How Can I “De-Motivate” My Teen From Engaging in Risky Behaviors? (Listener Question)

Debbie:

Hey everyone, joining me for today’s Parent Lean In episode, I have educator and friend of the pod, Zach Morris of Alive at Learn. And Zach specializes in working with parents and young adults who are navigating the complex dynamics of neurodivergent experience. He is uniquely equipped to serve families with profiles of autism, especially PDA, families who are navigating trauma and families who are needing to heal and repair relationships. He is also a parent coach in my Differently Wired Club. So hello Zach and thank you for being here.

Zach Morris:

Hi Debbie, thanks for having me as always.

Debbie:

Of course. Let’s get into it. Good question. And I’m just going to say as a preface before I read this, Ned Johnson, Ned, if you’re listening to this, my listeners love you as much as I do. So you come up in a lot of questions, which means people are really thinking about what you’re putting out there. So thank you for that. So let’s get to it. The listener wrote in. Thanks to you and Ned Johnson, we have been much more aware of how we can support motivation and refrain from demotivating our team. These are for behaviors or actions we would like to see them take. What about behaviors or actions or motivations that we are not okay with, like vaping? So the context for this is a 17-year -old ADHD and executive function challenges.

I just love this question so much. I think it is so good. It’s tricky and it’s 17 is an interesting age because you’re almost 18 and vaping is, you know, it’s, it’s not super safe, but it’s, it’s not drugs, but it could, you know, there, there’s a lot going on here. So I had lots of thoughts and I, and I’ll start with this one. first of all, just going back to the age of 17 at 17, we really can’t prevent our kids from doing something that we don’t want them to do. I mean, we can try. And maybe actually we can prevent them with extreme measures, but the ways in which we’re going to prevent them from doing something that they want to do are not going to necessarily be ways that build connection and trust, which is really the most important thing when you are parenting a 17 -year -old, especially a 17 -year -old who has ADHD, which means the impulse control is going to be not as strong, the desire to take risks is going to be higher. So that trust and connection is so important.

And there are two things I was researching, Jess Lahey’s work in getting ready for this question. And she wrote a wonderful book, The Addiction Inoculation. I’ll have a link in the show notes to our conversation about that and to her book. But two things she says is that number one, kids who are more controlled by their parents lie to their parents more. Makes sense. I was like, yep, that was me. Like I, my very controlling parents and I lied about everything when I was 17. Well, everything that I wasn’t supposed to be doing, which was a lot of things that I was doing. The second thing that Jess said is that monitoring kids too much can undermine their trust. So I wanted to share those two thoughts because again, the most important thing with a child who is about to be 18, who is, you know, who we’re really trying to raise so that when they aren’t living at home, when they are kind of out in the world, they, they know how to make decisions that are healthy, that they know themselves well enough that they trust themselves and that they trust us to come to us with things that are big or scary or difficult. So focusing on that connection is really important. And so when it comes to, you know, what we’re doing here, what are we doing here with our kids who are vaping? Jessica Lahey would say that the communication should really be about educating our kids, right? These are my concerns. This is what the science says.Right? If we’re talking about, I know this question is about vaping, but if we’re talking about drinking or we’re talking about marijuana use, I just recorded a great conversation about drug use in kids. We want to give them the real information. This is what these things do to a developing brain. This is what can happen. These are my concerns. These are the things that I’m worried about. Present that information to our kids.

And, you know, going back to one of Ned Johnson’s quotes that I say all the time, I trust you to make your own decisions and to learn from your mistakes. Because ultimately we want our kids to know we trust you. And this is what I’m concerned about. And we can’t control, we can’t control a 17 year old, what they’re going to be doing out in the world. So I just want to throw that out there.

One other thing I want to add, and then I am going to hand it over to you, Zach. I’m super curious to hear your thoughts on this, but legality is another piece of this. So with vaping, I was researching, you’re supposed to be 21 to vape, to purchase tobacco products in the United States, you have to be 21. So just like, as Jess Lahey would say with alcohol or with marijuana use or anything else. If something’s illegal, that’s a whole other conversation. In our house, we follow the law, right? It’s not our own moral things. Actually, it’s illegal. And this is a problem. So you can always kind of fall back on that too.You can use some, have some rules in your house around this idea that we don’t do things that are illegal in our house. And that’s where you kind of draw the line while still kind of sharing all the other concerns. But again, kind of zooming out and remembering what we’re really doing here, which is raising kids who are going to ultimately make good decisions for their wellbeing, for their health, for their safety as they grow and launch. We have to start doing that stuff while they’re living under our roof, because if we don’t, they go out into the world and it’s just going to be a lot and they’re not going to understand how to kind of navigate those decisions and thinking about things. So Zach, I would love to hear your thoughts on this question, whether you start responding to what I just unloaded or what came up for you when you first heard this question.

Zach Morris:

Yeah, it’s such a good question. I think you hit a lot of things I’m going to kind of touch on a little bit as well, you know, and I think, you know, one of those things being is, is that you’re kind of talking about, you know, especially at this age and stage, like being our kids is consultant, where like, this is the time where, yeah, like, I, I can’t be too attached about what you’re going to do or not do. Because we’re just out of that sort of compliance dynamic, right? And this is the time to, like you said, provide information, provide our perspective if they’re open to hearing it, right? This kind of gets into that land of sort of consent too, like are they even open to hearing these things from you or not, right? Because if they’re not, like you said, that might just be compromising relationship, just continuing to try to have that conversation, right? So, so from a broad perspective, right, I think we are talking about, yeah, if we’re, if we’re not oriented from a sort of a compliance place, right? Not it not being sort of actually about getting them to stop, but it being more about connection, orienting to connection, then we can look at, you know, what can we connect around actually around this like you know, because collaboration is going to come from connection. So if we’re, if we’re, hoping for any sort of collaboration in this, right. I think it really is going to sit on that platform of connection. And so, you know, are they also hearing that it makes sense? They’re exploring with substances. This is super normal for a 17 year old, right. With ADHD with, right.

So we also think about accessing maybe my learning brain at some point to hear some of the information and synthesize that and analyze that and all of those things, like what opens me up to my learning brain, right? It’s probably feeling connected, feeling understood in some way, right? Feeling safe. And so I think a lot of that is going to come from actually hearing like, you know, this is kind of makes sense actually that you’re experimenting with some things and, you know, makes sense that you’re, you know, maybe doing something that you’re know, you’re feeling drawn to do something that that feels good when you do it, you know, like, like, is that how they’re experiencing it? Does it feel good when they do this? You know, can we acknowledge that? Like, well, of course, you’re you’re you’re drawn to wanting to do something that feels good, you know, like, and can we kind of be in some of that space so that there’s maybe also openness to explore the other parts as well, like you said, where it’s like, totally feels great feels. And there’s also some of this other information out there about like, you know, long term effects are would you be would you be open, you know, can I share that with you, right? And so I think it’s such a balance of some of that, right? Like, as I try to introduce you and expose you to things that are outside of what you’re thinking about, and what you’re oriented to, am I also being with you and what’s real for you and what’s true for you and what’s already happening for you, right?

So, I think it’s sort of just a shift of our objective a little bit, right? So I think if our objective is to get you to stop vaping, I think that’s where we’re gonna hit a lot of tension and conflicts. I think if we can orient our objective to, yeah, maybe my objective is to provide you with as much objective information as I can find about this. Maybe my objective is to understand what your experience with this is and really get a better understanding of what this is like for you, right? Like, maybe my objective is going to be something different that we actually feel like we can get more of a foothold with more momentum with. And maybe that opens up to just way more conversation, right? And that’s ultimately what we’re looking for really is just just more conversation, more connection around this more, more back and forth, right?

I think if I was, you know, this is like really the first thing that came up for me. And even though I’m only getting to mentioning it now is, is this really made me think about Marshall Rosenberg’s work in nonviolent communication. And I know I’ve talked about this like so much on the podcast before and things like that. And people are always hearing me talk about this, but I think it gives such a clear roadmap for navigating conflicts and especially navigating like my conflicts like my internal conflict of watching somebody do something that’s hard for me to watch and that I don’t feel okay with, right? And so I think looking at nonviolent communication practices can really help us get clear on like, am I experiencing? What are my needs? What are my boundaries? What are my requests, right? So that I can get clear on what I wanna communicate, what I wanna do about this, right? Some of these communications just might be what our kiddo can expect from us. Maybe what we’re just saying is like, also that, you know, just if I find them in the house, I you know, I just want you to know, like I am gonna throw them away. you know, just like, like not trying to control you. I’m just saying like, I just yeah, I just, it’s really hard for me to watch. And you know, it’s just, you know, whatever the thing is, right? Like that’s not wrong or bad if that’s something but we can also be clear about that, right? And or, you know, maybe there’s other things we’re trying to, again, get access to connecting around. Maybe we can get connection around the idea of shared value of not doing this around younger sibling. Right? Like, so, so what can we get connection around so that we can get closer to collaboration? And that is, again, such a hard journey for us as parents because we are going to be watching things that are hard to watch. We are going to be hearing things that are hard to hear, but kind of to your point, that’s, that’s where we find ourselves with our 17 year olds. And I think when we can pursue connection, we get a lot more access to also being received about the things we might know or the things we might have to offer, or, you know, the requests that we might have.

Debbie:

I have three things I want to circle back on. First of all, I love that you said what you said at the end about I might throw them away. When you said that, it made me really think about how important it is that we, again, with the 17 -year -old, that we are showing up authentically to what’s going on, that we are not walking on eggshells. We are not trying to manipulate an agenda. We’re showing up authentically. I think that also just builds trust. So I really appreciate that.

The two other things that I wanted to bring up stemming from what you said is this idea of understanding the why behind the behavior. So I just interviewed Brenda Zane for the show. By the time this episode comes out, I think that conversation will have been really, she runs a community called Hope Stream Community. And she has a now, you know, her son is in his late 20s, but he had struggled with drug use and abuse and was in and out of rehab as a young person and has a really kind of an incredible story. And what she talked about is the importance of leaning into, first of all, the discomfort that’s going on and trying to find out what need is actually being met. What is that, that vape pen or whatever is actually filling because that is what we want to better understand. the behavior is maybe it’s a need to connect and belong because all the friends are doing it. Maybe it’s a stress reliever. So there are more coping skills needed. So, using that as an invitation to really try to understand what’s going on beneath the surface.

And then the last thing I wanted to touch upon that I love so much is when you said, is the objective. What is your objective for engaging? Is it to get them to stop? Is it to deepen the connection? I think, and I talk a lot about intentionality, but I think being super clear, what is my end goal here is so important to guide any kind of conversation you have or conversations or understanding how to navigate a conflict like this. Because what we don’t want to do is have something like this create more of a divide or deepen conflict or build more mistrust. That is the exact opposite of what we want to be doing with the 17-year -old. So many great points. Anything before we wrap up that you want to add, Zach or?

Zach Morris:

Yeah, just one last thing, you know, because something I was thinking about, too, and I think about this for myself a lot of times, right. But I’m just kind of pulling from that language in the question, too, about, you know, things we’re not OK with as parents. Right. And I wanted to sort of invite parents to think about what that means for me. Like, what does it mean for me that I’m not OK with this? Right. Like, like, does that mean? I’m gonna try and talk to my kiddo every day about this because I’m not okay with it. It means I actually wanna work with a therapist to reconcile this for myself, this like, reconcile this feeling of not okay? Does it mean that I’m going to, again, be communicating some boundaries that I have with my child? And so I think just getting clear on kind of that abstract idea of it like not being okay and just trying to explore that in a little bit more concrete terms of like, and what does that mean for me? I think that’ll that’ll that helps us maybe orient to a little bit more direction around like what’s aligned with my core values because again, based on what I’m experiencing with my child or what the dynamics been like, or it might not align for me to be like, this means I’m going to try to have this conversation every day. But that might be what I’ve been kind of doing and I might not realize until I kind of put it in those terms and I’m like, yeah, no, that’s not what I want this not being okay to mean for me or look like. I want it to look more like this or I want it to look more like this and that helps me a lot of times get clear on what does this mean? What does this look like now?

Debbie:

So good. good. Thank you for that question. Such a good question. Obviously, we had a lot to say about it. So I appreciate you sending that in. Make sure you listen to the episode with Brenda Zane. Again, link in the show notes here. And thank you, Zach, for joining me to talk through this one.

Zach Morris:

Thanks, Debbie.