A CONVERSATION WITH CHRISTINE CARTER
“KIDS THESE DAYS!” A familiar complaint – usually delivered with rolling of the eyes, a disapproving look, or a muttered criticism about modern young people not living up to expectations. But the truth is, ‘kids these days’ are struggling like never before. And if one of those kids is yours, you’ll know that the problems facing adolescents in our fast-paced world are many.
As a parent, you’ll be looking for answers – and we’ve found someone who’s got them. Dr Christine Carter’s a sociologist, author, speaker, and fellow parent who’s recently steered four teens into young adulthood. She knows what it’s like out there – for parents and for their kids – and she’s got some helpful advice, plus the science to back it all up.
GRAPEVINE: You describe your book ‘The New Adolescence’ as “a handbook for helping kids thrive in an age of accelerated change”. What are some of those changes?
DR CHRISTINE CARTER: It’s probably easier to list what hasn’t changed! It’s a whole different world to a generation ago. Technological developments have changed everything about life for our kids: how they socialise … how they spend their time … how they view their sexuality … how well they sleep … And all these things affect their overall wellbeing.
Research continues to highlight the dangers of social media – so much so that the US Surgeon General has issued an advisory about its harmful effects on youth mental health. It’s a sea change … and it continues to accelerate.
Then we’ve got geopolitical changes … wars and global conflicts … fears about climate change … And it’s all going on at once!
GRAPEVINE: Experts are ringing alarm bells about ‘an epidemic of anxiety and depression’ – which is enough to worry all of us. But you also offer HOPE …
CHRISTINE: Well, we know instinctively what creates social and emotional wellbeing – and science today confirms these truths. So, if we can clarify the reasons behind this epidemic of anxiety and depression, we should find it easier to focus on the solutions – adapting to all these changes in a way that leads to better wellbeing.
REVERSING THE TRENDS
It’s easy to see that social media, for example, can lead to greater anxiety and depression – because it’s replacing the time kids used to spend doing things that improved their wellbeing. But if we can get kids meeting up in person (instead of online) … getting a decent amount of sleep … and exercising more – we might reverse those trends.
GV: What parenting practices are the most effective in supporting adolescent wellbeing?
CHRISTINE: Adolescent problems today can feel really overwhelming for parents, so it’s important to go back to what we know are key principles. The first of these is, naturally, love and affection.
Now, if you’re reading this article – you’re good at that! You care enough to read up and act intentionally for the good of your child. This doesn’t mean that you stop worrying about your kids – obviously, it’s because you love them that you worry. But go back to what you probably did from the first time you met your children: simply, love them. That’s the easiest thing you can do – and the most effective.
The next two things are related to your own wellbeing, rather than your parenting. How well are you managing your own stress? (And your own anxiety or depression, if that’s something you need to manage?) Because your kids are watching you, and they’ll do what you DO rather than what you say.
Are you frustrated that they never put their phone down? Well, check your own habits. Are you constantly on your phone when the kids are around, or when you’re in bed? Are you interrupting your own sleep, scrolling mindlessly through Instagram? It’s important to be aware of your own self-care and mental health practices.
And the final key parenting practice has to do with relationships. The best predictor of your health and happiness is the depth and the breadth of your connections to other people. Do you have time for your friends? Do you see them in person? Do you have friends?
And how about your spouse? Are you having difficult conversations … working through things together … relaxing and enjoying time with one another? All these things are connected.
GV: Modern parenting has shifted away from more traditional goals of ‘control’ (on the part of parents) and ‘obedience’ (on the part of children). Is that an improvement on older parenting styles?
CHRISTINE: Definitely. The old-school ‘authoritarian’ control relied on force (“Do this, or else!”), and force doesn’t really work. However, letting go of control and obedience is harder than it sounds. It takes real skill to be warm and non-controlling while still maintaining boundaries. But it’s worth the effort.
The trick is to maintain that middle ground between extremes. I’m seeing more and more parents leaning more towards permissiveness. They make the mistake of trying to be ‘matey’ with their kids.
HOLD THE BOUNDARIES
It’s a modern idea to want to have warm and close relationships with our kids – and I’m all for it! But it can make us hesitant to hold the boundaries that our kids need in order to grow. When we’re worried about getting our kids mad at us or upset, it gives them unhealthy control over us – and they figure that out pretty quickly.
It’s still important that we set and maintain limits.
GV: How do you suggest parents do that?
CHRISTINE: Focus on setting limits within which your kids can still enjoy a good degree of freedom. What matters most after that is your consistency with those limits and how you enforce them. Set your boundaries – and follow through when kids overstep.
With younger adolescents, the limits have to be narrower and more defined. But that changes as they mature. It’s then helpful to get their ‘buy-in’ – so they understand why the limits are what they are.
It also helps to have limits set at the school or community level. Parenting has become so individualised that there are few ‘norms’ governing how we set limits for things – like phone and social media use. But it’s really helpful if you can have the same rules within a peer group – at the school level, or within your teen’s main social group. Try meeting with the parents of your child’s three-to-five closest friends, for example, and coming to an agreement on those things.
Teenagers really only care about what their friends are doing – so if everybody has the same limit (if that’s possible), it’s hugely effective.
GV: How can parents encourage their kids to become more self-guided as they mature?
CHRISTINE: You have to let them practise. It’s hard to be self-guided – kids want that, but they also don’t want it.
IT’S YOUR CALL
A lot of kids actually like having their parents do the decision-making for them, because then they don’t have to be accountable. Within the limits that you’ve set, you need to let them live their lives and make decisions. That doesn’t mean you’re distant – you let them know that you’re there to support them while also allowing them to experience failure.
I remember one of my kids really wanted me to sit next to him when he was doing his homework, because he struggled with staying focused otherwise. That became an enjoyable practice for us both. It was an excuse for me to do the reading that I wanted to do but never found time for. I was delighted to be asked to help in this simple way.
But imagine if I’d gone to him and said, “Even though you’re 17 years old, I’m going to sit next to you while you do your homework – because you’re just too easily distracted!”. That would’ve completely undermined him. That’s not him living his life – that’s me controlling him. He’d have rebelled against that, and it wouldn’t have accomplished what I’d have wanted, either.
As they’re developing the skill to make these decisions and come up with solutions for themselves, you can gently place the responsibility of that with them. You can ask, “So what’s your plan?” to get them to brainstorm solutions … or give them some ideas and say (with no pressure), “It’s your call.”
It’s also important to let your kids know that you have confidence in their ability to figure things out. And to remind them that you don’t expect perfection, that it’s okay for them to make mistakes: “If you fall down and need help getting up, I’ll still be around to give you support – but you’re the leader here.” It’s about offering encouragement, without rushing in to save them all the time.
GV: What are the basic needs of teens that parents should be aware of?
CHRISTINE: Their basic needs are to feel Seen, Safe, and Soothed. If any of these needs is not met, we start to see kids struggling.
Kids feel really SEEN when we’re warm, affectionate, and supportive of them. That doesn’t mean that we have to support all of their opinions or behaviours – but that we acknowledge our teens in the way they’re trying to show up. We need to see and hear what they want out of life … who they think they are … and who they want to be.
WHO AM I, REALLY?
One of the core conflicts between parents and teens happens because adolescents are trying to figure out who they are and what they want – and part of this process is trying on different identities. It can be frustrating to parents, because we have our own ideas about who our kids are and what they should want!
But we need to step back and allow them that growth and change.
Teens already know who and what their parents want them to be – but they need to discover those things and define them for themselves. They don’t feel ‘seen’ when we try to impose an identity on them – or if we’re too dogmatic about what they should want out of life. Really ‘seeing’ our kids involves bringing curiosity and acceptance to the relationship, even though we realise – in all our wisdom and experience – that they don’t yet fully know who they are.
I think that really ‘seeing’ them contributes to the second basic need of teens – feeling SAFE. Safety is a tricky thing in adolescence because of their risk-taking tendencies. But that’s where boundaries and limits play an extra role – because kids don’t feel safe when they don’t feel held by boundaries. If they feel they can manipulate us as parents – either through their anger, or if it’s too important to us to be their friends – then that leads to a lack of felt safety for them.
There’s some interesting research around risky teenage behaviour: teens who have stronger emotional connections with their parents tend to be more thoughtful about the risks they take. So emotional closeness and trust are important. That’s not the same thing as friendship, though. We don’t want our kids thinking of themselves as our peers – or like we’re relying on them in any way – because that also undermines their sense of safety.
The third basic need of teens is to feel SOOTHED. I believe that we’re seeing increasing levels of anxiety because kids aren’t necessarily learning to soothe – or calm – themselves. They feel stressed and anxious. And as parents, we can play a really big role in teaching them to deal with pressure.
We can help them identify what’s causing the anxiety – and help them figure out how to calm themselves in healthy ways. Trying to ease their anxiety by spending even more time scrolling on social media isn’t healthy. Using food, drugs, or alcohol is also not healthy.
So we need to consider how we can help them down-regulate their nervous system – and develop ‘distress tolerance’.
GV: Distress tolerance? How can parents help with that?
CHRISTINE: Well, for starters, our kids need to learn to tolerate some discomfort. Life is hard – but too many parents try to prevent their kids from experiencing any pain or suffering. And that’s natural … but not helpful! We’ve taken things a little too far: we don’t even want them to be a bit uncomfortable or experience negative emotions, disappointment, or boredom!
Distress tolerance is a basic life skill, and learning to tolerate discomfort is the key. Our kids must learn to deal with difficulty and disappointment.
SWOOP IN & FIX THINGS
They need to know how to soothe themselves … calm themselves … entertain themselves … and survive boredom! And we need to give them the opportunity to rise to a challenge. But if we never let them practise – if we swoop in and fix things for them all the time – then they’ll crumble at the smallest obstacle.
The result of our constant ‘fixing’ is kids who feel more anxious … who lack resilience … and who believe they’re weirdly entitled to a life that’s completely free of discomfort – which is impossible!
GV: When teens are struggling with poor choices or bad habits (e.g. failing to hand in homework, constant lateness, overuse of devices), what should parents do?
CHRISTINE: This is where those great prompts – “So what’s your plan?” and “It’s your call …” come into play. It’s not enough to identify the problem; the kids themselves need to feel the need for change.
They’re not seeing the downstream consequences of their lateness or getting into that habit – so once they’ve identified their problem (e.g. I need to get more sleep), you can encourage them to problem-solve around that. Let them generate some solutions. It doesn’t work for us to say, “You need to change.”
My natural tendency is to just hit them with all the reasons why they should care about it as much as I do – and warn them about all the negative outcomes – but that doesn’t work at all! Instead, if we can ‘see’ them and ask them what matters to them, we can maybe help them make the connection between the things they care about and their actions and habits.
This links in with identity – how they see themselves. If they see themselves as a rockstar, but they never practise, they’ll never get there …
GV: So how can we help our kids to find purpose and meaning in their lives?
CHRISTINE: Purpose and meaning are so much more important than a lot of the other things we try to instil in our kids. It’s vital to help them connect to what they really care about and what really matters to them. And we can do that by asking them good questions, and being really interested and curious …
When do they feel most engaged or alive? When do they feel the strongest sense of purpose? It’s really about helping them connect with something larger than themselves.
People get overwhelmed by the idea of finding purpose. Parents can feel like, “I don’t even know what MY purpose is!” – but teens are actually really good at this. They’re at a stage where they can have an almost grandiose sense of power and potential – so just ask them what they care about, and encourage their vision. Ask them what their skills are, and how they could put those skills to work to make the world a better place.
Modern life (and social media in particular) leads us to think a lot about ourselves, cultivating a shallow sense of self. But having a sense of purpose, being involved and connected with something that has some value in the world (and some meaning to you) – that gives our kids an authentic sense of their power and place.
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
Social media gives a false sense of power with its ‘likes’ and ‘views’ – and many people these days feel lonely and isolated. But actually making the world a better place, or feeling like you have an influence on something – something that makes a difference to other people – that is profoundly powerful.
GV: In this age of distraction, what are some ways we might encourage teens to focus their attention?
CHRISTINE: We can support them to develop structural solutions. Phones are incredibly distracting, so just going analog (where they can) is hugely effective. Use an old-fashioned alarm clock and banish phones from all bedrooms. Encourage reading from books – not devices – before bed. And with the phones themselves, they can turn off alerts and notifications … change the display to black-and-white during certain hours (so they’re not pulled in as readily by all the colourful images vying for their attention) … and take social media and other time-sucking apps off their homepage.
They might even try a ‘social media fast’, where they take Instagram off their phone for a month, just to break that cycle of distraction.
It’s far better to use structural solutions like this than it is to try to limit everything by willpower alone. Helping kids see that their devices are designed to distract them – that this is how corporations make money off them – is really powerful, too. Tell them the truth: “Someone’s making money off all your attention” – because most teens don’t like the idea that they’re being scammed or manipulated in any way.
GV: And how can we encourage them to rest and to embrace boredom and stillness for their own wellbeing?
CHRISTINE: The first thing is to let them rest when they’re naturally inclined to do so. Most kids don’t need encouragement to rest – they need permission, time, and space to relax. If there’s a family rule about ‘no phones in bedrooms’ then they’re going to get more rest – it’ll just happen. Creating boundaries like that creates space for rest. We also need to let our teens have unstructured time. Too many families are so busy and so focused on skill-acquisition, achievement, and ‘not getting behind’, that there’s actually no time for them to rest.
I remember coming home one day to find one of our teens lying at the top of the stairs, just doing nothing, and my first instinct was to question why she was ‘wasting time’ – like, “Don’t you have homework to do?” She replied, “I’m just staring into space!” – and I remembered that this unstructured time was actually something I wanted for her.
Sometimes we as parents have to fight those kneejerk responses and just let them be.
GV: Wow! Anything you’d like to add?
CHRISTINE: I really want to say to your mum and dad readers: You’ve got this! Modern adolescence is scary for parents, because all these new things are sucking teens in and getting them addicted to substances, devices, and so much else. But you can do this. You just need to love them … stay engaged … and try your best.
That doesn’t mean that everything will turn out perfectly. Horrible things happen – I’m not sugar-coating how badly things can go. But we don’t have perfect control over everything, and we never will.
So it’s better to just stay open and accepting and do our best. Love your kids, and take care of yourself as you do that, and everything else is gravy.
TO LEARN MORE, CHECK OUT CHRISTINE’S WEBSITE WWW.CHRISTINECARTER.COM. HER BOOK – THE NEW ADOLESCENCE –
IS AVAILABLE AT ALL GOOD BOOK RETAILERS.
