Speaker 1This episode is brought to you by Biogland Smart Minds. It's that long stretch to Christmas. Short days, tired children, and for the older ones, mocks on the horizon. Some need help winding down, some need help focusing, some just need their mood lifted on a grey afternoon. I've leaned on a little support myself as a mum. Biogland Smart Minds are sugar-free gummies designed to support growing minds, balance mood and restful sleep. Find them online and in store at Holland and Barrett. If you have got a teenager who seems a bit flat right now, maybe a bit withdrawn, coming home and disappearing to their room, saying they're fine when you ask and you know they're not, this episode is for you. Now before we get into it, if you are new to how not to screw up your kids, hit follow. It means the next episode finds you automatically and I promise you will not regret it. Right, let's talk about teenage loneliness. Because it's November, the days are short and dark, school has been back for weeks and the novelty has long worn off. And this is the time of year when a lot of teenagers feel it. Not dramatically, not in a way which makes it obvious something is wrong, just quietly, quietly, persistently, a bit more alone than they should be. Now what is actually going on? Now this is what I hear from parents and from young people themselves. Loneliness in teenagers does not always look the way we expect. Yeah, it's not necessarily sitting in a bedroom crying. It can look like a full phone, constant scrolling, a group chat, which never goes quiet, and still feeling like no one's there. It's not necessarily a group chat, which never goes quiet, and still nobody really knows them. It can look like being surrounded by people at school and feeling utterly invisible. It can look like having friends, technically, but no one that they would call at 10 o'clock at night or at any other time at the weekend if something bad happened. Now that gap between connection and the performance of connection, that is what teenagers are navigating right now. Genuinely harder. The pandemic changed how they formed friendships. Many are still rebuilding them. Social media gives them a window into everyone else's social life, a highlight reel which makes their own often feel supremely inadequate. And the depth of friendships which teenagers really need to be truly and utterly known and seen by someone their own age requires vulnerability. And vulnerability feels terrifying at 15, where they're so sort of preoccupied with this notion of just blending in and being accepted and not standing out. Now when we think of the fine lens, you know, what does it look like close up? Well, maybe you notice your teenager is spending more time alone. You know, they're on their phone constantly, but it doesn't seem to be making them happy. They come home from school, go straight to their room, and they're just sitting in a room. And when you ask how their day was, you get one word. They might say everyone is fine. They might even believe it. But there is a flatness there, a withdrawing. You do not know how to reach them, maybe without making it worse. What we do with the wide lens, and we think about what we're actually building, is we zoom out. And what we're actually building or working towards when we help our teenager navigate loneliness is really much more about helping them build something that's an adult relationship. A relationship where they can build genuine friendships and maintain them when they get complicated. You know, adults that can tolerate being alone without it tipping into something darker. Building, you know, an individual who knows how to reach out when they need connection, even if and when it feels awkward. Now that is a skill. That's the skill that we're really focusing in and developing. And it starts now in the sort of messy middle of adolescence. The underdeveloped piece is usually this. Genuine connection requires vulnerability, being seen, being known and tolerating the risk that you might reach out and it might not go well. And a lot of teenagers have learned to perform connection. Yeah, they're fun, they're liked, they have a group without ever practicing the really deep stuff. And when November comes and energy is low and it's dark outside and the performance gets harder, that's when the loneliness really breaks through. And what I want you to remember in this episode is your job is not to fix it. Your job is to help them build the skill. So how do we do this? I'm going to tell you how to fix it. Witness it. So when your teenager tells you, or maybe they don't tell you because that's quite frankly, teenagers often don't, we notice it. You know, we notice that they are lonely. Our instinct, of course, is to fix it. Yep. To solve, you know, and we sort of do the whole, have you called Sophie? What about that girl from football? Why don't you invite someone over? And every single one of those suggestions, however well-intentioned, closes the conversation. Because what they need first before any of that is to feel that the loneliness is allowed, that it does not need to be fixed immediately. Because in lots of ways that suggests that there's something wrong with them. What we really want to do is sit with them while they're in it. So things like, that sounds really hard, or I've noticed that you're, seems to be going through a particularly tricky time. That is more powerful, than any suggestion we can give. So try that first and then wait. Number two, create low pressure togetherness. Now here is the thing about teenagers, and they don't even need to have a teenage age. You know, this could be an 11 or a 12 year old, but fundamentally when they reach a particular age and stage with their development, they often can't do direct conversation. Eye contact, face to face, tell me how you're feeling, is often far too much pressure for most of them to deal with. But side by side, it's a completely different ballgame. So let's sort of create low pressure togetherness opportunities by doing something together, which doesn't require them to perform, or doesn't require that face to face, eye to eye. So maybe watching something together, being in the kitchen, maybe while you cook or prep something together, driving them somewhere, they're in the back seat or even in the front seat. That's generally where teenagers are more likely to open up. So it's not about creating a conversation, it's about being available and then seeing what happens. So we're managing our expectations when we create these opportunities too. It's not like, okay, we're going to cook together and now tell me what's going on in your life. But if we can create side by side and togetherness opportunities, that are low pressure, and we listen, if they do say something, then we're much more likely to be able to delve in and get to the meat and the crux of any of that loneliness, and then help work through it together. Number three, help them identify one real connection in the midst of all the connections that they may already have. So this is not a whole squad, not a social life, just one person. Who at school do they meet? Who do they feel most comfortable with? Who do they laugh with, even a bit? Who do they not feel that they have to perform for? What we're not trying to do is engineer a best friend. We're just helping them see what already exists, which they might be overlooking, because it doesn't look like the friendships on their feed. And one real connection is genuinely enough. They don't need more than that. Research on teenage loneliness is consistently being done. And research on teenage loneliness is consistently being done. And it's consistent on this. It is not the number of connections they have. It is the depth of the connections that they have and people that they feel that they can be vulnerable with, that they feel seen, and that they can be themselves. Number four is look outside school, because this is an important one. School is not the only social arena. And actually, for some teenagers and young people, it's actively hostile. Most unseen, most misread, and most likely, they feel like they just don't fit. So whether this could be a club, it could be a sport, it could be a volunteering role, it could be an online community around something they love, youth theatre, a Saturday job, the next door neighbour, whatever that might be, the friendships teenagers form outside school often go deeper precisely because they are chosen. based on interest, not just geography and timetable. So if school is where they're struggling, don't keep sending them back in and expecting something to change. Help them build elsewhere. Number five, as you might expect if you've been listening for a while, is watch your own reaction. This is for you as much as it is for them. When your teenager is lonely, it is painful to watch and that pain can leak into anxious questions, into hovering, into that look on your face when they come home, which says, please tell me something today was better. And they can feel it. Your anxiety about their loneliness only amplifies theirs. So your job is stay regulated, to believe genuinely that this is a phase and a stage which will pass, which you can help them navigate to be the calm presence that they can borrow. Now that is not easy, I know that, but the most helpful thing you can do for a lonely teenager is to be a parent who is not panicking about it. Now on Thursday, I am going to be talking about screen time, not the how much is too much debate, something more useful than that. I'm going to walk you through the five signs which tell you it has actually become a problem and then exactly what to do. Whether things have already gone further than you would like, whether you can still wade in or whether you have not handed over a device yet and want to get this right from the start. That one lands on Thursday, so don't miss it. Now that's it for today. If any of what I've talked about has landed, if you found yourself nodding or recognising something in your child, share it with one other parent. That's the best thing you can do for this show and honestly for them too. Everything I mentioned is in the show, if you have two minutes to leave a review, I'd genuinely be grateful. It helps more parents find the show when they need it most. And if you haven't already hit follow, please do. The next episode lands Thursday and it's not one to miss. Until then, you're doing better than you think. Subtitles by the Amara.org community
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