Applying expert parenting advice in real life: Talking to Teachers and Online Drama

Hello and welcome to Teenagers Untangled. I'm Rachel Richards. This is the Wonder Room, where I sit down with my brilliant friend Catherine Radicce, author, teacher, and expert on supporting teenagers through secondary school. She's also a mum of boys. Catherine, welcome back.

Good morning. It's always so nice to be here,

and it's lovely to have you on. Now we like to talk about what stayed with us in recent episodes, and we're going to do that. But firstly, Jeremy has written new to your show. I'm relieved to hear Catherine's common sense wisdom. My first episode was your interview with Doctor Sachs. Ooh, and while I understand where he's coming from, I came away feeling like this isn't the podcast for me. I'm glad that I'd been listening while making breakfast, and Spotify moved straight on to the next episode. Thank you, and Catherine, for providing balance in this particular episode. Isn't that great? But you

know, I think that's the thing, isn't it? Because whenever anyone listens to any expert, if you are an expert, then you position yourself around a line. That's what you have to do, but those of us on the ground, we've still got to think about where do we sit around that line? Is it going to work for us? Is it not? So to have this chance just to chew it over and think about what that looks like in practice, I think is a great opportunity. Yeah, me too.

And this is why I've called it the Wonder Woman because we want to encourage fearless parenting, where we fear less and wonder more. So today, let's reflect on the two

their school refusal and cancel culture. Should we start with something Naomi Fisher said? Because I loved that she said, "As adults, we accept that sometimes we need time out. People take career breaks, sabbaticals. We call that sensible, but when a child needs a pause from school, we treat it as a crisis. You see this from both sides at the school gate. Does that land for you at all?

I think it absolutely did. I think it's got two dimensions, though. I think her comments about why are we so obsessed with milestones are really well founded. It's a bit like back in the days of you know parent and baby group. You

are they crawling? Are they reaching? You know, all of that, and we can get so caught up on are our children doing something by a deadline that it becomes really unconstructive. And I think her comments of that, you know, if a child says GCSEs at 1617, 18 in the grand scheme of things, that doesn't really matter. I thought those comments were spot on, but I think the kind of moderating counterbalance is that it probably does matter to the child themselves when they're doing it, because although yes, in the grand scheme of things, if you sit your GCSEs when you're 18, no one's going to mind. If you miss a school year and you go back into school a year older, that can be really hard for the kids, and although I would never say to any parent, you know, push, push, push, push, push for your child to be somewhere if it's not working for them, I think that sense of milestones by the time a teenager is a teenager is something that's playing in for them as well as for parents, and that school pipeline of you know here we all are here we are same age same birthdays and so on I think that does exert its own pressure on how much teenagers feel they have to keep going.

I think you're absolutely right. At the other side of that is my daughter did take time out at 16 and it has been the making of her and she is flourishing. She's loving her work. She just got a commendation for getting a grade that's two grades higher than what they expected of her, because she's loving what she's doing. So I think it it can be both things, but I do think I think going back into the same education setting after taking time out can be the problem because you then see where your friends have moved on. If you go to a different educational setting, which is what my daughter did, she's gone to a college, and it's much it's a much bigger place. So she's sort of disappeared into it, but she's also managed to find friends. It's not the same.

Yeah. So yeah, I agree with

you. Those small cohorts can be really, really troubling.

Exactly. Exactly. And within all of this is our kind of go to principle of by the time your kids are teenagers, we have to listen to their view. And I thought when Naomi said that one of the things that was different for her was that she, as a child, took her own views seriously. So when she thought school wasn't working, she just thought school is ridiculous. The problem is school, not me. But a lot of teenagers find it difficult to take their views seriously, and therefore, when we as parents do pause and listen to our children, then it really helps them find the solutions to navigate what's around them. If a kid really, really does need a break, if they're really finding school intolerable, then the starting point as a parent has to be to pause, listen, and try and understand why that's the case, and then think: Can we manage to move through this, or do we need to step to the side of it temporarily while we rebuild?

I love that. I think that's so great. And I struggled with school. I couldn't really articulate it very well because nobody was asking me. So I do think that if you are prepared to sit down and just go, well, what is what is everyday like? How does this feel for you? and help them to. Tease out what they're experiencing. I think that's a very great message. And as Nomi says, you can ask them what they think the solution is. You say we do have to educate you. I mean, that's really important. But what are your thoughts? Because they may well have some great ideas. Yeah. And what do you think was the most useful thing a parent can say to a teacher, and what should they avoid?

So this was a really interesting bit, wasn't it? When she said that in her experience, when parents try and work with schools to try and make things better for their child, it's very, very kind of mixed how well that works. And I think she said a lot just depends upon the personalities in the room. And you know, I have sat through a lot of parent meetings. You know, my days in schools. You know, a lot of kind of times where parents come in, and one of the tricky things there is that handling that meeting, getting the best out of it from the parent side, isn't necessarily straightforward, because I think the first biggest barrier is that when a parent turns up to talk about their child, the kind of pacing around the time available is totally different, right? Because if you, as a parent, are turning up and you've got a 20-minute, 30-minute appointment, which is a long time, by the way, in the context of the school, if you've got a 20 or 30-minute appointment to talk about your child, that's a tiny percentage of the amount of time that you think about your child, and therefore your pacing is probably going to be quite slow. But for a member of staff, you know, 2030 minutes is a huge proportion of the amount of time any member of staff has to think about an individual. You know, a head of year has got 150 200 kids on their books, and so what often happens in those meetings is, you know, the parent comes in and the school say, right, you know, tell us what you think we need to know, and often the initial explanation takes up so much time. The parents spend so long explaining where they are with it that actually, then what happens is you've got 510 minutes to talk about what are we going to do. So, if as a parent you want to try and get the best out of those meetings, it's really worth thinking: Can I send my bit in an advance? Can I just write down what I think the school needs to know? Because actually, that meeting, the most useful thing for you as a parent is to try and understand what the school can do and can't do, because schools only have so many levers. You know, they are so resource poor in terms of teachers' time, you know all of that. Then actually, as a parent, it's not about saying you know the the magic solution looks like this, and can we now have that? It's about trying to work out what is the possible solution. Is that going to work for your child? What can you do as a parent to try and support your child around that? So you know that would be my

Think about the time you got available, and do you want most of it to be you talking, or actually most of it to be you asking questions and listening, so that you can understand that world and then make an informed choice about okay, here's what we can do.

I've not worked in a school, but from what I understand, particularly in the UK, they are under so much pressure to make sure that they don't have these absences, and this is coming from outside the school. So schools in there have their own pressures that they have to manage. Yeah, huge, huge pressures. You know, if you're in the maintain sector, then attendance is a big, big part of how schools are rated, and in general for very good reasons. But it does mean that if you're one of the families where attendance is difficult, there's going to be a big push from one direction that your kid really does need to turn up, and that

can also make those conversations fraught. Because I think the other big barrier to constructive conversations with schools is how straightforward is it for everyone to get their head around the kind of reality of how difficult school is, and I think particularly, e.g. if you're a parent in the private sector, sometimes it can be difficult for schools to be really honest and upfront about what we can do this and we can't do that. If the conversation sort of opens with a potential for blame, you know, if as a parent you come in really angry and say, oh, but you should and you must. You're probably going to get a much more guarded response. Whereas if you come in and say, I get the fact your hands are tied in certain ways. I know you are all just humans doing your best. What's the realistic possible situation here? You know, if you could be really candid and straightforward like that, and accepting of the fact that schools do try, but it's a difficult environment. Again, you'll probably end up with a much better understanding of what can and can't be done.

How do you think a parent can tell the difference between a bad week and something that's deeper?

It's tricky, isn't it? It's really tricky because the headline answer is,"Does the bad week repeat? And you know, on the surface, that sounds like an easy answer. You know, if, e.g. you know, friendship turbulence, if someone's being mean, is that just a kind of a one-off, or is it going to become a really difficult, long-lasting problem? The reason I say it's tricky is that whether or not it repeats, there's two types of repeating, right? You know, there's repeating on the top level of. These actions are happening again, and then there is kind of repeating on a deeper level. Of is my child still carrying this with them in a way that's sort of affecting you know how things are going. So you know if a kid has a really difficult experience in a lesson and they feel ashamed of an answer they gave, you know that particular interaction might not repeat on the surface, but the very same child might be very reluctant to put their hand up ever again. You know, for the next how many weeks and months. So I think it is. I think it's a difficult one. I think probably what I'd go back to as an answer is you have to just look at the whole child. You know, rather than trying to look for you know one individual thing, is your child as a whole happy, engaged, cheerful. You know, not happy every minute of every day. No one's happy every minute of every day. But is your child as a whole basically thriving? Because even if they've had a tough thing over here, if as a whole they're doing okay, then they're handling that toughness, but if actually they seem to be withdrawing, becoming more reluctant, more brittle, if their health is suffering, then whatever has happened is having an impact on them, which is serious, and that definitely does need attention and discussion.

I mean, my daughter early on in her senior school Career. She had a big group falling out, and she would cry every night before going to school. She was always really anxious and scared. And I did say to her, "You know, if you want to take a break, if you need to try and move schools, we can talk about that. Because she would tell me everything, which made it easier for both of us because I understood what was going on, but every day she'd go, "No, I'm going to go in. I'm going to go in, and it did get better. And it was, but it's a child needs to be wanting to do that. The child needs to be prepared to think, "Okay, it's worth it. And I think that's one of the difficult things, isn't it? And I think our belief in our child. So I kept saying to her, "The only thing I know is it won't stay the same. It will change, and I think that's true. And I think we need our kids to hold faith that whatever snapshot of their life they've got at the moment is not going to continue in that way. It's going to shift. It's just how do we make that that work for them? And if a child needs a pause, what can we do to keep that door open for going back?

I think the first thing is always discuss with the school, and I, you know, I keep coming back to the idea of schools aren't perfect, and as a parent, you will definitely have frustrations with whatever school your kid is at for sure, and you'll probably have frustrations with individual members of staff as well. Like that is inevitable because because schools aren't perfect, and I'm sure that parents with kids in my classes have had you know frustrations with me, etc. etc. But schools want the best for their children, so even though they're not perfect, the sort of will behind them is just to try and make things work. So always the first starting point has to be a conversation with the school and say, "This isn't working. We think we're going to have to move to you know this alternative. You know, set up. What do you think we can do to try and keep things going? And often, what happens is in the short term, if it's e.g. you know, a medical illness or someone's got to stay at home to recover. You know, maybe it goes down to a reduced curriculum and certain work gets sent home, or you know whatever. Often schools will try and come up with plans that keep the show on the road if it's possible. Because as a general rule, if a kid can stay in their year group, that often feels easier socially for them in the short term, as we were saying before. But these situations are so bespoke to the individual and the family, and exactly as Naomi Fisher said, you know, sometimes school kids have to go to school, not just because the law says so, but also because in the family structure, you know, not every parent can homeschool. Of course, they can't because parents have to, you know, work and so on. So it's all about what does this individual context look like? What are the needs? What are the possibilities? And then within that, what is the best thing we can do of the various imperfect options available? Because I think as parents, we often crave the perfect solution, and the mess in reality is that it just doesn't exist, does it? You know, you just want to take that one and move on. Yeah, you just want to say, right, problem solved. But actually, adolescence is a matter of like choosing between different messy alternatives. You know, it's all imperfect and messy, so it's okay. Well, of the available things we could do, this one is the better of the options. But the school's advice will help with that because they have the benefit of experience, and also they know what they can do, and then you can work out what you can do on the side.

Yeah, they've seen they've seen 1000s of kids, but this is not new to them. So they may well have some help and advice that can support us. I could talk about this all day, but we're going to move on to Dominique Thompson and the cancel culture. I just want to say, if you're listening to this and you're thinking this is something that's really big for me, email your question. We're completely happy to sort of focus an entire discussion on key questions because if you're struggling with something, guarantee somebody else is too. So I've got no problem with doing that now. Dominique Thompson, and we talked about cancel culture, and I I wanted to talk about this because I've done this before to an extent. So I talked with Susie about it, and I've done lots of research about it because this there was this horrible incident at Oxford of a boy who died by suicide because he had been ostracized, and in the inquest there was this comment that this is a culture thing. The kids seem to be policing themselves, and if we don't do something about this, it could result in more deaths. So it was something we need to, as parents, be conscious of, not panic about, never panic. What do you think parents can do to help a teen who's been called out in a group chat? Because that's the sort of stuff you hear about, I'm sure, at schools. I think it depends on the age, and I think it depends whether it is the you know the first or part of a progression, right? But I think, as a general rule of thumb, is you know be very wary as a parent of fanning the flames, because particularly if it's a group chat, things get heated really fast. And I remember saying to one of my friends, you know, how do your kids position themselves around group chats? And one of them said, you know, that their line had been their kids' line, that the drama just builds so quickly, and it's all like capital

letters and you know swear words and you know all of that. And I think one of the things that's tricky if you're a child, like if you're sort of like 12, 1314, or whatever, and you say something, and suddenly there's this sort of like whoosh of people, you know, saying you can't say that, can't believe you did that. You know, coming back at you. The natural instinct is to want to defend yourself, and that's totally understandable. But it also keeps the conversation going. So I was chatting to my son, who is now 16, and I think there can be differences in terms of you know how kind of boys and girls like position themselves around that kind of like journey you know turn and that drama, but I said to him what what do you do when drama erupts on on a group chat, and he said oh I just I just step back. He said most people just step back and you know let people get on with it. Now there is an issue in stepping back because actually sometimes people need to step in and stand up for someone.

Yeah. But I

think if you're stepping into an online chat, there are no boundaries around how long that chat can run for or how heated it can get. Like if you, you know, step in in person at school, there are boundaries, right? Because you know, conversation can only last so long at school, and it can only get so heated because someone will notice and intervene. So I think the first thing is that if you're if you can see that your teen is really upset by something that's happened online, pause, step back, and just don't respond immediately. Let it kind of simmer down a bit, and then if it looks like it isn't simmering down, then you know the conversations have got to begin about you know where's this come from? Why do you think they're responding like that? What do you think would be a good thing to do next? And have it as a conversation that's quite patient, as opposed to a disaster that needs to be fixed instantly. Because I think with kind of that sort of heated friendship explosion, trying to solve it instantly tends to fan those flames as well.

In my experience, young teenagers are simply not equipped to have these group chats. They're just not, and I have seen it where you know they just misunderstand what someone else is saying because they don't see the nuance, the relationships aren't deep and careful enough, and they don't think around a subject enough. So they'll see something, they'll react to it, and it can very quickly escalate. And I've witnessed this, and I've had to actually pull my daughter back and say,"Darling, this is not going to help you at all? Can you see how you might have misread what's been said? And I think the group chats are really something we can try and avoid in our kids when they're younger. I mean, I really say to my kids, "Can you just stay off those? And as they get older, they become more equipped with the the language and the nuance and everything. But they're never that great. I mean, who who can have a really interesting, smart conversation on group chats? And if I go online now, even though I curate my feed and try and make it quite positive, I just see a lot of people shouting at each other because one person thinks this and another person thinks this. And if you put them in a room together with their body language, with time to really talk things through, you wouldn't be getting that sort of response. So I do worry that it's also become almost a cultural thing about being online. And I interviewed Natasha Devon a few years back, and she wrote a book called Clicks, and it was all about turning up as your best self online. And I think that's a great phrase. It's just like. How are you being your best self online? I keep saying to my girls, why don't you just pick up the phone and talk to somebody or go and see them, rather than having these really difficult exchanges in this way? Because you can't get the nuance

exactly, and I think in all of this, speed is not your friend, right? Every bit of social media is sort of geared around speed. My mum, bless her, was watching one of my boys watching YouTube, and she said, "I can't, I can't handle like the the speed of YouTube because it is a whole different pace. But for building friendships and tolerance and taking an interest and someone else's point of view, speed is not your front. It's

an entire culture that it took me a while to get my head around. You can't leave anything unread if they've received the message and they've opened it, they've got to respond. And I'm like, this is ridiculous. Of course you don't. I leave my friends on red all the time because I like to have the time to think about it. And they're like, oh no, you can't do that. That's a terrible thing to do. That's really offensive.

Teenagers particularly generalize. So that principle of I can't leave anyone on you know the double blue tick. Well, that in general, okay, there are plenty of interactions where it's nice to get back quickly, but that doesn't mean it's true always. So you know, helping teenagers realize that there are some sorts of messages where you are better just stepping back and pausing and having those conversations about when is a pause necessary. Like you know, back in our day when we were kind of getting used to email and it was the whole never send an angry email last thing at night. You know, pause and check it tomorrow. But it was really good advice when we were all getting used to email. And there are similar things of what are the messages where

you shouldn't reply straight away. And if you have those conversations, then it will help your team think with a little bit more confidence about when to sort of feel that pressure of, but I've got to keep up with the pace, and when they can say,"Actually, no, this one needs to slow down. Speed is definitely not my friend here. And I think one of the interesting things is helping our kids learn how to disagree with someone or say,"Oh, I don't like that way of framing things, without destroying somebody or pitting themselves in in a battle against them, and I have found with my kids the best thing to do is get them to ask questions. So let's say their their friend has said something they don't like. It's I feel differently. What's behind what what you've just said, or even just sorry, why did you say that? Because I think the questions give you time and give the other person an opportunity to explain their situation. What do you think, and what do you do about this kind of disagreeing without destroying someone? Think. I think you can also bring in the the depersonalizing it bit. So I think questions is the first wave, isn't it? Always, you know, we always kind of say, listen for longer, spend longer understanding before you respond. It's just a really good general piece of advice. But depersonalizing the response, because where it gets really het up within a friendship, particularly quite a kind of evolving adolescent friendship, is when it becomes a battle between two people,

as opposed to exploring two sets of ideas, so you know rather than say, "Well, I disagree, because you know you can say things like, "What would you say to the people who think? and then you can put the counter argument without turning it into a me versus you. It actually keeps it as a well. What are your response to this view, as opposed to what's your response to me, and you know, then as someone who's trying to kind of build that conversation, you've also got a bit of leeway to work out at what point you want to say where you sit in it yourself, because you can have a discussion without having to make it all about your views and your identity. And where I think the cancel culture is really difficult. Is when one view gets seen as a whole person's identity.

Yeah, because then it

becomes a we're cross with the person as opposed to we disagree with the view, and therefore it's quite helpful to kind of help teenagers see how to keep a view as something that's just a view that can evolve and change, as opposed to themselves, that identity that they carry with them always.

I think that's absolutely spot on. I think one of the most important things, and David Jaeger talks a lot about this, is understanding that there we grow and we change, and particularly with teenagers, just because you think one thing one day does not mean that you're always going to think that, and that you're always going to behave in that way. And I think teenagers see a snapshot, and it's very easy for them to think, "Oh, that's who that person is. Like you said, they attach that one behavior to their entire identity, and stressing the growth of human beings, the growth mindset, the fact that even adults will change their minds, will grow and and develop as they hear new things, learn new things, really helps a child frame that okay, that person's just learning still,

yeah, and and

I'm learning still, and that's okay.

I think the the really interesting thing about growth is we tend to be more interested in it in a facing forwards way. So you know everyone now has heard about the growth mindset, which is great, and I'm a big fan of the principles behind it. But we use it as a kind of I'm going to move on into something different. And when we're talking about children, one of the really interesting things about child development is that a child doesn't always notice how they've already grown. So you know that thing where you take a ticket back to a place where they remember it from when they were five or six, and they're suddenly kind of like,"Oh my gosh, it's so tiny! Because they've grown, and therefore, you know the the climbing frame at the old park that looked like it was enormous is in fact actually you know really small and so on. And they get that kind of like I can't believe how different it is. And I think as parents, we don't always spend the time we could do helping our children notice how much they've already changed. And it's such a useful question sometimes to say, you know, think back to year seven. What did you think then? You know, who were you then? Who do you feel that you are now? Because if we help our children notice how they have already grown and how they are already evolving, what we do is we help build their confidence that, however things are now, the chances are it will be different in the future, but you can't absolutely love that. It's so true. You can't build that belief that things can be different tomorrow unless you're also really clear that things were different yesterday, and we are just all evolving.

And for your child, and also you can use examples in your own life where you know when you were this age, you thought this and you did this, and then you slowly grew, and then you you were different. And I talk about that a lot with my kids. That I've evolved so much since I was 1213, and those those little stories can really help our kids frame. Like they look at us and think, "Oh, you're a fully formed adult, as if still growing, you know. But they, but but it helps them, doesn't it? And with your boys, how do you make it safe where they can make mistakes at home, and then you can help them see a different way? You know, is this something that comes up in your house at all?

I think it comes up in every house, and I also think I can't claim to have any magic answers right because you know as a parent you see the bits you see but you know you don't see the bits you don't see so you know I like to think that we have quite open dialog at home and that my boys you know know that if they tell us something difficult you know we will pause and listen respectfully but I'd also be a fool to think therefore they're telling me everything because there'll be some stuff no matter how much I've tried to kind of cultivate that, that maybe they don't bring. And then in terms of you know how they feel about being open with their friends, again, you know, I only get so much sight of what that dynamic looks like and how they feel within it because I only get to see the bits that I see, but what I think we have really tried to do at home is to try and build a tolerance of mistakes, and we've talked about this a bit before. It starts with us, you know, because we live in an optimization culture, right? You know, we are all into trying to optimize everything, and that's kind of all well and good, but we do also have to be able to tolerate the mistakes and the recalibrations that are part of that growth. So we do try and do quite a lot of you know when things go wrong, saying, "Oh, okay, you know, well that went a bit wrong, but actually, you know, mistakes do happen. How can we move forward? You know, where does it come from? What do we all need to understand? And within that tolerance of mistakes, I think the one thing that I hope, fingers crossed, is useful is we always try and say, let's remember that no one intended to make that mistake. So when my boys were really young, and they used to, you know, like all boys do, you know, fall out and have rows, and you know, one would say, you know, mom, you know, he's just said this, and I would always say, what do you think he was intending to do? And sometimes the first response would be, you know, he just wanted me to be unhappy, and I'd say maybe, but is there a better interpretation? Could there be a better way to view him? And we have really tried to work on no matter how much action might be upsetting, just try and give it the benefit of the best interpretation in terms of intention, because you'll probably build a much stronger relationship, and also actually you'll probably be closer to the truth because loads of people are thoughtless, but very few people intend to hurt someone face to face.

I'm hearing in my head an entire episode on bullying here. I have actually done an episode on bullying, and I will put that in the episode notes because this is for some parents they're going to go no, but my. I was being bullied, and this is really traumatic. And and maybe we can cover that on a different one. We we don't have time today. But what do you wish parents knew about how quickly these things blow up and blow over at school? Because obviously you see this stuff day to day.

Yeah, things can blow up and things can dig in. And if as a parent, you think your child is daily unhappy, and you can see them reducing and becoming a smaller version of themselves. Then, as a parent, do not minimize it, because if you see your child getting smaller, kind of metaphorically, emotionally, or indeed physically, right? You know, because lots of upset can play into you know dietary habits and all that kind of thing. If you see your child reducing, don't belittle it and think, "Well, it'll just blow over. Take it seriously, but at the very same time, be wary of making it bigger than it is. So, at the first blow up, if you as a parent can be calm about it and think the chances are it will be fine, and be a bit patient, and then you know watch and wait for a bit. But if after two, three weeks actually it really isn't fine, because you can see that it is impacting your child in their kind of whole self, then that's the time when you've absolutely got to take action, you know, and not just saying, "Well, it'll probably be fine next year. Because actually, if your child is starting to diminish, then that really, really, really needs action.

Yeah, one of the things that I mentioned in my bullying episode is that if your child seems to be coming home saying this happened or X, Y, Z, the best thing to do is just log it, and this is what happened. This is what time. This is what day, and then just let someone in the school know. You say, "I'm not expecting you to do anything. I'm just logging it. Because one of the big problems is when things start happening and the school doesn't know anything about it, and then suddenly your child reacts to the other child, and it's the first thing that the school seen because these relationships can be very fluid, very difficult to see into, and just having that information can help. I don't know. What are your thoughts about that? I think it's really sensible. I think when there is a bullying situation, you've got two types of information: you've got the kind of events, the stuff that was served, the stuff that was done, and then you've got the feelings. And in the short term, as a parent, the feelings are the bit you probably need to kind of listen to and soothe. But if those events turn into a pattern,

it's quite hard at the point where you're maybe two or three weeks down the line where the feelings will have got bigger. It's then actually very hard for a child to be able to give a kind of clear narrative of events. So if as a parent you can just without kind of telling your child you're doing it, but just just keep that log, so actually, if things do get a bit worse, that thinking through the events is nice and clear. Then it means there's less of a risk that the the feelings are going to make it harder to deal with the pattern of actions that are those events. So yeah, absolutely. As a general rule of thumb, as a parent, just keeping a log of stuff that happens if you start to be worried makes it much easier to deal with it. Several step down the line. If it becomes a series, that definitely then does need some intervention. One

of the big issues is shame, and I think particularly for boys, I remember Andrew Hampton saying that the thing boys fear most is shame, and it often stops them from opening up about things that really they perhaps would be best off talking about. In your experience with students opening up to you, how does shame play a part in any of this? I think I think shame is is kind of baked into almost every difficult moment because when something's gone a bit wrong in the back of most teenagers' minds, it's probably a feeling of, and if I were a different person, then that

thing wouldn't wouldn't have happened, you know, like that whole thing and bullying, where you know kids think, well, if I were different, then the bully wouldn't behave that way, and that that doubt about whether I myself, the teenager, I'm doing it right means that the shame is almost always there when something's gone wrong, someone's upset about something, whether it be friendship dynamics, academic grades, or whatever. But I think you know when Dominic talked about shame being really toxic, that gave me really pause for thought because I think shame is difficult, but I also think we are guaranteed to feel it at some point, regardless of what our life looks like, and I think the bit that is toxic about it is how difficult it is to verbalize. Because as soon as you say I'm ashamed, you're basically saying I think I've done something that other people are going to disapprove of. That's going to make them think that I'm less than. And I've had loads of conversations where shame has been part of it, and it's ended up kind of out on the table, and you know we've talked it through. But I can't think of a single time where a teenager opened by saying the problem is I feel ashamed. And then I thought, you know what? As an adult, how often do I say those words myself? And I think about, e.g. the dialog that my kids have heard at home, and I say things like, "I'm angry, "I'm stressed, "I'm upset, you know, at the end of my tether. You know, I say all those things. I don't think I've ever said to my own children, "I feel ashamed about something, and so I think as a parent, it has given me huge pause for thought about whether I need to do a bit more role modeling of showing that shame is something that can be talked about like anger, or you know losing your rag or whatever, or you know feeling exhausted,

because actually the difficult. with shame is that if you don't talk about it, then it doesn't get moderated by someone else saying, "Actually, no, no, I don't think you were at fault there, and therefore, silent shame I think often kind of grows and grows and grows. So I think there is a. It gave me a lot of kind of, or or you know, not that that you weren't at fault, but also that's not as big a thing as you seem to think it is. Because I've got a friend who's an exceptionally capable woman. She's the breadwinner in her family. She's amazing, and we talk about things, and she says, "Oh yeah, no, I still carry that shame from when I was ex age to all the teenage stuff. Oh, and I did this, and I still I still think about it, which is just wow, wow, right?

It lasts so long, doesn't it? And I think also part of the problem with the silent shame is that if it's silent, what you don't get is the benefit of someone saying,"I hear that. I hear you regret it. I get it, but I love you just the same. Yes, yes, and broken. Nothing weird about you. Exactly. Like everyone has their kind of like jagged bits, their bits they're less proud of, and so on. So you know, if it's not possible to make shame visible, then it's not possible to kind of get that experience of thinking, but I am lovable in my entirety, even with those bits that I wish had been a bit different.

Yeah.

So I think I think shame is big, and I think it's it's one of it's a bit like you know 10 years ago women didn't really talk about anger, right? Because you know 10 years

ago, women were sort of made to think that you know we didn't get angry in the way that it was okay for a man to get angry, and I think shame is one of those emotion emotions that isn't straightforward to talk about, and I think we could probably do quite a lot of good if we made it a bit more possible to put it out there where it is found. I agree. I think it's a really important point. Just before we go, I just wanted to make a point because I saw a comment on threads by a woman who said that she was going to go out with her friends, who she and she was really looking forward to it, and then she saw a friend post something political that she'd completely disagreed with, and now she's not going to go out with her friends because she's going to stick to her values. And it really made me pause and think, "Wow, is this is this what we're doing as adults? Because if, as a parent, you say things like that to your child, you're you're telling them that just because you disagree with somebody on something, you now shut off a friendship that seems valuable. And my response was to that is, if you're friends with someone, surely the answer is to say, "Oh, that's interesting. I disagree with that. You know, like how did you get to that point? That's so interesting because you thought you were friends. How can you suddenly just say I'm not going to see them anymore because they politically have a different viewpoint to me? It's much more interesting and more more insightful to inquire why. And if we do that, we model that to our kids. They don't stand a chance, don't you think?

Yeah, I think so. And I think it boils down

Do we only want friends we agree with, right? Yes. What would we get from that friendship? Well, it'd be very frictionless, but it wouldn't help any of us evolve our thinking because if you just agree, there's no real conversation. So, you know, yes, it's a bit like you know when um you know Brexit happened and there was the whole you know where did people fall on that? And you know, I saw a lot of friendships lurch because people felt so strongly about it. You know, I saw friendships lurch where it suddenly turned out that you know one person was one side and everyone else was another side or whatever. But equally, do you only want friends you agree with? And actually,

given that people felt so strongly about Brexit. When I found myself in groups where someone had voted the other way, actually saying,"Okay, talk talk me through how it seemed to you, when there is disagreement, either we try and understand it or we just block it. But I would say the best route to building strong societies and you know sensible thinking is just to try and understand the other side as well as you can. Otherwise, there's a risk. You just keep thinking what you think by default, and actually, maybe that's the ideal. And it increases the understanding of nuance because when I think about the opinions that I have, I'm quite aware it's a broad church. Let's say Christianity. If you say I'm a Christian, there's a massive range of what that even means. So I think it's really important to get away from the binary saying if you're if you're a Brexiteer, then you are this, and if you're you know a Remainer, you're this. Coming back to the British example, because they're not, they're not. You know these are these are complex people who came to that position on the basis of whatever information they were getting, and it may be that right at the very last minute, they they chose one side, but they found it very very difficult. You know, and this is the nuance that we need to get back to, I think, and and demonstrate to our kids. Catherine, fantastic conversation, so wise, so much wonderful information and advice for us. Thank you so so much. I just want to remind the listeners: if you found this useful, ping it now to somebody else who might benefit from it. Email in teenagersuntangled@gmail.com. You can ask questions, you can argue, you can disagree. We're absolutely fine with that. If you think, oh, we're just sitting on our little bubble, having our own thoughts, always interested in what you have to say, and if you have suggestions for other things to talk about or other episodes, other guests, all ears. That's it for now. Thank you so much once again, Catherine. It's really, really love to see you as always, and have a great week. Bye bye. Bye.