Speaker 1At Harmony Bank, we believe that better happens together. We're a locally owned bank built on relationships and personally committed to your success. Our community bankers are ready to make quick decisions. No big bank bureaucracy, just a custom approach to help you thrive. From business loans to mortgages and everyday banking needs, Harmony Bank provides a secure, modern experience with a touch of Texas hospitality. We're Harmony Bank, where better happens together. Hello and welcome to the How Not To
Speaker 2Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. This is episode 99 and today's episode, Teen Friendships, I'm talking about ways that we can support our teens with their friendships, how to spot an unhealthy friendship, and ways we can support maybe a shy or an anxious teen that's struggling to make friends. Now, whilst the focus is on the specific challenges which teens face, the advice I'll share will work just as well for younger children in many ways too, and a lot of the foundation work that we can do in terms of supporting our teens comes from some of the early work that we can do when our children are younger. So, it's helpful for all ages. So, let's start with some context. Now, what we need, what we kind of need to be, what we need to be aware of is a bit of a backdrop when it comes to helping and supporting our teens with their friendships, because this is a really crucial part in what makes sometimes the sort of challenges that they face around friendships different to the challenges that maybe our younger children face. The first backdrop thing to remember is that our teens are often transitioning from a school where they have made early friendships when they were much younger, and it was very much focused around play, to now making new friendships, when they are older and coupled with that, they may well have broken away from some friendships, the school that they've gone to, they don't necessarily have their support group from their younger primary school and younger ages. So, that's one of the backdrops. The other thing is this backdrop of teens beginning to learn and discover who they are. They're trying on aspects of their character, much in the same way as they might try on different outfits. They're learning a little bit about who are they, what are the values that they have, what makes them, them. And along with that, they are very heavily influenced by a desire to fit in, to be accepted. And this high aspect of comparison, they're very aware of how they compare to their peers, and also a belief that they're being judged in lots of ways by their peers. Now, of course, they're all going through this, but for your teen, in their head, in their world, and in their environment, and in their experience, it's very much on that insular basis. They're not necessarily able to look beyond the judgment that they're fearing, and the comparison that they're making against themselves, to necessarily be able to see that there are others that are in a similar situation. So, we need to be aware of that backdrop, and how that shifts the challenges that they face around making friendships in a different way to maybe our younger children. So, what are the really important things that we can do in terms of supporting our peers? So, let's start with how we can help them in terms of sort of that discussion around friendships. And the first thing I would say is that we want to keep those lines of communication open. And this is where, if you're listening to this and your child hasn't quite yet hit those teen years, this is where you can be doing the foundation work, is that making sure that we keep those lines of communication open. And those lines of communication aren't necessarily unravelling, unpicking friendships, but just having those lines of communication open, where we can have conversations with our children and our teens about things just generally. So, it's really being aware of just making sure that we keep those lines of communication open, so that when issues arise, we can pick up on these early. So, it's just having those conversations. And what I would say when we're talking about keeping lines of communication open, it's remembering that teens particularly, but also children, when we're having discussions with them, when we're asking them questions and we're doing it with that real concentrated eye contact, they're much less likely to open up and engage in a conversation. Children and teens particularly are much more likely to engage in a conversation when we're doing something side by side, and when that conversation happens a little bit more naturally. So, those conversations that might happen when they might be helping you prepare the vegetables for dinner, maybe when you're having a walk, maybe when you're sat next to each other watching some television, or maybe when you're having a meal, maybe when you're in the car. It's where we avoid that intense eye contact, that intensity of those questions that we ask about, how was your day? Who did you spend time with? How were your lessons? How are the other people that you're hanging around with? It's those sort of situations tend to paralyse them, and that's where we tend to get the shutters down, and the little grunts and the note, you know, that lack of conversation. So, it's making sure that when, by keeping those lines of communication, we're optimising the opportunities, where we continue to have those conversations, and we just have small talk, where we're not being intensive with the eye contact, where we're not bombarding them with multiple questions, but we're just having a conversation around what might be at hand. So, really focusing in on keeping those lines of communication open, and doing it in a way that encourages discussion, rather than firing one question after another question after another question. So, that's one thing that we can be doing. The other thing we can be doing is about having regular conversations, so these don't become lecturing sessions, but much more about, they're conversational, around the qualities of a good friendship. You know, what's important to your teen about friendship? What matters to them? Is it that they're trustworthy? Is it that they can have fun? Is it about shared experiences? Is it that they need to be a good listener? Is it that someone that makes them laugh? It's sort of, you know, just having general conversations around what matters to them around what a good friendship is. What are the qualities that matter to your child? And what are the qualities that they themselves bring to a friendship? You know, what qualities do they have that they believe makes them a good friend? And that's a really crucial one to talk about. We'll talk about ways we can support children who struggle making friendships, but being able to identify what makes you a good friend is really important in terms of raising that level of self-worth, self-value for them. So that they can understand what they bring in, but also that understanding of what they're looking for, what they're seeking, because we all seek slightly different things within friendships. One of the common generalised trends that we see is that girls and boys generally seek different things from their friendships. Boys typically seek what they want within their friendships is fun. They want to have fun with their friends. They want that. That's a really key driver in terms of their friendships. Whereas girls will be looking much more for, for intimacy. So they want to be able to share secrets. They want to be able to talk about things, have in-depth conversations. So you will find that when you're looking at the differences between how you're, how boys will seek friendships is that, you know, boys that will quite often have friends through games that they will play and their use of their devices because they're having fun together. So whilst it can be, it can seem quite frustrating to us as parents because they seem to be spending a lot of time on games consoles and then, and then talking to their friends that way and maybe not necessarily going out and meeting friends in the traditional way that we might expect that girls might necessarily do. So it's being able to recognise those differences. Of course, we want to encourage our children, whether they're, whether we've got daughters or whether we've got sons, to have friendships, not just online and to nurture and cultivate friendships out of the digital space as well. But it's, it's being able to recognise that they're going to actively seek different things and they're going to, they're going to have different qualities that they're looking for in the friendships and then it's being able to recognise those. So it's, you know, keeping those lines of communication open, talking about the qualities of a good friendship. It's also recognising that friendships change with time and that's absolutely all right. There's no issue with that. So it's helping our teens be able to recognise that the friendships that they might have had at 11 and 12, 13 may well change as they go into their 14, 15, 16. That those friendships are going to change with time and that what that might mean is that their, who they spend, who they're friends with will also change and that that's okay. And of course, they're going to grieve the loss of that particular friendship, but it's a natural transition in friendships and one that they should be welcoming rather than feeling as a reflection of something that they've done or that they're not such a good friend because of it. So it's being able to recognise that friendships can change with time and, also that each teen, each child that we have will have different numbers of friends. Some people who'll be listening to this podcast, some of you will be listening and you'll have a child who has multiple friends. They like to be friends with lots of different people and you'll have, some of you will be listening to this and you'll have children who will want one really close friend. They really value that super, super best friend that they can go and spend time with all of the time. So it's being able to recognise that that's, that's all right. That's what makes your child individual obviously we want from a being able to nurture our children and allow them to not necessarily be super reliant on one friend of course we want them to have multiple friends but you may well have a child who really just values that one friendship and so it's being able to recognize that and also being able to recognize that that's all right even though it may differ to you we can't remove you know the types of friendships that we have and how our expectations of friends then playing out and there being an element of that comparison of thinking gosh you know i'm really worried about my child they've only got one friend and what happens if that friend isn't in school and how that then impacts them where you know where we're maybe somebody who's got multiple friends so it's being able to recognize and accept our child for how they are and how what they value in friendships and the number of friendships that they have it's being able to recognize that and it's also being able to help our our teens recognize that friendships require work we have to put effort into friendships they don't just occur organically without any work we have to put some work in we have to check in on how our friends are we have to invest some time and some effort in nurturing those friendships now when we start looking at what makes an unhealthy relationship and what makes an unhealthy friendship when we're spending a disproportionate amount of time with that at the expense of all other friendships then it may not be a healthy one but it is helping our our teens recognize that for a friendship to exist a good quality friendship to exist a friendship that gives to us as much as we give back to it requires some input from us we can't just do nothing so that means checking in with our friends in holiday days it means nurturing them as an important and a key part so it's helping them recognize that it's a two-way thing and the final thing in terms of just looking at friendships generally is helping them recognize that we have different friends for different reasons and different seasons so it's helping them understand that there will be some friends that they will have maybe very specifically in certain lessons that those are friendships in those lessons but they don't necessarily transition across into holidays maybe they don't necessarily transition across into break times or maybe that those friendships that they might share struggles that they're having with those whereas they'll have other friendships that may well not be in their classes that they may well spend time with at break times or it may be that they have friendships that are outside school outside lesson times maybe in activities and interests and hobbies that they have it's helping them understand that not every single friendship has to have the same purpose and that those friendships will serve different purposes but they may also be different friendships for different periods of time that they may go through which also helps them with this understanding that friendships naturally change they naturally evolve with time and sometimes we can have a friendship that starts at that beginning of that secondary school experience and then continues right through into our adulthood but it might also not not it might be for a very specific period of time so those are kind of like the the sort of foundational aspects of friendships that we want to help our teens and our teens and our teens and our teens and our teens and our teens understand what we then really need to help them understand is so that those are some of the aspects of sort of what a healthy friendship looks like how do we know when our child might have an unhealthy friendship or maybe a toxic friendship well i think i would say that there are sort of five general characteristics of an unhealthy or a toxic friendship the first is that that friendship may well be an overly possessive and jealous with their time and effort now obviously this will for those of you who are listening and it's very specifically for teens then this the kind of the characteristics that we're looking at and not just around friendships but may well be in those early relationship of girlfriend girlfriend boyfriend boyfriend girlfriend boyfriend so we're looking at how some of these may evolve beyond just friendships but also relationships so one of the key one of those kind of sort of things to look out for is where there's an overly possessive or jealousy around protection of your teen's time so that relationship becomes unhealthy where there's an overly possessiveness other characteristics to look out for is that when we see changes in our teen's character or their habits now this can be a difficult one to spot sometimes because our teens are naturally changing their character and their habits because as i said before that they're learning to become who they are and they're learning to become who they are and they're who they are so they're trying on these different hats and these different characteristics it's where we see some very dramatic changes in their character so things that they used to really enjoy doing they no longer want to do and they're beginning to withdraw from things that would normally have been a real passion of theirs or a real interest of those so it's where we get these extreme changes these extreme shifts these extreme habit changes that we will might be a healthy relationship or they're in an unhealthy friendship this episode is
Speaker 3brought to you by txu energy for the first time ever texans have an energy plan that combines free nights all year with daytime summer savings it's called free nights and cool summer you get free nights every night all year long plus a 25 bonus toward your daytime use all summer it's a first of its kind plan created for how texans actually use energy discover how much more you could save with free nights and cool summer txu energy energy for everything visit txu.com for more information rep number one zero zero zero four
Speaker 4at humana our medicare advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet like offering more benefits than you'd get from original medicare alone and including dental vision and hearing coverage in every plan and the best part is every plan has a zero dollar or low monthly plan premium which makes it easier to save too so this medicare planning season plan well with humana learn more at get humana.com humana is a medicare advantage hmo and ppo organization with a medicare contract enrollment any humana plan depends on contract renewal what we might also
Speaker 2notice is that their aspirations change maybe we've got a child who is really musical who really enjoyed their music and who suddenly makes a sudden shift and is no longer interested at all in their musical music or maybe they're really sporty and then they suddenly have an extreme shift in that maybe they have real aspirations and they're really interested in their music and they're really interested in their music and they're really interested in their music and they're really around animals or being outside and you begin to see that so these tend to be these big shifts in their aspirations the other thing that we might also find is that the relationship or the friendship itself tends to in now becomes quite intensive we're seeing real shifts in the intensity of that at the exclusion of all others so we're beginning to see that other friendships are being dropped where they're not spending time with others or if they're in a relationship with are in a relationship that they're not spending time at all with their friends in the same way so it becomes very intensive in that relationship or that friendship with that one individual and then the other thing to look out for is this constant checking in so you're noticing that your teen is having to constantly check in with that individual often and quite often this tends to be over the telephone so then when notifications come up they need to respond very quickly and that there's this constant need to be they're being required to check in in some way so those are the sort of things that we typically tend to see in an unhealthy friendship or an unhealthy relationship so if we're spotting some of these things you might not notice all of these it may be one or two and it might start off slowly and then build up but if we're noticing those what can we do as parents and what can we do maybe if we've spotted other things that make us believe that the relationship or the friendship that our teen is in is unhealthy how do we help how can we kind of begin to support them well the first thing to do is that we should be communicating it goes back to that keeping the lines of communication but let's be interested in our teen's relationship in our teen's friendships let's ask questions so this is not about interrogating but genuinely showing interest in talk to me about this new friend that you've got talk to me about this new relationship that you've started tell me what you like about them what how do you spend your time together what interests you so really trying to actively engage in a genuine way where we are actively listening it's really crucial that we actively listen and actively listen is not about listening and then having the question the next question in our head active listening is really listening with a really good about yourself so it's that kind of really listening to understand listening to be able to to say back and repeat back not in every aspect but to be able to kind of really check in that we're understanding and that's so important because our teen wants us to be able to to understand from their perspective so when we're really communicating with them we're really communicating and being interested in their relationship we want to do it in such a way that they feel that we genuinely want to hear and that we are not passing any judgment now of course judgment may well pop into your head you may be horrified at some of the things that your teen is telling you about what they like about that about that particular relationship or that particular friendship and what it gives to them but if we want to keep those lines of communication open it's about listening to understand not listening to judge so that's a really crucial thing that we can be doing because we want to keep those lines of communication open because we want to kind of keep aware of whether that relationship is maintaining a healthy one or not so that's one thing that we really need to do the other thing that we can do is helping them set a healthy balance so when we're talking about this notion of this if an unhealthy relationship about constantly checking in let's be the bad guy here let's sort of help them set healthy boundaries around their use of tech so that they can then balance that relationship so it doesn't become all consuming so they're not constantly having to sort of check in on notifications and respond and check in because we can nip it in the bud we can stop it you know we can prevent it becoming this big issue later on and that toxicity and that unhealthy relationship really festering and then becoming well established so we can help them around those boundaries helping them use their voice helping them use their voice helping them use their voice helping them use their voice helping them create boundaries having specific periods of time where we're tech free at home where devices are put away and you know and we can be the bad guy because your team can communicate well off my parents are really strict i'm not allowed my phone between this time and this time that's fine you can be the bad guy but you're helping them establish those boundaries really early on and create that balance really early on and if you're listening to the episode and you've got younger children who've not yet got devices or they're only just getting devices that's a great way to create those boundaries early on and then the other thing is about talking often about what really constitute constitutes a healthy relationship and what does that look like it's about mutual respect it's about communication it's about trust so again we're not communicating this in a lecturing kind of way but we're talking around what are the key aspects what are the key important things that make a healthy relationship and how does that fit within the context of the relationship and the friendship that they're currently having that's why the sort of the lines of communication are so crucial if we're going to help support our teens so that again if you're listening to this pre-teens or you're listening to this with a teen and you've not got to this sort of unhealthy relationship aspect by keeping those channels of communication open without judgment without lecturing without feeling from your teen's perspective that they're being bombarded with question after question then it means that we can have those conversations and we can sort of you know sort of interject very small comments around talking around what makes a good um healthy relationship and around mutual respect so we're not necessarily saying well this doesn't sound like that's a very healthy relationship because they're not being very respectful of you and your boundaries but it's much more probing questions around well how does that make you feel when they ask you to do this is it something that you're comfortable with how do you feel that you might be able to communicate that that makes you feel uncomfortable and that you would rather that wasn't how are you finding you finding yourself able to say how you feel okay you you aren't what do you want to do how might i be able to help so that's why it's really important that we actively listen that we understand that we paraphrase back because then when we are helping and supporting them it's a much easier conversation to have because they feel that we've been listening to them so those are the things that we can do around an unhealthy relationship relationship and ways that we can support and potentially prevent them from happening in the first place what happens if we have got so this is the last part is what happens if we've got a shy teen or an anxious teen or a teen that's just generally struggling with friendships and i think i've got sort of three broad tips here the first one is i would say is that we need to accept them for who they are and not try to change their character and this can be super tricky if you are yourself super sociable because you might find this really difficult but i think the first thing that we need to do is just accept that they are who they are and they may not be the great socialite or they may be this might be a particular stage that they're going through part of their development and that they will be but we have to accept that they are who they are go back to that analogy we're providing the scaffolding of the rising build that our child has we don't get to implement that we don't get to implement that we don't get to influence what that final build is we don't get to decide what they build because we don't get to inhabit it they do so we have to accept them for who they are and accept that this is where they are right now so that's the first bit is we need to accept them for that the next thing is that most children will want to form some form of friendships our teens are no different but they will be riddled with a whole load of angst and a whole load of judgment so it's helping them begin to identify what is that critical internal back chat which is making them feel nervous making them feel shy making them feel overwhelmed and preventing them from making those kind of those first moves and it could be that you might have a teen that is so debilitated is so shy and so overwhelmed that they're spending a lot of their time looking down or maybe they're even withdrawing from all social situations and hanging out in the library and they're not reading a book with you know removing themselves from social situations and it could be that they're doing that because actually they'd much rather be reading a book but quite often and in my experience that that can be a bit of a self-protection mechanism i feel really anxious and i feel really shy i really don't know how to start this conversation and so what i'm going to do is i'm going to give myself something like a book or an activity that removes me from everyone else that i then consume myself in because then instead of saying that i'm finding this really difficult and i don't know where to start and i'm feeling awkward i can just say i'd i'd prefer to be reading a book so it's really if we're keeping those channels of communication open and we're having those conversations it's being able to over a period of time we won't necessarily be able to get it all out in one go but begin to help them identify what is that critical internal back chat that's coming up that is preventing them from making those first steps that maybe is preventing them from making those first steps that maybe is preventing them from just getting themselves out of the library and at least into a social situation or at least helping them hold their head up so that they've got an opportunity to make eye contact with their peers or maybe instigating that early conversation or sending that message to see if someone wants to spend time with more hangout it's being able to work out where is my child my team what is a reasonable thing for them to be working on goes back to that whole ladder analogy what is the top of their ladder and it will be different for different teens if you've got a teen who's literally removed themselves completely and is hiding out in tech rooms or hiding out in the library then obviously the top of their ladder is very different from someone who is already engaging in social situations is hanging out within a group but is not making that initial move to maybe try and meet up with with friends outside the school context so it's different for different children and fundamentally we are looking at helping them move out of their comfort zone and take one small step up that ladder to doing something that makes them feel uncomfortable but not so debilitatingly uncomfortable that they're paralyzed so it's really helping identify what is that critical internal back chat so that we can then start moving them forward slowly step by step and then so the third thing is about we don't want forcing something that doesn't feel comfortable to our teen yet and instead we want to focus on setting the stage we want to help them begin to problem solve with our support about things that they can begin to do to be able to help them move up that ladder so it might be about encouraging social activities around your teen's genuine interest so that they're actually surrounded and around others who share things that they're interested in so that makes it easier it might be that it might be discussing small steps that they can take to begin that sort of social engagement it right might be around sending a message to someone and helping them compile it it might be about looking up so they're not kind of constantly looking at their feet it might be about saying hello to one or two people to kind of help them overcome that fear so it's really working out what are those small steps that they can take and then it can also be around encouraging them to role play now you might be listening to this and saying really i'm going to get my my teen to role play with me well if your teen feels supremely awkward role playing that hello or that holding their head up with you then that is nothing compared to how supremely awkward they're going to be feeling in doing this in their real life social situation so it's really being able to position it in such a way that okay of course this feels awkward you're doing it with your parents but if you can do it with us that it will feel so much easier when you're trying to do it in that in that real world social situation. But of course, none of that is going to happen if we haven't laid the foundation groundwork of keeping those lines of communication open. If we're not regularly talking to our team, if we're not having those conversations, just general conversations about what's going on in their world, of course we're not going to be able to get them to role play. Of course we're not even going to be able to get them to talk to us about that internal back chat. So at the basic level, if you're listening to this and you've got a team that you are aware, you're looking on the outside, you can see that they're struggling with their relationships and their friendships, but they're communicating nothing to you at all. Then at that basic level, we want to begin to open those lines of communication. And that isn't asking them how their day is. That is about just generally being in the same space as them and talking about other things that might be sort of relevant at that moment, not doing it face to face, as in eye contact to eye contact, but side by side, beginning to get a glimpse of what does their world look like? What are they interested in? What are they looking at? What do they find interesting? Sit next to them when they're watching something that they've streamed. Ask them what they're watching. Why is it interested? Help get them to explain it to you. If you've got a child that's gaming, do the same. Enter their world. Get a bit of that experience of, you know, help me understand what it is that you enjoy and what you're listening to and what you're watching. Not because I'm going to pass judgment, because I genuinely want to try and understand what they're watching. But I'm going to understand and then begin to layer up these extra pieces so that we're then in a position where they're talking to us and we can then begin to interject some of these things. It is difficult when it comes to our teens. They're naturally going to want to break away from us. They're naturally going to be much more communicative with their peers. But if they're struggling with their friendships, we want to make sure that we're open and we're necessarily going to pass any judgment. So it's really looking at where are we at in those various different aspects of how, what level of support can we provide for our teens? Because a lot of it will depend on what's that level of communication that we've got already. And if that communication has been struggling, then that's the foundation that we want to set first. So my give this week is going to be these bullet points. It's going to be the bullet points looking specifically about what we can do to help our children with friendships. Looking at what are the characteristics of an unhealthy relationship and what can we do to help support? And then what are the things that we can do to help a shy teen with those friendships? So it's a bumper give. And as always, head over to my resource library where you can get access to that. So it's drmaryhand.com forward slash library, where all you need to do is pop in your email address and you'll have instant access to this week's resource and all the resources across all my other podcast episodes. As ever, if you have enjoyed this episode, I would so love it if you could follow and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love. So until next time.
Speaker 1No big bank bureaucracy, just a custom approach to help you thrive from business loans to mortgages and everyday banking needs. Harmony Bank provides a secure modern experience with a touch of Texas hospitality. We're Harmony Bank, where better happens together.
PodcastTranscript AI