Eps 528: Boundaries and Language for Building Consideration in our Teenagers

Joyful Courage today is being willing to show up in all of my authenticity and trust that’s enough. My self-worth is something that is generated inside of me, not dependent on external circumstances. When I can live into that I experience ease and freedom…. And that is the essence of Joyful Courage.

Transcription

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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 01:33
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Welcome back. I'm so happy to have you here. I'm so glad that you join me for these solo shows. I appreciate you. I even tied it up for you. I did. I have a candle lit over here, and my desk and my room are clean. My husband just totally deep clean my carpets. Shout out to Ben. Thank you so much for that. Maybe that was procrastinating. Maybe it was setting myself up to be really intentional about the content and the energy that I want to bring to this show. We'll never know. Is anyone else feeling the vibe of the season? You know I'm talking about, right? I have volunteered to host thanksgiving for our family. We celebrate Thanksgiving, and there's 16 people coming over, and I'm really excited, and I'm probably in denial for what I've signed up for. It's potluck. Everyone's bringing a part of the feast. But still, we also have a big fun trip out of town that will bring me back home two weeks before Christmas, which we celebrate here. And I've done nothing to prepare for that. So I'm sitting with all that, feeling calm about it, feeling like, you know, no big deal. It's all gonna unfold, while also, I have this little naggy feeling of, oh, girl, you're in for it, like, get started, and these are first world problems, right? I'm so grateful that I can host our family in our home, and I can't wait for my baby boy to be here. I am so grateful to be traveling somewhere warm when the weather here at home is so gray and rainy, definitely living in abundance. And I get to remember that making lists is supportive as well as mapping out the when of doing the things I'm needing to do, which includes creating podcasts for all of you, which is why it's a Sunday afternoon as I sit down to record this week's show, to get ahead of the game. So go. Me, yes, hi. What's alive for you as we fly through November, I would love, love, love to know the thread that I want to bring into today's show is the work of creating the pause between stimulus or trigger or experience, however you want to whatever word you want to use for that, and reaction or response. Right to me, and I talk about this a lot on the pod. It's about the ability or the awareness to recognize that we're telling a story and slowing things down long enough to let that story go and make room for something new. Or you could even think about it as the ability to acknowledge the thoughts and feelings that are coming up, even that is giving you a little bit more space for consideration, just the acknowledgement, but then taking it a step further by finding the willingness to hold those thoughts and feelings a little bit lighter, not so tight. We hang on tight, we're gonna hold it a little bit later to again, make room for some new thoughts, new feelings that are more intentionally aligned. With what we want to create, right with what we want to create. I feel like if there's any one purpose to being on this human adventure, it's this work, this work of self awareness, being intentional about what we're creating, and really recognizing we are always creating, even if we're in reactive mode and not being super thoughtful, we're still creating something, right? So we're always in the creating, and what we're going to hold as we move through this show is looking at, what am I creating, versus what do I want to create? Right? What am I creating being willing to like, take a beat. What am I creating right now, and is it aligned with what I want to be creating? And if not, how can I change it up? What can I do? What can I do differently? So this week, I have a post from the joyful courage for parents of teens, Facebook group to play with, which I've really been enjoying doing. Big gratitude to everyone who posts there and shows up in the space. This one got a lot of response, which tells me that it's pretty relevant no matter the age of your adolescent. And I get it. So here's the post. The post goes, I need help trying to have faith that my 18 year old daughter will learn not to keep asking me for certain things. When I said no, for example, today she's getting her nails done, and last night, I told her, I don't have the money for that. She asked me again this morning, and as she was walking out the door, she said, the appointments at six, so we'll have time to talk about it later. Such an attitude. She does have a job. She's a senior, so we're paying for all these college applications now, and other things, as you all know about those expenses, there are other things that are also happening that I'm not too thrilled about. For example, She had her senior photos done. She chose this photographer, and it was expensive, but I took care of it over the summer. It was a really beautiful day. She never mentioned disliking the photos. She seemed to thoroughly enjoy the experience. While she recently suddenly decided that her boyfriend's dad, who's a photographer, will be taking the pictures again for free, because she doesn't like the pictures that were done by the previous photographer that she had chosen. And the mom goes on to say, these were really beautiful photos. I don't understand her mindset, and I don't want to pay for her nails to get done so she can, once again, have a photo shoot. Both my husband and I believe she is so selfish and inconsiderate, will she really grow out of this? So that's the post again. Grateful for this parent. I know when we're in the thick of it, right? Our lens is pretty narrow, right? We can only see what's right in front of us. So my hope is that by taking this post and teasing it apart, looking for the reframe, talking about tools and strategies and the possible growth opportunities for the parent, my goal with this is one to give all of you listeners tools and an opportunity to see things a little bit differently, but also, you know, to really support this parent in lifting up and out of her experience to create something different with her daughter. So let's start with the possible reframe, right? What's the possible reframe? So like I mentioned, this post got a lot of love from other parents in the community. The first place I want to take us is to again what the possible reframe is. Let's use that thread of what's being created versus what I want to create. So our teens move through the world as they experience it, right? They're learning how to move through it, through the experiences they have inside of the relationships that they have, right? I rarely use the word manipulate, because truly, our kids are doing what they've learned to do to get the results that they want. They are, you know, learning through experience and relationship how to survive, how to thrive, right? And we parents are rarely as explicit around expectations as we think we are. So the reframe could be going from when will my child learn to not keep asking for things after I've said no, to how can I create an environment or a relationship where boundaries are clearly stated and followed through on right? So we get to pivot our focus from how to get our child to be different to something that's much more in our control, which is how we show up and hold space.

Casey O'Roarty 09:41
We also get to remember that our kids, whether they're 13 or 18 or even in their early 20s or beyond, right, they're still learning and broadening their lens around how the world works through their experience with the world and their life. Unfolding. There's no ceiling to growth and development. And I've said it before here, adolescence is a self centered time. By nature. It just is. And man Oh, Mann, senior year can feel especially indulgent for teens, right? I mean, I remember absolutely feeling like the world truly did revolve around me around age 17. So yeah, that's the reframe. Okay, so instead of focusing on your child's behavior, consider a shift in the environment and how you're showing up for her, and here's what it can look like. So here's some parenting tools and strategies that could be helpful, and we're going to focus hard on language. So first being more explicit in our language. And no, I don't think you need to think of all the things before they happen, and have a plan for everything. You can meet things as they unfold, and just be really clear and direct, right? So for this situation, it could sound like, Hey, babe, you know, I'm realizing that I haven't been super clear about what I'm willing to pay for and what you need to take care of, and that has resulted in you asking me for things that I say no to, and because in the past, I've been willing to change my mind, you keep asking. So here's what your dad and I are willing to cover, and then you get to have a list, and it sounds like for this parent, you know, things like college application expenses is on the list and what else? What else are you willing to cover? And there's no right answer here. This is for your family to decide. I have a girly girl daughter who loved when she was a teen. Loved nails and hair and eyelashes and makeup and all this extra stuff, right? I didn't pay for these things. I mean, if we went in to get our nails done together, I would pay because I was happy to be hanging out and doing something together. But she learned how to save for what was important to her, which is now nails and tattoos, while letting go of some of the things that just aren't in her budget, which now these days are nails and, you know, crazy eyelashes. My son knew when he was living at home that eating out and video games, those were expenses and shoes. He loves shoes. Those were expenses that he had to take care of out of his own either his allowance or his paycheck once he started working, unless things lined up with birthday or Christmas, right times where we would naturally be buying a gift. So we get to be really clear, right? And maybe you have a kid with a job, which is great, and this, you know, parent who posted in the community has a job, which is great because you can offload even more responsibilities to them so that they can be in the practice of spending and saving. That's really what this is about, being in the practice of saving and spending. And if your child's younger and it works for your family's budget, I would definitely encourage you to give them an allowance and let them know what they will now be expected to cover with that allowance. It's so useful for our kids to get experience with the tension of spending and saving early on, but clarity here is everything, clarity and your ability to be with their disappointment when they can't get what they want because they don't have the money for it, right? Rather than taking it personally, we're going to talk about that in a little bit. So when we've offloaded some of the expenses, and when we've handed over expectations around paying for certain things, and we've been clear about it with our kiddos, and they come to us, but I can't afford it. I don't have my will. You just pay for it. Why can't you pay for it? Some responses that are useful could include, oh, man, I know it's so frustrating not to have funds when there's something that you want, right? Or, yeah, it's totally okay I get it. It's okay that you're bugged by this. Or, you know what, I love you and I trust that you can figure out how to get what you want right. Or, Hey, let me know if you want some help problem solving this or figuring out how to save for this thing. When I think about the parent who posted, she might say, I hear you wanting to get your nails done, and I don't pay for nails, I'd love to see what we have here around the house, and we can maybe give each other manicures, though, right? Or we could do some other problem solving, right? In our response, what do we want to create? And when I ask this question to parents, I often hear, I want to create connection. I want to feel more connected. We always want to feel more connected. And while this parent didn't say it explicitly in her post, what I read in her share is she also wants her daughter to grow to be more self aware and considerate. So see how a different response could have a different outcome. Right? The member again. I said, I'm realizing I haven't been super clear about what I'm willing to pay for and what you need to take care of, and that's resulted in this dynamic where you're asking for things over and over, and I'm saying, No, here's what Dad and I are willing to cover. Like even in that like you're kind of broad stroking, here's the dynamic we're in, so that she also can step out of the dynamic and look at it, which builds her self awareness. That response also highlights what the parents are willing to do, right? And that gets to broaden her perspective around, oh yeah, my parents do show up for me, right? And now it's really clear in the ways they're going to show up for me, right? So she can be more considerate, because she's more clarity around the situation. So going back to the post, mom is also frustrated about this photo shoot that she paid for that her daughter's redoing again, we get to decide what is the story we're holding on to right. What if this parent decided to sit inside of, you know, gosh, we bought this photo shoot for her over the summer, and now we have beautiful pictures that capture our daughter at 18 in this time of life, yay, rather than turning her desire to do different pictures with another photographer into evidence that promotes your perception around her, lacking character. Right. Communication around this could sound like, Hey, babe, you know, damn i We really love the photos that the first photographer took of you, and we're so glad that we could have financially supported you in using the photographer of your choosing. We're definitely going to make some prints from that session to keep and you know how fun it is that your boyfriend's dad is willing to do some more pictures for you. I can't wait to see how those turn out. What would a response like that create, right? I mean, what if you don't turn it into a thing, right? And of course, I get where you're coming from. I get where you're coming from. It is frustrating when it feels like our kids don't understand or appreciate all the things that we do for them, but remember that they are growing their capacity to see the perspectives of others, and that growth happens over time. It happens over time, and we get to help them in being explicit with our language and shift out of taking things personally, right? And the capacity building heard their lens growth. It doesn't happen overnight. It's not about saying the right thing once and she'll get it. It's about being consistent and clear and trusting that she is in the development of growing her self awareness and her consideration of others. We get to hold our kids in a better light. Shift out of She's selfish and inconsiderate and into she's young and learning to be more self aware and considerate, right?

Casey O'Roarty 18:12
Also, keep in mind, humans tend to be their worst with the people they know love them the most, and those people tend to be the ones that do the most for them, right? It is hard, and it doesn't make it okay, but it is true, right? It's true. And you know, what's the growth opportunity here for the parent? Right? What's the personal growth work around this challenge? What can we let go of? What are some practical tips for staying grounded and regulated as we move through something like this, and we kind of wait out the development right? What's the personal growth opportunity for the parent? Well, again, we're coming back to that thread of having the ability or the awareness to recognize that we're telling a story and slowing things down long enough to let that story go or lighten our grip on that story and make room for something new, right? And as you get more clear and explicit about what you will do and follow through what you say you're gonna do, your child, well, they might continue to engage in the same annoying behavior for a while, simply because that's the dance you've been in. So it's the one that they know, right? They might even kick it up a notch, working to get back to what's familiar, not because they're bad kids, but because what's familiar and what feels safe is what feels safe, and it's just what humans do. So you get to work on recognizing what's happening when it's happening, right? So the internal dialog might sound like All right? Here. Here she is again, gosh darn it, asking for that same thing, and here I am feeling so irritated and holding her as selfish and inconsiderate. And when will she ever learn right? And actually, this is making me feel even more disconnected to her. So okay, I'm gonna take some deep breaths. You. She is young and learning about what being considerate looks like. What do I want to create here? What can I do or say to move this dynamic in that direction? Right? Create something new. Don't you want to I mean, I read posts like this from parents, and I have to believe that while typically people post in those moments of deep frustration and pain or fear or irritation, ultimately, yes please, I want to create something new. Show Me The Way, right, and I'm offering that right? I think we are often living inside of this idea that something new comes from our kids behaving differently, but actually we create something new when we behave differently, when we change up the dance steps, when we see our teens through a different, more expansive and positive lens, right? What do you think about that? Does that land for you? I mean, listen, I believe that you've got this. Things can change always. There is rarely a situation, if ever, where I sit inside of the idea of, Wow, this is a dynamic that's never going to change. The only time I have experienced those thoughts with clients is when I've got a parent that is so stuck and unwilling to do the work to show up differently in the space, in the environment, because when we show up differently, the dynamic changes, even if the only change is how we feel about how we're showing up, right? If we're judging change solely on our kids behaving differently, well, we might feel a little frustrated, but if we can instead celebrate when we're showing up differently as that being the win, and us feeling good about how we're responding and being with our kiddos, like that's everything, and that's something we have control over, right? So there's a second post from the group, and this actually was a response when I asked about how things were going. One of the parents posted this, and I just want to share it, because I think it kind of dovetails what I've been talking about today. So the parents said I continue to struggle with my teen wanting nothing to do with me, and actually treating me quite poorly much of the time. I'm a single mom. She and I have been very close. My rational mind knows that she needs to separate and fly on her own, but does she have to be so inconsiderate in the process? Again, there's that word inconsiderate. It's like she has zero awareness that I'm also a human being. I'm trying to be easy with myself and do all the things I need to do to maintain my calm. But sometimes it piles up and I blow mainly because I'm just so hurt, hurt and CO dependent, I guess. And one thing I want to say to this parent is a CEO, it is hard to do this as a single parent. Absolutely. I really appreciate your sharing around trying to be easy with yourself and doing the things that you need to do to really live in that space of calm, grounded and no shade, no shame around those moments where you flip right we all have only so much tolerance and capacity for what we're holding what we're receiving from teens, right? But you all listening, can you see how what was discussed today on the show would also support this mom like awareness around the story she's telling herself, right? My child is inconsiderate and wants nothing to do with me and makes me feel hurt and disconnected, right? Okay, I'm gonna breathe. I'm gonna breathe. Am I willing to shift this story, right? Okay, am I willing to shift this story? She's learning who she is, separate from me, and she's practicing independence. What do I want to create? What can I do or say to move this dynamic in that direction? Right? So if you want a formula, there's a formula to play with, right? Recognizing where you're at, recognizing the story that you're telling yourself and the feelings that are coming along with it, taking some breaths, finding some willingness to shift the story and speak about your teen in a more positive. Right, and then really leaning into what do I want to create, and what are the actions and language that I can use to move in that direction? Right? And we get to be explicit with our language. Could sound like, Hey, I'm feeling really disconnected to you. This is such a fun and wild time of life that you're moving through, and it's totally appropriate for you to pull away from me, and it's important that we can continue to communicate respectfully about the things. How might we do that in a way that feels helpful and not hurtful? I need your help, right? Again, we create something new when we behave differently, when we change up the dance steps, when we see our teens through a different, more expansive and positive lens, when we remember the terrain of the teen years is messy, right? It's messy, but you've got this. You've got this. People, you do be willing to create that pause, to shift into deeper alignment for what we want to create. That's the work we can all do, and it's work that makes the whole world a better place. So I really hope that today's show was useful to you. That's what I've got. Let me know on social media or via email about what you heard that resonated with you. I love, love, love hearing from my listeners. And did you know that you can comment on the show directly on Spotify? I actually just discovered how I can see the comments that you leave on Spotify. So that's exciting. If you listen on Spotify, you can kind of scroll down and there's an option for leaving a comment, so I'm really excited about that feature. Check it out, leave a comment. Say hello, let me know what landed, and if something that I shared really pulled you in and left you wanting to take things further with me, sign up for a 15 minute call. You can do that. No, there's no commitment, just 15 minutes, and you can do that at besproutable.com/explore. We can chat a little bit about what you're moving through and see which of my offers is a good fit for you to do the big work in, right? So be sprottable.com/explore, go check it out. Sign up for a little 15 minute. Call it's free. And yeah, I appreciate you. I appreciate you. I'll see you next week. Have a beautiful, beautiful weekend. Bye.

Casey O'Roarty 27:36
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 [email protected] tune back in on Monday for a brand new interview, and I will be back solo with you next Thursday. Have a great day.

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