very basic survival instinct. So your teenager is doing exactly what they are designed to do so that they can thrive in the quote unquote real world as an adult. They're getting that kind of practice. So remember that. Part of it's natural. And I think so many of you listening already know that. And so oftentimes you're left discerning what's natural, what's not. Is this normal? Is it not? Like there is an element of, they're not going to tell you absolutely everything probably. And they're certainly not going to tell you absolutely everything that's going on with their friends in order to protect their privacy. But there is some gray area in between where you want them to open up about stuff and be able to process it. So that you can guide them through it. The problem starts because so many parents interpret them pushing away as a personal attack. And so, so many parents might push harder. They ask more questions. They wanna be included. They judge more. And so these kinds of strategies of trying to be in, you know, it's like, I remember Tina Fey being on, was it Letterman or Jimmy Fallon or something? And she said, having a teenager in the house and wanting to be in their world is kind of like having a crush when you're young too. It's like you kind of like cozy up to their door and you're like, hey, what's going on? I'm going to be like eating pizza downstairs later if you want to join me. Okay. You know, it can be this tap dance that we do with our teens because we don't want to push them away. And so we're left in this kind of limbo period as parents. So inside this episode, I'm gonna give you some very concrete reasons and unintentional reasons why they don't open up to us and how to get them to open up more and create even more of that strong bond. So here's what actually determines whether or not your teenager comes to you and shares what's happening in their social world. It's whether or not they feel safe, not physically safe, although obviously that's important, but it's not physical safety. It's emotional safety. Are they gonna share something and you're gonna panic? Will you go into fix-it mode? Will you ask too many questions? Will you have too big of a reaction? Will you then bring it up again at the wrong moment in front of people who can't handle it or who aren't supposed to know? So the answers to these questions are built up over a ton of small little micro-moments, and they go through their own filtering process deciding whether or not You can handle it, whether they are safe sharing the information with you and that you can hold it. It just simply shapes whether they come to you or whether they don't. And so just recognizing you have this information, it's changeable, and you can build the skill of being able to hold it. So before I tell you exactly what's gonna get a teenager to open up, I wanna paint a picture of what's actually happening in their social life that so many parents are removed from. They've It's like the great forgetting, amnesia of what it's actually like to walk through the halls of high school. Okay. I go into high schools every week and I will tell you, there is a visceral energy that is palpable on a social landscape inside the high school walls. There's like a sexual energy. You know, everyone is, I feel like given the opportunity, everyone would be making out. There's hierarchies happening. Your teenager is managing a social landscape that plays out 24 hours a day in a way that it just simply was not playing out for us in the '80s and the '90s when we were teenagers. It just wasn't. It's happening across multiple platforms in multiple environments and sometimes with permanent records of it, right? This is navigating the social media world where then it's traceable. I mean, thank God there was not social media when we were growing up because it has a very different effect on their social-emotional skill building, the relationship they have with themselves, and their ability to be resilient in these times, knowing that what they do could be permanent. So what used to happen for us at like the lunch line and then forgotten by dinner, It sticks with them. It can stick with them for days, for weeks, for months. It lives in screenshots. It lives in group chats and comment sections. Simply put, the social stakes are higher, and in many ways they're constant. And underneath that are some of these bigger questions that they're trying to answer for themselves around their identity and how they feel about themselves and what makes them special. Who am I? What am I good at? Why do I matter? How do I wanna be seen? Maybe I'm too fat. Maybe I'm too ugly. Maybe I'm too skinny. I'm not athletic enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not social enough, right? So all these different nuanced layers of their forming their identity are at play underneath all of this incredibly complex social landscape. The peer group is like a laboratory for who they think they're becoming. It's like a laboratory for answers to a lot of those questions, which means every social experience, every friendship, every falling out, every drama or, you know, breakup that happens, et cetera, carries an emotional weight to it. It's an emotional weight that can feel very heavy to them, but to us and our logical adult brains that have gone through the great forgetting, it doesn't feel rational sometimes. To us, but to them, it feels very, very heavy. So we wanna keep that in mind when we are working on creating a relationship with them where they actually come to us, because the whole idea of you becoming a teenage guide inside your own home is that you want them to have your positive influence. You want them to come to you so that they can process with you and you have wisdom to share, right? That they'll actually receive. So when a teenager is processing something, they're going through something and you know that, and you ask them about it and they say, I'm fine. I'm fine oftentimes equals I don't have the energy to talk about it right now. You're not gonna understand. And I don't have the ability to manage your reaction. I can't handle your reaction to this. They're not trying to manipulate you. They're trying to protect themselves and protect their autonomy. So what actually gets teenagers to open up? Well, I will tell you after nearly 2 decades of working with them that teens will talk and they talk a lot and they wanna talk. They really want to have someone that they can talk to. They are often desperate to be understood by the people who love them, who care about them. What's missing isn't the desire for them to want it. It's the conditions that need to be in the environment, in the relationship, in order for them to actually do it. So when you say, you can tell me anything and I won't react, but then you back it up with reaction or judgment or stress or not the right timing or context or whatever, that is a clue that you can't handle it to them, even though you're a human. You are allowed to have your own experience. It's just worth noting from a parenting perspective, when it comes to teens, it's closing a door that otherwise you could keep open. Teenagers don't believe, they start not believing that you can handle things. What they need is proof, more evidence that when, for example, what's going on in their minds is, when I share something with you, you don't judge it. You can regulate yourself. You can just listen and not ask too many questions. You can stay curious. You can be nonjudgmental. And I never regret telling you. I actually feel better after I tell you. The last part is really key. I don't regret telling you. You know that feeling when you tell someone something and then afterwards you're like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. They gave me so much input, or they were judgmental, or You know, I don't trust them, or I know I, then I had to like, they made it about them. We are oftentimes unintentionally doing that as parents to our teenagers. So watch what happens when they come to you. Did you then bring it up at a moment they didn't wanna talk about it? Did you flinch or have a face or make a comment that was judgy? Do you use it in a point later as part of an argument? And if any of those things happen even once, oftentimes the doors close. Being the safe person that your teenager needs in order for them to come to you requires you to have a specific amount or a specific ability, a specific capacity to be able to hold it. And what I notice for parents a lot is that they're stressed, they're depleted, they are oftentimes doing it alone. They may not have a partner who is part of the equation in a healthy way. They're operating from a different manual, a different blueprint. They can either not be clued into what's happening and make it worse or say something that triggers and then it shuts the whole thing down. So, so many parents are depleted and therefore reactive, not responsive. They're reacting harshly. They're not responding from a regulated place. They're carrying the emotional weight of everyone in the household and all the schedules and the planning and the coordination and the carpooling and the driving and the— all the things. And so many parents are doing this solo. They're not doing it with a parent who is a true partner in it with them, whether intentionally in pre-agreed-upon ways, or that's just the dynamic of the relationship or busyness or schedules or whatever. It happens a lot where one person's taking the brunt of Creating that kind of emotional container in the home. So if you're the one who's always noticing, always doing the best that you can, always doing the listening, always kind of reaching out for that kind of connection with your teenager, and then your partner comes in and they don't notice it, they might say something that makes it worse, or they have an approach that is completely off and they don't know how to do it at all, that kind of imbalance can have a cost too. It can also lead to shutting down, even if you're doing a lot of the right things. And it's not because you are wrong, it's because you're operating from a different manual. And this gap between you, this imbalance, shows up in your ability to really be there, to create that consistent opening up where your team comes to you, or to feel like, ooh, I have a partner in this, and they go to both of us equally. I'm just gonna call it out 'cause you know I like to. If you are a midlife human, which you probably are, Your capacity's also maybe a little bit lower if you are not tending to your needs biologically, spiritually, emotionally. You are going through your own restructuring. And so your ability to hold your teenager's emotions is also very much impacted by what you're going through in this midlife stage. So here are 3 very concrete, tangible, actionable things that you can do Right away to experiment with this, to try to open up that door of connection and get your teen to open up. First, what you wanna focus on is creating conditions that allow your nervous systems to regulate, to allow for moments where you can just kind of weave in connection points and talking, whether it be in the car or at the dinner table, just listening, and then It might lead to more open conversation about what's actually happening in their social world, but it will only happen if the conditions create a balance between you in a regulated state. If one of you is stressed, it will shut down that opportunity for connection. 2, when they do share something, anything, even if it's a small thing, stay curious and listen a little longer Then maybe your instinct. Oftentimes parents will come and they'll tell me like, or they'll ask me, what should I say or do? And oftentimes the answer is nothing. Just be like, hmm. Oh, really?

Huh.

You're not really saying much. You're doing a lot of listening. No opinion, no solution, just genuine interest in them. And then before you go into, do you want me to listen or do you want me to help you solve? You ask about their experience. Like, well, how you doing? What was that like for you? It's one of the most powerful things that you can do because it signals to them, my parent's not trying to take over. They're not trying to fix anything. They're not trying to boss me around. They're really just here. 3, your teenager's willingness to share depends on a few different things, but your ability to attune and to regulate yourselves is key. So Experiment with practicing your tending to yourself and your own energy and moving any stress through and being able to be with yourself and be relaxed. I know that may sound overly simplistic, but how many people are walking around unable to actually be with themselves? And not judge themselves, not criticize, not have a never-ending to-do list telling them they're never enough, they're always running behind. So really tending to yourself in very specific ways. When I work with families, we go through this process where you're tending to the relationship with yourself, you're tending to the relationship with them. So it might mean Doing these things that actually support you from the inside out so that you're just spending quality time, you're not actually asking about friends, but you notice a very tangible shift inside of you and the way that you're relating to yourself, that will have a very direct impact on the way that they experience you too. And it oftentimes leads to them feeling like an open door. To be able to come to you at the 11th hour at night and tell you what's actually going on with their friend who's been ghosting. So often we've been fed the narrative that the teenage years are just hell and we have to grit our teeth and get through it. And I am on a mission to change that narrative for families around the world. There is Such great, beautiful opportunity to deepen that relationship you have with yourself, to enjoy life with your family like you never have before. This is exactly the work that I do with families each and every day, where that grieving of what you think is lost and somehow you have to be in pain for the next decade while your kid's a teenager, to transforming to, wow, I've never felt better, and I feel closer to them at a time when everyone's telling me I shouldn't. It's really incredibly powerful stuff. So remember to leave a comment, like, subscribe, and share. I want to know, What part of this resonates with you? And what are you committed to making a decision to practice when it comes to really understanding your teenager more and keeping the door open for that kind of connection about their social world that I know that you want to be a part of and be able to support them through? Remember, never underestimate the power That you have as the parent. I'll see you next week.

Thank you so much for being here today. If this episode resonated with you, or if you heard yourself somewhere in it, that is not an accident. You are meant to be here. Come discover more about me and my work at theteenageguide.com or follow along wherever you are. And if this episode helped you. Share it with one parent who needs to hear it. A like and a subscribe means more than you know. And as always, never underestimate the power that you have as the parent, because you are the teenage guide too.