We’ve seen kids, and they lash out and they’re angry, and I will tell you it’s always rooted in something, a way that they’re feeling, or how they’re feeling about themselves. So asking questions allows us to get down to that.

Hi there, I’m Dr. Suzanne Simpson, and I want to talk to you today about what teenagers say they need from us as adults for their own wellness and support. If your child is pulling away, if they’re struggling with their mental health, this is why we’re here, and I’m going to go through it now. This work is based on the research I did at a youth psychiatric unit: what did teenagers say they needed from adults when their mental health had deteriorated and their substance use had increased? There are three main things I found that kids say they need, and this covers the gamut of any challenges with your child, whether it’s a mental health disorder, whether it’s feeling disconnected or like you’re losing them, or whether you simply want to get closer to your kid, because we are in a day of screens and distractions and technology, and even we as adults have a hard time getting off our phones.

So I asked twenty-five kids, over a one-year period, what they needed, and I’m here to share that with you.

Number one: so simple. They said they needed to be supported. That’s it. Just to be supported. What does that mean? Support comes in so many forms. It could be helping them through a problem, and by the way, if you don’t know the answer to that problem, that’s okay, because we are all human. It’s about leaning in to work through a problem with them, even if all you say is, “I don’t know the answer, but I’m here for you.” That’s support. The kids even talked about getting help with a small school assignment, about just having someone there for them, present in our own humanity. That’s being supportive. We’re building them up. When you’re there for your kids, their self-worth grows, because you’re showing them that they matter.

The second thing kids say they need is understanding. We talk about understanding all the time. We think we know what it means: understanding what someone is going through, even if we haven’t lived it ourselves. Let’s talk about that for a second. First, understanding doesn’t mean you have to have gone through the same experience. It means you’re making the effort to see it through their lens. Here’s another thing: the moment we, as parents, bring even a single trace of judgment into a conversation with our kids, they’re done. That came out clearly in my research: kids said they felt understood specifically because they weren’t judged. So when you’re talking with your kids, watch your facial expressions, watch your tone of voice, and don’t say anything that signals you’ve already formed an opinion, because that isn’t understanding.

I had a wonderful teacher, Vikki Ellis, who’s featured in a former podcast episode about understanding. She said understanding means taking your head out of your own way. To truly understand, you have to remove yourself from the situation, because we all carry our own experiences, biases, and perspectives, and we can’t let those get in the way when we’re trying to understand someone else. We have to set ourselves aside, sit there, and simply listen.

Asking questions is also a powerful way to understand, rather than assume. You could ask, “And then what happened?” or “How were you feeling in that moment?” or “What are you afraid of right now that’s making you say this?” We’ve all seen kids lash out in anger, and I can tell you, it’s always rooted in something: a feeling, or how they feel about themselves. Asking questions is how we get down to that. The last piece of understanding is considering what’s behind the behaviour. What is it that’s causing my child to act this way? If we can get to that, we can truly understand them. So if you’ve got a child who’s being difficult in front of you, instead of reacting, pause, take stock, and find out what’s really going on. Ask questions, get to the root, and build a relationship where that’s possible.

So the kids told me they want support, understanding, and to be cared for. That last one sounds a bit general, doesn’t it? But we all know when we’re cared for. It’s a way of leaning in. I think support and understanding are things we do; care is our way of being. To care for your child is to love them. Does your face light up when they walk into the room? That’s care. Do you want to spend time with them? I mentioned self-worth earlier, but caring for your child means engaging with them: it might be as simple as helping them when they’re sick, sitting with them, putting on a bandage. It’s walking alongside them with care, and that self-worth grows enormously when we do.

So: support, understanding, and caring. What happens when we do this? I am not a psychologist. I’m not a clinician. I’m a teacher. But what came out of my research was that the kids who experienced these things felt connection. That’s it. They were connected. Anecdotally, I’d say about ninety-eight percent of the kids I worked with, over five and a half years at that psychiatric unit, felt that they didn’t matter and that they didn’t belong. They weren’t feeling connection.

A psychologist once told me that the opposite of connection is substance use, because you’re filling that void. So when kids feel connected, they feel more certain of themselves, their self-worth continues to grow, and they have people to talk to. I recently learned that the CDC, the Center for Disease Control in the US, identified connection back in 2011 as the number one mitigating factor for suicidal ideation: the one thing that can interrupt that feeling and stop the follow-through. It comes back to being present, and to support, understanding, and care.

When we do this, kids also feel more grounded. Kids who struggle with anxiety, for example, told me they feel more grounded simply because they have connection with people. And the other thing that happens is that they stay in relationship with you. So if you want to talk about conflict in the home, and how to reduce it, here’s what I can tell you with confidence: when your kids are connected to you, there’s less conflict, because they’re attached.

There’s a wonderful book called Hold On to Your Kids, by Gabor Maté and Gordon Neufeld, about attachment parenting. The idea is that your child’s behaviour aligns with their attachment. If they’re attached to you, they’ll make decisions with you in mind on a Friday or Saturday night. They might stay home more, or their behaviour will align more closely with your values.

If, instead, your kids are more attached to their peers, you now have the potential for at-risk behaviour: being out using substances on a Friday night, spending time with people you’d probably rather they didn’t, because that’s where their behaviour will follow their attachment. And it all comes back to what I said: connection, support, understanding, and care.

So what do you do with this? You’ve got a child who’s struggling, you want to connect more, and you don’t know where to start. You start right there. You start by supporting them: how can I support them? Think about that in your own life. Then, how can I understand them better? What can I do, personally, to understand my child more, so that in a conversation, I’m not blowing my top, I’m not reacting out of emotion, I’m just sitting there, not judging, asking questions, getting to the root of it, and keeping myself out of the equation. And then, care: how can I care for my child, and what does that really involve?

This is all about getting on their turf, and it all comes down to connection. So join me again in two weeks. I’m alternating these Just Me episodes with the podcast, where I sit down with people from around the world to talk about how we get on our kids’ turf and connect with them more. You can find me on Instagram and LinkedIn, and you can like this video using the button below. Subscribe to this channel, and leave me a comment: I’d love to respond, and to hear what you want to know for future episodes.

I’ll see you next time.