Eps 525: Support for parents with unmotivated teens

Today, Joyful Courage means tending to my internal experience and way of being, and moving through the world with love and compassion – even as I navigate my emotions due to current events.

Transcription

JC Solo 11.7.24
Tue, Nov 05, 2024 6:58AM • 27:39
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
positive discipline, conscious parenting, teen years, parenting challenges, teen motivation, executive functioning, self-care goals, parental support, teen growth, personal growth, parental curiosity, teen inspiration, parental encouragement, teen independence, parental acceptance
SPEAKERS
Casey O'Roarty, Theme Music

Theme Music 00:00
[Music]

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'rourdy. 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 01:32
Hello, hello, my friends, welcome back to the podcast solo show today. Woo. Grateful to be here. As usual, I want to start this week's show with a shout out to Emily denunzio, I hope I'm saying your name right, Emily, I wanted to call her out for posting in the joy of courage Facebook group last week, she wrote, parenting a 14 year old girl is like being in a bad relationship, except you can't break up with the person, and you definitely would if they weren't your teenage daughter. Oh my gosh, I saw that post in the group, and I cracked up. It's such a true story, and the post generated lots of solidarity, solidarity from other parents. I laughed and shared, have you seen that great Tina Fey clip where she's on Jimmy Fallon and she's talking about how parenting a teen daughter is like having an office crush, and she's so funny, like, hey, you know, we're all going out to lunch, but you probably don't want to come, but maybe you want to. And anyway, look it up. It's so funny, and the timing of Emily's post is awesome too. As I had Rowan back on the podcast this week, hopefully you listened to Monday's interview. Rowan is my daughter, as most of you know, Rowan's my girl, and she's 21 she's almost 22 she has generously shared her story over the last four years, her ever evolving story with listeners of the show, and it was so great to have her back on the pod. And you know, she came over for dinner on Saturday, and I had this really crazy experience. It was the first time. And those of you with older kids, you might relate, it was the first time that I really, really experienced her as grown. Does that make sense? Like there was something in the energy between us, she goes over for dinner, and then we sat on the couch, and we just kind of talked and laughed, and her dad and I were kind of bantering. I felt also like Ben and I were kind of this married old couple. It was kind of surreal. We were definitely our own little unit, and she was her own separate unit, not like separate in a bad way, but just really, like, contained by herself. And you know, she's living her own life. She's making her own decisions. She's taking care of herself, making choices. She is capable and confident, and she believes those two things about herself, which is really amazing. And it might sound weird, but it just landed differently than it has before the other night. And you know, I don't feel sad about it. I feel grateful. I feel excited. I feel so, so glad to look at this young woman and see someone who understands her power. She understands where she has privilege. She's grateful for it, she understands the impact she has on her own life. And you know, she kind of covers this on the podcast too, on Monday, but yeah, it was big. Saturday felt big, and I even texted her about it once she got home. Said, you know, you're grown. I felt it tonight, and she responded with I felt it too. So it was definitely something that was in the air. And it felt really awesome, especially considering all that we have been through as a mother, daughter, duo, as a family in the last five years, it feels really good to have total confidence in her living the life that she wants to live. It's it's just really, really special. And you know, I've never been a parent educator that's acted like there is some special formula for avoiding the hard things, right? The teen years are hard, the terrain is messy, and the teen years look different for all of us, like the fine details might be different, but it is absolutely a collective experience, and it can bring a lot of us to our knees, including me, the parent educator, and that is why it's so important to me to bring you the real and raw here on the show. It fits right into the why I keep showing up, and I've been doing some work around the podcast, and I sat down the other day and really leaned into my why, my why for this podcast. So my why is I show up because parents need a space that is real and raw about the experience of raising teenagers, because parents in the thick of it need to feel seen and heard and understood. I show up because parenting teenagers is an invitation to growth and self actualization. It's an opportunity to get deep with who we are and what we're holding onto. It's an opportunity to grow and develop in profound and meaningful ways. I show up because the teenagers need to be raised by people who are thoughtful, curious, accepting and trusting in a way that leaves them feeling taken seriously, because the world needs people who are moving into adulthood, believing in themselves and navigating the world with curiosity and compassion. That's my why. That's why I keep making this show. That's why I keep creating content. That's why I keep looking for guests that I feel like bring something to the conversation. I am in it for you, and I'm in it for your teen. Yeah, so today's show. I'm gonna respond to a parent today in the Facebook community who is seeking support. I'm gonna do this more often. I kind of love it. It's an awesome way for me to be prompted into content so the parent wrote any recommendations for a feasible coach to work with an unmotivated 14 year old, specifically on short and long term goals, drive motivation, executive functioning skills, self care goals, and works in tandem with the family trying not to sell my house to be able to find a good coach that's within budget. Appreciate any suggestions you might have plan on this happening virtually. Thanks in advance. So first of all, I love that this parent is showing up in the community. This is exactly what the joyful courage for parents of teen space is intended for. It's for sharing resources. It's for asking for help. It's for seeing and supporting each other in this crazy journey. And there was a lot of feedback from others in the group, right? Definitely, lots of conversation around connection. There was a little bit of pushback just around this parent's desire. You know, the list of all the things this parent was looking for. There was some pushback around that, you know. And for me, I just want to say thank you to this parent, because anytime somebody shows up in that space with a request, it is an opportunity for all of us to learn and grow. So thank you to this parent.

Casey O'Roarty 09:07
I am going to share my thoughts here on the podcast, and with the goal and the purpose being so many of us sit inside of, how can I help my unmotivated teen like that's not new. It's not specific to this parent. So I'm gonna tease this apart. Caveat, I do not know this parent. I don't know their child, I don't know their family. So yeah, just bringing that in. What I want to start with as I share my thoughts is a little bit of a reframe, right? Again, I don't know the dynamics of this family, but I'm gonna humbly offer up what could be a more expanded lens for this parent to look through. So one place that's pulling me straight off the top, unmotivated or uninspired. And I've talked about this on the podcast before, I think, and Rowan even brought it up, I think the. Is a lot happening in the world today. And as I record this, it is November 4, and tomorrow is a big day here in the States, the teenagers have been watching the adults on the national stage behaving badly. In my opinion, the teenagers are listening to conversations around climate change and gun violence, and they've been raised in this space of screens. And, you know, I don't know if it's unmotivated or uninspired, and so here's what I did. I think a lot of our teens are uninspired and discouraged and then get labeled as unmotivated. And this may or may not be the parent who posted this questions teen, but I think, you know, we're going to kind of lift up and out, and I want you to hear me out. So I went on to chat GPT and said, What is the difference between unmotivated and uninspired? And here's what AI thinks, while unmotivated and uninspired may seem similar, they reflect slightly different feelings or states. So unmotivated refers to a lack of drive or desire to take action. Someone who's unmotivated might not see a reason to engage or put effort into a task, either because they don't find it personally relevant, or they can't see the benefits of doing so this is often about the willingness to start or continue something. So that's AI's definition of unmotivated. Uninspired means lacking creativity, enthusiasm or fresh ideas. Someone who feels uninspired may still want to work but feels like they don't have the right spark or new concepts to make their work engaging or fulfilling. This is more about a lack of creativity or vision. So in short, unmotivated equals lacking the drive to act, whereas uninspired is about lacking creative inspiration or enthusiasm, a person could feel unmotivated, uninspired or both at once, and these feelings can often overlap. I mean, I just wanted to do that deep dive. And why does it matter, right? Why does it matter? Well, it matters because when we consider a teen who's unmotivated or uninspired, that's just the tip of the iceberg. We get to start asking different questions, right? And that's what I want this parent to remember, and all of us to remember. We get to ask some different questions. And this parent in the post starts to go there. They know that what they want for their teen is support with short and long term goals, drive motivation, executive functioning skills, self care goals, right? They see their teen as unmotivated, 14 years old, I'm guessing eighth or ninth grade, right? All of those things are a big ask for a 14 year old. So we're gonna reframe this request. We're gonna reframe this question, and instead of, you know, support for all these things, where to find support to get them to do all of these things. Instead, let's ask the question of, what is getting in the way of my teen leaning into taking action and and creativity? Right, or enthusiasm or inspiration, this supports a parent in drilling down what the problem is to be solved. What's getting in my teens? Way that tends to be a really powerful question to keep in our back pocket and consider when we notice our own frustrations showing up. All right? What's getting in their way? The assumption when we ask that question is that our teens, they want a good life. They want to do well, right? They want to feel good. And then we look at their behavior, and we are confused or curious, but then coming back to this question, what's getting in their way? We start to look at the behavior from again, a more expanded place, and what could be the answer to that could be perfectionism, could be a fixed mindset, could be fear of failure or looking foolish. Could be that they're in a power struggle with you, or there's some deep disconnection. Again, not knowing this family at all. I'm making some guesses here, but this is where I would start. What's getting in my child's way. And the good news is, you don't have to know the answer. Yay. You don't have to know the answer. In fact, you don't. You probably don't know the answer to that question, what's getting in my kid's way, but you know who does know the answer, or who's going to be a source of exploring it in a way that's useful and gets to the answer to that question, your teenager, your teen. But before we get into tools for drilling down with your teen, I want to talk. About spend? I want to also talk about the opportunity for your personal growth with a challenge like this. First of all, absolutely no shade to the parent who wrote in. I'm so, so grateful that they showed up with this question, because now we all get to learn from it. So if you're listening in now, know that you have offered a huge gift to the community that we get to tease apart and learn from. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So many parents are frustrated by what feels like a lack of motivation in our young people, and we're gonna play with it today on the pod. So when we perceive our teens as unmotivated, we tend to do a few different things. One thing we do is, you know, we want to fix it. We want to fix this problem. We want to fix our teen right? We think of it as a problem for us to fix. The other thing that we do, we can often do, is label our teens right. And the finally, the third thing that shows up is we start future tripping from the stuck snapshot of today and all of these things wanting to fix, labeling them, being stuck into the snapshot of today and future. Tripping. All of this adds to disconnection in our relationships with our teens, and makes it ever more likely that our kiddos will stay stuck where they are. So what then? Okay, actually, I am gonna go into Tools, and then we'll talk about the personal growth piece. So first of all, we can't control how motivated our team is. So what can we do? One thing we can do, and I talk about it a lot on the pod. We can live out loud. We can talk about our goals. We can talk about our steps to creating what we want. We can be explicit about our own executive functioning skills, where we notice we're lacking, where we're working to get better, we can normalize conversations about self care and the fact that we ebb and flow with all of these things, right? We get to bring what we want our kiddos to develop to life in our own practice, right? That's one easy step. Another thing we can do, we can get really curious about what's happening for our teen. It can sound like, Hey, babe, I notice x, y, z, and I'm wondering about that. I noticed that you seem really detached from schoolwork and grades and such. And I'm wondering about that. I noticed that you aren't doing much shooting hoops outside of practices. I'm wondering about that you get to speak what you are seeing and open up conversations with your teen, with the only intention being to get a fuller picture of what is happening for them. Right? We want to get a fuller picture. We want to know what's happening under the surface. This is big. This is big. We aren't curiosity is not about leading the witness. It's not about landing our point. Curiosity, as you've heard me say before, has no agenda other than to learn about the other person's experience, and to invite them into their own more expanded thinking, or perhaps, you know, critical thinking,

Casey O'Roarty 18:14
we can also get curious about what is important to them. So it could sound like so I noticed that you're not doing much school work outside of school. How are you feeling about school? What are your hopes and dreams about school? What do you want to accomplish? What would feel good to see at the end of the quarter, at the end of the semester again? Watch the agenda. You might hear, I don't know, or I don't care, or have them withdraw from the conversation. You can get curious here, too. Okay, so I'm noticing you do not want to engage in conversations about school. Tell me about that. It could be that the topic has become a place of toxicity between you and your child, and you have some ownership to take, right? Get curious about how they experience you in these conversations. That might be useful here, too. I wonder if you feel judged or criticized when we talk about school and then listen, how can I do better, right? How can I be a more useful supporter of you when it comes to school or it comes to basketball or it comes to friends or whatever, the challenge is another tool besides curiosity, here is encouragement, having faith that our teens are going to figure things out, that they have the skills to get there, to learn through experience and to find the inspiration that they need to lean into taking some action and remember experience is where they grow and develop skills. Life skills aren't something we give them to move through experiences of their life. They're actually developed as they have experiences as they navigate that tension. So when things are hard or it seems as though our kiddos are stuck, we get to hold us. Space of encouragement for them it can sound like so I'm hearing you say that this class is super uninspiring, and I trust that you'll do what you need to do to get the grade that you want. I'm here for you if you need any support, or you want to talk through any of it. I love you. Or I hear that you're super discouraged by your basketball team, and I know that you know what to do to improve your game. If you want to talk about extra coaching or support, I'm here for it, right? And then let them be. Let them be. There's a big message there when we offer up some encouragement and then we walk away if we're gonna say, I trust you. I trust that you're going to do what you need to do, then trust them to do what they need to do. Let them feel that trust as you do what you say you're going to do, which is, hey, I'm around. I'm not hovering, but I'm here for you if you need it. When we start labeling our kids, right? And we all do this, let's be honest. We label them, even if it's just in our own mind. We trap them inside of a story that might not actually be true. We trap them into proving otherwise right, the people who should be seeing the wholeness of our kiddos, we're only seeing the deficits. Does that make sense when we label them? We're identifying our kids by their deficits, or by, you know, places, areas of growth. Labels limit our kids. They impact their self esteem and, yes, their willingness to act right? And, you know, and I see it all the time in the community, my kids unmotivated or my kid doesn't care, or my lazy kid, right? Or sometimes it's like I said, it's not necessarily something we say out loud, but start paying ever more attention to your self talk and to that internal conversation that you're having about your kiddo, right, and noticing how you're labeling them. There. Labels influence. They impact our kids' self esteem and their willingness to act. I think I just said that labels influence our expectations of our kiddos and how we treat them. This is why it's so important to ask what's getting in my child's way, right? So we can go deeper. When you catch yourself labeling your kiddo again they're unmotivated or lazy or just don't care. Look for counter evidence, right? Catch yourself. What does my kid love? Where and when are they taking action? What are their strengths? What do I love about my kid? Right? Just interrupt yourself and ask some of those questions. And finally, check the future. Tripping. It's not useful. Today is a snapshot of who they are, and I think this is so evident in my conversation with Rowan from Monday. Never in a million years. Four years ago, could I have predicted what she'd be doing today? Never. I was in the trenches. It was dark. I didn't know how she was gonna come out of what was going on for her. I was unsure about what I was doing as a parent, but one thing I did imperfectly was trusting and having faith that we would grow through what we were going through, and you will, too. My friend today is a snapshot, and it might not be a great one. It might be dark and grainy and not one that you're going to want to put into a frame to be on display. The teen years are messy. It is the nature of the terrain when we can lean into connection and be in acceptance of who our teen is today, while knowing that today is one day and a string of days that they will continue to evolve through. We're on the right track. Right? Lean into connection, and this is personal growth at its finest, isn't it? To lean into curiosity and encouragement and acceptance when things feel hard is a big ask. So what's getting in your way? Right? Let's use that question on ourselves. What makes it hard for you to be with the team you have today, the one who isn't setting goals, and perhaps, from the outside looking in, isn't taking care of themselves the way you think they should. Why is this hard for you? What values or beliefs are being poked at or triggered. Here, your teen needs you to see them where they're at right now. They need to know that you're gonna love them and accept them no matter what. When they believe this, they're gonna be ever more willing to let you in. They also need you to trust them and have faith in them. If you had a magic wand and could transform into who your team needed you to be, what would change? What mindsets would you leave at the door? Or if your future another way to think about it, if your future self showed up to let you know, hey, guess what? Everything's gonna be okay. The end, what would you be able to let go of right now? How could you show up differently? How would you show up differently if you knew that you were moving through a dark time and that things were gonna work out, okay, my invitation to you today is to meditate on this. Have some quiet time to sit with yourself, get out a journal. Write about what's coming up for you as you consider all of this. The gift of parenting is the opportunity for growth as we raise our kids. So let's grow. And if you're listening and thinking, Yeah, I'm into it and Mann, I need some support with this, I'm here for you. Besproutable.com/explore. Com slash explore. We'll get you on my calendar, and we can see if we're a good fit for working together. Be sproutable.com/explore, I've been where you are, and I'm here to support you. Thank you so much for listening. I trust that you got exactly what you needed from this episode. I believe in you and I believe in your teen, I trust you to do the same. Huge thanks again to the parent who wrote into the Facebook group asking for support. You've helped us all. If you're not in that group, head over to joyful courage for parents of teens Facebook group ask to join. Answer all three questions. I only let people in to answer all three questions, and you're in, and maybe your question will end up being one that I answer on the podcast. To be on my newsletter. I think I say this in my outro, but I'm just gonna say it again here. If you're not already on my newsletter, get on it. If you go to be sproutable.com/teens my website, and you scroll to the bottom, you can sign up for the newsletter. There. Big Love to you all today and all the days my friends, go drink some water, move your body, know that you're not alone, and I'll see you soon.

Casey O'Roarty 26:58
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 at be sproutable.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.

Theme Music 27:38
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