Podcast: Teens and Trust Over the last few weeks, one of the consistent themes that has come up with my coaching clients is trust. The details are different, but the story is the same. Their child has done something that they didn’t expect and now they feel betrayed and start questioning everything else their child is doing. They feel like they have lost control of the situation and they are filled with worry and fear. Each time they say some version of: “I just want to be able to trust them again.” And while it sounds so nice and logical to want to trust your child, it is actually this very thought that is causing them so much pain and frustration in their relationship with their teen. Today we are going to talk about what trust is and how trust affects our relationships with our teens. There are so many wonderful definitions of trust. A simple one that I love is “confident hope”. Doesn’t that sound so nice. Another is “to rely on the truthfulness or accuracy of something”. One that I learned years ago from Jody Moore that resonated with me is “a belief that the outward expression of someone is consistent with who they really are inside”. But I found another definition that I think gives us a better picture of trust as it relates to our teenagers. “Firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability or strength of someone or something.” More simply put, when we trust someone, we firmly believe that they have the ability and strength to do what we expect them to do, and can be relied on to do it By this definition, our trust has three main elements: 1. Our expectations of what they will do 2. Belief in the person’s ability and strength to do it 3. Belief that they can be relied on to do it Each of these elements plays a crucial role in trust so I want to dive in to each one a little more. First, our expectations: Our expectations for what our teens will do come from a variety of sources: 1. What they have said they will do 2. An assumption based on what they have done in the past 3. What we want them to do 4. What we think they should do 5. What we have told them to do Sometimes our expectations come from just one of these sources and sometimes from a combination of these sources. Think about something you trust your child to do. Why do you expect them to do it? Have you actually had a conversation about it? Have you told them your expectation? Have they committed to doing it? Understanding where your expectation is coming from is a key to determining whether this is an instance where trust is even appropriate. You don’t ask your neighbor to water your plants while you are out of town and trust them to do it if they have not said they would…even if they have done it in the past. You don’t trust a baby who is just learning how to crawl not to pick small objects up off the ground and put them in their mouth even though you have told them not to because it is a choking hazard You are going to end up disappointed if you trust your child to behave how you want them to behave, without considering how they have committed to behaving or how they are capable of behaving. The next element of trust we want to consider is their strength and ability: The human brain is extremely complex and I am not a brain expert, but for the sake of better understanding our teen’s strength and ability, we need to understand what is going on inside their brain. To keep this as simple as possible, we are going to talk about two different parts of the brain: The amygdala – or what we are going to call the lower brain – is the part of our brain responsible for fight or flight, it activates automatically and immediately to keep us alive. It is the part of our brain that looks for danger and pleasure and acts on impulse, emotion and instinct. The prefrontal cortex – what we are going to call the higher brain - is the part of our brain responsible for planning and reasoning. It is where we can weigh the benefits and drawbacks of a decision and make choices that will be best for us in the long run even if they aren’t the most fun or exciting right now. Both parts of our brain are very important and we need both to survive and thrive. One way to think about these two different parts of our brain is that the lower brain is like a barking dog and the upper brain is like a wise old owl. When the dog senses danger or sees something it wants to do, it starts barking loudly. The owl has more perspective. It can see more than the dog from its perch in the tree, but when the dog is barking you can’t hear the owl. Teenagers’ brains are still developing. The prefrontal cortex (the higher brain) is the last part of the brain to develop and that process continues into early adulthood. Because of this, teens often rely on their amygdala (the lower brain) to make decisions. It is as if the dog is fully grown, but the owl is just a baby bird and when that dog is barking, the owl gets scared and flies away. It is important to remember that our teens are still learning. While they may logically know what they want to do and what is best for them, they don’t always have the strength or ability to do it. Your teen likely isn’t breaking your trust because they want to hurt you or they don’t care or they aren’t committed to doing what they said they would. The dog is just barking so loudly with urges and impulses and emotions that the owl leaves and they are left to chase whatever the dog wants. Third, their reliability I like to think about reliability as consistency. A person who consistently behaves in a way that you can predict. Someone who consistently follows through and does what they say they will do is reliable. Someone who always responds to your text messages is reliable. Someone who yells every time you talk about politics is reliable. Someone who is 15 minutes late to everything is reliable. In all of these examples, you know exactly what you can expect from that person because they consistently behave that way. As a general rule, teenagers aren’t known for being consistent. With the rollercoaster of emotions and impulses and hormones and constant change they are experiencing, it is difficult for them to behave consistently. This is why we joke as parents about walking on eggshells because you never know whether saying “good morning” to your teen will be met with a smile, complete indifference or flaming rage. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not telling you that you should never expect your child to do anything, I just want you to understand that if your teen is inconsistent, they are developmentally right on track. You can save yourself so much frustration when you stop expecting them to behave consistently. The best way to teach your teen how to be reliable and consistent, is to model that behavior for them. When you consistently love them and seek their best interest…regardless of the way they are acting, they will learn how to be reliable through your example. Each time someone tells me that they want to be able to trust their child, I wonder if that is really true. If someone has shown you that they aren’t reliable, why would you want to trust them? It seems like a recipe for disappointment to me. But we have learned throughout our lives that good relationships are built on trust, so we think that we can’t have a good relationship with someone unless we can trust them. And yet, if you really think about it, the better someone is at lying to us, the more we trust them. We certainly don’t want our teens to get better at lying to us and making us think they are meeting our expectations when they really aren’t, just so that we can trust them more. Maybe trust isn’t what we want with our teens. Or maybe we just need to remember that trusting our teens is a process. Think about a baby learning how to walk. You trust that baby will learn how to walk, but you don’t expect them to do it the first time they try. If you never let go of their hand and let them take a step without you, they will never learn to walk. If you catch them every time they lose their balance and fall, they will never be motivated to avoid the pain of falling and learn how to balance. You have to trust them to take the step, knowing that they will probably fall. You have to trust them to be strong enough to get back up and try again. You have to help them practice and offer them support as they are learning. You don’t let them practice by the stairs where a fall could result in serious harm…you start by practicing in the middle of a big open space where there is minimal danger. You have to encourage them and love them and cheer them on whether they fall or whether they take those first steps. If you want to develop trust with your teen, you have to be willing to know the truth about what they really want…even if it is different from what you want for them. You have to trust that your teen will develop the ability and strength to not just do what you want them to, but to do what is best for THEM. But just like learning how to walk, it will take time. Start developing trust in safe situations that don’t have lasting consequences. Trust them to fall and get back up. They will need to practice over and over again. They will need your support and encouragement and guidance, but ultimately they will need you to trust them to do things on their own. You don’t have to trust your teen to have a great relationship with them. In fact, because your teen’s brain is still developing and because the teen years are filled with inconsistency, it makes total sense not to fully trust them…yet. Manage your expectations, guide and support them as they build their strength and abilities and show them what it means to be reliable by showing up and loving them through it all. Next month in my ENJOY Coaching Community, we are learning all about relationships and going even deeper into trust and why it is so important to us as humans. Whether you have a difficult teen, frustrations with your spouse or drama with your mother-in-law, this month in ENJOY will give you the tools you need to transform any relationship in your life. In addition to the relationships workshop and tools, you will get help with your specific challenges and access to all of the recordings of past workshops and mini-classes inside ENJOY. Registration is open now for about a week and the link to register is in the show notes (https://client.jenbelltate.com/membership). Can’t wait to see you inside and help you transform the relationships in your life!
