Talking to teenagers

  One of the issues I work with frequently with teenagers is self-harm. Self-harm can feel complex and overwhelming to parents and school staff who see it as a destructive behaviour. It is extremely distressing for the young person and also for the parent that feel powerless to stop it. It is destructive in its nature but is also a coping strategy to regulate feelings that feel powerful and overwhelming. When I worked in a school counselling team, school staff used to describe it as attention-seeking, but in fact, it is attention needing. What do I mean by this? The teenager is trying to understand and regulate these difficult emotions and is seeking to connect. What self-harm provides is a frequent return to a regulated state that the person has ultimate control over. Many young people report that it feels like a release of tension and agitation, that the tension release is freeing. In counselling and other arenas such as a supportive conversation at home, the teenager nee...

  Things could be hurting over time for your teenage boy and you may never know. Anyone who has different sex children reports feeling at a loss in navigating the differences when it comes to teenage years. It is true that there is a crisis in masculinity for teenage boys. They are expected to be sensitive, but not the group p***y. They are expected to be persistent but not overbearing. Caring but not needy. The language used by teenagers blurs these things and words that don’t suit a person’s characteristics are banded about and may have more sticking power than they should do. If we model empathy and sincerity, we have a greater chance of our boys feeling comfortable displaying these qualities. You could express things that your teenager may not have considered about themselves but when said rings true for them. Below is a list of words that have nothing to do with image or how someone looks and everything to do with inner qualities. When you notice one of these qualities...

  There are three aspects that lead to us using emotive language and catastrophising with our teens…Worry, panic and anger. It is hard not to worry, worry is the ‘digital age’ parent default mode. Of course, parents have always worried about their children through the generations, but not to this level. It seems to permeate through our lives, as the mental health crisis grows within the child and adolescent population it makes sense that it travels upwards to the parents.   We are anxious and frustrated at being anxious, this leads to a less-than-ideal way of responding. We all do it. We find ourselves reflecting on the confrontation later and wishing we had responded differently and certainly chosen our words and tone for the better. Research suggests that mothers exhibit more negative affect in terms of angry responses with girls, whereas with boys, mothers exhibited more negative affect in terms of outward expression of anxiety, leading to panic. I have spoken bef...