Is it worth it? Parenting teens positively in The Wonder Room

Hello and welcome to the Wonder Room, a bonus episode where we try to take the fear out of parenting, have some fun, bring some more wonder into our lives. As in, I wonder what happened there. We talk about your messages, done things I've done, and we reflect on what the experts are telling us from a real parent perspective. Joining me as ever is the magnificent Catherine Rodice, mother of Teenage Boys author and consultant to both the UK's leading schools and us parents. Catherine, thanks so much for being here. Good morning. Good morning. There's so much I want to talk about, and I almost don't know when to start. But years ago I introduced the concept of nugget on here, a little piece of gold to share with the audience about our day, our week, our year. Do you have one?

I think I do because this week has been a little bit atypical for me in that normally I like to be busy. I'm one of those people who is a real kind of, you know, what's next? Go, go, go, go, go. And this week has been so much calmer than it normally is. You know, evening events, not there, just much, much steadier. And it's been such a useful grounding experience in reminding me that if all we have is push, then we actually miss out on all of the joy of just being. And it's so relevant to parenting, right? Because as parents and teenagers, often we've got our eye on what's coming up the track. You know, are you on track for GCSCs? Are you getting your UCAS form in? What does the future look like? Have you got work experience? And I do think sometimes as parents, we get so caught up on that push of are we getting somewhere? That we don't just pause to notice where we actually are. You know, we don't just sit and kind of meet our children as they are right now in the here and now. So my nugget is actually sometimes just slow down, like just pause and don't relentlessly push for the future.

How about you? Oh, I love that. Yeah, as Dr. Jody said, have that nap and have the fun with the kids. You know, like we don't have to constantly be optimizing. Mine's not so much a nugget of gold, it's more like a dirty Cheerio, and I'm sharing it because here I am. I spend years making this podcast, learning from the experts, and I still screw up. So listen up. I am going to make you feel better about your own parenting. This happened in the school holidays. I'd woken my daughter at about 10am, which is look, it's a nice lion, right? I then got on with my day, and I it was a busy day. And at one in the afternoon, she finally emerged, bleary-eyed, in her pajamas, after I'd spent the morning cleaning, washing clothes, doing an interview, dealing with all sorts of problems, writing, I mean you name it, right? She came into the kitchen, pulled out her cereal, then said, Hey mum, can you buy me some granola? And I paused and I said, Look, I'll buy me usually, not granola because it's full of sugar. You can make your own granola if you like. We're what Gen Z calls an ingredients household, right? We're not like we don't have a lot of snacks because I come from a background of massive eating problems. I just don't have the snacks in the house just because I will eat everything, right? Anyway, her response was, I'll buy cherrios then. And it's that was a real right. Your reaction shows it's a screw you, isn't it? It really is. She denies it, but it was. Anyway, I sighed and left the room because I thought it doesn't warrant a response, but I couldn't let it go. And I went back for an argument later, which was along the lines of attitude to work, getting things done, deliberately trying to provoke me, terrible, you know, like wearing pajamas in the middle of the day, poor decisions, right? It wasn't pretty. And I'm not sharing this because I'm proud. I'm sharing it because I want other parents to know it happens. And being good at discussing things and apologizing is important to relationships. And I also just want to take this moment to recognise that some kids like rage baiting, and she's one of them. So not all my kids are like this. And she's not a bad person. It's not that she's horrible, it's that I think it just makes her feel alive, and she likes that adrenaline rush. And I think maybe her doping, her sort of levels energy are set quite low. So it gives her a kick. And I know that about her, and yet I still sometimes fall for it. So I don't have a lesson.

It's just I think that's quite common though. I think that thing of the teenager, I don't know whether it is deliberately, intentionally riling, or just kind of in a habit where it's quite tempting to rage bait. I think that's quite common, partly because I've certainly seen it in my own family, partly because I kind of think if you're a teenager and you are carrying all sorts of mixed emotions, sometimes having a bit of a row feels like a bit of a release. A release, yes. You know, because you can have a bit of a shout with your mum, and then afterwards, particularly if you're in a quite safe dynamic of rupture and repair, you have a bit of a shout, and then the repair happens, and it can be quite cleansing. So the challenge then is right, you know, how do we deal with that dance and how do we try and make sure there is ultimately as our children grow up a different outlet for those tricky feelings. But you know, if people listening to this, you know, resonate and think that their teens are rage-baiting them as well. Like I would say you are not alone for sure.

Not alone. Right, good. Okay, we're all in this same boat. Listen to emails, actually, this came through on the text button. So you can press a button at the top of the text on the most of the apps and it will come straight through to me. This was what she said. My daughter got really angry when I took her phone off her to the point she trapped me in the bedroom and hit and kicked me. You see, we're all dealing with this stuff. I had asked her to help with a few things, like feed the dog, she didn't. I ended up feeding him because he was hungry. I asked her to put the shopping away, she didn't. I then asked her to nip upstairs to get my charger for me. Whilst I served up the dinner, after everything I asked her to do, she hadn't helped. I said, Right, we need to put your phone down because it's distracting you. She then exploded. She's 14 years old. After everything calmed down, I explained to her it's okay to get angry and frustrated, but you can't hit and kick. Now here's the other thing. Her dad used to do the same to me, and I always worried she would have this temper. It triggered a lot of memories with her dad when I saw her behave like that. It's not the first time she's done it. How do I teach her not to let her anger get to that point? What are your thoughts?

Yeah, oh, always tricky one. I mean, first of all, hats off to you, the person who wrote in, for moving into that repair stage. That after the row happened, actually stepping back, calming down and having a conversation. Because I think for teenagers, learning to deal with anger, it does take time. It's not something that gets solved overnight. It is a kind of evolution of things going wrong and having conversations and learning the dance so you can handle it better. But I think in this situation, there are two things. There is the what do you do about the anger? And then there is the what do you do about the phone. And I think with the anger, it sounds like she is already doing everything right. Pause, reflect, have a conversation, try and understand where that anger came from, and then crucially take an interest in what it looked like at an earlier stage while it was building. Because a really useful question here would be, you know, you got really, really angry with me. What did it feel like 10 minutes back? What did it feel like earlier in the sequence? Because decided to feel it in your body. Exactly. How did you feel in your body? At what point did you begin to feel irritated? You know, what was I doing? What were you doing? You know, because if if if the daughter can learn to catch those feelings, to notice those feelings before they become explosive, then she can deal with them before she flips her lid.

Don't you think the mum was in this situation too? That mum has gone through a a mounting frustration and irritation with her daughter. And we also have to see this in ourselves. We have to go, okay, this is starting to really upset and annoy me, and actually arrest that anger before it bl explodes. Like the frustration. Because we do this, we sort of think, oh, it's okay, I'm the parent here. I'm just gonna be I'm gonna be calm about this. But maybe I used to do this my with my kids when they were really little, when I'd be like, put your shoes on, put could you put your shoes on? And then I would say to them, Angry Mummy is about to come out. Could you please put your shoes on? But that warning would say to them, Oh my goodness, we don't what does angry mummy look like? Let's not do that. Okay, and I think in a way, we always we actually have to give a warning to our kids and say, you know what, I've got to the point now where I'm starting to get really frustrated with your behaviour, and maybe even using trigger words like uh Elaine Taylor Klaus mentioned in her ADHD episode, you know, like having a word like Susie had one with her son, Flint, when you're starting to get stressed and upset about something that everyone in the family knows that this is what this word means. And then you can go, okay, this is getting serious, right? So carry on, you have a second point.

Absolutely, absolutely. Uh that that sense of feeling in ourselves as parents when we are getting close to the brink, kind of feeds into the the second bit of it, which is sometimes I think when there are difficult bits of the parenting dynamic, like I'm gonna ask my child to do a chore or to help me out, and maybe they say no. And I think we often feel, oh, it's not worth the row, I'll just do it myself. And if you are in a situation where at an early stage, like that feeding of the dog, you think, oh, it's not worth the row, I'll just do it myself. Actually, at that moment, I would say, if you think a small thing isn't worth the row, what you actually do is you're sort of just letting the small things gradually build until the row is a reality because the emotions will kick in.

Yeah.

But if you can reframe it and not think, oh, it's not worth the row, but think actually this small thing is worth a conversation. So, you know, you asked to kind of help feed the dog, and the you know, your your daughter says, Oh, you know, no, or she says nothing, whatever, because she's on her phone. Like that doesn't need to be a row then, but it could be a conversation. It could be a okay, can we notice what's going on here? I'm trying to get the dinner ready, I've just come home from work, I've asked you to do something, you're saying no. Can you just talk me through why you're saying no? Because it may be actually, you know, your daughter is in the middle of a really difficult conversation, or it may be she's had a really bad day at school. So quite often teenagers, when they come home from school, they're not mega responsive because they spent all day at school having to dance to the teacher's tune, you know. So the conversation at an earlier stage can get to a point where you then think, right, we need to know what our framework is gonna be. We need to get to a point where we agree that, you know, in the half hour of the run-up to dinner, actually you are available. Or we need to get to a stage where the framework is that I recognise that in this bit of the week you just want not to be interrupted, and I'll respect that, you know, but you're not gonna get that framework unless you do have a conversation before it gets angry.

Often my daughter, I'll ask her to do things and she won't, and it's not because she doesn't want to, it's that she's distracted, it doesn't seem important to her, she forgets. You know, there are all sorts of reasons why these things don't happen. And having conversations like, why did you not do it? It's because you forgot or you weren't, you were distracted. You can then say, so what do we do to make sure that you're not distracted at times when it's really important that we work as a team? So you can both problem solve this together, side by side. But one other thing I want to mention is that, you know, of course, it triggered all this stuff about her ex-husband, which is very upsetting, and I totally get that. And I I think we live with this, the stresses of our past, and they do come out without us wanting to, wanting them to. I see this a lot with families where our child does something and there's um a genetic member of the family. It doesn't even need to be the father or someone that's closely related, it might be the the weird uncle or this, you know, the aunt that's bizarre, and you and you suddenly think, oh no, that's their that's what they do. Oh, I don't like that. Oh, I was so scared that they were gonna be like that. And we instantly label them in that way, and we have to really, really be careful about that because we know from genetics that that is definitely not a foregone conclusion. That people's genes express in different ways, and even if you've inherited a certain way of being, doesn't mean to say you're gonna be that way. There are other things that you could be. So it's really important when we don't create a self-fulfilling prophecy, isn't it?

Yeah, totally. Because if we just suddenly assume that a child is the same as someone else, then it's quite a big barrier to stop us seeing that child as they actually are. And yes, there'll be echoes and resonances of things in the past, they're bound to be, but they're still a different separate person. I think in general, anger is so difficult in the family because we are all at our angriest at home. That is quite a universal truth. We just are, you know, everyone, you know, where is it safe to let your angry It's usually at home. You know, it's why family dynamics are so difficult because anger is so often there. But it's also probably the case that a 14-year-old who has got so angry and slammed a door and you know hit and kicked, that 14-year-old probably doesn't want to be that person. Of course he doesn't. She doesn't want to be that person. Exactly. And so the other thing in the family anger is that if there has been a very difficult template of a father figure who was angry in a really problematic way, when the daughter then feels that emerging within her, that can be quite frightening for her. Yes. And therefore, talking about the anger in a, you know, what you did was difficult for these reasons. And you know, yes, you need to take responsibility, but hearing from a parent that the parent knows the teenager doesn't want to be that person who behaves that way, it's much easier for a teenager to be honest about their difficult bits if they know that the parent believes in their best self. Which is like that material from Dr. Josie about, you know, coming back to the best version of yourself as opposed to feeling that you are defined by the worst version of yourself.

Yeah. So start with, I know that that's not what you wanted to do. Yeah. Let's move on to another one because we have so much to get through. We had a conversation about how to ha talk to your teenager about their phones. And one of the responses was, what about teenagers with autism and PDA? So pathological demand avoidance, I think that represents. My daughter is reluctant to engage with most conversations. It's difficult to understand her usage, even with gentle curiosity. Do you have any thoughts on that? So we talk a lot about listening.

And I think probably for both of us, listen for longer. You know, listen until the other person feels understood, you know, is your kind of fantastic um acronym. We talk a lot about listening. And in lots of circumstances, listening implies conversation. But it's also true that different teenagers have different capacities for conversation. You know, so one of my sons, if we start having a chat, it's going to be half an hour. And my other son, if we start having a chat, it's probably five minutes, you know, because they just have very different relationships with how long they want to talk for. And where there are profiles like, you know, autism or PDA, there's also in the mix sometimes a real difficulty in verbalising or a kind of readiness to resist anything that might feel like confrontation. So I think the two messages are first of all, listening doesn't have to be verbal. Because in that listening process, there's two things. There's trying to get information and understand your child, and there's also trying to make sure that your child feels heard and seen. So listening in kind of, you know, inverted commerce doesn't have to be spoken. It can be just sitting alongside and being with, it can be observing behaviours, it can be holding a hand and taking an interest in how the body is. Is it all uptight? And for some children, that listening probably needs not to be verbal in the way that for other children it could be a conversation. And I was going to say, and the other thing is that when you're trying to help your child feel seen and understood, particularly if there's PDA, saying, you know, I'm really keen to understand this better, but what is going to help you in this conversation? Do you want to set a timer so that you know that when we hit five minutes, we're done? Because for some children, knowing the conversation's going to stop makes it a lot easier to stop. Saying, is there anything that you don't want me to do? You know, when you're telling me something, do you want me not to react on the day that you say it? So actually thinking about what parameters your child would find helpful because the things that tend to make a child pull back, whether they're PDA or not, is is this conversation going to go on and on and on and on? That's why car journeys are so good, because a car journey has an end, right? The teenager knows. Whatever their background. Exactly, exactly. So, you know, A, making sure the teenager feels they're not going to get looped into a massive conversation that goes on, and B being alert for the things that we might do in how we react that actually make the conversation too difficult.

I think when it comes to complex children, I think direct questions can feel very confrontational. So they sound like a demand or a threat to their autonomy. And also online spaces are very important to them. That's kind of where they regulate. Whatever it is they're doing, they're connecting, and it's a place where they can feel competent, where the world can feel really confrontational to them. We also get kids who really have deep focus. So when if you interrupt them when they're trying to do something, it can feel very uncomfortable. So all of that can actually play into this. So I I agree with you. I think declarative language, like I I noticed the game has a new update, you know, like what do you think of it? Side by side, as you said, you know, not in the you know, in the car or wherever, and letting them be the expert about how they're managing their life so that you are the advisor and able to say the great thing about safe people is they don't ask you to go off the game and go into private chats. And you can also just co-create agreements, ideally visual ones, and and doing it in a very like structured way, so it's only one small thing at a time. Like you said, the idea that you might get trapped in a long conversation about something that you already feel is uncomfortable is just terrible for teenagers, isn't it? They avoid it as much as they can.

Absolutely huge, definitely.

Uh I hope that helps. Let me know if there are any further questions. Let's talk about Dr. Usker Bullutt, who is the author of The Reward Trap and his points about how giving your kids rewards actually can backfire. How did you receive that episode?

It's always interesting. Every single conversation with an expert is always interesting. And there were some bits where I was absolutely nodding along. So, for example, when he said praise can be pressurizing, I was absolutely nodding along and thinking, yes, if we praise on bases that are quite brittle, you know, if we praise for an A, it's not guaranteed that a child who in year seven gets high marks is going to get equally high marks in year 11 because marks as you go through school go down, right? So if we praise for things that are very external and not an absolute given to continue, then that praise is pressurizing. But if we praise for things that are fully within a teenager's control, like their attitude, how they respond to things, then actually that praise isn't pressurising because it's based on a value system which is available. So there were some things I was nodding along with 100%. But my worry in places was that sometimes there is this thing where theory doesn't quite mesh with reality. And the theory. Yeah, so so that the theory that was very to the fore was the idea of, you know, all of the fantastic observational studies that have been done on when are children best motivated and when do they learn the most. And those studies have made it really clear that teenagers are best motivated when they themselves want to do the thing. And when that thing is the kind of optimal level of sufficiently challenging to enable growth, but not too difficult to turn them off. And also, I think it's been fairly well established that teenagers who are open in their engagement as opposed to being told by an adult, only do this thing, those open teenagers tend to learn more from a process than the ones who are just too kind of like blinkers on, just got to get the A. So that bit I all totally agreed with, because I see it day in, day out in the classroom and at home. But the bit where I thought theory and reality didn't quite align is what you then do as your strategy based on that information. Because the obvious strategy that he was advocating for is therefore, if we want our teenagers to be as motivated as possible, all the motivation needs to come from within. And all the tasks need to be the optimum level of difficult enough, but not too difficult, and we need to not fence their perspective. And yes, if we had a perfect world and we could design a learning experience that met exactly that framework, we would probably have much happier, more motivated teenagers. Yeah. The difficulty is that at home as a parent, you don't get to design the homework. So, you know, your kid is you know, you really don't. So your kid is going to come home with homework, and some of that homework they probably aren't going to want to do because they don't have internal motivation, and it's either too easy, or it's too difficult, or it's not meaningful. And as a parent, you can't really shift that because the task is as it is and it still has to be done. As a parent, you can't shift the homework, right? So, my bigger interest as a pragmatist is when your kid comes home and doesn't want to do something like their homework and it has to be done, rather than how can we turn the tap up on wanting to do it, how can we get them to do it even when they don't want to do it? That's the kind of secret, isn't it, as parenting? Like, how do you get your kid to do the stuff that they don't want to do?

I think our job is not to be. Be the police over our kids' homework. Our job is to ensure that they have optimum conditions to do that and to support the school in saying, you know, this is important and this is why it's important. Because the ultimate penalty is if they don't do their homework, there will be sanctions at school. We have to be behind it, supporting the whole school environment and saying, this is a really, really important thing. And my daughter has said as much. So my daughter, who was never that motivated by school, and that's all changed. For her, she said, you know, it's really important that I have somebody at home giving me a sense of why this is important in the future. What am I going to, how am I going to benefit from all of this? And, you know, even last night she was really struggling with motivation. And we sat down and talked about the future and spent quite a bit of time, not on the actual work that she's not doing. It's on how does this slot into who you are, the life you're trying to create for yourself, what does it say about you? And she found that so much more motivational. And in the end, she was really hyped up and happy and much more interested in doing it. So I do think, I agree with you. I think there are times life is like that. You know, we are going to have to do stuff we don't like doing. And that's part of why we give kids chores and everything. It says you just go, well, this is life. I'm sorry it can't all be fun. And that's just the deal. But actually, that bigger picture that we can see because we are the adults. My kids are in this really controlled environment. And we know what the world of work's like. We know what adults are like outside school. They don't. They've not seen that, they've not experienced it. So we can see over the hill and we can put it, put things into context and talk to them about, you know, the person that they're becoming and how this might actually fit in. It might not. I don't know. It might just be a pointless piece and pointless exercise. You just go, well, I guess the thing is that, you know, what are the what's the penalty for not doing it?

You know? Yeah.

How is that going to be?

I think I think that hits the nail on the head, right? Because where I get a little bit anti the message of we need to try and make sure everything is fun, which was kind of a bit what Dr. Balatt was suggesting, is, you know, A, life isn't like that. But B, a task doesn't need to be fun for a teenager to do it. It just needs to be worth it. And when I first started teaching, you know, in the early 2000s, making education fun was a big buzzword. Just teachers supposed to be doing, you know, enjoyable lessons with maximum engagement and gamification was coming in, and you know, it could be brilliant, you know, max the the we all love to do this level. And I realized really early on in my career that trying to make lessons fun was a hiding to nowhere. Because whatever you do, it's not necessarily going to be fun. You know, what one kid loves in gamification, another kid is like, come on, let's just get on with the actual thing we're supposed to be doing. What I realized was what makes teenagers pull into lessons is feeling like they're not a waste of their time. Yeah. And we keep coming back to this idea of the effort has to feel worth it. And if we think effort is only worth it if we enjoy it, then we slice off loads of areas of growth. So, you know, sitting down with your daughter and saying, actually, let's just track out why what you do this evening is going to be worth it, either because you don't end up with a sanction tomorrow at school, or because you can now see that what you do this evening and tomorrow actually builds the skills and endurances and rhythms that help you succeed in the adult world. If you can make that process feel worth it now, then it's easier to crack on and do it. Exactly, exactly. Meaningful and worth it. But that often requires honesty because there's loads of things that are meaningful and worth it that are not enjoyable at the point of completion.

And they just think you're missing the point. If you can't see why they think this is pointless, then they're going to think, well, what's wrong with you? Like, why can't you understand me? I did like his point about doing things together and connection. And I think there's a lot of validity to that. And for example, my fantastic trainer, Hizy, she has this wonderful family setup, which we do at home too, which is where the clearing up after the meal is part of the whole joy of being together as a family. You know, she said, we're flicking each other with tea tiles and chatting and joking and everybody's clearing up together, everybody's washing up, drying up, whatever they're doing. And it's a sense of teamwork, it's a sense of pulling together, it's a sense of connection. And it makes all of it seem like it's it's important and it's worthwhile. And I'm not saying you can do that with every chore either, because obviously you can't. But having a feeling like you matter and that what you're doing isn't seen really can help. And I also think it's really clear that body doubling with some people is very effective. And sometimes my daughter likes to sit in the kitchen with me and she did that during the holidays because she wasn't at college and she was working. She said, You know, I like being in here because I just feel like I'm connected. And and I do think that that can actually be a really powerful motivator in itself. We we forget that people do things because of people, not necessarily because it's always for the joy of learning something.

Yeah. And and in that side-by-side idea, I think the crucial bit is the being alongside, as opposed to driving the process. Because if a parent sits down with a piece of homework and says, I'm going to help you, and then tries to drive the process of how about you do this, and the answer is this. What you've got is a dynamic where the kid feels fairly inadequate because they're having their face rubbed in the fact that they can't do bits of it, and that's entirely visible to their parent. And that is why kids don't want their parents to help them with their homework. But if you spin it round and say, look, I recognise the fact that getting this art project finished or revising for this exam is something that you really don't enjoy. So how about I just sit with you just to show that I recognise you're doing this and I'm cheering you on? And when you're done, we will celebrate. And one of the um I remember one of the students I interviewed when I was working on the exam stress books, and I I asked every student I talked to what helped. And one of the things she said was that she hated revising science TCSEs. And her parents realized that science was not her thing. And so her dad, who was a plumber, said, Do you know what? I hate doing my paperwork. So how about when you're doing your science revision? I will come and do my paperwork. Facts. And we would both be doing a task that we hate. Yes. And she said, you know, they'd kind of have these moments where, you know, he'd say, How's it going for you? You know, how cross are you right now? And she'd be like, Oh, I'm hating it. And he'd be like, Oh, I'm hating it too. You know, and then you can actually create that side-by-side mutual support. So, you know, see the difficulty and be willing to shoulder it by that connection and company. Don't think your role as a parent is I've got to circumvent the difficulty by trying to show my child how to do it better. You know, sitting alongside with teenagers is so important. Five-year-olds, a bit different, but teenagers sitting alongside every time.

And I do think asking them, what are you finding hard at the moment can give them an ability to because sometimes it just all feels horrible. But if they can just say, Oh, it's this, and then you can say, What would you think might help that? You're kind of coaching them through the process of trying to break down what's going wrong and how to actually tackle it. And there was also this big specter, which was this external motivation behind Dr. Ballat's personal story, and that he'd had all of this academic success, which he thought was very, very important, and then he just felt miserable. Do you what do you because you work in Cambridge, what are your thoughts about that?

It really resonated. I I see quite a lot of what he described. You know, I I have a teaching and a pastoral role for one of the Cambridge colleges, and quite often students will come and see me on a pastoral basis because they've got to Cambridge, they've been so academically successful, they've worked so hard, and they get here, and sometimes they just feel like they're floundering or their motivation is gone. And sometimes I think what happens there is when someone has been very ambitious and they have fuelled that ambition or that hard work with a dream. The thing about the dream is that having a dream is very motivating, but dreams are often quite idealised. And therefore, I think when people are working for external reasons, I'm gonna work because when I get my A grade or when I get this offer or when I get this job, it's all going to be worth it. There is a risk that actually that dream takes on a promise that can't be cashed out, and it's a bit like you know the toddler who is so excited for Christmas and there's been so much or behave well, otherwise, you know, Santa won't come or whatever, and you know, so much effort put into Christmas Day being amazing. And then what often happens on Christmas Day is you know that small child cries because actually Christmas Day is not as amazing as they believe it to be in advance. So I think if if you know people are listening to this and they have a teenager who has a dream, a dream is great, but if they are working hard in the here and now in a way that is really costing them, if all of the payback on that effort is located in the dream, then it's quite risk. Whereas if they can feel a worth in their effort in the here and now, you know, it's worth trying even if the dream doesn't work out, then actually they're much less likely to collapse at the point where that dream materializes. Because I think achieving the dream is emotionally much more complex than we think. The bottom can fall out of things when that dream actually lands and it's not quite as dreamlike as it seems in prospect.

And our whole educational system is set up to say that if you do this, this will happen. And very often those things don't happen. I have a friend whose son started out talking about Cambridge, didn't actually get the offer, and then ended up talking about other universities, and then the Greys came through and they didn't actually live up to what he was hoping, so he's taken a year out. And I was talking to his parents, and they said that was the best thing that's ever happened. Because his year out now, he's actually growing in completely different ways, and he's looking at the world in a much more expansive way. And actually, we can't really imagine for for real what uh this is going to be in the future. We need a North Star to point towards, but we also need to remember that what's going on at the moment does actually have importance. And I'm just saying this because I want to stress that if we are focusing only on the academic work, which is what we're told to do, we're led in that direction by everything around us, and then we're forgetting the importance of their emotional life, their hobbies, the the the having fun at home, all those things, you're not really living. You're not, you know, we can't we can't funnel everything down that's simply just do this work and then it's all gonna be good. We have to be living all the way through this. We can't go through the whole of our time parenting children, going once they get to this stage, it's all gonna be great. We have to kind of find the great now. Yeah, totally.

I think sometimes as parents we do get so worried about trying to push for that future circumstance. A bit like where we were at the start of this episode, you know, with the nugget, that if all we're doing is pushing, you know, get your grades, then you'll be fine, get this music qualification, then you'll be fine, you know, have an eye on your 18-year-old self or whatever. If we just say enjoyment comes in the future, that's really, really risky. And sometimes I say to parents, whatever you do, provided your kid goes to school, turns up on time, he has the equipment they need, isn't too tired, and is respectful of the school, then the academics will happen because the academics is what the school is, you know, running. But the laughter, the fun, the feeling like it was worth getting out of bed in the morning because life is bringing some joy in the here and the now, you know, making sure that the home has some fun in it, some positivity as opposed to just, and you've got to get this done because you need it in three months' time. The fun bit is really, really important. Teenagers need that. They need to feel that there's a return on their effort and their life now, and not just think it'll all be worth it in two years' time.

Yeah. Before we came on, I was saying that, you know, when I was a teenager, I missed so much school because I just basically skyped off. My mum didn't really care that much. I wasn't happy at home, but I didn't have any friends at school and it all seemed pointless. And it was only when I started having friends that I would go, it's worth getting on the bus and going to school. And then the academic sort of started to happen. And I do think that we need to, you know, consider the thing as a whole. And I know for parents who've got kids who are going through friendship problems, that must be like, oh no, this is awful. I get it. We we all go through friendship problems. But the truth is that's what makes us get out of bed in the morning. It's being connected to other humans and feeling like what we do matters. I think I think as parents, we we can really help that connection piece.

You know, we can't guarantee that we can generate fun for our kids, but we can do two things. We can certainly value the things that they find fun, whether or not we personally find them fun ourselves. But the other thing we can do is we can build connection by showing that we do enjoy their company. So it's interesting to think as a parent, how often do we say things like, oh, I've really enjoyed that conversation?

Yeah.

Or it's really nice to sit down and have supper with you, or it's been so nice just to sit and watch this TV show together. Because if we don't verbalise that we enjoy our children's presence, then there's a risk they don't realise that we enjoy it. I agree. But also, if we are verbalising it, if school is difficult, which it always is sometimes, if friendships are bumpy, which they always are sometimes, if we are verbalising that we enjoy spending time with our children, then there is this safe bit where our child knows that they are valued and their company is enjoyable to someone.

That's quite an important bit of the nurture, I think. Yeah. A lot of teenagers won't be getting that feedback. So if it comes from us, like, that was such an interesting question. Thank you for asking that. Or it's lovely being with you. That was so much fun. Oh, it's so nice having you sitting next to me while I'm watching this. You know, any of those things can be just fill up their cup. And they may not even show you that it's landed, but it will, for sure. It will.

I remember you saying once actually that that lovely anecdote about when you came home and you realised how lovely it is that you know dogs are so pleased to see you. Yes. And then I remember you saying that actually you decide how how amazing would it be if your kids came home and you could be as pleased to see them in the same way. And it's such a boost. It's such a boost for a teenager to think this adult, this person, is pleased to see me today.

Yeah. Actually, what I should do is just to get a video of my dog and how she responds. For people who don't have dogs, and you will see the just sheer joy of this animal when she sees I've woken up, when food's coming in, any of that. No, it's like having a toddler that you don't have to panic about because they're not going to kill themselves. And they don't they don't end up with tantrums either. It's just amazing. It's like this is the best child ever. And I did, I did actually think, why did I have children when I got a dog? Wow, that would have been so much. But no, no, I don't mean that. Um so yeah, just those things can transform your relationship. So I love that you brought that up. Um, Catherine, it's been amazing. Thank you so much. So good to see you again. If you found this useful, please make sure you send it to other people. If you had anything to comment on in this, you have other questions you want to ask, you have other comments about any of the other experts I've had on, you'd like us to just talk about them, ping me now. You can either use the button on the top of the app or you can email me on teenagersuntangled at gmail.com and my website's teenagersuntangled.com. We are both on Substack. Substack's a fantastic place for you know some really good writing. Catherine writes fantastic think pieces that really get down to the nitty-gritty of the stuff we parents need to know. So follow her on Substack. Again, a warm thank you to Catherine for being here. I really appreciate it. I know it takes time out of your very busy day, but it's just a joy to, I just so love seeing you. Thank you. Thank you. Always a joy to be here. Thank you. That's it for this week. Bye bye. Bye.