Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Ep. 63: Navigating teenage girls' friendship issues with Natasha Devon
1.5k Plays2 years ago
Natasha Devon, MBE, joined me on the Teenage Kicks podcast to talk about something most parents of girls will be all too familiar with - friendship issues. Teenage girls don't grow out of problems with their friends as early as we'd like them to, but they do grow out of us being able to fix fallouts for them with a playdate or a sleepover. Put simply, when they're teenagers, it gets even messier. Add social media, and the permanent ability to stay connected via Snapchat and Whatsapp, and our teenage daughters need a lot of resilience to navigate the sometimes destructive arena of their social lives.
Writer, presenter and activist, Natasha tours schools in the UK and beyond, delivering talks and conducting research on mental health, body image, gender and equality. From her experiences of what teenage girls talk about with her, she's written a YA novel which examines friendship problems in the context of coercive control. Toxic* is a brilliant read for teenage girls and parents alike, and food for thought for girls struggling to know how to approach friendships that feel a bit rocky at times. (*Affiliate link.)
What interested me most was that the 'toxic' character in the story wasn't a bad person; she just had her own insecurities and fears that led her to unhealthy coping mechanisms with her friends. Natasha says that was deliberate. In her work with teenagers she sees the fragility behind the bravado, and understands that none of our teenagers are really equipped with the emotional maturity to empathise and support each other.
In this episode Natasha explains that, and offers some tips for how to help our daughters navigate their friendships when they're not going as well as they could be.
Who is Natasha Devon, MBE?
Natasha presents on LBC (one of Britain’s most popular speech radio stations) every Saturday, and writes regularly for newspapers and magazines.
In her charity work Natasha supports people coping with anxiety disorders, online abuse, eating disorders, and talks regularly about gender issues, all of which – as we know – affect all of our teenagers to some extent throughout their young adult years.
Author of titles like A beginner’s Guide to being Mental and You can Ace School Without Losing Your Mind, Natasha speaks directly to young people.
Find out more about Natasha on her website, natashadevon.com and follow her on Instagram.
More teenage parenting from Helen Wills:
Helen wills is a teen mental health podcaster and blogger at Actually Mummy, a resource for midlife parents of teens.
Thank you for listening! Subscribe to the Teenage Kicks podcast to hear new episodes. If you have a suggestion for the podcast please email teenagekickspodcast@gmail.com.
There are already stories from fabulous guests about difficult things that happened to them as teenagers - including losing a parent, becoming a young carer, and being
Recommended
Transcript
The Complex Nature of Teenage Friendships
00:00:00
Speaker
With girls, they're really almost creative ways that they find to torture each other. And the fact that there's always a subtext in the conversation and trying to work out what they each other actually mean and what's actually going on.
Introduction to Teenage Kicks Podcast
00:00:24
Speaker
Welcome to the Teenage Kicks podcast where we take the fear out of parenting or becoming a teenager.
Meet Natasha Devon: Activist and Author
00:00:36
Speaker
I'm Helen Wills and every week I talk to someone who had a difficult time in the teenage years but came out the other side in a good place and has insight to offer to parents and young people who might be going through the same.
00:00:57
Speaker
I'm excited today to be talking to writer, presenter and activist Natasha Devon MBE about teenage friendship issues. As well as being an in-demand TV presenter, Natasha tours schools in the UK and beyond, delivering talks and conducting research on mental health, body image, gender and equality. She presents on LBC, one of Britain's most popular speech radio stations every Saturday and writes regularly for newspapers and magazines.
00:01:27
Speaker
Not afraid to tackle hard issues when she's up against high profile figures, I've seen Natasha deliver incisive commentary as a panelist on issues affecting women and teenagers, where her savvy responses compel listeners to pause breath a little bit and think a bit harder.
Natasha's Work on Mental Health and 'Toxic'
00:01:46
Speaker
In her charity work, Natasha supports people coping with anxiety disorders, online abuse, eating disorders, and gender issues, all of which, as we know, affect all of our teenagers to some extent throughout their young adult years.
00:02:02
Speaker
Author of titles like A Beginner's Guide to Being Mental and You Can Ace School Without Losing Your Mind. Intended for teenagers but I think she should write a companion follow-up for parents, Natasha speaks directly to young people.
00:02:19
Speaker
Her most recent book and debut novel, Toxic, explores the concept of coercive control in friendships, something which really made me rethink all those friendship issues that have been going on for years and years and years, and that parents of teenagers, especially girls, know all too well.
00:02:37
Speaker
Natasha, welcome to Teenage Kicks.
The Inspiration Behind 'Toxic': Real Teen Experiences
00:02:40
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. Shall we talk first of all briefly about toxic before I'm going to ask you to tell me a little bit about your teenage years. What gave you the idea to talk about friendship in terms of coercive control? I don't think I've heard anyone talk about it that way before.
00:03:02
Speaker
Well, like all my best ideas, I actually got it from the teenagers that I work with. And so when I'm in schools and colleges, I do focus groups with 14 to 18 year olds predominantly. And just prior to the pandemic in 2019, there were some changes made to the sex and relationship education curriculum. Yeah.
00:03:24
Speaker
And what it meant was that teenagers had to learn about things like codependency, red flags, coercive control, emotional abuse, in the context of romantic relationships, which I think is wonderful that they have that on their radar. But in the focus groups,
00:03:44
Speaker
Teenage girls in particular were saying to me, okay, but what if the person that is manipulating me is not someone I'm romantically involved with? It's my best mates. What do I do then? And I thought, ah.
Teenagers' Insight and Political Engagement
00:03:59
Speaker
someone should write a book about that. And then the pandemic hit and initially schools didn't have the capacity to have digital talks. And so all of my work was cancelled and I suddenly had time on my hands. So I thought, I'm going to have a go at writing fiction.
00:04:20
Speaker
And it started off as something that I was just doing to see if I could for myself. But the more it kind of developed and evolved, the more I thought it was something that I wanted to put out into the world. And then that became toxic, which came out last year.
00:04:37
Speaker
Yeah, my God, what you just said there about the idea coming from teenagers just makes me think it's what I say all the time. We need no one's talking to teenagers. And when I say no one, I don't mean no one because the teachers in our school are really good. They've got great relationship with the kids. In some respects, their hands are tied on some things.
00:04:59
Speaker
But they speak so much sense. I say this all the time when I'm a guest on podcasts. And we make so many assumptions on their behalf, don't we?
00:05:11
Speaker
That's so true. And I actually find teenage brains really exciting because they're at that age where they're old enough to basically understand how the world works, but they're young enough to still have that optimism of wanting it to change and believing that it can change. And generally speaking, whatever conclusions they've arrived at, you know, they're not a monolith in terms of their opinions, however much they're often presented as such.
00:05:40
Speaker
They do have different political ideas, etc. But whatever conclusions they've arrived at, usually they've arrived at those conclusions because they want the world to be fairer. And they're not thinking about how much tax they have to pay, or how much their mortgage is going to be. They're not selfish considerations, but they're much more myopic. They think about society as a whole.
00:06:07
Speaker
And, you know, I often say to teenagers, always go back and check in with your 16 year old self as you get older and ask what would they think about where you are now, because you very rarely have that perspective again, you know.
Personal Growth and Shifting Perspectives
00:06:22
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's really true. And it's one of those things that we as conflicted adults end up being recommended to do. Is there anything that you would go, I'm going off for a tangent here now, but I would have gone there eventually. Anything that you would like to have checked in with your teenage self? What does your 16 year old self say to you these days? Well, believe it or not, when I was 16, I think I would have been a Tory.
00:06:50
Speaker
Am I? Yeah, I've gone the opposite way round. Okay, not expecting that.
00:06:56
Speaker
to the way most people have gone, because, so, and this is why I find it so fascinating, you know, people like Suella Braverman, for example, now, because, so I'm from a multiracial family, I'm from a very working class background, and I got into a really good comprehensive school that was outside of the catchment area where I lived on academic merit, so that
00:07:23
Speaker
they, you know, they took a few people in who they thought would kind of, I guess, enhance the reputation of the school. And I was one of those people. So I went from, you know, not having a lot of money at all growing up to like the first person that I met at school that I made friends with in her sitting room where the TV should have been she had a cello, you know, right? Yeah. Okay, this is a whole new world. And I think that there was, um,
00:07:50
Speaker
comfort for me in believing that I earned that chance and that anyone could do it.
00:07:59
Speaker
if they worked hard enough. And that's a belief system that I adopted really early on. And I didn't see any of my privilege back then. I was just like, well, I've had a lot of disadvantage and I've managed to go to the school and lots of people from my school ended up going to Oxbridge. We were very much in an environment where we were told that we could achieve anything if we put our mind to it.
00:08:25
Speaker
And so yeah, I think I would have been a little bit of a Tory. And I think it's because there's a kind of comfort in thinking that you're part of that club.
00:08:42
Speaker
and not acknowledging the luck or the circumstance because when you start to consider how many opportunities in your life you got just because you were in the right place at the right time and how
00:08:57
Speaker
you know, fragile it all is and how that you know, that butterfly effect if things have just been a little bit different, how differently your life could have turned out. That's terrifying. That's, that's a really terrifying thought. And I'm so grateful for so many of the opportunities that I had now as an adult. But back when I was young, I was like, no, no, I would have always done well, because I'm a hard worker. And I'm very clever kind of thing. Yeah. So yeah, I don't think I would get on with my 16 year old to be honest.
00:09:28
Speaker
Well, but they're there are 16 year old cells are there to inform something aren't they and have to be recognized as such. I guess even if you, even if you don't like them, it's interesting you say that because I say this to my daughter, my daughter's 18 and she quite frequently will say to me things like I was a bit of a twat when I was 12.
00:09:46
Speaker
And I'll go, well, you weren't. And you didn't think you weren't. No, but that's why I was a twat. But I thought you were amazing. It's just that you've changed. And that's okay. That's normal. Don't be so harsh on 12-year-old you. And I said, one day, when you're 28, you're going to think that 18-year-old you was a bit of a twat. No, I won't.
00:10:07
Speaker
I'm about right now, but it's a good point. Do you think that today's teenagers, given all the talk about checking privilege and the current state of affairs and how switched on they are by all of that, and they know so much more than my generation, do you think that they are more aware of their privilege now, even at 16?
The Empowerment of Social Media for Teens
00:10:32
Speaker
Definitely. They're so much more politically engaged. And I talk about this quite a lot because I'm in my early 40s now. So when I talk to people my age and I say what I do, they always say, oh, I'd hate to be a teenager now. And when you interrogate that a little bit, the answer that they give is always because of social media.
00:10:51
Speaker
Yes. And I'm a bit like, well, you know, the planet's on fire, but okay, social media is the worst thing that's happening to teenagers. And I get why they say that, you know, there was a freedom that we had in being able to make a mistake, and it would never be, you know, photographed or videoed and make an indelible imprint on the internet forever.
00:11:10
Speaker
And so I understand that aspect of it. But I feel like no one ever acknowledges the advantages. Because I look at the TikTok videos that young people are making now, and they're talking about feminism and intersectionalism and socialism. They're talking about these really complex philosophical and political issues in a way that's really clever, often really funny,
00:11:38
Speaker
I would have loved to have had access to that kind of content back when I was 16. The only thing that I had at that age that even remotely tried to speak to me was more magazine. Do you remember that? I do, yeah. And for me, I don't know if it was still around then, news round, I used to watch news round and that was very, very vanilla. Yeah. And I remember
00:12:03
Speaker
I talked about this recently, actually, an event I was at. There was a boy band that I used to absolutely love called 3T. I don't know if you remember them. It's probably not quite mine. I was a bit more haircut 100. They were Michael Jackson's nephews.
00:12:19
Speaker
And they all had a name beginning with T. That's why they were called 3T. And they all had magnificent eyebrows. That was the main reason I loved them. They were just brilliant eyebrows. And they had like one hit, you know. But there was an interview with them in Moore magazine and the journalist asked, is it or is it not sexy when a woman shaves her legs in the bath?
00:12:48
Speaker
And whoever she asked, this one member of 3T said, oh, well, I guess it depends on how hairy her legs were before she started shaving them. I think about that every time I shave my legs in the bath. And the point of that story is to demonstrate the extent to which that was the only thing I had that was trying to talk in a young person's voice in a relevant way and how much I sort of clung to it as a life raft.
00:13:18
Speaker
Oh my god, and yeah, I can see in the same vein why people who don't really get the benefits of social media, like a lot of my generation, I'm in my mid 50s, and I'm one of quite a few people, not that many people who do and who does understand social media.
00:13:39
Speaker
I can see how people are scared that their children are seeing and hearing and latching on to narratives like that as to whether or not I should shave my legs in the bath and will it offend a boy, for example.
00:13:54
Speaker
because I get that. But you're right, you're so right about how clever and smart and actually intelligent and informative social media can be and gives them an outlet to explore their thinking and expand their brains and their personalities and what they want out of their lives. I've got in this series, actually, a guy called Harry, who's the champagne socialist on TikTok. He's 22. And he started it as a university project. It's basically political commentary.
00:14:24
Speaker
And he doesn't adhere to one side or another. He verges on one side, but incorporates all aspects, which is what I love about it, of politics. And of course, my kids don't know him. They've got their own
Positive Change Through Teen Support
00:14:39
Speaker
people that are not part of my life, because that's not cool. But yeah, they're learning so much. And I quite often say to people, I think if we give
00:14:51
Speaker
teenagers and young adults, the power and the space for their voices to be heard. This world is not in bad hands in the future. What do you think?
00:15:04
Speaker
I agree with you. I think my only hesitancy in making that argument is I feel like my generation, millennials, have kind of given up and gone, okay, you know, the generation above us, the boomers, Gen X,
00:15:22
Speaker
they're in charge, they're making a mess of everything. We don't really have the political or economic power to do much about that. But it's okay, because eventually they will die. And when they do, this current cohort of teenagers are wonderful, and they'll sort everything out. And I feel like that potentially could be a another source of anxiety for teenagers. Oh, God, yeah, no, that's true. Everything's such a mess. And I've got to clean up after you, you know,
00:15:52
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's a good point and everything needs to be tempered. Maybe millennials can help coach that generation to support the next generation and it gradually evolves into a better space. But let's go back to
00:16:09
Speaker
toxic friendships and friendship difficulties because I feel like that as parent of a girl is what I hear from parents of girls all the time from my audience. The people that talk to me about teenage issues, I would say 60-70% of them are talking to me about how much stress they've got because their teenage daughter is in a friendship group that she's finding difficult.
00:16:37
Speaker
Is that your perception or do you see it in boys as well? Whenever we're talking about gender, I think we're always talking in quite sweeping averages. And of course there are anomalies and there are examples where this wouldn't be the case. But having said that, I still feel like
00:17:03
Speaker
boys are operating in a different strata when it comes to their emotional interactions. So you've got the problematic thing I think with with boys friendships is where is the line between banter and bullying? Yes. Yeah, that that's the big thing. And there are so many boys that I talked to who are
00:17:29
Speaker
you're highly sensitive, but they've somehow picked up along the line that this is how men interact, that they've got to learn how to take the piss out of each other and just accept whatever's thrown at them in order, almost like a rite of passage to masculinity. But actually there being, it's almost like a microaggression, you know, all the time that that's happening to them. That's the main problem that I hear from boys. With girls, it's, they're really,
00:17:59
Speaker
almost creative ways that they find to torture each other. And the fact that there's always a subtext in the conversation and trying to work out what they each other actually mean and what's actually going on.
00:18:17
Speaker
And it was difficult because that's something that I recognised from my teenage years. I went to an all-girls school, so there was, you know, a lot of that. But equally, I also recognised that female friendship is
00:18:33
Speaker
probably the most powerful thing on earth.
Exploring Nuanced Friend Dynamics in 'Toxic'
00:18:36
Speaker
So with toxic, I was trying to strike that balance between going, yes, this is a problem, it's a problem that I hear a lot about, but when you get it right, it can also be the thing that saves you, you know? Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more on all of that. And I feel it as a woman in my 50s, kind of coming out the other side, gradually,
00:19:03
Speaker
slowly, painfully of parenting. That's what I've put my focus on is my female friendships. And I can still see how some of those and the strength in those is reflected in some of my teenage friendships, in elements of my teenage friendships.
00:19:21
Speaker
Just to talk about the book for listeners who've not read it yet, and I strongly advise they definitely get it for their teenagers, but read it themselves because it's a blast of a book and has really, really good messages.
00:19:38
Speaker
It's basically, and correct me if I'm paraphrasing this wrongly, but for my interpretation, it's basically the story of a girl who doesn't feel like she's in the popular crowd, which is a lot of our kids, latching on and being latched on to by a newcomer and their friendship
00:19:59
Speaker
A bit like you'd experience in a love bombing coercive control romantic relationship becomes intense very, very quickly. But you gradually realise through what happens that there is a subtext and there is control going on. And the toxic friend Aretha
00:20:23
Speaker
It's actually really clever. It's not for me to comment on your writing, but I thought it was really clever the way I was. I was so there with Aretha. She was the great friend. I loved her. And then gradually as the book went on, I started to feel a bit nervous and a little bit uncomfortable and then eventually realized
00:20:42
Speaker
Why? And clearly that is the experience of the protagonist. I mean, please comment on that, but also I want to leave you with a question. I found myself feeling compassionate towards Aretha, the toxic friends. Was that deliberate? I'm so glad that you said that because I really wanted readers to take that from the book.
00:21:07
Speaker
So I feel like there's been a trend in the kind of wellness circles recently of this whole, and it's absolutely true, this whole Brené Brown thing of it's difficult to hate anyone up close. And Brené Brown is a psychologist I have a huge amount of respect for, and she is absolutely correct. But I also feel like
00:21:30
Speaker
OK, you can understand someone's reasons. That doesn't mean that you have to put up with their crap. Right. And part of toxic is Luella struggling with where that line is, where, OK, I can understand that my friend behaves badly sometimes because she's got stuff going on too. And she's a human being. But ultimately, I have to have boundaries.
00:21:58
Speaker
about what's okay and what's not okay. And there are things that Aretha does to Luella that are not okay. And red lines are crossed. But Aretha is not a bad person. And in reality, the world isn't divided up into heroes and villains. And something that was coming out of the focus groups I was doing with teenage girls is there's so much anxiety around whose side everyone's going to be on.
00:22:25
Speaker
And I feel like this is magnified by social media. Who emerges out of this as the wronged party and who emerges as the antagonist?
00:22:36
Speaker
And part of me writing toxic was me saying, it doesn't matter. Sometimes two people come together and they just create a toxic dynamic and it's not good for either of them. And it's okay to walk away without any massive confrontation. This is a bit of a spoiler, but a couple of people who read the book
00:22:56
Speaker
wished that there'd been more of a dramatic ending. And I deliberately made it not dramatic because the transformation that happens happens inside Luella, the protagonist. It's not something that you would necessarily even see from the outside.
Identity Struggles and Admiration Among Teens
00:23:15
Speaker
Yeah, I see that she grows as a person. And that's a great model for the fact that we all, if we're doing it right, and I'm using air quotes for people that aren't watching but listening, we all need to aim to grow out of our relationships and learn about ourselves. And I think
00:23:38
Speaker
Far too frequently, a lot of us are drawn into trying to be more like the other person in order to be accepted, when in fact it would help us better if we just used that friendship to learn about other people and to learn about how we relate to other people.
00:23:57
Speaker
Yeah, I completely agree. And particularly when you feel a bit lost yourself, that's when and when you're a teenager, you're not the finished product yet, you're trying on different identities, you're experimenting with who you are. And what happens with Luella and Aretha is Luella
00:24:16
Speaker
is of mixed racial heritage. She's very tall. She's a tall person that takes up space. That's how I always describe her. And she feels therefore like she stands out. And she's not quite sure how to be herself without being apologetic.
00:24:36
Speaker
And then Aretha turns up, who's had a completely different experience of being mixed heritage, and grown up in a much more diverse community. And she's wearing her difference as a badge of honor. And part of what attracts Luella to Aretha is her confidence is going, okay, how do I do that?
00:24:56
Speaker
you know, how do I be different but say, you know, I don't care, this is me. And if you don't like it, you can suck it. And I feel like that is always part of every friendship is there's always something that you admire in your friend, but particularly in teenage friendships, it's teach me how you're doing that, you know? Yeah.
00:25:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And this isn't helped by social media because there's a lot riding on the outcomes of that and how successful and effective you are at being more like the person that you think is more liked. Yeah. It's really tricky. So what message apart from to
00:25:39
Speaker
be true to yourself and not accept shitty behavior from your friends. What message are you hoping in the book that teenagers might learn from it? How should it help them?
00:25:51
Speaker
Well, I wanted to write a book where the main character experiences anxiety as a diagnosable issue. And this is something that I get asked a lot. I have a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder myself, but obviously anxiety is also an emotion that we all experience. And lots of people say to me, how do you know? How do you know when it spills over into something that you should talk to a professional about?
00:26:19
Speaker
And I hadn't really seen particularly panic attacks.
00:26:25
Speaker
described in a way that to me felt authentic. In fact, after I wrote Toxic, I watched, have you seen the Netflix show, Ginny and Georgia? Yes. Yeah. And that's the first time when Ginny has a panic attack in that show. That's the first time that I went, oh, that's a completely accurate representation. That's what it's like. Right. But
Reflecting Personal Teenage Experiences in 'Toxic'
00:26:49
Speaker
before that, I
00:26:52
Speaker
I'd never really felt like it had been got right. And so I wanted to portray it accurately, but I also wanted to, and hopefully it's not in a patronizing way, but kind of sprinkle the book with tips on managing it.
00:27:08
Speaker
And so there are things that Luella does, like, for example, not eating enough, which can exacerbate your anxiety, not getting enough sleep, that make her panic attacks worse. And then there are little things that she does as she's talking to her therapist, tips that kind of help her to manage that she's employing in the book. So I'm hoping that anybody who struggles with panic attacks
00:27:37
Speaker
will learn from Luello's experience how to manage it better from reading the book. I hadn't overtly noticed that, but now you've pointed it out. I was very aware because she has a therapist as well, doesn't she, who gives her little tips and advice on how to manage anxiety and her panic attacks. And you're right, I guess I've not seen panic attacks described in the way you describe them.
00:28:06
Speaker
I don't want to be too personal, but let's make it a bit more generic. I did want to ask how autobiographical toxic it is from your point of view. Well, put it this way, I gave a copy to my brother and then a couple of weeks after I said, are you reading toxic? And he went, oh yeah, I read the first chapter, but it was too obvious it was you.
00:28:30
Speaker
brothers love them. So, I mean, I always say, Luella is very much a, you know, the book is set in 2019. She's very much a 2019 teenager. She's not how I was in terms of her views. I mean, she's very
00:28:48
Speaker
she's very woke in the way that most teenage girls are now. But in terms of our family background, so, you know, being of mixed heritage, not knowing your dad, being very tall, being kind of big, but not plus size. So kind of feeling like, you know, when
00:29:10
Speaker
where am I in that world? Just feelings like you're on the periphery of things. Yeah, that we've got a lot in common, put it that way. Right. I mean, that was a very obvious theme in there that she just didn't feel she fitted anywhere. And that is something that is
00:29:29
Speaker
I want to say it's biological in young adults and teenagers, you do need to fit somewhere. Because ultimately, back in caveman days, if you didn't fit in a tribe, you would die. So it's a compelling urge to be like other people and be accepted by other people. And Luella just didn't see her people.
00:29:52
Speaker
Yeah, she's also, and this is very much like me, wanting connection, but not enough to pretend to be interested in really trivial shit. Yes.
00:30:07
Speaker
She's like, I don't really want to talk about makeup and boys, it's boring. And she really wants to find someone who will connect with her interests. And she describes it at one point as all the teenagers around her, it's like they're speaking a different language that she hasn't learned and she just can't tune into it.
00:30:28
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I wonder if some teenagers learn to speak that language, not because it's what they're interested in, but because it's what gets them accepted. Do you see that in the schools that you visit? Do you know what I find really interesting is I normally speak to a whole year group together, and then sometimes afterwards, you know, they break off into smaller groups. The character of a year group is always defined by one or two people.
00:30:59
Speaker
And so the teacher will say, oh, this year group are a bit like this or, you know, just to make you aware of her. And you immediately spot who there's always an alpha.
00:31:09
Speaker
whose personality has defined the entire year group. And what's really interesting is a couple of times in my career is that person has had to leave the room because they've got a music lesson or whatever. And the entire character of the audience, the whole energy of the room totally changes. Wow.
00:31:33
Speaker
Gosh, I know from my kids anecdotally that different year groups are known for different things. Year eight is a little bit roadman. That's their thing, but they're a bit popular and smoke and want to drink early and have girlfriends at the age of six.
00:31:54
Speaker
or year 10 is pretty academic and they're all very studious, et cetera, et cetera. But I've always thought, well, that's just coincidence, isn't it? How is it that so many kids like that all landed in one year group? What did we do as parents? But that's a completely different way of looking at it. I've never thought of that.
00:32:13
Speaker
And I have no idea, having never been one of those people myself, and I don't think I know anybody who was that person, how you get the social currency to be that alpha. Yeah. That would be interesting actually to try and find that out. Maybe that's my next novel. Yes, that would be another great story. Yeah. You need to do a lot of research somewhere along the line for that one.
00:32:38
Speaker
Yeah, I actually, so we have a new family have just moved in next door to us, and they have a teenage son, and his bedroom, it shares a wall with a room in our house. And I can hear every single thing he says.
00:32:57
Speaker
And there's part of me that's like, I mean, he's just playing video games with his friends most of the time. There's nothing yet that has been a revelation, but there's part of me that's like, is this a research opportunity? How ethical is this? No, hit record. Oh my God, how funny. Yeah, no, you just have to be very euphemistic about everything, vague. No, it's not you. Why would you think that was you?
00:33:28
Speaker
Yeah. Oh my God. Oh, fascinating. What a little snapshot into school life that I've not had before. Oh
True Friendship and Its Evolution
00:33:36
Speaker
gosh, what else did I want to ask you? I guess I want to ask, did you have experiences of real difficulties and toxicity in your friendships? And has that informed anything? And the flip side of that question is, is there some ultimate advice
00:33:58
Speaker
for teenagers. I know that there's the impact of anxiety and managing that, but is there any advice that you have from your experiences of what teenagers should do with these bickery that become bitchy sometimes friendships? So there's two things. I think
00:34:23
Speaker
something that I wanted to try and unpick a little bit in the novel is this saying that a friend in need is a friend indeed. Because as much as there is some truth in that, I actually feel like from my own experience that it's quite
00:34:40
Speaker
easy relatively to be there for someone when they're at their lowest ebb. Because we all like to feel needed. And from my own life, you know, there's been times in my life where I have been really struggling with my mental health and I can barely function. But then there's also been times in my life where I've been
00:35:01
Speaker
advising the Prime Minister. So it's very much a kind of life that's been defined by extremes. And I have had friends in the past who have been very good when I have been vulnerable in some way. But then when I have enjoyed a success, that's when
00:35:23
Speaker
Jealousy, essentially, has reared its head. And I feel like the ideal friendship, and I was actually, I went to the theatre last night with one of my closest friends who's called Shahru Izzadi, and she
00:35:38
Speaker
She used to work in the NHS in addiction treatment, but she since wrote this book that's sort of been translated into about seven languages, I think now, called The Kindness Method. And she recently did a podcast with one of the dragons from Dragon's Den, and she's just like really taken off. And I said, you know,
00:35:58
Speaker
I am so proud of you. And your message is something that everybody needs to hear. And I'm applauding you from the sidelines. But just so you know, I would still be your friend if you were still working in the NHS. Because she was telling me that she'd had people kind of contacting her from school going, oh, you just popped into my head. And she's like, yeah, sure. Kind of thing.
00:36:20
Speaker
And I think that's the ideal balance in friendship, where you're so happy for your friends and you cheerlead them when they succeed, but that's not why you're friends with them. And that's kind of one of the things I was trying to unpick with Luella. I think Aretha likes it when Luella is struggling. She can't bear it when Luella has a triumph.
00:36:42
Speaker
Yeah. The other thing, the other question that you asked was about the hoping, yeah, what I hope that people would take away from the book is, and again, this is something that I've picked up from, from Sherou, because she talks a lot about habit change is when we want something to change in our lives, we always focus on what we don't want anymore, rather than what should be different or how we want our life to look.
00:37:10
Speaker
So quite often, teenagers will say to me, well, you know, I really want to get away from this person. I can recognize that they're no good for me. But, you know, what do I do next time when, you know, they ask me to sit next to them at lunch? Because she's their friend. Yeah.
00:37:30
Speaker
And that's a really good question. I'm like, yeah, that's absolutely the right question to ask. What are you going to do differently tomorrow lunchtime? Where else can you hang out? Is there a club that you can join? What's your new pathway going to look like? Because if you don't create one, you're just going to default back to your old habits. Yeah, so it's having a vision and actually that is life advice, isn't it? Have a vision for where you want to be in the future and figure out a way to get there. And then the stuff you don't want
00:38:00
Speaker
will kind of fall away at the edges. That makes total sense. I think you've probably answered it. My next question was going to be, what do you say to these groups of girls who've come up through primary school and had all sorts of
00:38:22
Speaker
Well, it is toxic, isn't it? But they're children, but they've got that history of jealousies and not celebrating each other and feeling insecure and that coming out as bad behaviour. All of them, not just one particular. I'm saying a group of 10 girls, all will have behaved badly towards a friend at one time, but they're still in that friendship group. Because that's the narrative I hear a lot from other parents.
00:38:49
Speaker
You know, it's a really common story. My daughter is still friends with people she's been friends with for seven years and there's six of them and they fight all the time and they cry all the time. What should they do? I feel like part of this is my generation's fault because we had this kind of strange hybrid Spice Girl feminism that we grew up with. And what my generation did was we said,
00:39:16
Speaker
Oh, the whole Disney fantasy of a Prince Charming, that's ludicrous. We reject that. But then we kind of replaced the Prince Charming figure with a BFF. And there's all these kind of narratives around your ride or die and this idea that one person can fulfill all of your emotional needs, but also that true friendship lasts a lifetime.
00:39:46
Speaker
And I think that's bollocks. I really do. I think it's so rare that you stay friends with someone for a lifetime. And the only reason that that happens is because either you change together and the ways that you change happen to be compatible, or you don't change.
00:40:05
Speaker
which is a really undesirable outcome because life is about, you know, growing and evolving. And sometimes somebody comes into your life for a reason or a season, you know, and it doesn't make your friendship any less valuable. If you were so right for each other friendship wise at the time, and then it lasts six months, and then you go, actually, you know what,
00:40:26
Speaker
this dynamic has shifted and we're not good for each other anymore. It's okay. It was still a great friendship while it lasted. So yeah, again, that's another thing that I'm talking to teenage girls about because I've actually created a presentation that's a kind of companion piece for toxic that I'm taking into schools and having discussions with teenagers about friendship. And one of the things that I explore with them is this idea that
00:40:56
Speaker
of a best friend. I even think that the term best friend is a little bit toxic in and of itself. You can have a friend who's your advice friend and you can have a friend who's your party friend and you can have a friend who's your chill friend and that's okay. Yeah.
Historical Social Dynamics Among Women
00:41:14
Speaker
Well, a best friend implies ownership in some form, I think, which is never healthy, is it? And it goes right back to that coercive control.
00:41:23
Speaker
impetus. I'm not going to let millennials own the fault of this because I remember having exactly the same dynamics and I'm a boomer. Am I a boomer? What am I? I don't know why I am. I'm 56. But I was a kid in the 70s and I had exactly those friendships and I still to this day have a letter drafted on my laptop to Kay who hurt me badly when we were 10.
00:41:51
Speaker
I think we've all got it. It's what I keep saying to everyone. I think it's been around since caveman times. It's just having better tools to manage it and having more confidence in yourself, as you've described, to be who you need to be and own it.
00:42:13
Speaker
You're so right about the caveman thing. So I went to see a lecture by this guy who's an evolutionary biologist and he'd written a book on the history of women and in particular women's bodies. But one of the things that he talks about in the book is, so you know when you see someone and you're in a new environment, like say you're in a bar or a party or something and you see another woman and what you're actually thinking is there's something about her vibe, something about her energy that I feel like we could be friends.
00:42:42
Speaker
But you don't say that because that's weird. So what you actually say is, I like your shoes. And he was saying that that's evolved from a time when women were very often chucked out of tribes because they'd been perceived to be transgresional in some way. You know, they got pregnant by, you know, someone else's partner or, I don't know, they just not followed the rules. I mean, nothing's changed really.
00:43:10
Speaker
So they got they got chucked out of the tribe and then incredibly vulnerable. So what they had to do was they had to try and ingratiate themselves into another tribe. So what they would do is they would identify the alpha female of that tribe and then make some kind of gesture of social subservience. So that's what we're doing when we say I love your shoes. That's actually what we're doing. Yeah, let me in your tribe. I think you might be better than me.
00:43:39
Speaker
Oh, God. Look, Natasha, on that note, is there anything else that you desperately wanted to say that I haven't asked you today? No,
Conclusion and Resources
00:43:50
Speaker
I think so. I think we've covered a lot.
00:43:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's been brilliant. Thank you so much. Tell the listeners where they can find your book or any of the other resources that you want to point them to. So if you go to NatashaDevon.com, that's my website, there's a books page where you can find out more about all the books I've written. And there's also a recommended reading list that you can download on mental health with other people's books that I think are brilliant.
00:44:17
Speaker
Amazing. There's a page called Resources, which has got some animated videos I made for teenagers with BBC Bitesize. Oh, great. And also, you can download a free section from one of my books where teenagers can discover their intrinsic motivation, which is a really good thing to know about yourself. And if you want to follow me on social media, I'm really only on Instagram. That's where I hang out. And you can find me at underscore Natasha Devon.
00:44:45
Speaker
Amazing. That sounds amazing. I'm going to put those links into the show notes as well. So when you finish listening, just scroll down and click those. Natasha, Devon, MBE, it has been a pleasure. Thank you for joining us. Thank you.
00:45:07
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening. I really do appreciate it. Thank you too to everyone who's already rated and reviewed the podcast. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Amazon, it would mean the world to me if you could leave a review. It really helps get the word out as well as making me very happy to read what you have to say. If this episode strikes a chord for you, please share it with anyone else you know who might be in the same boat and hit subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
00:45:35
Speaker
If you have a story or suggestion for something you'd like to see covered on the podcast, you can email me at teenagekickspodcast at gmail.com or message me on Instagram. I am Helen Wills. I love hearing from all my listeners. It really makes a difference to me on this journey. See you next week when I'll be chatting to another brilliant guest about the highs and lows of parenting teens. Bye for now.