[00:00:02.340] – Speaker 1
I’m Chris Tompkins, and welcome to the Shaping Our World podcast.
[00:00:15.910] – Speaker 2
My goal is to invite you into a conversation that will leave you more confident in understanding and inspiring the young people in your life. Each episode, we talk with leading experts and offer relevant resources to dive deeper into the world of our youth today. Today, we have Emer O’Donnell on the show. Emer is a behavioural coach who realized while she was going through her training that so much of what she was learning as a coach would be valuable for young people to have access to, and that inspired her to start her practice, Teen Reconnect. She’s also the creator of 7Q Teen Reconnect formula and the Q Pathfinder, a personalized digital tool that supports young people in understanding who they are so they can live a life they love. Emer is also the author of Understanding Teen Stress and Anxiety: A Parents Guide to Building Love and Connection, which she wrote to support parents and professionals who have teens in their lives in becoming the good adult our young people need in this modern, noisy world. I know this is a topic that will resonate with so many parents, so let’s dive in and hear what we talked about.
[00:01:30.920] – Speaker 2
Before we meet our guest, a quick word about an opportunity at Muskoka Woods. Starting as a staff member here, I found it to be more than just a job. I discovered a pathway to personal and professional growth. We are committed to intentional staff development, providing training, and building a network that can propel your career forward. Imagine working where you’re nurtured to grow with access to amazing facilities and staff care events. If you’re seeking a role that prepares you for what’s next, visit jobs.muskokawoods.com for more details. Now, let’s get into the heart of our show. Thanks for stopping by, Emer. It’s great to have you on the show today.
[00:02:13.510] – Speaker 1
I’m delighted to be here, Chris. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:02:16.530] – Speaker 2
As we get going, some of our listeners from North America might recognize the little accent, so maybe you can throw that in as we get to know you a little bit. But let’s talk about what shaped your world when you were growing up. Tell us a little bit about what teen and childhood years were like for you. What are the big influences in your life?
[00:02:33.470] – Speaker 1
I was raised by my mom, two older brothers. My mom did the most amazing job. She was a wonderful parent. You couldn’t have asked for more love. We didn’t have a lot, but We never really missed out on anything either. So if that’s how I would balance it. She always drummed into me as a young woman that I needed to be financially independent, and I think her own experiences shaped that advice for me. And so as a young person, if I wanted any extra money, I had to go and earn it. And as young as 14, you were allowed to do it back there. I would have worked in the local chemist, talking to customers, selling them perfumes, designing the windows, counting up the money at the end of the day, or else I might have done local babysitting. For me, that feeling of earning and being independent and learning those real-life skills was just really lovely. It certainly, I think, always helps if you can learn those skills along the way. I had a huge amount of freedom and independence as a kid because my mom was away. We were latchkey kids, but she trusted us.
[00:03:39.530] – Speaker 1
And I think that’s vital because when you feel trusted as a teen, you’re actually more likely to behave because that’s being invested in you. So our house after school would be packed to the brim with other kids. But so long as it was clean and tidy when my mom came home, she didn’t want one bit. We learned that. We learned the value of she’s given you your trust, we need to repay it back. It also helps you make better decisions. You have to make decisions if she isn’t around all the time. I think that keeps you in good stead when you go out into the world as an adult. I had those two brothers who were very protective of me, so I was very blessed for that as a teenager girl growing up, because I know a lot of young people, a lot of girls don’t feel that. They don’t feel as safe as I probably did growing up. I was the only one to go to university, and I studied psychology, which basically created a lifelong love for human behavior. It’s something that I bring to my life every day now.
[00:04:43.050] – Speaker 2
What a rich child childhood and how it’s interesting how it’s informed so many parts of your life, too. We’re going to actually get into that when we get talking. But just briefly, too, where did you grow up and where are you living today?
[00:04:56.750] – Speaker 1
Well, I came from the west of Ireland. Basically, if you get to the edge of the ocean on the west of Ireland, the next stop is America. A lot of people who would have emigrated from Ireland back in those famine years would have come from that area. I was brought up in the countryside I’d be out running around wild. But then we also… I used to live in Dublin when I got older, which is the capital of Ireland. Currently, I live in the UK and have done for many years. I’m a product of the greatest export from Ireland hasn’t been oil or iron, it’s been people. I’m one of those immigrants who left the Irish shores and came to the UK. I’ve been here since… Well, since after my university days, really. I came here in the late ’80s, early ’90s.
[00:05:46.840] – Speaker 2
That’s great. What’s shaping your world today? Tell us a little bit about what you like to do with your free time. What are some of your interests?
[00:05:53.870] – Speaker 1
Well, I suppose if I’m really honest about the key thing that shapes my world, it’s my children, because I learn as much from them as they do from me every day. I work really hard as a professional, but I’m very hands-on when it comes to my kids. I live beside the ocean, so that’s lovely. I love to spend time out there. I live in an outstanding place of National Beauty, about 15 minutes up the road, which is along the Seven Sisters, which are these amazing cliffs along the Coast of the UK, and it’s a National Park. I try I don’t spend as much time out there walking, being by the ocean, and working and having kids. I don’t have kids every day, but I’m looking after my kids. I’m very keen to have them outside. They’re really sporty. I want them off devices. We’ve got kids who are on devices up to eight and a half hours a day now, and for me, that’s not good for them. So the more that we can spend time out and about engaging with people and being in the world for real, that’s Super important to me.
[00:07:01.340] – Speaker 2
It’s great. As you’ve told a bit of your story, it’s clear how family has shaped not just your upbringing, but your perspectives today and has probably been, and I won’t speak for you, but a real influence in your own work. Can you tell us a little bit about how you’re shaping the world of teens and young people professionally right now?
[00:07:23.200] – Speaker 1
Okay. I would say that the world that young people live in right now is not one that a lot of them are thriving It’s certainly not the world that so many generations before them were part of. I founded a company called Teen Reconnect, which is a coaching and training company, because I think there’s a misconnect connection. It’s very easy for us to disconnect in this world right now, and we need to be able to reconnect because as humans, that’s what we need to do. That’s where we thrive. I’m also an author of a book for parents, and I’m a creator of something called the Q-Path Finder app, which I developed as soon as I retrained and came out of doing my master’s of coaching at Hennie Business School in the UK. Because it really seemed obvious to me that we give all these tools of coaching and psychology and the appliance of science to senior business leaders and elite sports stars. But actually, the real time you need it is when you’re a teenager, when you really don’t have a clue who you are. Actually, you could do with as much help as possible to try and navigate that, especially since we’ve had COVID, where we haven’t been able to go out and experience the world.
[00:08:38.060] – Speaker 1
We’re becoming more online, so we’re not experiencing real-life situations. And so we have to give young people new tools because we know they’re not all thriving. So, yeah, I’ve developed a program specifically around that through my work for young people. It’s called the 7Q program. And I very much work with parents who who want to help the kids to thrive, or I’m very, very focused on training the trainer. I hope now I get to talk about what I call the good adult later, because there’s only one of me. I think this should just be general mainstream education. If I can train more people to do what I do, then more children can be supported to be given the right tools and the right skills to know who they are, to create the lives they deserve.
[00:09:29.870] – Speaker 2
Well, I love this conversation because we’re going to be introducing you to so many listeners who are like, Yes, I want to be able to do this. So I think this is really intriguing for us to dive into some of your work in a little more depth and to unpack it, at least in this context for people who care about young people right now who are just resonating with everything that you’ve just said. Before we jump in, we know, and I know A lot of your work is around identity formation in young people. We talk a lot on this show about just how significant, I think how underestimated these big developmental questions are for young people. Who am I? Where do I belong? What contribution am I going to make in this world? I think so many things that we see behaviorally and just as we watch childhood and adolescence progress are them working through that. I know a lot of the work you do helps focus on that, and you spend a lot of time coaching others and diving into that. I’m really excited for this conversation. One of the things that really intrigued me in the intro of your book, Understanding Teen Stress and Anxiety, you talk about how what you learned when you were going through your coaching certification as an adult, you called it transformational for well-being and performance.
[00:10:58.100] – Speaker 2
What you were learning then would have been really helpful for you to learn as a teenager. I know you aim to fill that gap with your practice and book. I have a couple of questions around that. First of all, in a nutshell, can you distill what you learned in being a coach that you think would be so valuable for teenagers from a high level?
[00:11:19.400] – Speaker 1
I think the thing I learned most is that the quality of our relationships shapes the quality of our lives. You need to know who you are in order to create good relationships. I had a 15-year-old say it to me once, Oh, I get it now. If I don’t know who I am, how can I expect anyone else to know? For me, what I think the beauty of coaching is that it opens new doors of possibilities because there’s a guy called John O’Donahoo, who’s an Irish writer, and he often talks about looking out through the lighthouse window. But what most people don’t know is there isn’t just one window to look out of. We can actually turn around and there’s other windows. I think that’s what coaching does. It empowers you to ask the right questions to get to more helpful answers to make better decisions. For me, that’s huge financially important. And we don’t all operate in the world in the same way. And that’s where so much of our poor relationships come from, because there’s disappointment if someone behaves in that way towards me, and I’m just assuming they’re operating from my view of the world.
[00:12:29.520] – Speaker 1
So, yeah, I just think there’s so much in coaching that can help us build self-awareness. And the need for that has been around since ancient times with Socrates and Plato. Know thyself. Because if you don’t know who you are, you can’t create that life you love. It’s like getting in the car, but you don’t know where you’re going. For me, that’s the basis of everything. I think that’s really what teams are trying to discover.
[00:13:00.150] – Speaker 2
The quality of your relationships impacts the quality of your life. Remind me of that again.
[00:13:05.710] – Speaker 1
Absolutely. The quality of our relationship shapes the quality of our lives because the science tells us that if you don’t have a good quality relationships, It’s one of the most significant factors to impact both your physical and mental health. You know what it’s like, don’t you? Even as a teenager, you fall out with your friends, or if you come home and you’re with your partner and you know the things aren’t great at home, your heart sinks as you go through the door, and you can be preoccupied with it all day long. When they’re going well, well, we feel great.
[00:13:38.130] – Speaker 2
Then the second part of that is the quality of our relationship shapes the quality of our life. In order to have quality relationships, we need to start by understanding ourselves and who we are and what we bring to the table. I love that. Those two ideas are really intersected. Really, it actually begins with self-awareness and really this lifelong quest, but particularly in childhood and teenage is really discovering who we are.
[00:14:11.890] – Speaker 1
Absolutely. It’s another piece which I’ve learned through my work in business is, what is it that successful people do if you distill that down? We can all define success, how we choose to. But for me, success is someone who can perform but also feels well-being. And contentment within themselves. What they do is that they understand who they are and they play to their strengths. They also recognize and manage their gaps, because for every strength, we have a gap. It’s in our gaps that we find our stressors, whereas if you know what they are, you can manage them. That’s where they find.
[00:14:54.400] – Speaker 2
What is the connection between mental health and maybe poor mental when we get into more wrestling with some of the topics that we know are there for young people and knowing ourselves? What’s that intersection there? Because we know mental health challenges are at an all-time high, particularly, I know here in North America and Canada, we’ve talked about that a lot. What is the intersection there between healthy self-awareness and working through some of these mental health challenges that we see popping up?
[00:15:28.930] – Speaker 1
If I see it in the context of young people, I think we live in a world that they feel massively overwhelmed because we’re getting more data in a day than a person got in their whole lifetime in the 1900s, and our brains haven’t evolved to cope. So if you don’t know how to calm that stuff down, then you can’t connect the dots. And they struggle to connect the dots anyway because of 80 % mature brain. And if you’re not connecting dots, you’re feeling stuck. There’s a fear of failure. And if you’re worried about fear and failing, then that impacts self-esteem, it impacts confidence. Then we get stressed. Then when we get stressed, stress and anxiety, anxiety is one form of stress. That just can end up getting you into a cycle, especially when you’re the front part of your brain, which is really good at You’re making good decisions, adding some logic in there. You’re not stuck in your emotions. If you’re stuck in all of that, it just feels like what I call walking around in a fog. If you don’t have the self-awareness piece of a sense of who you are, what talents and strengths you can bring to the world so you can see where you can fit in.
[00:16:52.850] – Speaker 1
Where’s my place at the table? What am I going to be good at? Where do I belong? Where do I feel feel like I have a place? Then actually, that’s really a lonely place to be. I think that’s why there’s a thing in the workplace called good climate. Culture is how we do things around here. Climate is what does it feel like around here? One of the key things to drive a good climate, and that impacts wellbeing and performance, is clarity. And they don’t have the clarity. And when we don’t have clarity, we feel stuck. And then we get depressed, fed up, stressed, and then we think we’re not capable. And then you’ll have social media feeding them a story that is anything but the human condition. There’s unrealistic goals that they may set themselves about what they think is true, whereas it’s not true at all. And so I think it’s really important that young people know how to When we all need to know how to visit our stories and decide whether they’re serving us or not.
[00:18:07.280] – Speaker 2
There’s so much wisdom in what you’re saying there, and I want to drill in on it a little bit. You talked about gaining clarity. You talked about that cycle, that negative cycle. Maybe you can expand a little bit on that. I think you covered it fairly well. But when we get into clarity, what can we do to help young people gain the clarity required to help with that negative cycle? And whose role is it? Parents, teachers? How do we partner together? What does that look like? And I know that’s a big question, but maybe start us down that journey and we can press in on a few things as we go.
[00:18:47.920] – Speaker 1
Well, I suppose that’s what my work has been all about, because that’s what we’ve helped senior business leaders do, and that’s what we’ve helped elite sports stars do, create that well-being, create that clarity of direction, and then being given the tools to go and have it, go in and make it happen. For me, it’s about if they’re not out there learning through real-life experiences, then there’s an opportunity to give them the tools from that, tried and tested science, behavioral science, from positive psychology and from quality coaching, so they can figure out who am I. So that’s why I created that Q-Path Finder, where I actually did over a thousand qualitative hours with people. I said, What do you want help with? Because I can make it up, but it’s far better I ask them. And so they were really clear about it. They said, I want to know more about me and what makes me tick. And that can be measured. I want help with my confidence, and that can be measured, too, what drives someone’s confidence. I want you to help me understand how to manage my stress. That can be measured, too. I want you to help me with my learning, Because that’s a huge pressure for a lot of them.
[00:20:03.090] – Speaker 1
We can also measure, what are your risks when you set goals? Then we also can look at, how can I have a better relationship? Because we know that’s a driver of stress and well-being and performance. The last thing is, give me a sense of where in the career arena I could fit in. What we do in that is look at themes. We can give you examples of jobs, but there’s over 20,000 jobs out there with millionaires in between. If you can look at themes, because jobs are actually just a set of behaviors. If you understand that your theme is, I mean, mine are creativity, imagination, support, people. They’re just some of my themes. Then you can distill down from that the overwhelm of the potential unknown to say, Well, this is what I’m good at. It doesn’t mean I can’t develop the other skills, But if I can focus on these and develop the others over time, then at least I’m going to be in the sweet spot. What I measure is not personality, because that’s how we show up on the outside. We know we can show up on the outside way different to how we’re feeling on the inside.
[00:21:18.990] – Speaker 1
I call that the Marilyn Monroe approach. All happy on the outside, and we know social media, our kids are brilliant at that, but they could be dying on the inside. So what we measure is predisposed behaviors, which are formed by the time you’re six or seven. And these are the behaviors that I feel really comfortable doing. And we all have preferences, nurture nature. But it can’t actually be measured until you’re a teenager. And so for me, they stay with you. They’re pretty stable throughout your lifetime. If you are a conscientious seven-year-old, you will be a conscientious 90-year-old. But you’ll know for each preference you have, you’ll have the gap, and that’s where your stress is. For me, that creates a foundation map of them knowing that they’re uniquely unique. They’re fine. There’s nothing wrong with them. Don’t compare yourself to anyone because there’s no one else like you. And look at all the stuff you can do. And it helps clear the overwhelm. And it just puts those… I just see the light bulb moments going off, bing, bing, bing, bing all over the place. And then what I love is once you take that pressure off them so they can take it off themselves, the light comes back, the sparkle comes back into their eyes because they know they’re not losers.
[00:22:47.430] – Speaker 1
They know they’re fine. And for me, if we can understand the gifts we’ve been given to be able to take them out into the world, that gives us a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging that serves us but also serves others. That’s what successful people do best.
[00:23:11.260] – Speaker 2
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[00:24:31.540] – Speaker 1
Okay. That’s just one piece of that 7Q program. The first thing for me is I have to calm everything down. I need the skills to do that. If you think about, we get access to over 11,000 bits of information per second, and it goes into our own… It’s accessible by our unconscious. But our conscious mind can only access 40 to 50 per second. If we’re stuck in old patterns of thinking that can drive negative emotions, make us not feel good about ourselves, whatever the story is, and our brain loves that because it doesn’t want to use any new energy to create anything new. It’s programmed to keep us on the tried and tested, even if it’s not very good for us. If we can’t calm our minds down and we’re consuming that 40 to 50 with old patterns and stressors that don’t serve us, we’re going to stay in that state. But calming, learning how to calm and regulate our emotional state and our body and our minds so it doesn’t run around like an untrained puppy, to me is the fundamental first step. But then it’s the self-awareness piece. If I was ever to work with a young person, I would say to them, What’s the one thing you’re really struggling with at the moment?
[00:25:49.140] – Speaker 1
Because it’ll be one of those six things. I tend to do the profile first, and then I go, Okay, is it stress? Is it confidence? Is it careers? What are you interested in? I’m always guided by them. Then there’s other pieces, which is limiting beliefs, understanding mental resistance. There’s a number of factors, because I don’t think you can look at careers in isolation. You have to look at somebody holistically because we’re like an onion. You’ve got to peel back the layers, and they’re all interconnected. And that’s the beauty of the human condition. But when you can get some amazing signposting along the way to understand that’s why I behave like that. That’s why I avoid that behavior, even though that’s the behavior I need to roll out. Oh, that’s what I’m motivated by. Okay, if I can create more of that, I’m going to be more inspired. That’s my bad day behavior. Oh, that’s mom and dad’s bad day behavior. I’m not going to take it personally. I’m just going to see it as it is. It just creates more clarity and gets us out of the story that’s often fiction.
[00:26:57.860] – Speaker 2
Yeah. And you’ve just started to really unpack, you call it the 7Q?
[00:27:04.060] – Speaker 1
7q program, yeah.
[00:27:06.620] – Speaker 2
Parents can go to your website, Teen Reconnect, and go more in-depth on this. But I just wonder, too, I’m just thinking to myself as you were talking even about quieting the mind and going back to relationships, too. So much of what we want to help and guide young people towards our relationships with them are so critical in that. I might have been thinking, How do I practice that as I show up as a parent? And not just for my own life, but for me to build that relationship to help my daughter or any young people that we care about to practice the same thing. I think there’s some value in even understanding what young people are going through. But how do we as adults, even practice some of these things to continue to develop who we are? Because as caring adults, we shape the lives of the young people that we invest in. Can you speak to that, too? What encouragement for parents would you have on some of these practices? Not just thinking about it for teens, but for us as well modeling some of this?
[00:28:16.570] – Speaker 1
I think the reason I wrote the book is because I found that a lot of parents would bring me their teams and thought they were just the only problem. There’s always two sides to every story. It’s two sides to every coin, and it takes two to tango. And I think there’s a huge piece. What I’ve tried to do in the book is take parents on a coaching journey so they understand what they’re bringing to the party. Now, over 90% of our behaviors are unconscious. And if we can’t understand what is driving our behavior, we’re going to roll out the same behavior and get the same old result. But there are certain key There are many factors, I think, that can really help as a parent to navigate these teenage years. First of all, it’s understanding how their brain works. It’s not like yours. They’re more susceptible to stress. Their peers are super, super important to them. So you’re going around and criticizing them, it’s not going to do you any favors. They absolutely need to be able to have those peer relationships because what they’re doing is trying to leave the nest. Mother nature is programmed it that way because if they don’t leave the nest, they’re not going to go out and continue the development of the species.
[00:29:40.540] – Speaker 1
But when Mother Nature decided to implement this stuff, we didn’t live in the world we do live in. So you’ve got to understand that they’ve got all sorts of changes going on. They’re stuck in their emotions. But what emotions are you bringing to the party? Because our emotions have energetic vibrations. And if you’re stuck in negative emotions and you introduce anger to however they show up or they’ve done, screwed something up, because they will do, because you did, you’ll just get more anger. And again, it’s about being… I always say the first thing is if they come and you’re ready to blow up, well, the first thing you need to start to learn is, how do you calm yourself down? You can leave the room for 20 minutes. That discussion doesn’t need to happen straight away. I think you also need to remember as a It’s the difference that you’re both on a learning journey. The parenting of a younger child and a teenager requires different skills. You can learn how to become an active listener. Instead of being someone who judges. You can learn how feedback works. The problem with the moment is that feedback is our second greatest need as humans beyond breathing.
[00:30:58.060] – Speaker 1
And we do it on average every three hours. Because our kids are hanging out with us so much more, we can’t help but tell them when they’re under our noses what they’re doing wrong. Because if they’re doing everything right, well, we may be really good and say, Well done, but actually, We don’t really have to give them that much attention and we can get on with all the other stuff we have to do.
[00:31:18.690] – Speaker 2
Right, yeah.
[00:31:19.780] – Speaker 1
Being mindful of the feedback and asking yourself, Is this lifting them up or is it dragging them down? I think it’s a really, really important thing to consider consider. There’s so much you can do, and I guess that’s why I wrote the book. It’s remember, you’re two people on a learning journey. Be mindful. I talk about bad day behavior. We all predisposed to have a bad day behavior when we’re stressed, you can figure out what yours is. You’ll actually recognize it in your boss as well, because we all have one. And if you can recognize it and bring it into your awareness, then you can create change. If you’re stuck it, you can’t, or it’s unconscious, you can’t. I think there’s one other thing that I talk about. It is about being the good adult they need. Because we know from the research is that if they have someone who’s called their good adult, someone they feel they can talk to about their problems, someone they can be real and be themselves with, someone who’s there to guide them through those trials and learning journey when they don’t get everything right, someone they feel is not going to shout at them when they show up and they make a mistake.
[00:32:34.610] – Speaker 1
We know from the research that that presence of that one individual reduces depression, reduces anxiety, reduces self-harm, and reduces suicide. And so that’s a key reason why I train the trainer now, because I want more good adults in the world. I want to give adults the skills they need to be able to be that, but also be able to help their kids be who they need to be. And remember, too, I always say this, I say two things. When they were babies, and especially if it was your first, your children were very forgiving of you when you screwed up. It’s like payback time when they become teens. You’ve got to play that forward. And also remember, it’s your job not to change them. But to enable them to be who they’re meant to be in the world. And just be mindful of your fears. I have a four-year-old. He’s not a four-year-old, he’s 27 now. But when he was four, I remember backing into the driveway in my car, and I was going through quite a difficult relationship at the time. And he said, Out of nowhere, it’s all about love, mom. You just have to fill your heart with love.
[00:33:58.980] – Speaker 1
And I think if you can Don’t bring that to the situation every day when you feel triggered, when you feel they’ve got you down, don’t make it personal to you. Be the person you used to talk to when you were a teenager, that you felt that you could talk about whatever it is that you needed to talk about. Be that great boss who always lifted you up. And if you can deliver those skills, you’ll get through it.
[00:34:29.170] – Speaker 2
Man, there was There’s so much in there. I want to drill in on the last point you were talking about, about having good adults. But before we do, when you’re talking about the brain and science, I’m always reminded, and just to remind all of our listeners, too, and they probably heard it if they track with the show, but a reminder that our prefrontal cortex doesn’t really develop into the 20s, fully mature. That’s just like biology and physiology. A reminder, again, to our listeners, that part of the brain is responsible for things like planning, prioritizing, good decisions. We probably shouldn’t be surprised that young people are working through those things and are not at their highest capacity for those things because their brain hasn’t fully developed towards that. It doesn’t mean you just let everyone off the hook for not planning or making dumb decisions, but it gives you a greater understanding that this is a normal part of the developmental process when your 15-year-old has struggles planning everything they need to take out the door to take with them to school for the day or doing the right things in the right orders from priorities, or not looking at that fence saying, I could jump off of that, no problem.
[00:35:57.420] – Speaker 2
I think when we see those things are like, What are they doing? Again, there’s just part of that. That’s just natural development. I loved how you were unpacking that. So much of the science that’s happening in development impacts behavior. There’s some stuff we shouldn’t be surprised at. But I did want to ask you a little bit more about the good adult part at the end, because I think so many of our listeners are showing up to listen to this because that’s what they want to do and they be and want to be. I was intrigued. You talk about parents parents judgment as one of the things affecting our kids. I know it’s the last thing I want for my daughter is to think that I’m judging her. We were even in a conversation. I try not to unpack too many of our personal things. When we were talking about values and important things that we have and her saying, Well, if you disagree, that means you’re judging. I was like, No, I’m not judging your friends or other people for doing that. I’m just saying I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that. We got into this her being very sensitive to a parent or an adult being judgmental.
[00:37:08.460] – Speaker 2
Can you talk about how we might resist that? What can we try to avoid? How do we approach conversations? How can we be a caring adult in the lives of young people without imparting this judgmental feeling between parent and child or caring adult and child?
[00:37:28.220] – Speaker 1
For me, it’s not being in the blame game, pointing fingers. So if something happens, instead of going, Oh, my goodness, how could you possibly have thought to do that? For me, it’s about going into curiosity mode. Okay, this has happened. Probably not ideal. Let’s sit down and talk about what was going through your mind or what you were feeling. So I really just want to understand what’s going on in your world so that we have to figure out how you ended up there. Then that gives the opportunity to explore that, and then an opportunity to ask them within hindsight, What would you do differently? Because that’s what a great boss would do. For me, I think judgment just comes when you’re pointing the finger and you’ve not taken the time to understand what’s going on. One of the key things with a teenager, you may not actually be fully judging them, but they think you are because they’re stuck in that emotional brain. And you can look sideways at them and they’ll make up some story to think, Oh, that’s what they mean. And, Oh, my goodness, I feel judged. And that might not be the case at all.
[00:38:45.440] – Speaker 1
So I think being very mindful of how easy it is for them to feel they’re being judged when it may not be the case and getting clarity around that. They raise their eyes to heaven or put their heads down or whatever it is and say, Can I just be curious as to what’s going on in your world right now? What are you feeling? Rather than thinking because that prefrontal cortex isn’t working, but there’s so in the feeling element. So, yeah, I think that helps. If you think, too, ask them, Do you ever feel I judge you? And they’ll tell you.
[00:39:26.500] – Speaker 2
Yeah. There’s a section in your book called Parents Parents and what they want, where you talk about how our own unconscious beliefs and desires can lead to a disconnect with our kids. You say that parents have to learn objectively to stand back, reason, be present without the internal noise in our heads in order to find a loving solution that serves everyone. Can you talk about that, these unconscious beliefs and desires, what we can do to manage that and so that we can show up without those really impacting the relationship relationship or how we interact with kids?
[00:40:02.390] – Speaker 1
Sure. I think, first of all, we got to realize that it’s really hard to be objective as a human. Super hard. It’s going to even be harder now with AI coming over the horizon, or it’s already jumped over the horizon, to be honest. We have over 200 thinking errors, prejudices, biases that are naturally going on in our world. Because so much of our behavior, as I said, is driven unconsciously, if we don’t become aware of our biases and when they show up, then we’re just going to operate blindly and just make assumptions, make generalizations, delete information, distort information. We’re going to do all that stuff. I list, I think, about 30 of them in the book, the the key ones. So for me, it’s being able to get to to understand that psychology piece. And it’s a matter of just… I’ve listed a lot of them and thought, I think I even said it, you’re probably bored to death reading through these, but actually, I prefer to know than not know. And if you know these and you read through them, then you’ll recognize the ones that show up with you. You might have catastrophizing.
[00:41:25.360] – Speaker 1
Oh, my goodness me. Everything’s going to fall apart. Well, actually, we know that over 90% of the things that we stress and worry about will never actually happen. If they do happen, we actually learn something along the way, and we tend to deal with it much better than we think. It’s that thing. It’s just knowing that there are all these biases, there are all these limited thinking errors. You can Google them, too, because you’ll find them on Google. But you need to find the ones that resonate with you, but the most common ones are making assumptions. Without being curious, I’m assuming based on my past experience and my past story, this is what’s going on. Generalization. Well, everybody does that. Well, maybe Why not? Do they? Really? Deleting information. Oh, nobody loves me. Really? Nobody? And distorting information because of the way that we all uniquely operate in the world. Because we We all have our own unique map, and we need to realize when we’re living in truth and trying to strive to get to that truth or whether we’re living in the fiction of our story.
[00:42:43.350] – Speaker 2
I’m trying to literally furiously scribble notes as you’re talking because there’s been so many incredible words of wisdom and tips and tools for parents. As you think about this idea of coming alongside young people in this journey they’re on, is there anything that you’d love to share that maybe we’ve missed to encourage parents with before we wrap up the conversation?
[00:43:12.700] – Speaker 1
Don’t compare yourself with other parents. You’re all on your own journey, and we never really know what’s happening behind someone else’s door. Just take responsibility for who you are and nurture them as much as you can. Treat them in a way that you’d want to be treated. I think that’s a general goal for life. Don’t be frightened to show up and run your own race. What’s really interesting is when you’re genuinely an authentic yourself and you’re not trying to be someone else. We create more genuine relationships, and they help us support to find our tribe a lot quicker. And courage is a really, really attractive behavior. And it inspires others when we’re courageous. So don’t blindly follow others and think, Oh, I’m not good enough. Reach out if you’re struggling. It’s not a failure. It’s one of the most important things as a leader to be able to say, I need help. It’s about working together. There’s a reason why community is such a huge, the important thing to us as humans. We’re not supposed to operate alone. I always say, No man is an island. So remember, you don’t have to struggle alone. And you can bet your bottom dollar.
[00:44:41.010] – Speaker 1
If you’re experiencing something with your child, there’ll be someone else on the planet that is, too. And two heads are often better than one. And I feel when you create the environment where you’re not forcing them to be at odds with who they are in order to fill some societies of expectations of what success looks like. I want them to be a doctor, I want them to be a lawyer, I want them… Be careful what you wish for because those professions have some of the highest suicide rates than any of us. You corrode your soul when you go on a path that is the opposite of what you are. And you should not want to wish that for them. It’s much more about them feeling you believe in them and their capabilities and celebrating what makes them unique and celebrating them to be able to be themselves because we’re all unique. I think That’s the gracious gift that you can give as a parent.
[00:45:49.280] – Speaker 2
That’s great. As I’ve been listening to that encouragement, I can’t help but thinking about, you started by saying as parents, not comparing ourselves. While that is so good for us and our own journey, it’s also modeling what we’re hoping our kids to not do as well. I think that’s the one thing I continue to pick up from these type of conversations is everything we hope for in our kids and in them learning to thrive in life, it starts with us. And how do we model some of these things in our own lives? And also, as I’ve been listening, I’ve seen this thread of how we enter in and ask questions to get to know where a young person is at, what they’re wrestling with, rather than just making up what we think is actually happening, we enter in. And what better way to develop relationships than to start from this position of curious? It’s that famous saying, right? Or a phrase that people often use. It’s more beneficial to seek to understand than to seek to be understood. I think parenting is a lot of like, we want to be understood because we know the way to go.
[00:47:13.520] – Speaker 2
I think if we can switch that and seek to understand where our kids are at and what they’re wrestling with. I think even that exercise of entering in that way with curiosity and seeking to understand changes the nature of the relationship and allows us to show up in a different disposition and provide different things than if we just come in and tell kids what’s what and what they need to do. I think you’ve really highlighted that in a different way for me, and it’s been really encouraging to hear so much I know you were just scratching the surface of all the things that you do and the work that you provide and some of the tools that you have. I’d love to direct our listeners to your website. It’s teenreconnect. Com. There are many things that they can find on there. Again, I’m sure so many of them are rushing out to purchase your book as we’re listening to this, Understanding Teen Stress and Anxiety. Any other resources or suggestions for them as they go and navigate your website or other tips or resource places for them to go? I see you have some videos on there that they can watch that really help with the positive cycle video and what a negative cycle is all about.
[00:48:28.710] – Speaker 2
So any other suggestions is where parents can go if they want to learn more?
[00:48:32.450] – Speaker 1
Definitely the website www. Teamreconnect. Com/emreodonnell. The book is Understanding Teen Stress and Anxiety: A Parents Guide to Building Love and Connection, and you can get it on Amazon worldwide. What I can do, if we can slot this in at a later point, is I can send you some links. I don’t know if you put them up on a website or what.
[00:48:56.130] – Speaker 2
We can do that.
[00:48:57.160] – Speaker 1
When I wrote the book, the subject of addiction is huge. And so I had some extra and I thought, Well, I really want that out in the world, too. So I can send you some links to that. And also understanding teenage sleep, because our sleep changes And teenagers are often accused of being lazy. Actually, they’re not. They just sleep later in the evening, and that’s why they want to wake up later. So if that’s possible for you to slot that in, that would be brilliant.
[00:49:31.150] – Speaker 2
It’s great. We will do that. Emer, thank you so much for the work that you’re doing and how you’re helping parents and young people now across the world as we talk to you from the other side of the sea. So thank you so much for all you do and for what an enriching conversation was today. Really appreciate you and the work you’re doing.
[00:49:49.240] – Speaker 1
And thank you so much, Chris. And the fact that you’ve touched the hearts of over 30,000 children a year is just phenomenal. So well done you and to all the team that you have there.
