Eps 523: Exploring the layers of our teens experience and inviting them into their higher selves

Joyful courage is a willingness to explore the unknown.

Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 00:04
Hello, welcome back. Welcome to the joyful courage podcast, a place for inspiration and transformation as we work to keep it together while parenting our tweens and teens, this is real work, people, and when we can focus on our own growth and nurturing the connection with our kids, we can move through the turbulence in a way that allows for relationships to remain intact. My name is Casey O'Roarty. I am your fearless host. I'm a positive discipline trainer, space holder coach and the adolescent lead at sproutable. Also mama to a 20 year old daughter and a 17 year old son. I am walking right beside you on the path of raising our kids with positive discipline and conscious parenting. This show is meant to be a resource to you, and I work really hard to keep it really real, transparent and authentic, so that you feel seen and supported. Today is a solo show, and I'm confident that what I share will be useful to you. Please don't forget sharing truly is caring if you love today's show, please, please pass the link around, snap a screenshot, post it on your socials, or text it to your friends. Together, we can make an even bigger impact on families around the globe. If you're feeling extra special, you can rate and review us over in Apple podcasts. I'm so glad that you're here. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Enjoy the show.

Casey O'Roarty 01:33
Hey everybody, Hi. Welcome back to the podcast. How's it going out there? How's it going out there? In parenting land. It is Halloween. The show is coming out on Halloween. It's weird. Halloween is funny. When you don't have little kids, I'm noticing I am fresh off of Parents Weekend at the University of Arizona, and it was everything you would expect it to be. We did lots of shopping and resupplying of dorm snacks, eating meals, meeting friends and just being with my boy in this really special environment that he now calls home that's become his normal. Such a wild time for parenting. For sure, I was noticing that it was much harder to say goodbye on Sunday than it had been when I left him initially in August. I don't know why, but it did. It felt harder even as he's gonna be home for Thanksgiving and then again for the holidays, it was hard to say goodbye. I'm so proud of him, and I'm so grateful that I get to be his mom and witness his journey. And yeah, now I am coming to you from Southern California, where I'm spending a few days with my mom and family. Down here, I went on a long walk this morning, and I re listened to this week's interview show with Annie Donaldson.

Casey O'Roarty 03:03
Did you listen to that yet? Did you check it out? We talk about spirituality and bringing spirituality into our parenting and having conversations with our kids about spirituality. This is really great conversation. I talk about my own kind of hodgepodge of beliefs over the course of the interview. And I realize, while talking to Annie, I realize that I am actually inviting you all into having a spiritual practice and to having faith in something bigger and trusting the unknown all the time. I tell you to trust the process. That's a spiritual act. We don't know how things are gonna turn out right, and we get to believe that everything's gonna be okay. We get to lean into our higher selves, our wiser selves, our outside observers. This interview really helped me to see in a new way that this work is really spiritual work. It's so much bigger than a formula or a strategy for parenting, it is truly finding ourselves and our purpose inside of the challenges and the unfolding of life. It's big. And, you know, as we parent, as we raise our kids, we're also just going through the things, right? We're going through our, you know, family of origin, health and well being. We're navigating maybe some illnesses in our families, our intimate relationships, some of you have moved through divorce, job loss. There's so many things that are a part of life that intersect with the fact that we are also parenting and. You know, what is the mindset that we can hold that helps us really believe that everything's happening for us and that there's a bigger purpose that, to me, is that spiritual conversation, and I love it. I loved the interview, and I would encourage you to check it out if you haven't already, one of the many things that comes up during the interview that I want to explore more here is that the idea that we can support our kids in their understanding of their higher self and how to consider the situations and challenges they may be moving through from that place more often I really wanted to kind of focus in on that, and as I prepped and kind of wrote out where I wanted to go for this show, I kind of went off in some different directions. So I hope that as you listen, you hear some things that are really useful to you in holding your kiddos as spiritual beings, as you know, humans that are meeting life as it unfolds, making sense of it, making meaning, and doing the best they can with the tools that they have in the moment. I think that teenagers are often held as just living at surface level, that they don't have depth, that they are easily influenced and have limited perspective. They get dismissed by adults as being irrational and impulsive and short sighted. And it made me think about the essence of adolescence, that acronym that Dan Siegel talks about the essence of adolescence. Essence stands for emotional spark, social engagement, novelty seeking and creative exploration. And when we remember the essence of adolescence, you know, keeping in mind, and something that Annie talks about is adolescence is very existential, like creative exploration, is our kids pushing against status quo and asking big questions, and kind of, you know, being in their own disillusionment of perhaps some beliefs or values or things that maybe we have been sharing with them over time that now they're in the question of, and I just think that adolescents, It is such a special time, and there's so much happening for our teens. There's so much happening for our teens. So I want to talk about some of this, specifically through the lens of some of the teachings of positive discipline and Adlerian theory, the first being that we all every human, exists with their own private logic, right? And our private logic is kind of our own inner GPS that we use that supports us in our decision making, in our way of being in the world. And when we teach about private logic in positive discipline classes, you know, we talk about this cycle of, you know, of experience, right? And initially, we are perceiving what's happening, right? We perceive the events and experiences of our life. We interpret or make meaning around those events and experiences. I am, the world is people are. And then we start to form beliefs, do I belong? Do I not belong? Am I safe? Am I not safe? Right? Does this matter to me? Does this not matter to me? And from that place, from those beliefs, we make those split second decisions, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes, you know, in the moment, right? So private logic happens over time. We develop it again and again and again as ever, more events and experiences show up in our life, right? And there's a reason that wisdom comes with age, because as a 51 year old, I've had a lot more events and experiences to make sense of than my 21 year old and my 18 year old or your 12 year old or your eight year old, right? So, yes, wisdom comes through experiences. And with the meaning making and the belief forming that happen every time we move through something, we also, I think private logic also is influenced by the messages that we have received over time through our life, right? From our family of origin, from our friends, from our coworkers, from the larger culture, right? All of that plays into our private logic and our decision making. There's a reason. And for any of you that have taken a positive discipline class with me or with someone else, there's a reason why every activity we do at the end of the activity, after we've kind of moved through a role play, the facilitator will ask so as the teen or as the parent in that role play, what were you thinking? What were you feeling, and what were you deciding, deciding about others, deciding about yourself or deciding to do but. It's really to tap into what is the private logic that is at work here, and where can we interrupt when the private logic is limiting us, right? When the private logic is keeping us? You know, narrow minded or short sighted, private logic also has a lot to do with belonging and significance. And you've heard me talk a lot about belonging and significance here on the podcast, positive discipline is all about do we belong, those questions of, Do I belong? Do I matter? Right? Belonging being that connection and love, significance, being personal responsibility and mattering right? And we're always moving this again, comes from Adlerian theory. We're always moving through the world being influenced by our sense of belonging and significance. We are wired. We are wired to feel connection right, and when we don't right, when we feel disconnection, when we feel left out, when we feel like we don't fit. Now that's when a lot of mischief making happens. That's when a lot of self doubt or inner dialog can show up. That isn't actually useful in moving us forward, right? And there's skill here too. I recently was at a festival in Colorado last month with my sister and her two young kids and her daughter. My niece is seven, and she is super extroverted, like me, and she really just wants to be friends with everyone. She wants to play with everyone, and she has limited skills, because she's seven around how to join in. And I was watching her at this festival. I was watching her watch these three little girls who were playing with a hula hoop. And, you know, I could see that my niece was kind of, you know, really wanting to be a part of what they were doing. And she decided that the way to do it was just to literally jump in the middle of them and just kind of growl, like I watched her do it. She jumped in the middle and she just kind of growled. And all these little girls, the look on their face was like, oh my god, we gotta get away from this girl, right? And all she wanted, all my niece wanted was to play and to belong and to fit in with them and be a part of their group, but she didn't have the skills to step in in a way that allowed the other kids to say, yeah, come in and join us.

Casey O'Roarty 12:39
And it was just so fascinating to watch. And I did have a little side conversation with her afterwards, like, hey, another way to do that could sound like this, and we practice some other language. And, you know, but there's this idea that our kids should know how the best ways of connecting and mattering, what it should look like, and they don't. They're learning. They're learning. And behavior is purposeful, like Ayla wasn't looking to disrupt. Ayla was looking to connect. Ayla as my niece. She was looking to be a part of, right? She was looking to be a part of I also think it's really interesting, too. I've had a couple of recent explore calls and client calls with people who have, you know, multiple kids, and one of their kids is really struggling and having a hard time, and it's hard to connect with. And when I talk to the parents, and we start talking about the sibling dynamics, I'm not surprised to hear not only is this one particular child hard for the parent to connect with, they also are, you know, not so kind to their siblings, and behavior being purposeful. It's never surprising to me to hear that, because if I am the sibling who recognizes like, I'm the hard one to get along with, I'm the one that mom and dad, or mom and mom, or mom or dad, whatever the parent situation is, if I'm the one that everybody's working hard to deal with. I don't fit, I don't connect, and I'm looking around at these other kids who seemingly are having an easier go of it and are more accepted by the parents. I'm gonna push some of this angst and some of this anger and some of this hurt onto them. Right behavior is purposeful. Our kids aren't just behaving in you know how they're behaving because they're trying to be defiant or obstinate. There is always a reason, right? And we talk a lot about that on the podcast here. We talk about beliefs behind behavior. We talk about mistaken goals, right? We talk about the iceberg and what's going on under the surface. So rather than you need to get along with your siblings, the question the curiosity becomes, tell me about what it's like to be the sister, to be the brother in this family. What has been your experience, and how can we shift into deeper connection and understanding of each other? Right? We talk about the ice. We talk about the belief behind the behavior, because then we're getting to what the actual challenge is. I have a lot of parents right now that I'm working with whose kids are in pretty active school refusal, which is something that I'm going to have a guest on in a few weeks, that we talk about. And school refusal is so hard because we're scared about what our kids are missing out on and I don't know if I shared about this on the podcast, but I did have a gal in the joyful courage Facebook group come in and ask for some support around this. Maybe I talked about this on the podcast, but she wasn't looking for like, how do I discipline my kid into going to school? She was asking for how do I be with this hard time that my kiddos having? And I thought that was such a wise place to be, because it's not like if we're looking at it simply as my kid refuses to go to school, we're missing and then leveraging things to try to make them go to school. We're missing the bigger picture, which is what's getting in the way, what's making it hard for our kiddos to go to school, and how can we, instead of like being in this power dynamic and this power struggle and this control situation, how can we really land that? You know, the skills that they're growing and developing by going to school are skills that are going to be useful for them, to eventually leave the house and live their life like going to school isn't like, do it for me, it's really, this is for you, right? And when we think about, when we talk about the iceberg and belief behind the behavior we're really getting at those missing, lacking, lagging skills that our kids ultimately need to begin to move from surviving to thriving and eventually getting to a point where they can be out on their own and figuring things out as they go right so belonging and significance is happening under the surface safety you Know that amygdala, that safety radar is always working for our teenagers. They're looking to save face. They're looking to avoid embarrassment and shame. Is there anything worse than being a humiliated teenager? And granted, some of our kids have a higher tolerance for humiliation than others. Some of our kids have a higher tolerance. I remember I hated being embarrassed, but it didn't like totally knock me out. The idea of feeling embarrassed literally drove my oldest to completely dropping out of school, like it was such an anxiety provoking experience that, you know, she didn't have the same kind of tolerance that I have. Our kids are always weighing the options of what to do in a way that makes sense to them, even as it might not make sense to you, right? And it doesn't have to make sense to you. You don't have to understand the why they did this, that or the other. You can know and what I'm inviting you to believe is our kids are always looking for ways to feel safe, and for teenagers, safety is not getting out, you know, ostracized, trying to not be ostracized from the group, right? So sometimes that looks like, you know, giving into peer pressure because they want to be a part of the group. Sometimes it looks like lying to you about something because, you know, it's a better option, you know, quote, better option than telling the truth. It's a safer option. So, yes, belonging and significance and safety and brain development, all of this is happening, right? This is all part of the layers that are going on in the teen experience. And I don't know that adults always give kids enough credit about this, right? I know one of the messages that I got growing up around, some of the challenges and some of the layers that were a part of my experience, the messages that I got when I brought them up were, don't use that as a crutch, right? Like all of these things might be happening, but the most important thing is, you know, you show up and you do your best, and you get the grades right, instead of, Wow, that is a lot, and let's talk about that. And I want to see you in your experience, right? I want to see you and your experience, and I want you to feel seen in your experience. And just as I said, our kids are doing the best they can with the tools they have in the moment, I'm also recognizing so are we right? So are we and we do have the gift and the curse of a bigger picture and a broader perspective and our own experiences. And I call it a gift and a curse, because I think that, yeah, it makes us great guides and supporters that we've been through all that we've been through, and it also if we're not paying attention, like our own private logic can get in the way and blind us to what our teens might actually be needing in the moment, right? And our messages over time, whether they're implicit or explicit messages, those can also play a part in our teens. Developing their private logic, right? And I think some of the messaging that I want to highlight, that can come up is, you know, our kids, over time, develop beliefs around I am accepted by my family when, right? What kind of messages might we be sending? What is the unspoken culture and values of your family, and how might it be impacting the teen that you have? Right? How do you talk about other people and other families, or even you know, as you're watching TV or watching a movie, like, what are the messages that you're sending around, what's accepted and what's not accepted. And if your teen turns their lens inward and considers who they are, do you think that they are having a feeling of, yeah, who I am is acceptable to my family, or are they thinking Who I am is not acceptable, and therefore I better withdraw or move away from not trust this relationship that probably the parents are really eager to have, you know. And this is something again, that came up in the Facebook group. An anonymous poster was talking about living in a community that really valued competitive athleticism and sports and having kids that that wasn't their thing. You might be in a community that values music and arts, and maybe you've got a super jockey kid, or maybe you love certain sports but not other sports. I mean, I know for me, there was a lot of messaging just around how I looked, how I presented myself, what I was wearing, and it felt uncomfortable to me. It didn't feel authentic to me. It might be that the messages are around how you're supposed to show up, style, presentation wise, and maybe you've got a really moodier emo kid who has their own thing going on, right? It could be around politics. This is a really intense time of year, and maybe even with your teen, you're finding yourselves on different sides of the spectrum of political leanings. So

Casey O'Roarty 22:03
is your kid receiving the message of, I accept you for who you are and I love you for who you are? Or are they receiving the message of, it's acceptable to present a certain way and unacceptable to present another way, right? I love you. What about love? What are the messages of love? What are we sharing verbally or energetically, about the condition of love? When will we love them? When is love held back and again, remembering private logic, right? There's the events and experiences, how they perceive things, and then there's their meaning making I'm not saying that you parents are conditional around your love. What I'm saying is your kids are watching and they're listening and they're making meaning around your actions and your words and how you talk about others, how you talk about yourself. So what do our actions in our body language say about when we love our kids. We love you when, right? Another thing that's really interesting to me is, you know, teenagers get into mischief, and they do things, they react, they respond, they might have big, explosive reactions, or say things that are really hurtful. And I often will have parents come to me and share the biggest question they have is, how do I make sure they know that this behavior is unacceptable, right? And this is really a loaded question, isn't it, so we're gonna unpack it a little bit. I believe that our kids are pretty clued in on what we're okay with and what we're not okay with. My guess is, by the time they make it to adolescence, they've heard you say it's okay to be angry. It's not okay to hurt other people. It's okay to be angry or upset. It's not okay to trash your room, right? They've heard all the things they've heard all the things they're pretty clued in. If you have a teenager that flies off the handle when they get upset and your household isn't necessarily one where the adults are also modeling this behavior, then your teens are probably connecting the dots that this isn't how we handle our emotions and rather than what is focusing on what is and isn't acceptable. I encourage parents to support their teen in building skills to navigate when their emotions are getting the better of them, and how to make things right when that does happen to me flying off the handle, destroying property or hurting relationship. You know, I'm less concerned around, how do they know that this isn't okay? How do I make sure they know this isn't okay? I'm more concerned around, like there's some missing skills, right? Because we are going to be flooded by emotion. We are going to have a hard time and feel. Overwhelmed, I want to know that my kids have what it takes to be with that in a way that is helpful and not hurtful, right? So I want to shift into okay, what is here to learn and grow from, or even what's the private logic that might be guiding this decision making? And even as I say that, I think about when our lids are flipped, we don't have access to our prefrontal cortex. We just have that limbic system, which is highly reactive and emotional. So yeah, what is it about whatever the thing was to trigger that flip that we can dig into and make sense of? Right? What are the missing skills.

Casey O'Roarty 25:47
And there's this idea, again, that we want to land well, this behavior is unacceptable, and if somehow we land that magically, they won't engage in that behavior. But if your teens aren't developing the tools and the mindsets that they need to navigate the hard times, if they're not developing this higher self, right, this outside observer, this considerator, considerator, to reflect on what's going on for them, they're going to continue to use the tools they have, which, in fact, might just be that, quote, unacceptable behavior. And the final thing that I want to kind of highlight, just around the layers of who our kids are and their private logic and how they're developing a sense of self in the world, is that question of, you know, what is your child's worth dependent on? What is the household family culture vibe? Is it leaning heavily on performance and accolades for measures of worth? What is your kiddo thing you might actually answer the first question with like, no, of course, their worth isn't based on accolades and performance, but I would be really interested in knowing what your kiddo thinks about that, because again, their meaning making machines and the meaning they'd be making may not be what you hold to be true and what you would want them to be making. So you get to check in with them, and it's not about everyone getting a trophy and no one taking personal accountability. That's not useful. And when we go there, actually, what happens is we're growing entitled, fragile humans, and that's not good. That's not what we're about here, right? So what we are is raising our kids with a healthy sense of self worth, that's key, and they are no less. We are all worthy of dignity and respect, and whether or not we earn a job or get into college or win the prize that comes from hard work and grit, right? We are worthy, and we get to work hard towards what we want, right? Both of those things are true. So if you are listening and realizing maybe that some of your messaging that might be coming up in your family, you get to clean things up, right? You get to talk to your kids. You get to have conversations around worthiness and around unconditional love. You get to have these conversations. You get to check in the experience that they're having of you, of the family, right? You get to check in with them and find out what is the meaning that they're making. And some of the things that I would encourage you to do, too, is really thinking about who are you and what is your role, right? You're there to love and support them in moving through this time of life, right? And if you're gonna land anything, I think the most important thing to land is that they are making the decisions when they walk out the door, and at the end of the day, you want them to have what they need, to navigate the life that they want to live, right? And like I said, I have a few clients who are really sunk into the school refusal challenge, and it's a battle of wills. It's a battle of wills, and it's so important for these kids to recognize say, Hey, babe, this isn't about me, and what I want this is about you, and the skills that you're going to need to be developing and practicing to move out and move on and live the life that you want to live. Right? You get to double down on this. You get to decenter yourself and make it about your kids. They aren't being a problem. They're having a problem. And like I said, I'm going to talk more about school refusal with a guest on an upcoming podcast, and I had said that I wanted to talk about higher self. And like, what does this have to do with higher self? Well, I think that before we can have conversations with our kids. About what higher self means. We get to kind of explore our own thoughts and mindsets around parenting and around the season of parenting, right? Another piece, I think that's really important to highlight is that our kiddos timelines might be different than ours. You've heard me talk about this mental health is something that will be a part of their life forever, and it might not be solved while they're living at home. It could even be something that they continue to work on as they move through young adulthood and beyond. So what are the actual skills that they need? Yes, I didn't want my daughter to be riddled with anxiety so much so that it was getting in her way. But what I want most is for her to know that she can get support and help, right, that there are people out there that spend their life, dedicate their life to supporting others, adolescents, young adults, in making their way in the world, right? That's what I wanted her to know. And you know, the college and high school performance is another hotbed of opportunities where we send the wrong message. Do we believe them and trust them and have faith in them? What are we focusing on? Because when we focus on grades versus curiosity and thinking about the future, it's short sighted. Right mid high school students is not the same as mid human beings, right? Their timeline might be different than your timeline, and I'm experiencing this with my son. I think I've mentioned this before. He was not highly motivated in high school, but now that he's in college and really recognizing this is all part of what is helping me have a vision for the future. The way that he is engaging in school is a lot different than when he was simply going to high school taking the courses that he had to take to graduate. And you know, it's such a different experience for them. There's such different motivations from them. And yeah, like I said, you know our story over here, and you're going to hear from Rowan next week about how things are going. She's going to come for an update on the podcast, and she was my biggest teacher around letting go of the timeline and letting go of the narrative and trusting that our kids ultimately want what's best for them. And they're gonna get there. It might be a side road, it might be a squiggly path, but they're gonna get there. They will find their way. And what if our kids were raised in an environment that was steeped in that message, you will find your way. I trust and believe that you will find your way. What if they could develop that mantra for themselves?

Casey O'Roarty 32:43
I trust that I'm gonna find my way. Things are hard right now. I'm hurting right now. I feel disconnected right now. I'm confused right now. I'm overwhelmed right now, and I believe that I will find my way. How would that shift the experience that they're having? Not only babe talking to our kids, not only will you find your way, but you have something inside of you that you can access, that will remind you that you will find your way. Right? Do they trust themselves? Do they have a helpful inner voice? Do they believe that life is full of opportunity? Do they know that development is always happening, right? They're always living through experiences that are ultimately teaching them, guiding them, offering them wisdom for their back pocket for next time, right? And to me, this is what develops our kids higher self. This is what develops our higher self, right? The higher self knows that we grow through what we go through. The Higher Self offers wise counsel. So if what we want is to support our kids with recognizing and accessing their higher self, how do we do it? How do we do it? Well, first of all, we get to normalize the conversation about higher self, right? And you can call it whatever you want. What is your relationship, your listener? What is your relationship with the wisdom that lives inside of you? Do you access it? Do you pause and have moments throughout your day to slow things down and connect with your higher self, your wise self, what gets in the way of listening to that wisdom? Are there times that you're making decisions that are more for the short term rather than the long term, more reactive than responsive? Do you share those experiences with your family? You know that I love modeling right? And I love normalizing that humaning is complicated, and I think it's so, so important, right, normalizing that we are all in the tension of what we want most versus what we want now, right? Speak into that, make that a part of you know, the conversation you're having around the dinner table or in the car. Not all the time, but, you know, bring it up and of course, use curiosity to open some conversations with your kids. So some ideas that I have around conversation starters sounds like, do you ever get stuck when you think about what you want most, but in the moment, you make decisions that are more of like what you want now, right? When was the last time you thought about what you could do today that'll make you feel better tomorrow? Or what wisdom do you think your 25 year old self would give you about this situation? And you know, we're not asking these questions because we want this, you know, prophetic answer, a profound answer. We want to drop these seeds and spark some consideration in our kiddos and our teens around like, yeah, do I get stuck and think more about what I want now versus what I want most? When was the last time I did that right? And then we can start to have conversations around you know, what does your inner wisdom sound like? What does it sound like to you when you you know? Listen to yourself, you know, and how do you move through self doubt and you know that inner voice that isn't helpful having these conversations just because they're great conversations to ask, maybe it is a lot, right? But when we make our home environment one in which these conversations happen regularly. They stop feeling like a trap or an agenda and instead become a part of the fabric of our way of being for ourselves and for each other, right? So good. Oh, I love all this stuff. I love talking about this stuff. Thank you. Thank you for going on this journey with me today. I hope that it was useful to you. I hope that you grabbed some nuggets. If you'd like to get even more into this with me, book an explore call. You can go to beastproudable.com/explore, and book a 15 minute call. We can see how we can work together to further your practice and support you in building this into your family system. I so appreciate you for listening. You are always welcome and encouraged to offer me feedback. If you're listening on Spotify, you can actually use the comments in the app, which is kind of cool. Nobody's done that yet, so maybe you'll be the first one. You can offer comments right there on the app, on Spotify, if you just scroll down under the show, you can send me a direct message on social media, or shoot me an email at Casey, at joyful courage.com. You know, I love to hear from you. If you aren't already on my newsletter list, I encourage you to jump in there. Go to be sproutable.com/teens or any page on the website, and scroll to the bottom, and you'll see for signing up for the newsletter, I write to you once a week with a pep talk and musings, as well as offering updates on podcasts and offers that I have for parents of teens. So that's it for today. My friends. Go drink some water, take a nap, take a walk, have a beautiful rest of your week, and I will see you again soon. Bye.

Casey O'Roarty 38:13
Thank you so much for listening in today. Thank you so much to my sproutable partners, Julieta and Alana, as well as Danielle and Chris Mann and the team at pod shaper for all the support with getting this show out there and helping it to sound so good. Check out our offers for parents with kids of all ages, and sign up for our newsletter to stay better connected@besproutable.com tune back in on Monday for a brand new interview, and I will be back solo with you next Thursday. Have a great day.