How To Use ACT To Help Adolescents Thrive W/ Dr. Hayes

How do we help our teenagers thrive? World-renown ACT expert Louise Hayes discusses how parents, caregivers, and educators can help teens discover their values, navigate friendships, take healthy risks, and manage technology. Dr. Hayes applies her DNA-V model from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as a guide we can use in supporting teens to navigate their own path to adulthood.

Transcript

Welcome back,

I'm Dr.

Diana Hill.

This show is about wise effort,

Helping you put your energy in the places that matter most to you,

Savor the good of your life along the way,

And hopefully be of benefit to others.

And when we talk about wise effort,

That is definitely something that you need if you are a parent or caregiver or teacher who works with teenagers.

It's a real treat today to have Dr.

Louise Hayes on the show.

Dr.

Hayes is a clinical psychologist,

Author,

International speaker,

And educator.

She is a fellow and past president of the Association of Contextual Behavioral Science,

And she currently holds a position as an adjunct senior research fellow at La Trobe University.

Together with Joseph Sirochi,

Dr.

Hayes developed the DNAV model,

Which is a leading acceptance and commitment therapy model,

And it sparked international studies.

She's the co-author of numerous books,

Including What Makes You Stronger,

Get Out of Your Mind into Your Life for Teenagers,

And Your Life Your Way,

As well as a book for practitioners called The Thriving Adolescent.

This is a wisdom episode.

As you will learn,

Dr.

Hayes is incredibly wise.

We're going to explore everything from how do you work with a teenager that feels left out,

How to support teenagers in taking risks.

What do you do if you have a teenager that tells you very little about their life?

How do you help them open up?

And how do you help teenagers explore their values?

Stay tuned to the end because we will also talk about technology and teenagers.

And throughout,

She's going to weave through these concepts of the DNAV model.

D,

Your discoverer,

Going out and exploring and discovering the world.

N,

Your noticer,

Being able to make contact with what's happening in your body and around you.

A,

Your advisor,

Which may be giving you helpful or not so helpful advice.

And then finally,

V,

Your values,

Helping you identify what matters to you and how you want to show up.

So she'll be weaving this DNAV model throughout our conversation together.

And I think you'll find that if you have a teenager or you work with teenagers,

The messages that Dr.

Hayes offers us are very comforting,

Encouraging,

And give you a little bit of direction as they did for me.

And please share this episode with somebody that has a teenager.

I think it'll help them out as well.

And as we continue to do these skill building and real play and wisdom episodes,

I hope that it gives back to you as well.

Alrighty,

Onto my conversation with Dr.

Louise Hayes.

Well,

Good morning,

Louise Hayes.

Hello,

Diana.

It's lovely to meet you online.

Meet you online.

We did a little pause before starting and I'm hearing all the birds.

Is that you or is that me?

Well,

I don't know.

It could be me.

It could be me.

But it could be you too.

It could be you too.

Yeah.

They sound like morning birds in Australia.

Where are you?

I'm in the bush.

Yeah.

Well,

What we call the bush.

I think you call it a forest.

Yeah.

But yeah,

I'm lucky enough to live in a very,

Very small area,

A small town,

Right on the edge of the forest.

I can't turn the birds off.

You can't.

Please don't.

Oh,

No.

I was just going to say that.

I was just going to say that.

Yeah.

I can't turn the birds off.

You can't.

Please don't.

Oh,

No.

I was just in Anaheim this past weekend and there was not a bird to be found.

I was like,

I don't even know where a bird would land.

If you were a bird and you lived here,

Maybe a few palm trees.

But yeah,

It's good to hear your birds all the way in the bush of Australia.

Yeah.

I feel like I'm very fortunate to live here.

It's a very small town.

Mine has about 2,

000 people,

So it's very little.

Oh,

My gosh.

Oh,

My gosh.

Everyone knows everyone's business in that town.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Good.

You asked about what we could talk about and I just feel such a privilege to talk to you because you've made such big strides in the field of psychology and ACT,

Your main leader in shaping the course of ACT research and development.

You also have made such an impact in terms of the work around teens.

Teenagers are struggling right now across our globe and parents of teens,

Caregivers of teens,

Aunties and uncles of teens are a little bit don't know what to do.

This may be just sort of not only current times,

I think this is just in general.

This teenage entity in this time of identity development and emotion,

Big emotions and changing brains and bodies.

I'm hoping to dive a bit into some of the questions that we have about our teenagers and particularly using your model,

This DNAV model.

This morning I sent a text out to this woman's group that I have.

We're called the Mandala Mamas because we meet up in nature in different places and we create mandalas together,

But most of the folks are about my age range and most of the folks have teens at this point in time.

And I just said,

Hey,

I'm talking to a teen expert today.

And they sent in these long,

Long,

Long,

Like 10 points of questions.

And I wanted to read some of them to you because I actually think it'd be good to give you some real life,

Like this is what somebody people are struggling with.

And then you apply your model to it to see how it would work.

Absolutely.

Let's do that.

One question is what is your advice to teens who have friends who might not acknowledge them at school?

At school,

They're doing this sort of hierarchical group status kind of thing and they're being left out.

And how would you work with a teenager that's feeling deeply left out or not part of a group?

Well,

That's a great question and such a common one.

I think almost every team that I work with feels left out.

And I often talk about this when I do my training and work with parents and professionals too,

Is that what we need to do is we need to really start to talk about this,

The way that our social lives influence how we feel and that it happens to everybody.

Not to dismiss it,

Because to a teenager,

If you say,

Well,

That's normal,

It happens to everybody,

They'll say,

You're not listening to me.

This is just me that feels this.

But if we first step back and think how often,

Even at our age,

We go to a party and feel like I'm different,

I don't belong here,

Everyone else looks like they belong and I don't.

Does that ever happen to you,

Diana?

Every party I attend.

Right.

Me too.

Me too.

So I tend to avoid them.

Right.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And school is like a big party,

Right?

Yeah.

School is like a big party.

So the first thing is we don't really acknowledge and talk about how this is part of life pretty much for everyone.

So we are often judging ourselves and feel like we don't belong.

We look inside ourselves at what's wrong with us.

And there's not a lot of conversations that say,

Hey,

This is everyone.

Everyone's worried about whether they fit in or whether they belong.

And so there's not a lot of modeling for teenagers around that.

So the first thing I think is to kind of create a space where we have conversations,

Where I would talk to my clients and my own now adult sons all of the time about how difficult it was for me to socialize.

And how much I say,

I often say,

I still say to my adult sons,

I never want to go anywhere and I never want to do anything,

Never.

But then I go and I evaluate it afterwards.

And I almost always find out that it wasn't as bad as what I thought.

And that I even enjoyed it.

But if I listen to my own inner voice,

I will often never go anywhere.

So that's that first thing is creating a dialogue in the family about how you feel,

About what it's like to socialize and to kind of create it in schools and classrooms as well.

And to really get out of this fake image that everyone's having a great time except you.

So I have a question about the inner voice,

Because it seems like there's many inner voices.

There's that inner voice that's saying,

I don't want to go.

And then sometimes we're encouraging our teens to listen to the other inner voice,

Which may be,

I don't want to go.

But one of them is the anxiety inner voice.

And the other is the,

It's not right for me.

I shouldn't put myself in that position.

There's somebody there that's harmful to me,

Or I don't want to go because I don't want to be exposed to drugs and alcohol.

I don't want to have to deal with that or whatever.

How do we help our teens distinguish that?

Start to understand which voice is which.

And when do you not listen to it,

Disregard it,

And when do you know it's a healthier voice?

So in the model that we created with Joseph Ciarochi that we call DNAV,

DNAV we think of as your four abilities,

Discover,

Notice,

Give yourself advice,

And value things.

They're the four abilities.

Every human has these four abilities that cover everything that happens to you.

And they occur in two contexts that we never want to forget,

The social context and your self context.

Who you are in the relation you have with yourself and other people in the relation you have with them.

But let's just go with the A.

The A stands for your advisor.

And it's a metaphor that we use to help adults and young people understand how we talk to ourselves.

And so the reason we called it your advisor is because we wanted to create this sense that this internal dialogue you have,

It's like giving yourself advice.

If you're a good principal or a good president,

You take advice and you weigh it up and you make decisions about which is good advice and which is not good advice.

And that's kind of exactly what goes on inside our heads.

So if you watch the way your thinking unfolds,

It's almost always,

What could go wrong in my life?

Can I pay my bills?

Or if you're a kid,

Will I pass my tests?

And social danger,

Do people love me?

Do people care for me?

Do I belong?

Now that happens to us,

But in the teenage years,

That is switched on loud.

Why?

Because the developmental task in the teenage years is to move beyond your family.

The task in adolescence is to take risks.

It's actually an evolutionary adaptation,

To take risks.

And those risks are things like going out and developing more social relationships,

Becoming independent,

Practicing adulting,

If you want to put it like that.

And so our advisor is going to be switched on really loud.

What do I do if I made a mistake there?

Oh my goodness,

That thing I said yesterday.

And in this developmental period,

It's really profound and loud,

This voice.

And so what we want to do and what we try to do is help young people understand firstly what it's for,

To protect you,

To keep you safe.

When you're saying,

I don't want to go to that party,

Or I don't want to go to school,

To protect you and to keep you safe.

And the second thing is,

You don't always have to listen.

Sometimes that advice is just like your mum saying,

Don't go there,

Don't go there.

And you say,

Well,

I want to go there,

Mum,

That's what I want to do.

And so it's about balancing that.

And sometimes there's another part,

Not listening to your advisor at all,

But stepping into the place of experience,

Trying it and seeing what happens,

And then using your experience to teach you,

Because we kind of teach our inner voice.

Like I said,

I never want to go to a party.

And every time I go to a party,

I almost always enjoy it.

So over the years,

I've developed the capacity to say,

All right,

It's just me,

I never want to go anywhere.

I'm staying home.

When I go,

I enjoy it.

Adolescents don't have that experience yet.

So you want to teach them the experience piece too.

There's a line from Pema Chodron that I love,

That I remind myself of,

Which is,

You can complain about the rain,

Or you can get wet.

Exactly.

And sometimes you just need to get wet.

Stop complaining about it.

Don't you just love Pema Chodron?

And so much of adolescence is being wet all the time.

I mean,

Just like constantly getting wet,

And it's so excruciating.

And that's what's excruciating as a parent to watch,

Or a caregiver to watch,

Because we have our own advisor,

Which is,

Protect my kid from pain.

They're going on this overnight with friends,

And they're having such a hard time,

And they're maybe texting their parent,

Or they're going on a school trip,

And they come back,

And they feel like it's so hard.

When do we intervene,

Or how do we intervene?

So part of it is teaching them about this advisor voice inside their own head.

But yeah,

What are the interventions that a parent could do as they're watching their kids struggle with the weakness of it all?

You're right on the money there,

Diana.

One of the issues that we have is parent advisors are really loud.

Yeah.

I used to do this intervention where I would ask parents to write on a piece of paper the critical self-statement that they gave themselves about their parenting,

And it is the meanest of things that you will ever see.

This is my fault.

I'm screwing up my child.

Everybody else can do this better than me.

I'm a terrible mom.

And why is that,

If you think about it?

It's because your own advisor is trying to protect you and your life,

And your children are often more important than you.

In terms of a survival thing and the way we emotionally connect with our children,

You know we'll fight off lions to protect our children.

And so that makes sense that your advisor is going to get really loud.

If anything happens to my kid,

It's my fault.

I messed it up.

We really go into this dark place.

So understanding what your advisor is doing is really helpful because there's also the other task that we have,

And that is to let our children grow,

We need to quieten our own voice and sometimes let them do things that are hard and let them learn how to cope with failure.

And that's really hard.

But we don't pull the rug out from underneath them and step away.

We are the safe place,

The solid boundary,

The place where they can cry to us and put their arms around us and say,

Mom,

That was terrible.

We're the solid place,

The place they can always return to,

The foundation.

And so sometimes that's the only thing we can be,

Is the one who listens and lets them cry and says,

I'm hearing you.

Listen to the emotion.

I always say to parents,

Respond to the emotion,

But don't problem solve it.

Put your advisor down.

Respond to the emotion.

Don't problem solve for them.

Ask them,

Do you need me to do something?

If they say no,

Respect that.

Yeah,

I would say that for the parents,

Oftentimes their children will show them the worst of the worst because they feel the safest with them.

So the moms will get only the bad stuff,

Only the terrible stuff and the worst of the worst.

And I would consider that a huge compliment.

That's the biggest compliment because it means that your child feels safe to bring that to you.

And then there's the other flip side of things,

Which is more my experiences where I get nothing.

I get zero.

I get,

I'm fine.

You go on this,

My son just got back from a five-day biking trip where they were tenting with other kids.

They were climbing up mountains.

There was girls there.

I'm sure there was so much happening.

And he comes back and like,

How was it?

Fine.

Good.

Fine.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I've got two sons,

Diana,

And I've got one of each.

Yeah.

One who I knew everything that was going on.

And the other one,

I would often say,

I wouldn't know if he was hit by a car unless I saw the tire marks.

Yeah.

I wouldn't know either.

There's that side of things too.

There's the parents that feel overwhelmed by all of their children's stuff.

And then there's the parents that feel like they're in the dark with their teens.

And the way that I deal with that distress,

If I'm not being psychologically flexible,

Is I'm trying to pull it out of him where he just gets more and more,

He's like a mule feet on the ground.

Yeah.

And then you get less and less.

Yeah.

I get less and less.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so that's kind of easier in some ways,

As long as we're prepared to respond to their emotion and not fix it for them and recognize,

Just as you recognize,

That sometimes you have the kind of young person who's going to tell you everything and you're going to get the worst of the worst.

And isn't that great that you get that,

As long as you don't run off to fix it?

And you say,

What do you want me to do?

But for the silent ones,

The ones that are internal,

Who are processing it all inside,

And they say to you,

I'm fine.

And you can see they're not fine.

That's more of a challenge for me and my advisor,

And maybe you,

Diana,

And yours.

And what I say to parents is find a way to be with them and really to shut up.

So with my son who was like that,

I would try hard to do things together,

To just be together.

And usually I would find that the conversation,

I would find things out if I didn't ask any questions,

If I didn't ask any questions.

So we would drive places.

It's good if they're learning to drive,

Drive places.

Or I would watch terrible episodes of shows I was not interested in because I was watching it with him,

Or sit on the sofa while he was gaming and maybe get a few words out here and there.

And I found out,

And I talked to my parents about this too,

If you say less,

You usually get more with those kind of kids.

And doing things is better than sitting opposite them and asking a question,

Walking the dog.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's where I'm trying to insert myself.

My insert now is homework.

I can be useful.

I can help you make flashcards and I can read the chapter to you while you make the flashcards.

And then sometimes that goes off into conversation where he'll share a little bit.

But that's a good point.

Absolutely.

A lot of it is staying the course and staying steady and being there without intervening is what I'm hearing in that.

Absolutely.

Well,

I just had one more thing that I often tell parents about because it's really kind of sticks in their mind.

So I did my PhD on adolescents who were struggling in their life.

And as part of that,

I interviewed a whole bunch of adolescents and I asked them,

How many questions is it okay for your parents to ask you at the end of a school day?

What do you think the answer was?

One.

No,

It's two.

Two.

Okay.

It's two.

Okay.

They're okay with two.

So what I say to parents is make your two questions useful and really important for you to know.

Don't make it,

Did you eat your lunch?

Yeah.

And make it,

If your child responds to open questions,

Then you can make it an open-ended question.

Did anything interesting happen today?

Not all young people will respond to open-ended questions,

But just try to make your two important and then the rest of them do exactly what you're doing.

Insert yourself and tell your advisor to stop asking questions,

Zip your lip,

Be present.

And when they start to talk,

Try to be quieter.

Great.

Okay.

Okay.

So we have the advisor,

Which is the A in the DNA V,

And there's some other letters on that acronym that could apply to parents and then also apply to supporting teenagers.

Maybe I could give you another problem and you could give me a letter to go with that problem.

Another problem had to do,

I think this is a parent of a girl,

Which had to do with sexuality.

Sexuality versus sexualization.

Okay.

So this one kind of comes up,

I noticed a big difference between seventh and eighth grade.

My son's in eighth grade now,

Where all of a sudden in eighth grade,

There's just a lot more expression of sexuality.

There's a lot more bodies being revealed.

There's a lot more experimentation and wanting to encourage that exploration,

Experimentation,

All of that.

That's very natural at that age.

And then there's also the,

I remember being in eighth grade and I would wear my little tiny top underneath the flannel.

I'd button up the whole flannel,

Leave the house and then whip that thing off and go hang out with 20 year olds.

This is our fear as parents.

So how do we support that in terms of also,

We talked about teenagers with problems,

Right?

Because there's also a safety issue in there and yeah,

Support our children,

Healthy exploration of their sexuality while also helping them stay safe in the world.

Okay.

Yeah.

It's scary.

It is scary when you watch your young person doing all these things.

So we're going to talk about two things.

I'll talk about the discoverer for a moment.

The discoverer is a word that we use to describe creating a greater sense of agency and learning how to do things in the world.

It's an evolutionary adaptation that we humans have to learn how to be in the world,

To manage the physicality of the world,

To do things and to develop agency in a sense of independence through our experiences.

In the teenage years,

One of the things that happens,

And this is across the species.

It's really cool when you look at it.

Across the species,

What you see is a risk-taking,

Love of novelty and sensation-seeking.

Mice,

Dogs,

Humans,

Right?

And that means we have some kind of evolutionary adaptation going on.

In humans,

There is the biological aspect,

There's the increasing sexuality and the wanting to understand that and explore that,

That can be scary as a parent.

That's risk-taking.

But I think it's more important to think that the biggest risk-taking that we see in young people is practicing being an adult.

And that includes the relationships and the sexuality and all of those things,

Right?

And we want to help young people take risks in an adaptive way.

So adaptive means that you learn and grow and thrive.

And you might flip it over to maladaptive,

Which hurts you in the long run,

Let's say taking drugs or something like that.

So what we want to do is we want to find a way to help our young people take risks that help them learn and grow.

And when they make a mistake and they did stand up and they then fall down,

We want to be the safety net underneath that.

Let me just get,

So that's the discovery piece,

But let me talk about that safety net for a moment.

From all of my research across the years and way,

Way back to my PhD,

The number one thing that gets an adolescent through the adolescent period is the relationship they have with adults around them,

Especially their parents.

That's the number one thing,

Right?

That's the number one thing.

And so all of the groundwork that you've laid down in the early years,

That's there.

You can't see it because they're telling you they hate you and pushing the boundaries and being like,

Nothing happened today,

Doing all that.

But the relationship they have with you is the foundation.

And so you're the safe place.

And you want to be the place that they return to and that they take those risks and come back to.

And it's scary.

And as part of that safe place is having a framework of family rules.

You know,

They already know what you expect.

You've got a 14-year-old,

Diana.

14?

Do you think your 14-year-old already knows what you expect without you saying it?

Yes.

Yeah.

So there's a place of kind of understanding that we already have covered the relationship that's there.

Continue to be that relationship in the stable place.

Let them take risks.

You won't always approve of the risks,

But make sure the risks are adaptive,

That they're helping them learn and grow.

And then have a certain amount of clear rules and guidelines for the things that are not adaptive.

So the other part of it,

The research shows the really important thing is to know where they are and who they're with.

You don't need to know all the other details,

What did you talk about and all that stuff,

But where they are and who they're with is pretty important.

And should parents intervene if where they are or who they're with is not something they feel is safe?

Yes.

So you know somebody's house,

But they don't know the other parent.

Okay.

So,

Yeah.

Yes.

And adolescents will say,

You're the worst parent.

Everybody else is allowed to go.

Why are you the only one?

And often that's not actually the case.

Sometimes it is,

But often it's not the case.

So the other thing is parents forming their own social network as well.

Parents talking with each other.

What are you doing about the party?

What do you think about this?

Kids will try really hard to keep their parents out of it.

And they'll say things like,

Everyone else is allowed to go.

You're the worst parent.

You're the only one who's doing this and everybody else is allowed to.

But if you're checking with other parents in the social group,

You'll find that's not really the case.

So give them some rope,

Allow them to take some risks.

Manage your own difficult emotions and your advisor around that.

Let them take some risks and then recognize you're the safe place and be that safe place so they can come and talk to you about the mistakes that they make.

That would be cool,

Wouldn't it?

If you could go and talk to your parents about the mistake you made and they don't jump into problem solving and say,

Well,

Why didn't you do this?

And then be the parent,

Have some clear,

Not too many,

Not more than a handful,

And the most important,

Where they are and who they're with.

And talk to each other.

Where do values come in?

Because one of the things that I learned from you a long time ago was that adolescent and teenager values are still developing.

There's a different approach to values with teens than it is with adults.

I mean,

I still feel like mine are still developing.

All of ours are still developing,

Especially during adolescence.

And that is something that I think,

Gosh,

Every parent would want for their kids.

We'd want them to have a sense of an inner compass that when they go to college or they go to a trade school or whatever they do with their life,

That they can use that compass as a guide no matter where they are.

And then sometimes pursuing those values or that compass also has social consequences.

That was actually another one of the questions that one of my friends wrote is like,

What if your kid is starting to figure out what their values are and they're different from what other teenagers' values are?

So I always think about values with young people as something that is not necessarily present in the way we in the ACT community talk about values.

The discovery piece is important here.

That discovery is about trying things,

Standing up and falling down and making mistakes.

And then from those mistakes,

You learn what you care about.

And you hope that you've got all of the foundations in place so that your young person,

Their mistakes are not so big that you can't help them pick up the pieces.

Remember all the things you tried when you're a teenager,

Diana,

A day you think,

What was I doing?

Well,

You know what?

I actually,

No.

That was actually my whole teenage development was totally thrown off because I was anorexic and I was in treatment most of my teenage years.

So I actually missed out on the discovery piece.

And I see the implications of that now as an adult because I didn't do all that stuff.

Yeah.

Mistakes would have been really hard.

Yeah.

How important it is to go to a party and try this thing and do that thing.

I didn't do any of that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's interesting.

I wish I could say,

Actually,

Some of my most well-rounded adults that I know say that all the things that they did in their teenage years makes them super healthy now.

Well,

Yes.

But we all catch up.

Yeah.

We all learn trial and error eventually.

Right.

And that's what your adult years.

So the first thing is with young people,

Values is,

The way we use values in the ACT community is it begins with being able to say,

I care about this.

Now you can't say,

I care about this until you've had some experiences and decided what you actually care about.

I mean,

You can say what your parents have taught you or what you think you should say.

Like I get lots of young people who say,

Oh,

I care about my friends and I care about my family.

And that is true.

But sometimes I can hear that they're telling me that because that's what they think they should care about.

That's what the verbal community tells them they should care about.

And so thinking about how you develop that language to say,

I want to stand for this.

This is the kind of person I want to be.

You get that through practice.

So the first thing is we want to help people try some things that are not too risky or risky in a way that just teaches you.

And we want to help them do a lot of that.

And to not be too hard on themselves when they make mistakes,

To understand that's the process of growth and learning.

So the discoverer is out there taking the risks,

Making the mistakes,

Learning from them.

And that's informing the values.

That's sort of like,

That's the fertilizer for the values or that's how the values grow is through the discovery process.

And then the advisor in there is like,

What advice are you taking or not taking during that discovery period?

Exactly.

Well,

Your advisor changes depending on how you step into this discovery place.

It teaches your advisor,

Oh,

It's okay.

I always hate parties before I go,

But I like them afterwards.

Those kind of things.

You actually change your advice.

And that share that you just,

Your own experience of adolescence and what you've shared is really important and really useful that you're able to talk about that now.

Because you would have gone through the process of learning how to make mistakes and learning how to try things that were scary.

It just may not have looked as loud as some of the other people talking about their own adolescence.

And it may have been later,

A little after anorexia.

Yeah,

I did a lot of it in my 30s.

I did a lot of it in graduate school.

I mean,

It's a hard time to learn some of those lessons,

But also helpful.

We talk about adults being discoverers too.

I think it's really important that adults don't dampen that down,

That we continue to learn and grow by making mistakes and trying new things.

So the first thing is,

I make no assumptions that young people have a sense of what they value.

I think there's a heartfelt sense of what matters to them.

But being able to articulate that in words and saying,

I'm the kind of person who cares about this,

You only know that through living,

Through experience,

Through trying.

So what I do when I work with young people is try to help them practice things and try things and then build up a language,

I'm the kind of person who cares about this.

I want to be like this in the world.

This is what I care about.

So that's at the deeper level.

Then at the surface level,

We can say,

I love Taylor Swift and I care about playing this game or I care about being on my e-bike.

And that's a sense of what matters to them at the vitality level,

At the level of what you do and engage in each day.

And that helps build up values over time.

So that's one part.

The other part that I talk a lot about these days is to always think about values as me and we.

We are not ever alone.

We always need other people.

So I think we make a mistake if we just talk about what I value.

Has to be what I value and what you value,

What we value.

So for young people,

It's what they care about and what matters to them.

And also in the social context,

What their friends might care about that they connect with and what their family might care about that they connect with.

So another question about navigating their own adult relationships and then their kids have these friendships.

The kids stop being friends with each other,

Then the moms have to navigate all this adult friendship stuff and this mom is kind of secretly mad at that mom because the daughter is openly mad at the daughter.

How do you kind of stay out of that?

Be able to be differentiated enough from your kid,

But also you want to be involved in your kid's life and then it impacts your own friendships.

It is that we part of it all.

It's really hard.

It's super hard.

Yeah.

It's really hard.

We're all reading each other's texts and I don't have this problem with my boys.

I don't know why,

But maybe in a couple years I will.

I don't know.

Yeah.

There is something that you can do and that's when the noticer is really important.

So you picked the right question.

I think the noticer is the most important part of the work that I do.

I don't think it's valuing at all.

I think the value is important,

But I think the noticer is the most important part.

I think it's the most undervalued part and I know it connects a lot with the work that you do,

Diana.

So I think of the noticer as the neck down,

Our body.

It's not just saying how you feel.

It's understanding this embodied presence that we have in the world,

This ability to take in information through our bodies and to use that information and to send out information through our bodies.

Teenagers are good at that,

Sending out information through their bodies and their face too,

Of course.

I'm not excluding their face,

But sending out information that says,

Don't come near me.

I'm mad at you,

Mom,

Or I've had a bad day.

So I think of the noticing piece as the piece that we neglect as parents,

As adults,

In ourselves.

We're such a cognitive species,

Especially in our Western culture.

We're so cognitive and it's like we've forgotten all of this language,

All of this nonverbal,

Physiological way of being in the world.

And so I think if we tune into that more and get more practice,

That we can get better at dealing with these really complex situations.

So if you've got a complex situation,

Let's say two moms and two daughters,

And there's a tension going on between friendships,

It's easy to jump into the advisor and start to problem solve and think,

Hey,

This is how I'm going to sort this out.

I would instead encourage to be in the noticer space,

To be aware of your own response to that and how you feel.

Be able to take a breath and pause and be aware of what's going on inside your body and just let that be there for a little bit.

Maybe you don't need to do anything.

And you can also perspective take.

You can step into thinking about what's going on for the other person and maybe how they might be feeling.

And in our adult book,

What Makes You Stronger,

I divided noticing into the simplest of two steps,

Noticing what's going on inside you and noticing what's going on outside you.

And I wanted to make it as simple as possible because technically it is simple,

But the lived experience is really difficult.

And if you can get better at just being aware of what's going on inside you and not always immediately jumping to being reactive and being aware of what's going on outside you,

Which would include those other people and maybe not being reactive to that either,

And sometimes just letting it be,

We can get better at that.

And the reason I say the noticer is so important is because it's so profound to have something inside your body like frustration at another parent or frustration at a kid.

And to respond to that is often our problem.

It's my problem too.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

So the training and noticing some of that kind of early meditation training where you try and count 10 breaths,

All of us can probably count 10 breaths.

We just be quiet and pay attention to your breath and you count to 10.

But what's interesting with that noticer is you're counting 10 breaths,

But somewhere along the way,

The narrative starts going along and you're kind of still keeping count,

But then you're in your head and then you're like,

Oh,

I'm supposed to be counting my,

And you've still kept count,

But then you come back.

And that's also the noticer for me of the one eye in,

One eye out is,

Could I notice what's happening inside my body right now?

And then notice the narrative,

Then go back to what I'm noticing.

And then could I notice something outside of my body I could pay attention to for a minute,

Like I'm looking out a window,

Colors of the light on the tree for a minute,

But then notice the narrative that comes in.

And then could I go back to the pure experience?

And that is a really difficult task.

I could see that if you start with something simple,

You get to notice your own tendencies and then you put it to something complex,

Like your kid,

At least for me,

Can I just notice my kid?

I've been trying to see them now because what happens is every once in a while,

My teenager,

My teenager will walk into the room and I'll be like shocked because I'm like,

What happened to you?

You were six a minute ago.

You're giant and you're gangly and how did this happen?

And it's because maybe I haven't been paying so much attention along the way.

Because life's busy,

Right?

Yeah.

Life's busy.

And you've got a problem solving advisor that constantly says,

Do this.

Think of what a parent has to do.

You're really training your advisor to be constantly problem solving.

Thinking about school and education and what's going to happen with your child's future and whether you have enough milk in the fridge and who's got basketball or training and who's got ballet practice and all of those kind of things,

Or just have I got enough money to stay alive and can I put milk in the fridge,

All of those things.

And so all of that building up of the advisor when a parent often,

You don't get a chance to just be.

And it's training,

Right?

It's learning,

A learned experience.

The other part of it is,

If you think about what's really happening with noticing,

The way to hurt a parent is for their child to be hurting.

And if you think about what that means is that when you watch your child fail at something or be sad,

Just watching your child be sad is a really difficult thing for a mom or dad or a parent to do or a carer,

I'll cover them all.

It's really difficult to do.

And if you have trouble having sadness and you start to watch this process and become more skilled at noticing what's going on inside you and outside you,

If you start to notice that when your child is sad,

Maybe you get angry because you don't like being sad or because sad is not comfortable for you or because you have trauma in your background or a whole range of reasons.

And so your child is sad,

Before you know it,

You're angry.

Or a whole range of different experiences can happen.

And so there's this,

Such an intimate link between what's going on with a child and what's going on with a parent.

And if we struggle to be aware of our own feelings and to notice what's happening in our body,

Then what we find is we're reacting to it like instantly.

And so your child might be sad,

And before you know it,

You're angry and frustrated and slamming the kitchen cupboards,

But not really being aware that it's because there's this interaction between your child's emotions and yours.

So slowing the whole process down can be one of the most useful things to do.

Slowing down before you respond and being aware of,

What am I feeling?

What's happening inside me when I see my child come in the door after school or my teen come in the door after school?

And being able to own that and give yourself a bit of space before you respond.

Take a couple of breaths.

It sounds like such trite advice,

Take a couple of breaths,

But it's the most useful thing you can do.

Yeah,

You know,

Sometimes the most trite advice,

The reason why it's trite is because it's so useful.

The reason why it's been said so many times,

And it's now gotten to be so like,

Oh,

I'm kind of sick of hearing that,

Is because it's so darn useful,

That's why we keep on saying it.

So that is very true.

And these are skills that,

Gosh,

If you can start them,

If you're a listener and you're hearing this because you have little children in your life and you're like preparing for the teenage years,

Do it now.

If you have that repertoire in place earlier on,

Then it'll be practiced for the teenagers.

And it's still hard,

It's just,

It is hard to be with our own difficult feelings and notice them.

Look,

There's a fear,

Like the most important,

Not the most important thing in your life,

But it's certainly up there as one of the most important things that you care about as your child.

And there's a risk that they might be hurt or that their life might not go the way you want.

And that's hard,

It's always hard,

And you don't get to finish being a parent.

My young people are getting close to 30 now,

And I still have to watch and think,

Oh,

This is really hard.

I don't want you to be hurt.

Yeah.

Don't be hurt.

Yeah.

Well,

There's something about that that I've noticed in my own parenting,

And that when I'm bracing against them being hurt,

I also miss out on all the wonderful things about them.

If I'm in the state of looking for problems,

I'm so fixated on the putting the twisty tie on the bread that I'm missing out,

And they made their own lunch.

Isn't that great?

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And they might not make their own lunch next time because you got into them about putting the twisty tie on the bread.

Yeah.

Right.

Exactly.

Or they're having a friend issue,

And it's like,

Well,

Isn't it great they're out there in the world?

They're not in their room where a lot of teens are,

You know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so,

I think for me is what am I noticing inside of myself,

But also what am I noticing outside of myself?

And could I put my spotlight on some different things with my children than just the problems or the worries or the fears that there's a lot of beautiful things to look at about teens.

They're so creative and funny.

They're hilarious.

They are so funny.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

And yeah.

I loved having .

.

.

It wasn't always easy,

But I loved having teenagers.

I think .

.

.

And I think they get a bad rap in our culture,

The parents who are afraid.

What do I do with the teenagers?

Will I manage this?

And I'm realistic.

There are a lot of things to fear.

But you also have a young person that you can have relationships with.

You can talk about really important things.

You can listen to the stuff that they care about,

And they're so knowledgeable.

Even though they think they know everything,

They might not,

But they're so knowledgeable.

You can have these different relationships.

And if you can find a way to not notice the twisty tie on the bread,

Isn't that cool?

And that's why I think the noticer is so important,

Diana,

Because that's your advisor,

The twisty tie on the bread,

Right?

Problem solving,

That this needs to be done.

That's a problem that needs to be fixed.

Keep the bread fresh,

Right?

And with too much advisor,

Or too much talking,

We miss all those other things.

And because your teenager knows you so well,

That you might say,

Put the twisty tie on the bread,

And it might just be a thing that has to be done,

But they might see it as,

I made my lunch and you didn't even notice it,

And now you're telling me what to do,

And getting into me,

Teenage language,

Getting into me to put the twisty tie on the bread,

And you've lost the whole thing.

Yeah.

No,

It's more like,

My teenager is more like,

Oh,

She'll say that,

But she'll still put the twisty tie on the bread for me,

So I don't really care.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Different relationships.

She'll do it for me.

Different relationship.

Yeah.

But the important thing is,

Even with the best of intentions,

When you start bringing your instructions and your advisor in the game,

You can lose the relationship.

So that's why noticing can be cool.

If you just quiet down a little bit,

You get to be present with them.

One last question is,

Could you take this whole DNAV model,

The best of your ability,

And apply it to technology,

Which is the thing that social media,

Technology,

This is a big question,

But maybe it would be a good application now that we have a sense of these different parts of the DNAV model of how to help our kids with technology using this model.

Yeah.

As a parent,

I get this is a really tricky place,

Especially if you're navigating digital teens,

Is that digital technology is taking over,

And their ability to practice noticing someone else physically,

A real person,

Or being in the place of trying to develop autonomy in the world,

Is hampered by this continued language piece,

This advisor and gaming.

So that's one piece.

We're not quite ready for the,

From an evolutionary perspective,

We're not quite ready for how powerfully addictive this is.

I'm not anti-gaming.

My kids loved to game.

They both of them loved to game.

I was always the parent saying,

Turn that off,

Long enough.

And so it's powerfully addictive,

And it puts parents in a place where we have to manage the boundaries around it.

And that's hard.

So if you have younger children,

I'd say manage it early so you're not in a place where later on you're trying to backpedal.

You know,

Start out as you mean to continue is a good thing to think about.

And recognize that the dopamine hit that you get when you're on your device is so powerful that young people are not in a place where they can always manage it very well.

So the easiest way is to start out when they're younger and try to manage the devices.

If you're in the place where you have a young person who is not meeting their developmental milestones because they are addicted to it,

Because they're just inside gaming all of the time,

My suggestion is to get some help.

It's really hard.

It's really difficult.

As a parent,

Have some boundaries that you want to try to stick to.

That's really hard.

It's going to mean your young person is going to be really unpleasant because taking their phone away is like ripping out their aorta.

And so I'm not suggesting at all that you now go in and be the tough parent and take the phone away and say,

You know,

Don't do it.

But finding a way to have conversations,

Shared conversations.

Sometimes be the parent and have the rules around what is the technology allowance and what is not.

And then trying to navigate it together.

Never let go of that relationship piece that's really important.

Yeah.

I've kind of taken a cue from your co-author,

Joe Sirochi,

What makes you stronger on that one in terms of the autonomy and really including having both my sons be part of the conversation and them coming up with their creative ideas,

Which are usually more creative than mine,

And then how to navigate some of this stuff and co-creating some of the guidelines in our household.

Sort of like if your kid helps make dinner,

They're more likely to eat the dinner that they helped make or whatever.

I have found that helpful to have more buy-in in it and also helping them see that their perception of how much they're using,

This is the same as us for adults,

The perception of how much they're using is not an accurate reflection of how much they're using.

So we'll sit down and look at the data that we've collected.

That's the other thing about technology.

It collects data on everything for you,

Including how much you're on it.

Absolutely.

Wow.

This took three hours of your Saturday,

And what else could you do in three hours?

And then encouraging in-person,

Always in-person.

Yeah.

Encouraging in-person all the time so that it's balanced.

We're all with the same on our devices,

Allowing the devices,

But being balanced with it.

There's some things that can get a young person unstuck,

Like a device under the pillow.

We all have to manage.

I had to manage it.

I have to manage it too.

I noticed that every time I woke up,

The first thing I did was check my phone,

That that was my alarm clock.

So the first thing I did was looked at the time,

But then before I knew it,

I was also looking at my emails and I was looking at my text messages to see what had happened overnight.

So if you do that,

There's a recognition that your young person is doing the same thing.

It's not easy to manage.

It needs to be collaborative if you can.

And your example of sharing it and finding a way to co-create it,

And recognizing it's a problem for you too,

So we need to manage this.

That's that we value.

We need to manage this.

It's not just me being the adult,

But we need to manage it and find a way,

And then sometimes having the rules is what you need to do as a parent.

It's the heartbeat about being a parent,

Right?

Just a couple,

But some are needed.

And that's where the noticer comes in too,

In terms of noticing for ourself what it feels like when we're on it.

Our eyes,

How they feel,

Our body,

How it feels,

Our mood,

Our anxiety,

And helping our kids start to notice that too,

In the same way we could help them notice that with the food that they eat or the movement that they do on days that night.

When kids go out for big bike rides,

They're just in better moods,

And we'll point that out.

Like,

I just noticed it seems like you're really happy,

You're in a really good mood.

Is it having to do with having biked today?

So helping them make that connection.

Well,

That's a really important thing that we want to do is when they go out and do something physical,

Or go out and meet a friend,

Help them map it to language.

That was really nice,

Your example just now,

Is actually help them map it to language.

Oh,

When I went out for a bike ride,

I felt better,

Because often we miss that piece in ourselves.

I don't want to make light on the issues around technology.

It's a tough,

Tough issue,

Probably the toughest issues parents face.

So getting together and finding ways to be supportive of each other and the young people is a really important thing to do,

I think.

So the important thing is you can let them have other milestones that make them feel independent,

And give them that you're happy with.

Let them do other things that make them feel independent.

Yeah,

I know my kid goes down crazy mountain bike trails that any parent would be terrified for their child.

I'm like,

Go for it.

Well,

This has really been helpful.

Thank you for fielding some of these real-life questions.

Good.

Good.

Well,

Thank you so much for taking this time,

Louise.

Well,

We'll have to do it again with another one.

Yeah.

So thank you.

Have a wonderful rest of your day,

And thank you for taking this time.

That'll be a busy schedule.

Thanks,

Diana,

For inviting me.

It's great to talk to you.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Wise Effort Podcast.

Wise Effort is about you taking your energy and putting it in the places that matter most to you.

And when you do so,

You'll get to savor the good of your life along the way.

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only,

And it's not meant to be a substitute for mental health treatments.