June 24, 2025
Vintage: How to talk so your teenager will listen, and teens wanting to sleep together.
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What do you think of this episode? Do you have any topics you'd like me to cover? Remember those years when your child followed you everywhere, and gazed at you with adoring eyes because you knew everything? Have they now turned into a teenager who simply grunts, or screams at you, when they occasionally emerge from their bedroom? Changes in a teenage brain help them to develop abstract thinking and self-reflection but they also make them hyper-critical and keen to develop emotional distance...
What do you think of this episode? Do you have any topics you'd like me to cover?
Remember those years when your child followed you everywhere, and gazed at you with adoring eyes because you knew everything? Have they now turned into a teenager who simply grunts, or screams at you, when they occasionally emerge from their bedroom?
Changes in a teenage brain help them to develop abstract thinking and self-reflection but they also make them hyper-critical and keen to develop emotional distance so they can practice life without you around.
What to do: Daniel Siegel says we need to teach them to have reflective conversations:
- Numerous brain studies show that when we do this (either with someone else or in our own heads) it stimulates the integration of the prefrontal cortex where planning and problem solving takes place, and allows us to tune into others ie empathy.
How to do it: JoAnn Deak - Girls will be girls.
- Don’t assume or jump in straight away.
- Don’t move straight to the fix-it mode.
- Help them to explore what they’re saying.
- Leave some grey areas.
- Discuss strategies for action. Don't overreact. Once you’re in the strategy phase that’s when your knowledge can help inform the teenager’s decisions.
- Don’t be afraid to provide your moral/philosophical bottom line. There are so many grey areas it can be a relief to know there are some black and white’s.
Techniques: Parent Gym based on how to talk so your kids will listen.
- Super silence and active listening.
When to do it?
- Try to develop regular non-crisis moments where conversations can happen. Saying goodnight, car journeys, meal-times, fixing their bike.
- Listen to the news together to start a discussion. Get them to entertain you. What’s the gossip? What are you reading? What have you been watching? What’s your favourite music at the moment? Take a genuine interest in their answers.
Books, and materials, we've referenced:
- Brainstorm by Daniel Siegel
- How to talk so your Kids will listen; How to listen so your kids will talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
- Girls will be girls: Raising Confident and Courageous Daughters by JoAnn Deak
- Parent Gym coaching materials
Tangling with your teenager
Helen wrote 'My sixteen year old is dating and says he’s in love. What do I do if he brings her home and wants her to stay the night? Do I put them in the same room, or separate them?'
ISSUES:
- Explore your own feelings about it, and why? Convey them to your child.
- Talk to the other parents to find out how they feel about it. If they aren’t happy, talk to the son about what his alternatives
Thank you so much for your support.
Please hit the follow button if you like the podcast, and share it with anyone who might benefit. You can review us on Apple podcasts by going to the show page, scrolling down to the bottom where you can click on a star then you can leave your message.
I don't have medical training so please seek the advice of a specialist if you're not coping.
My email is teenagersuntangled@gmail.com
My website has a blog, searchable episodes, and ways to contact me:
www.teenagersuntangled.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teenagersuntangled/
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/teenagersuntangled/
You can reach Susie at www.amindful-life.co.uk
WEBVTT
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Rachel, hello and welcome to teenagers.
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Untangled the audio hug for parents going through the tween and teen years. I'm Rachel Richards journalist, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters. Now it's summertime in the UK, so I'm going to take a short break from weekly recordings, spend some time with my wonderful family and read lots of books, but But I love you and I don't want to lose you. So in the meantime, I'm going to re share the episodes with the biggest downloads of all time, which means it's not just you struggling with these things. These are the topics that are bothering everyone else, too. I'm still around, so keep sending me your questions and messages, and if you like the show, here's how you can help me keep it going. And it costs you nothing. Hit the Follow button so you don't miss an episode. Give it a five star rating and pass it on to someone else who might benefit. Thank you so much. Now on with the show. Today, you're going to hear the most downloaded episode, and I'm really happy about that, because, frankly, talking with our teenagers is a vital skill, and the more we practice, the better we get.
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This chat with Suzy Astley was only the third episode, and originally recorded in January of 2022 remember those distant days when your child gazed at you with adoring eyes, chattered non stop and even listened when you talk to them, it can feel very upsetting when your teenager descends into the language of grunts and sulks and much of that from behind their bedroom door. But don't panic. According to Daniel Siegel in the book brainstorm, the excess neurons that have built up during early childhood are now being actively pruned. The good thing is that teenagers are now able to develop abstract thinking and self reflection. The bad thing about it is having to live with someone whilst all that's going on. Now, let's start with getting your child to listen.
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Susie, how do you do it? Well, in my experience, it feels very different with my kids, the boy and girl element,
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and I have had to learn and haven't been very good at not talking too much myself.
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And I find with with my boys, particularly my eldest, I will explain things ad nauseum, and, and I've lost him literally by sentence too. And he's become, they've both become very good at looking like they're listening even answering.
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This is where those skills come from. Yeah, yeah, inviting the teenagers, yeah,
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and, but actually hasn't heard any of it. So, so I've had to learn how to get to the point.
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And how do you do? What do you do? Well, um, we
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had some issues. My eldest unfortunately had lots of back issues, and there were lots of things that we had to discuss together, like doing physio, taking care of himself, like lots of boring things I had to keep bringing up. And I was losing him by sentence too. So I suddenly thought, I know what.
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I'll put a time limit on it. So I asked him, I think we were in one of those car journeys where you're talking and he's trapped and listening, or just trapped, actually. And, um, I said, How about if I put a two minute time limit on it, and when I get to the end of two minutes if, even if I'm not finished, I have to stop. Fantastic. And I literally saw his shoulders go down, and he went, ah, that would be great. And,
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and all the married couples across the country thinking, Yeah, I think I'm going to buy time,
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yeah. And it, honestly, it's really good, because A, it makes me focus, because I can go on and on and on. And B, he's sort of agreed to listening to those two minutes
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because he knows he's got to concentrate, but it's only two minutes,
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yeah. And sometimes I get to the end and I go, I've gone over, haven't I? Or and he, or he'll go, um, that's way longer than two minutes. You've got to stop now, because we have the agreement go. Okay, thanks.
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And I find that I quite enjoy putting the radio on in the morning. I put on the Today program because they are covering the news. And, you know, just the other day, my one of my children said, Sorry, what's cladding? And the story was about the Grenfell tower, as I said, it's used sometimes to talk about what goes around pipes, but it's in this context, it's used on buildings. And then I thought, How do I make this interesting? And I talked about these poor people whose lives have been upturned, and how they've bought properties and now they can't sell them on because of the cladding issue.
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And what was amazing about it was it encompassed all sorts of things, and it was a general knowledge learning experience without it feeling like that. We just chatted five minutes out.
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She gets she goes, that's
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interesting. The older they get, the more you can have these kind of conversations.
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And the book by Daniel Siegel talks about teaching your child to have reflective conversations. And when we're talking about reflective conversations, we mean those ones where we speak without filtering our feelings and our thoughts, kind of letting things out, brainstorming. And he says there have been numerous brain studies showing that when we do this particular thing, either with somebody else listening, or you can do it in your head, it stimulates. It's the integration of the prefrontal cortex where planning and problem solving takes place, and it allows us to tune into others, and it generates empathy. And as an example of the way that you might do this, he says, If you lost your temper with your teenager, go away. Think about what happened there. Why did you get to that point? What preceded it, what else was happening in your world? It sounds quite arduous to some people, but it's actually a method of thinking that's very powerful. And then go back and talk to your teenager about it, choose your moment, but give them an opportunity for you to say, I'm really sorry. This was what was going on. What you're doing is you're showing them how to go through that process and then apologize. If you need to apologize. He says, we as parents need to try and teach this to our children.
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I think that's really, really important, and it's a massive part of mindfulness as well. You know, an awareness of what's going on.
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What do we get? We all get triggered by stuff. We all react. Of course, we do human beings, especially with our kids. But to be able to then go away and go, Okay, what happened there, and then to voice it with your kid. And then we do that regularly, of course, you know, of course, we lose our temper with each other. We, you know, we're family. Actually, I had an episode the other day with with my eldest on the phone, and we were disagreeing about something. And actually, then he texted afterwards and went, Oh, I'm sorry. I felt attacked. And then I could reply and go, Oh, thanks for sharing that. Yes, I was attacking you. Sorry. And this is why, because I felt that. And then we kind of checked in with each other, okay, you good, you good, yeah, good, done,
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finished.
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Amazing. That's amazing communication, that he's able to actually say that I felt I was feeling attacked, and then you're able to say, Yeah, okay, I was doing that and and that's something we can all try and reach towards. Jo Ann Deek in girls will be girls has a fantastic explanation of how this can work. So she says we often, when we are talking with our teenagers, we can often assume or jump in so they start saying something, and you are either busy or you kind of feel like you know you've been there, so you jump in and assume that you know what they're talking about. That's very, very upsetting for somebody who thinks, Well, no, that wasn't it. But then they just think, I'm not going to tell you because you're not interested.
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And then if you have opened up, she says, Don't go straight into that fix it mode. Give them some space to explore what they're saying. So encourage them to open up a bit more about what they actually mean, because sometimes they'll have got to something, but they're not there yet, and you're trying to model that sort of research, that kind of searching around, rummaging around, that reflective thought.
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And she also says, Leave gray areas. You don't have to have an answer to everything. You don't have to tell the teenager what the answers are. Let them try and figure this stuff out, because, again, that's part of the whole job of being an adult.
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And the time when you can be very helpful is when you discuss the strategies for action. So once they've got to a stage where they figured something out and they sit and then you can say, So, what are you going to do? So let's say the child you know is failing in their exams, and you say, So, what are you going to do if they say, Well, I think I might leave school.
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Don't panic. You know, you have to keep a totally straight face, and don't catastrophize it. To use your term that you used last time. Give them a chance to stand next to you and stare over that precipice. Oh, okay, yeah, you could. You could lose school. So what will you get a job? Are you going to move out now? How is this going to work?
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And just let them talk about it?
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Yeah, I think for me, always the the point of it all is, is connection, like we're trying to connect with our kids. And sometimes that goes well and sometimes it doesn't.
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But rather than it being, you know, a teachable moment or whatever that looks like, it's a, you know, genuine, authentic connection. So when they come with something that maybe is something that feels difficult, that we are, you know, genuinely trying to unpack it with them, yeah. What do you mean by that?
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What's that about? What cos? I mean, we all hate being fixed, and I certainly do, and I hate it when someone's not really listening,
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and you could smell a teachable moment a mile off. You know, when your parents have zoned in again, oh, I know how you can fix this, and you just stop. It's a new feeling for them. So to have somebody sort of step in and say, Oh yeah, I've, you know, done all this before. It kind of just takes all the wind out of their sails or fix it because they're frightened. Yes, yes, because the parents frightened, and we very often are frightened by the things I wouldn't tell us. But one of the things that she also said in the book is that we shouldn't be afraid to give our moral or philosophical bottom line and be definite about that be black and white about certain things, because so much of life is gray that actually having a parent who says, you know, this is not acceptable, that makes them feel much more safe and comfortable. So do. Those who are listening may well be thinking, Okay, that sounds like it works, but how do I actually go about doing that? What are my tools? Wonderful thing is that parent gym, which I used to coach for, actually summarized, and there were two techniques.
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One is the super silence, and the other is the active listening. And these may not come readily to us, but actually they're quite simple and easy, so practicing them will not be that difficult. So what we'd like to do is role play, so that you can hear in action the way that sometimes preaching and judging and jumping in too quickly can shut down a conversation, which could have been a really, really useful opportunity. So Tom wouldn't meet up with me today. He never does what I say. Well, maybe you should try compromising. I don't want to compromise. I hate him.
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Don't be such a spoiled brat.
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I'm not a brat. He's a brat.
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You're being really immature.
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Oh, I'm not you don't understand. You're so old and stupid. Don't you speak to me like that. Fine. I'm going to my room. Sounds nice. All right, you know what's wrong with my child? This is an example of how you can go from the child actually coming to you and saying something that could have been a useful opportunity to discuss things and understand your child to being catastrophic. It's catastrophic, yeah. So what we're going to do is try that in a slightly different way. So the super silence is where you say nothing and you just make noises. So you'll just say, Oh, interesting. Or you just little, little responses. And then the act of listening is where you try to summarize what you've just heard, so you're sort of here. And then they'll either say, yeah, that's it all.
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They'll say, Nah, that's not really it. And they may well then work it out themselves.
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Yeah, it's very similar to mindful listening, mindful communication. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. So, so just engaging. You're listening to listen and to connect, rather than to answer and fill in the gaps
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and give your opinion. Yeah? So Tom wouldn't meet up with me today. Never does what I say. Yeah, he said, I always try to boss him around, so I just hung out on my own.
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What was that
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like? Oh, that was rubbish. Interesting.
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Yeah, he's my best mate. If we don't hang out, I'll be on my own.
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What would that be like? Rubbish.
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Maybe I should let him decide what we do sometimes, yeah, maybe so there is an active role, but it feels passive to the person who's talking the teenager. They feel like they're just able to have space. Sometimes, my daughter says, Mommy, don't, don't say anything. Just let me think this through. Yeah,
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and they can unfold it themselves, and sort of hear, hear what they're thinking themselves.
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And don't be afraid of that silence, those moments where you think is no one saying anything. And the next question is, when, when do we do this? So all of these things I've put in the BuzzFeed, write up of this, if you want to have prompts and things. But in terms of when we do this, when do you find the most useful period, Suzy, for if
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it's something specific I want to discuss with them, or if they come to me with something, yeah, I guess they come whenever they're ready. But if I want to discuss something, then cars, car journeys are the best.
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Thank God for girls.
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Okay, brilliant, because there's this safe moving presence. Yeah, yeah.
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There's a safe space where there's no eye contact, and it's a finite amount of time they know it's going to end at some point where they can jump out. I think they're brilliant.
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My eldest, often late at night, is he suddenly wakes up and wants to fry up.
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Mine want me to sit on the bed and say goodnight and chat, yeah? And
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you have to pick these moments, because they might not come for another few days. So, and
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I think you have to fight for those moments in your week. I'm not saying day, because sometimes we can't see each other regularly, but meal times, I had one parent on my course who said he likes fixing bikes with his son, and he said, we talk about everything. So actually doing something where you're working together, these are really special moments when you can have those conversations.
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Dog walks, walking to the station. I walked. So I walked to the station. Well, part of the way to the station with two of my kids in the morning, it's well, one of them, the other one's usually late.
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Running behind one of them was
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one of my favorite things to ask them is, what's the gossip? I love asking them what's going on at school.
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They know that I'm not going to tell anybody else, but it's really this salacious chit chat that's been going on. And also, what music are you listening to?
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You know, they're walking around with some ear pods in or their headphones on, and often they say to me, oh no, you won't like it. It's boring. And I say, No, no, no, no, just let me listen.
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And I think if we take seriously this, the minutiae of their life, they're. And when something is important, then they're much more likely to to connect.
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We had that in the summer, where we had a really old, broken car with only radio, and then we had a new car, which you had Bluetooth, and we drove all the way to the Lake District, and I was like, right guys, put your music on. Let's have a listen. And it was amazing. It was so much fun.
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Yeah, my boys like grime, but it was lovely to hear and then to share and talk about what kind of things they like. It was really nice.
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How amazing my friend's son. He lives in London, and he's fully grown, North Face ear pods, sucking his teeth, listening to grime and Shabbos and and then she turned to him and said, Oh, you like poetry. Brilliant,
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brilliant. Yeah, I got told off for trying to sing along because I'm obviously not very cool.
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Yeah, there's a limit. So we'd love to hear your thoughts on this segment. Do you struggle to communicate with your teenager? Do you find yourself grinding your teeth with frustration at times, or are there any particular techniques or times that you find are really helpful. I've learned that with my kids that I should always start with allowing them to express their feelings or pain and simply acknowledging it, just saying that sounds really hard, and not jumping in to fix it, is often enough for them to feel seen and give their thinking brain space to start working. Professor Steven Peters, who wrote the Chimp Paradox, calls it exercising the chimp sex. Now I've got your attention, and Helen had ours when she sent us this question. My 16 year old is dating, and he says he's in love. What do we do if he brings her home and wants her to stay the night? Do I put them in the same room or separate them? I'm just not ready for this.
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Well, I have had this experience, and I have permission to talk about it. He said he didn't really
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care. This is why sad is so valuable on this program.
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Well, my now 16.
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He's 16, and he Yeah, he was 16 when he asked as well, and so was she, importantly, and he has a girlfriend who lives quite a long way away. So travel is difficult for them. They're very happy to do it, but it takes a while. So traveling late at night was particularly challenging for her, because it's dark, etc, going on trains, so earlier than they otherwise would have done they wanted to.
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She wanted to spend the night.
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He sleeps in our old garage.
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It's been converted so we communicate often via Alexa, which is super wind further work. He thinks it's brilliant.
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So he 10 o'clock at night, he he dropped into me in the kitchen saying, oh, can can my girlfriend stay over on Saturday? And a, I was sort of ready for bed and thinking, Whoa, I don't really want to have this conversation right now. And, and V I said, I'm certainly not having this conversation over Alexa, so let's talk about it tomorrow.
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Let's and I didn't react at all.
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I just said, Oh, okay, well, let's have a think, and we'll talk about it tomorrow. And I could then go, oh, that's there.
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Wasn't expecting that. And could actually think about what how I wanted to answer it. And my philosophy is, and always has been about that would be, I want them to feel safe. I want them to feel comfortable. Eldest is pretty headstrong, so whatever he's going to do, he's going to do so I can make it safe and nice and nurturing for them, or I can not, and they're going to do it anyway. And it might be dangerous, it might be uncomfortable, it might be not a very pleasant experience. So I said I thought that would probably not be what I had chosen. It's probably earlier than I would have chosen. But my caveat was, I need to speak to the girl's mother. We hadn't met, cos they live a little while away. So
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hello, my name's Susie Asli. We haven't met, but could my son?
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Yeah, pretty much.
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That was how it went. And interestingly, my son was like, really, really, do you have to?
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And I was like, Yeah, that's a non negotiable. If you want this to happen, I need to have that conversation. So if I don't, then it's not so by the end of that day, I had the number, and I did it was literally like that. I rang her up, lovely, lady, and we had a very fun, nice conversation. It was, it was fine. And she had then a chat daughter, and we worked it out. It was very much a joint decision. And I also thought, you know, if you do the separate rooms, which is also absolutely, and I'm not, absolutely, not judging anyone who does this differently at all, this was just what worked for us. They're gonna sneak around, and I was not willing or thinking it was appropriate to be policing anything like that, you know, cos they'll do what they're gonna do. So it's worked, and it wasn't weird, and it's, it's, and they've been together for a year now. So,
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and I love what you said about checking in with the other parent. And this is something that is, in my opinion, as well, critical major decisions into teenagers lives, and I think it's it's disrespectful to allow anything to happen in your house without checking in with the parent first.
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We also had an awkward conversation. While I don't I didn't think it was awkward, but my son would almost certainly say it was, you know, about contraception, about what you know. How are we going to manage this? Yes, and we had that conversation, and that was
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short, I think that's perfect, because I mentioned it to my daughter, and she said, Mommy, what would you do? And I said, Look, I think if you're old enough to have a girlfriend go to parties or have someone staying over, you're old enough to have adult conversations about sex, and that covers things like a sexual health check. Now these are young children, hopefully both virgins, but it's actually still worth bringing up the question of sexual health, and that if you were going to zip a new partnership, you really should both get checked to make sure one of them doesn't happen venereal disease. I've got a friend many years ago who her first sexual relationship. He gave her a venereal disease that she can she's had for the rest of her life. So, you know, this is one of those things where it's worth flagging up, because otherwise, if you never mention it and something happens, then you'll look back and think, oh, maybe I should have said something. I think it's worth remembering that, you know the contraception when you're talking about it. To me, I would want to actually, so it's a boy in this example, I would say, so what would happen if she said she's using contraception, and then she forgets and then now she's pregnant? How would you feel about that? How would you deal with having to go to an abortion clinic with her if that's what she chooses? How would you feel about her deciding that she's going to keep it and you're now a 16 year old boy who has a baby in the world to your name or 17. You'll be 17 by that. But you know, how would that work for you? So rather than saying, Oh, are you going to use contraception? Is actually saying, so this, this is the result of not using contraception. So just think about that. And and then I'm leaving. I'm not going to pry.
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I'm just going to say, Here are the options, and we're going to make sure that you're safe. You need to make sure you're checking in with her and that talking about making the girl feel happy, and saying, you know, every stage where you were going a little bit further, you say you okay with you're right, because she's gonna love you for it. So this is the thing that guys don't know, is that actually, if you're responsible and responsive, you probably get further.
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Yeah, we get it. We had a chat as well, and we talked about about what sex is, you know, it's in it's between people who love each other, and they've been, they've been to each other for a while, but it's a really beautiful connection.
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It's not just, you know, sex and, yeah, no, that was really important. I felt that was really important that he understood that. I mean, how much he did, I'm not sure, but we had the conversation, and, you know, he did, it did resonate.
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Another interesting side of this is, what does your partner feel?
00:22:30.618 --> 00:22:39.138
Because, of course, you're parenting on your own, so you were left to have to deal with this all on your by yourself.
00:22:35.838 --> 00:23:05.519
Yeah. And so, you know, there's the other parent, set of parents who need to be considered and included in this decision making. There's your own feelings about, you know, morals, religion, anything you know that has to be taken into account. If you're unhappy about anything happening in your house, you need to explain to your child why just, just give them a real sense of why this matters to you. Because there's nothing wrong with having that conversation, but just remember, they may well go and do it somewhere else, as you said,
00:23:06.058 --> 00:23:14.219
but they probably also respect our opinions. I mean, I have absolutely no judgment for anyone however they dealt with any of that, because we have very different morals.
00:23:14.219 --> 00:23:29.959
We have very different ideas as to what's right, what's wrong, what's okay. But as you say, it's communicating that, and first of all, tuning in, what do I think, what is okay, rather than a knee jerk reaction to any of it, what are my values, and then communicating them.
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And I think it's worth doing that before you get confronted with this, because this poor lady has obviously, she started to see the Juggernaut coming towards her. What's amazing is that he's talking to her. Wow, well done.
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Great parenting, because you've got a son who's even expressing these feelings, so don't panic.
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You're doing so well. There's an open communication there. He's not gone or sneaked off and done something or dropped in on Alexa. Alexa, Can't hear you right now. Alexa, oh, it's stopped working. It was interesting because I mentioned it to my husband, thinking we very, very similar in the way that we see things. And he said, I wouldn't be comfortable. And I said, Oh, interesting. Why? And he said, because I don't want to accelerate something beyond where it should be. So I wouldn't want to put them in that situation where maybe they're saying, Oh yes, we want it, and then suddenly they think, actually, maybe this isn't what we wanted. What we wanted. Or would there something rather fun about
00:24:24.920 --> 00:24:26.720
sneaking around?
00:24:24.920 --> 00:24:26.720
Yeah, interesting point, though.
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I mean, we like to think that they'd be sort of mature enough to just, you know, do whatever they feel to be, right?
00:24:32.058 --> 00:24:40.598
But I think he had those years when he was a teenager having to sneak around in his parents house, and that was rather exciting. And so maybe he's like, Well, you know?
00:24:41.979 --> 00:25:17.878
And one last point about this that really made me stop and think was when I was talking to another mother whose son is in this age range. She said, You do realize, don't you, that when they turn 16, you have no access to their GP records, so you have no control they can go. To their GP and ask for any kind of help they can. Ask for the morning after pill they can, you will not have access. So it's very well worth having these conversations before and realizing that if you come down hard on a teenager who's moving in that direction, you may find that they shut you out.
00:25:17.940 --> 00:25:46.299
Yeah, and I want, and I've said to my my son and to her as well, she's really lovely. You know, if there's any, I want them to feel that, if there is an issue, if there's a problem, whatever, however big, however small, that, you know, my door is open, they can, they can discuss it and and, you know, they think it's a little bit awkward, maybe, but I really hope, and I think they would, you know, if something happened, they would be a feel they could have that conversation, because it's been an open, it's been a, hopefully a nurturing space,
00:25:47.558 --> 00:26:11.398
and that's the main message of the entire podcast. Build an open, supportive relationship, where your kids genuinely feel heard and not that you're trying to fix them or stop the discomfort that comes with difficult topics. Over the years, I've realized we set the tone in our homes, so if we feel uncomfortable about discussing something, then they're likely to get the message that we think there's something wrong with them or that we don't like them.
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One of my favorite quotes is correction without connection feels like rejection. That's it.
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Have a great week. Big hug from me. You.
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