Motivational feedback, a happiness hack, and letting your teen sleepover after a party

Hello, hello. It's Rachel Richards here and your Teenagers Untangle Community Catch Up. If you haven't listened to one of these before, well, it's a chance to gather as a community, think about what we've been doing, and maybe answer a question posed by a listener. And this week I want to talk about giving feedback in a way that really lands positively. There's also an article I read which has a fantastic hack for happiness, and there's a listener question. And this listener has a 16-year-old son who wants to sleep over after a party. As always, the devil's in the details, so keep tuned and we'll unpick her dilemma. Now, those of you who are regular listeners will know that my daughter Phoebe has just started at Oxford and the workload is brutal. My first few weeks of university involved very little work and a lot of growing my social group. That's not what's happening for her. She has Latin and Greek language work and a hefty essay that has to be submitted each week. And this involves getting through huge amounts of material. And the way her tutorial system works in her college, and this is true for all of these colleges, it means they each have to hand in the same essay. So they each answer the same question. The tutor marks each essay and puts notes on them. And then there's a tutorial which is a two-to-one. So two students to each uh tutor, and they discuss the work there. There's nowhere to hide. She told me that the feedback she gets is extensive and it can feel quite brutal at times. And she feels like she's doing well. She's somebody who's used to doing really well academically, and I think it sort of makes her feel like maybe she's doing quite badly. She's not overly upset because she realizes that she's really amongst the best of the best. But it is hard. And she's not given grades, which she likes, and it fits in really well with what many educational thinkers believe is best practice. When you give a grade, kids look at the grade. They've tested this. This is what happens. They're not really looking at the feedback. If you only give feedback, then they'll look at the feedback and they'll look at it much more carefully. So it's all good. Um, but here's the one tweak that her tutor could make and that we can all make, which will turbocharge our kids' enthusiasm. Dr. David Jaeger talked about it in his book 10 to 25, which we'll quote all the time. And here's the thing: before you give feedback, you can be explicit and say, I'm giving this extensive feedback because I can see how capable you are, and that if you know how to improve, it will help you achieve your best. When we're explicit about our belief in the person, we help them have belief in themselves. They're not left guessing about whether we think they're okay, good, bad. And it's a little tweak that can be incredibly powerful. Why don't you try it? Now, do you fancy a happiness hack that's proven to work? I read this in the Washington Post, so all credit should go to the author Darna Milbank. It revolves around results from a six-year study of Cornell, which add to some already compelling evidence that the most efficient route to happiness and flourishing is purposefulness. The Cornell psychologist Anthony Burrow found that with relatively little effort, he was able to bring about an entirely different side of Gen Z. They gave 1,200 college and high school students $400, no string contribution to use to pursue what matters most to them. Maybe something that benefits their community or their family or even themselves. Eight weeks later, those who had randomly received the contribution scored significantly higher than the non-recipients on all the measures: latent well-being, sense of purposeness, sense of belonging, feelings of being needed and useful. What's the takeaway? Invite your kids to think about a contribution they want to make and help them to make that contribution. This is thinking about other people. They'll feel agency and much more purpose. Darna goes on to point out that we already knew this stuff. Aristotle believed that a good life required living with purpose. Nietzsche wrote that he who has a why to live can bear almost any how. I think we can all learn from that. My sense of purpose is this podcast, and I can't begin to tell you how much joy it brings me. What's yours? Finally, listener question. So this is what they said. I just wanted to say how much I love your podcast. You're doing such a great job helping parents understand and support their teenagers. I've learned so much from your episodes. Why, thank you. My 16-year-old son has just started college and most of his classmates are 18 or 19. Hmm. He's been invited to a 19th birthday party in another town. I was okay with him going to the party and said, I'll pick him up at a certain time. But now he's asking if he can stay overnight. My husband and I aren't comfortable with that. But our son is arguing he's been really responsible, he did very well in his GCSEs, those are the exams you do at 16, and has been great at home. He didn't have an easy time in high school, so of course we want to encourage his new social life, but we're struggling to balance trust and safety. How should we approach this without holding him back, but also keeping appropriate boundaries for his age? Thank you again for all your great advice and support you share every week. Now this is such a great question, and it's one that troubles so many parents. He's just started college and obviously he wants to fit in, and it's great to be invited to a party. My youngest is in the same situation, having struggled with friends at school, and she finally found a great group at college. But there's still a big difference between a 16-year-old and a 19-year-old. So whilst he is obviously quite a mature boy for them to accept him, I would definitely want to put boundaries in place that protect him. I also think that this is very early in this relationship with these boys. Look, they may be the most wonderful, thoughtful, fun people he's ever known. They also may be unpredictable at a party, and allowing him to stay over would leave him vulnerable to the whims of whatever might be happening. Trust me, things can quickly go awry. They can also be amazing, I'm just saying. Now, your offer to collect him is an excellent one. It gives him the freedom to go out and enjoy himself, but also keeps a lid on the other options. It also means that it will reduce the amount he might drink or any other substances he might use because he knows he's coming home. This actually helped my daughter. The decision to allow him to go to a party or to be collected, it's not related to how well he does at school or how responsible he is at home. This is why it's really difficult when we tie these things together, you then get caught out. He clearly is a wonderful, smart young man and deserves fun and friendship. It's not about him, it's about the situation. He probably wants to stay over so he doesn't miss out, and so he doesn't seem like the young guy that he is. The key problem is that age gap. How new the relationship is, and the fact that a lot of problematic things boys do tend to happen when they've been drinking. Adolescents are driven by status and respect, so I would give him a really good excuse he can use for why he has to be collected, that doesn't make him sound like he's a little boy or like he loses his respect. So I would tell him that he should use this as a chance to find out what they're really like when they're blowing off steam, have fun, and that you can revisit the issue further down the line when you all know more about these boys. So you can give him excuses for having to leave the party, he's having to host the next day for his dad, or just something that will make him look like he has an important role at home, not that he's a little boy that has to scurry back with his parents. I hope that helps. And thank you so much for listening. Um, what problems are you facing? I'm thinking I might start offering my catch up as a live on Substack. Have you signed up there? Go to teenagersuntangled.substack.com or my website www.teenagersuntangled.com. Send me your questions at teenagersuntangled at gmail.com. It's all tingly tangly.com, isn't it? Uh that's it for this catch-up. Thank you for the brilliant reviews. We've been getting more on that next time. And remember, the fact that you're even bothering to listen to me means you are a fantastic parent and probably quite patient. Big hug. Bye-bye.