Transcript
Speaker: As I watch my son and his friends go off to different colleges, about half are doing well and about half are not. Half that are not, are not going out and making friends. They're staying in their dorm room. They're really scared to make social connections. And so hopefully in the preteen and teen years, there is plenty of practice with that discomfort that we have to feel in making those connections with people who are different from us.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Positively Healthy Mom podcast where positive parenting meets wellbeing. I'm Laura Olinger, teen and young adult wellbeing coach and founder of Positively Healthy Coaching. And today I am so excited to introduce my guest, Jennifer Miller, who is an amazing woman who has just had years and years of experience, 30 years working with educators and now families. And talking about how teens learn and develop, she wrote and illustrated Confident Parent, Confident Kids, and her new book, Human Essence, which I'm excited to hear about, Igniting Courage in Our Teens and Ourselves, comes out very soon, so we'll find out about that. And so today we're going to talk about the courage habits that help parents and teens thrive.
Speaker: So Jennifer, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation and dig into how we can support our teens.
Speaker: Awesome. Okay. So what made courage the thing you wanted to focus on right now after 30 years of work in this space? As a parent of a teenager, when I was a parent of a child, i needed confidence because it's really what I lacked the most. So I was constantly searching for confidence and trying to build my skills as a parent and model the things that I wanted my my child to learn. And as he became a preteen,
Speaker: i I felt like I had built those confident skills by by working on ah on my self-awareness, my self-management, my relationship skills, responsible decision-making, all those things that kind of helped me be a better parent and and also generate those skills in him, i started to feel like I needed courage as as a preteen parent. And as he moved into the teenage years, I know that I just longed for courage. Teenagers
Speaker: mission is risk-taking. They have to take risks. That naturally brings about pain. They have to go through hard things. And watching as a parent, your child encounter hard things in life is one of the hardest things as a parent, I think. So weathering those storms in ways that I could be courageous and promote his thriving and really his sense of who he is yeah and not trample that and not get in the way of that was really what I was searching for. So I always write about what I'm trying to learn and figure that other people will will join with me in the dialogue and that's exactly what has happened. Hmm. So tell us a little bit, maybe the high level overview of what the eight habits of courage are.
Speaker: So first of all, we have to to know a few things about courage ok in order to get into the habits, I think. So... To understand courage, courage is not the same as bravery. Bravery is i run out in traffic and I grab a cat out of the road because he he's clearly going to get run over. and it's that instant rush, that reflexive, impulsive rush that we get to save something that is in danger. but it relies on our primitive brain. It relies on impulse. And so courage is not that. Okay. Courage requires a pause. It requires a stillness in us. It requires us listening to the quieter voices within that are our inner wisdom. And so often we're hearing the loud inner critic. The voice of wisdom inside resides there, but it's always quieter. In order to access courage, especially in the face of things that we fear, we have to pause and create stillness in order to to access that inner wisdom. So that is the first courage habit is that pause our stillness so that we're not coming from the primitive brain but we are or our impulsive reflexive selves, but we are coming from a deeper, more reflective place. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: The other thing about courage to know is that it is always in service of a noble goal. a noble goal can be, how do i not harm myself? How do i project ahead that I'm not harming you or my environment? um So it's caring about self and others in in whatever I'm doing. And courage is a an intention, a choice.
Speaker: It can be learned. And the best way of learning courage is through models, watching others who are demonstrating courage and saying, i can do that that. That's something I aspire to. and I can become intentional, even in the face of fear, in in modeling that kind of behavior. so those are kind of a few things that We know from research about courage. And if you're intentional about courage, it doesn't feel natural at first. It's hard, but it can become a habit. And those habits can help you become more courageous in daily life.
Speaker: I would love if we could give an example of the pause and building the courage. And maybe we'll maybe it'll naturally progress with the other steps. But My classic example that I go back to all the time is when my son was asking a homecoming date out and he had made the little ho-co poster. This was not recently. um This was couple years ago. And I drove him over to the girl's house and he was nervous. He was visibly nervous. and
Speaker: what we talked about it let's just say in the car. And finally, it was just this matter of like kind of ripping it like a bandaid. Like the longer we sit here, the worse this anticipation is kind of building. And so I'm curious about that because there was some level of that pause kind of escalating things versus just like rip it like a band-aid. Let's go. Let's just go do it. So what are your thoughts on kind of not pausing too much where you hesitate and then don't take action? Like if the idea is to take forward action, does that align?
Speaker: So that is such a great example. I love that. And I love that question. And I think built into your story, there was a pause. He had time to make the poster. he had, and maybe some some nights of sleep on it. He had time to kind of premeditate how it would go, maybe played out in his mind how it would go. he had time in the car with you to kind of ground himself and be ready for that moment where he leaps, So it can be a feeling of a leap. And sometimes we have to kind of overpower our nerves or our fears with that leap. ah But there there was time. And so he was able to pause and have stillness before that actual moment of truth where he had to make the POCO proposal. I see. Yes. Okay. That makes so much sense now. Yes. It wasn't like he just decided to ask her and then five five seconds later he was doing it, right? it was this or There was a process. Okay. Now i'm I'm on board. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker: And so feel free to share um about the other habits, however you'd like. A second courage habit is about sacred meaning making. And that is something kind of in our world of social media where we we see so much crude, so much profane. Our teens are going through spiritual development as much as they are developing physically, changing socially, developing mentally and emotionally. And so how can, how can they make sense of the world around them, of their place in the world, of their relationships, like your son proposing to a girl, a date for homecoming,
Speaker: how can those take on a sacred meaning? in other words, how can we make sense of life's choices toward noble goals? So when our students are thinking about achieving in a particular class or making a new friend,
Speaker: How do we we talk together about those opportunities as opportunities to grow who they are as people, to bring a deeper part of themselves, a more vulnerable, intimate part of who they are to those relationships? Maybe in the academic context, maybe It is truly about deeper learning and not so much about grades and achievement, but how they can grow as a human being in their understanding of love, truth, beauty, the meaning of the universe. So i think sacred meaning-making is at an all-time low, and yet for teenagers, they are striving
Speaker: for that or they're yearning for that. They're hungry. And when I when i work with high school students, I i do leadership forums and i I do leadership workshops with high school students.
Speaker: They can't wait to get into those conversations with one another, with parents and educators kind of on an equal playing field. Because they see the complexities. They're worried about what's happening in our world. And they want to make sacred meaning of what's going on. They just don't have the opportunity to be engaged in those conversations enough.
Speaker: Yeah. And I can see um a level of kind of deep energy that they have to, but they're not yet ready. And so there's probably ah just like a bit of frustration. like And some kids do at a very young age start to make amazing changes in this world. Most don't have that opportunity in until after they've done more school or just been able to kind of get out there and engage a little bit more. Yeah. I love kind of the message there also just of authenticity. i don't know um if that is the ideal spot to talk about that or if there's more. But I know from kind of just personal experience of myself with my kids, other relationships and coaching my clients, and just kind of from the academic perspective that the the deepest connections in life are authentic. And really being kind of truthful and honest about what our deepest kind of core needs and desires are. And at the kind of bottom of all humanity is that we all want love and connection. And we all need that. And so like finding ways of how we can not only... receive that, but really give it right, like kind of as leaders, if you're in a leadership conference, I would be thinking about like, how can I show love, show my purpose, do things to serve others and in an authentic way. And then, you know, then it'll come back to me. What are your thoughts? Well,
Speaker: I love that so much. I love how you amplified authenticity. And in the book, I call it heart courage. So teens are working to marry the inner true self with the adapted self. And ah the the paradox that teens have to face that is truly complex is the truth that often the inner self, the true self that we deeply know to be and they are discovering, ah can be in direct conflict with the adapted self, which are the expectations of parents, teachers, the demands of school, the demands of college applications. So these two things have to coexist yet often they conflict. And that is a real difficult thing to rectify. But we know that if teens are going to be healthy, well, mentally well, and thrive, they're going to have to bring their true selves, their vulnerability to their relationships and in order to feel like they're really seen, they're really valued, they're understood, that they're bringing their whole selves to their lives, not just the adapted self that can perform well on an instrument or on an exam.
Speaker: and And so this is a true complexity. And I think the the adults... in teens lives need to recognize how difficult that is and the best tool we have is as parents teachers educators coaches in midlife we are also going through a reckoning of our adapted self versus our true self and where we're trying to figure out how we can bring our true self into all our obligations, roles, and responsibilities, which often ends in a midlife crisis or blows up in a midlife crisis, right? So I think we have this deep empathy as parents in midlife of what our teens are trying to grapple with. And if we recognize that, we can be a better support for them.
Speaker: I love that you brought that up as an example because I just had my 50th birthday few weeks ago. 50. Thank Love. Thank you. Thank you. And I was talking with ah some other friends who are in their 50s, and we all just agreed that there's something so incredibly liberating and freeing about being in this like second half of your life. And that you do really get to be more your your true self and you have less of that kind of performative level. You kind of get to the point where you're like, I'm done with that.
Speaker: I don't want to live like that anymore. Right. and And for me, I've had this very interesting experience about how I've connected with my true self over several years, like ah just a journey of just like we all have some type of a story. Like, how did we find that? How did...
Speaker: And I think I love the idea about the empathy for teens because yes, like they are at the peak of this probably frustration that they're feeling and the amount of pressure and stress they feel to have that performative self um because they don't know what their other choices are, right? Like they feel it's like... I have to get into a good college or be on this team or or I need to belong or I need this and I need that and I want to look good.
Speaker: And at the same time, I have this self. So it's like this dichotomy and and no wonder they're they're frustrated and having empathy as moms and caregivers and teachers. And as you said, educators about that gap.
Speaker: So what else can we do besides have empathy to help our young people potentially close that gap a little bit? Well, I think recognizing that our teens are in the process of a rebirth.
Speaker: They are are literally being reborn as the individuals that they define themselves as and We too in midlife are going through a rebirth as we decide that we can be the authentic people we are and maybe let go of some of those obligations and not apologize for who we are, but actually step into our personal power. So we we are on these thresholds, our our teens and parents and adults who are going through midlife, and
Speaker: Rebirth or birth in general is a painful process. It's a messy process. The only way is through. We can't go around it. We can't avoid it. Mm-hmm. And so sometimes our teens have to go through hard experiences, and we cannot save them from those hard experiences. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: In fact, we deprive them of building resilience or the ability to bounce back from struggles when we fix things for them. So when we allow them to feel the pain, to go through the hard experiences, to face them head on we say, you're capable.
Speaker: You are courageous. You are able to walk through the fire and get to the other side. If you need to you're capable of healing from it, and I'll be there. i will i will value you. i will love you. i will support you, but i'm not going to save you because it is your journey, and you you have to go through it. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: I'm curious how your philosophy or your book could support parents of, it's typically girls, but you know, it's always boys too, who are having a lot of stress with friends and friend drama. um What are your thoughts about that topic? Social anxiety is rampant. And i I think we have to realize that as preteen and teens grow and develop, they grow their social awareness. They become much more aware of the world around them. And it is normal for people
Speaker: for teens as they grow their social awareness to also grow their social anxiety. i can't worry about what you think about me if I'm not aware that you're thinking about me, but you know then i can become extra sensitive to your facial expressions, your tone of voice, what you're directing at me. So I think we have to first normalize social anxiety, that it is hard to be in relationships. It's hard to initiate friendships, but also necessary. And our teens have the courage to do it. They need a lot of modeling. They need a lot of practice. So How can they be in-person circumstances, maybe an added extracurricular, a community activity where they need to meet new people?
Speaker: As I watch my son and his friends go off to different colleges, about half are doing well and about half are not. Half that are not are not doing going out and making friends. They're staying in their dorm room. They're really scared to make social connections. And so hopefully in the preteen and teen years, there is plenty of practice with that discomfort that we have to feel in making those connections with people who are different from us.
Speaker: I'm so glad you brought that topic up because that has been a huge passion of mine recently. My daughter is also a freshman in college. And so, of course, I'm on the parent Facebook groups and just seeing message after message after message of my child is lonely. They're really struggling.
Speaker: Their roommate is MIA or whatever this circumstance might be. And how painful it is for the parents to be reading these and feeling a bit pastored. powerless So I have been providing some support and tools when I'm able and I co-collaborated writed on a social media post with someone who, um and if you haven't heard of her, the Dorm Guide is an amazing resource. Laura Becker is awesome. And so what are your thoughts on helping those parents who are most likely long distance help support their child and very importantly, without overtaking, obviously, but how can we support their courage and their skills?
Speaker: I think it is, especially with ah college students, it's so hard on the parents. We're at a distance and we're hurting. We're grieving the loss.
Speaker: ah We're wondering what our role is now. Like, how are we needed anymore other than ah our MasterCard? Like, you know, how how are we needed And I'm asking myself that question daily. ah So I think being gentle on our aching hearts may be the first thing i would yeah say. But then i think we have to use our best self-management skills to not fix and to hold our students capable. They are capable. and if they're uncomfortable, yeah, that's normal. If they don't want to go out, yeah, that's normal, but they're going to need to in order to make the connections that they need to make. So as much as we can speak stories of strength, stories of resilience, remember when you moved from middle school to high school and you knew no one?
Speaker: And that first day was so hard. That first week was so hard. And then you randomly sat down with someone at the lunch table and you guys just became fast friends. I mean, I think those stories of resilience can really remind our students, I've got this. And and ah and we can communicate that message.
Speaker: and I don't need to fix this for you because you are capable. Yeah. Yes. And one thing I like to just remind, even though i've said it so many times recently, is just the whole social media comparison, right? Because the problem is these kids are seeing other kids connect and join Greek life and do all these things. and they look so happy and they're having so much fun. And It's just I like to remind everyone that you are on your own path, you're on your own journey, and you're on your own timeline. And maybe the friend you make in November will end up being your bridesmaid or groomsman in your wedding or in lifelong friend, whereas maybe some of these friends that are making quickly, um they might not and even talk to them next semester. Right. Just the idea. That's kind of what I've been sharing is that everyone's on their own path and own journey and and that it it will just unfold in in a very natural sense. But also that person does need to put themselves out there. They do need to be courageous. They do need to take the steps. um So what are your thoughts?
Speaker: I would invoke the courage habit of pausing. At first, I would ask, when I'm on social media, how is it making me feel? And as I see all of these people that I know living their best life, if I'm coming away on my phone saying, yeah with that sinking feeling, like, I'm that's not my life or this is this is not where I am right now and I wish and I want to and I don't and I yearn. you know If you're having those kinds of feelings, then that is not life-giving to you and it's not helping boost your courage in taking the risks that you need to take in order to develop those relationships so it's time to pause That's ah very wise words. Like I literally want to pause you right there. um Because yes, exactly. It's not giving you the strength and the energy to go out there and be courageous, right? It's taking away from you. It's not giving to you.
Speaker: So those are just like, I love that i just idea. And that's something that I can share if I can steal that idea you know with more audiences as as well. um So Jennifer, any last questions? words about your book and your mission and then tell us where people can find you.
Speaker: Yeah, thank you for that. So my last word, I guess, would be that for teens listening, ah for for any parents, educators, coaches, people who love teens and are are trying to do their best to support teens, I would ask or challenge you to look to a teen's inner spirit. How can we see the the true self that is within them that maybe they're working really hard to bury? and for teens, you know what that feels like when you try to bury the most vulnerable parts of who you are, when you know
Speaker: that the truth is that the magic happens when other people can see that light within you and can feel it and sense it and truly know it. So how can you, if you're a teen, be courageous about sharing that most vulnerable part of who you are to get to that magic? That is the risk of the teen years. That is so worth taking And then as parents and educators, how can we keep our eye on that ball? in Instead of being so performance-driven, instead of being so achievement-oriented or looking at data, instead of those things, how can we see the unique light, the unique humanity in each teen and try to call that forward as they try to show their true self to the world and get a sense of who they are becoming and what their purpose is in making this world better. So um that would be my last piece.
Speaker: Yes. My book is called Humanaissance, like Renaissance, but... I got it. Okay, I said it wrong earlier. or Correction. Yes, okay. I'm with you i now. Some made-up words.
Speaker: And the subtitle is Igniting Courage in Our Teens and Ourselves. So check out Humanaissance, like Renaissance, on Amazon. It's available wherever you buy books. I'm pre-order. And you can also find me on confidentparentsconfidentkids.org.
Speaker: Fantastic. Jennifer, thank you so much for your time. You're a wonderful guest and I appreciate you. Laura, thank you for the opportunity. It was a great conversation. Thanks. When you get a chance, please go to the show notes and click on the link ratethispodcast.com slash tphmom to give my podcast a rating and review.
Speaker: And if this episode resonates with you, be sure to share it with your mom friends who are going through the same things. Be sure to tune in for next week's conversation. Until then, keep up the good work.
