Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Andy Earle
Hey, it's Andy from talking to teens, it would mean the world to us. If you could leave us a five star review, reviews on Apple and Spotify help other parents find the show. And that helps us keep the lights on. Thanks for being a listener. And here's the show. You're listening to talking to teens, where we speak with leading experts from a variety of disciplines about the art and science of parenting teenagers. I'm your host, Andy Earle. We're here today, with Michael MacQueen talking about how to convince stubborn people, if you've ever had the experience of trying to get through to your teenager about something and feeling like they're just stuck in their mindset, and they're not listening to the great arguments that you're making, or the important information that you're trying to get across to them. Well, there's a disconnect between the way that we go about trying to convince people of things, and the way that the mind actually works. As Michael says, we're using approaches from the 19th and 20th century to try to change 21st century minds. Is it any wonder that it doesn't work so well, that's why Michael has written the book mind stuck. He's spoken with experts, and compiled the latest research on behavior change, and put it into a handy framework, a series of very actionable tools that we can use to change someone's mind when they seem to be stuck firmly in their way of thinking. In fact, just yesterday, Michael had a situation where he put these principles into practice with his own son. And we're going to talk about that in today's episode, along with a whole lot of science based strategies that you can use starting today with your own teenager, all that and a whole lot more is coming up on the show, Michael, thank you so much for being here. Super excited to talk about the art of changing minds, a book really on, on how to move people in a different direction, when they're kind of firmly entrenched in a certain way of thinking. It really, really spoke to me because that's a situation that a lot of parents find themselves in.

Michael McQueen
Yeah. And it's funny, too, I mean, my wife would tell you that I'm the perfect person to have written a book on stubbornness and how to change stubborn minds. Because I come from a long line of very headstrong people in my family. It's been interesting, even just just looking at the patterns I've seen in my own life, my own way of processing information, then my own parenting, and then just seeing how that's actually just so in many cases, such a human trait, but we see some temperaments are probably more prone to this than others. And you see it in your kids. I mean, you know, if you've got three or four kids, I'm one of five boys. So I'm going across the spectrum of my family, there are one or two that were actually pretty chill, pretty willing to just go with whatever but most of my my brothers were fiercely stubborn. And that temperament style, that means you know, you they're digging their heels, as their instinctive reflex makes it tricky to influence. So then, a lot of the book is looking at how do you get through to people when they are in that very stuck or stubborn state, particularly those who've got a temperament where they're naturally inclined to do that. Anyway. So hence, the title of the book of mind stuck? How do you get through to people whose minds are stuck in certain ways of operating? or certain ways of thinking? What was

Andy Earle
it that made you write this book? Or how did you get so interested in this topic and become such an expert on this? In

Michael McQueen
one way, in one sense, this has come out of a lot of the work I've done in the corporate world over the last 20 years or so. So I've been I've been in the space of studying essentially, where the world's heading from a technology perspective and demographics. They're looking at you the millennials, and Gen Z. And then they're looking also at the tech space. So everything from AI and robotics and all the rest of it. So I will be working with in most weeks at a fortune 500 companies and their leaders trying to figure out what's coming, what are the disruptions they can afford to ignore? What are the trends they need to jump onto before their competitors do what I noticed, though, over the years, is that I would consistently have these conversations and I remember one really vividly at the back in the back of a ballroom at a Hilton Hotel, given the like the closing keynote before the lunch break, and at the lunch break, I was speaking with one woman, and you could just everything about her was frustrated and tired. And she said, I can see what you're saying, I I'm across this stuff. I know we need to change in my organization. And if we don't do it soon, we're going to be left behind. I just can't get my bosses on board. i They just so stubborn in their view. And I said I won't have you tried and she what she suggested was all the stuff we should do all the normal advice, but it just wasn't working. And the interesting thing is that's a conversation. I've had time and time again with clients over the years and with educators and with parents. So this book is really an attempt to answer their question of why do our best and most logical arguments fail to in influence or persuade stubborn people, because time and time again, we see that to be the case. And the data is pretty compelling as well, I think. So we spend 40% of our professional lives trying to sway the influence of others, or try to try and sway or influence other people's thinking or decisions, we are only successful get this three to 5% of the time, we are just not good at doing this in modern time. So a lot of the book looks at why and then how to sort of address that and get a whole lot better at being influential.

Speaker 1
Or mine gets so stuck in one way of thinking, or is it just that the way that we're going about trying to trying to convince other people of things is not really the best strategy, or it's

Michael McQueen
a bit of both. I mean, it's it is both sides of the equation. It's the stubbornness on the part of the person not willing to change, but also just our tactics and approach and the philosophy we have tried to influence or persuade other people, again, whether that's a teenager at home, someone in your team at work, or someone in a football team, that you're coaching, whatever it is, you see these dynamics all the time. And one of the big reasons we see this not working as well as we'd like is that we've sort of been taught to use 19th and 20th century techniques for changing 21st century minds. And it just doesn't work. In fact, most of the techniques and tactics we've been taught for years for decades, for centuries, really, not only do they not work, but actually they're counterproductive. And you've probably noticed this other thing where you give someone the best logic, the best evidence, you're like, men, I've nailed this, you know, I've given a watertight case here that it has the opposite effect. In fact, they become more stubborn, more stuck in their view. And you see this particularly I mean, anyone who's got someone in their world and we've always got someone who now everyone's got someone in their world who in the last few years has really gone down the rabbit hole, it's they've conspiracy, belief, and when you when you interact with those people in your try and give evidence and logic, I mean, it's just not only does it fall on deaf ears, but it makes them more rigid, more stubborn, and suddenly about it's not about intelligence, I mean, highly intelligent people are just prone, just as prone to doing this as people who aren't. So this is this is all of us and beautiful. Like why are we so bad at this probably the person if you want to blame just one person, because who doesn't love a scapegoat? Hey, so probably the person we could look to blame would be Francis Bacon. So Francis Bacon, England's former Attorney General, he was the dude that coined that phrase, knowledge is power, but he was also one of the forefathers of the Enlightenment. And his big idea was that humans are basically fundamentally reasonable and rational. And if you just give people the right information, or the right evidence, they'll arrive at a rational conclusion, which would be nice if it were true, but it's not true. But that was the core idea that was that essentially sprang forth into the enlightenment for the next few 100 years. And it's still shaped to this day, how we try to persuade others. I mean, right through from government information campaigns, we just figured if we can give you the right evidence and the right data that'll that'll that'll do the job that'll teach you that'll make you think you're right, I should change. And we were just seeing in the last few decades, we've been practicing just how ineffective and counterproductive some of these approaches are, the term they use, and all that other academic researchers reactance. And when you try and give someone evidence and logic, that flinch response to dig their heels in, and then push back is called reactance. And we see it constantly. But the more we push, the harder people dig in. And yet that's so often that the very dynamic that causes us so much frustration, it also means the situation never changes.

Speaker 1
It's funny that that's our go to, to try to use logic and reason to convince somebody of our what we think is right, because probably we didn't really use logic and reason to arrive at our beliefs in the first place. Somehow, we think that we think that we're gonna be able to use it to convince somebody else. Yeah,

Michael McQueen
there's this great quote, I came across from the am Irish essayist, Jonathan Swift. And he said, It's impossible to reason someone out of a view, they never arrived at via reason. And like, enter your point. So many of the things that we've decided to be true that things were so stubborn about, it wasn't because like we logically made up our mind to do that, and that's a lot of what I look at in the book is what actually does make up our minds. And it's not linear. And it's not this accumulation of data points. And suddenly we'd make a decision to go on and and make up my mind about something. It's just that's not the way it goes. In fact, so many of our athletes things we feel certain about indefinitely about you actually send it Why do you think that we don't even know like, we just, it's often a bit of a gut feel type thing, or there's a sense that we've just arrived at this point of view, because isn't that what everyone thinks? And everyone like me seems to be saying this and I'm reading stuff online and social media keeps saying this, and then we arrive at these points of certainty and then get ourselves stuck and unable to rethink them or reconsider them.

Andy Earle
You have just like all of these tips in the book, and it's just, it goes on and on and on with this toolkit of different different Ways of sort of thinking about how to move somebody from where they are to a different way of thinking and a lot of things really, I found thinking, wow, this would be really helpful for teenagers, this would work really well with teenagers, especially early a lot of the stuff on autonomy and like you were mentioning, yeah, commonality how we can appeal to think, especially as in the teenage years, this one we're just getting, getting so tuned into what other people are doing. And you're trying to make sure that we're, we're, we're right, who we're doing the right thing, or are saying the right thing, or believing the right thing based on kind of what everyone else is doing. But as a parent, does that mean that we're just we don't have any leverage to stand on, because they're just going to be influenced by what everybody else is doing.

Michael McQueen
So there's a couple of things that led me to a point does make it increasingly difficult to persuade teenagers, particularly some of his life stage, some of its just hormonal. Also, because of in high, we've all we've all been teenagers. And when you cast your mind back to that point, you do go through that stage where you go from dependence to wanting to be independent, and you realize you're really 20s You're interdependent with your parents, like they actually they do know a few things and they're valuable to bounce ideas are, you do have that, that naturally independent stays, that's just a part of growing up. But there are actually more dynamics going on than just that natural life stage based stuff. So what's interesting that I look at in the book is this idea of the fact that we have two very different minds that we use to make up and make arrive at for decisions and judgments and opinions. So the two minds and this is important, because when it comes to this question of how do you change someone's mind, the first question is, which mind you're trying to change, and particularly with your teenagers, so the first mind is what I refer to in the book is The inquiring mind. So that's like, going to think about where that leaves in our brains. That's the frontal lobe as the frontal bit of our baby brains. It's logical, linear rational. This is a part of our brains of Francis Bacon was speaking about, it's methodical, it's really good at taking in data and dealing with complexity. Here's the trick, even the best of us as fully grown adults only use our inquiry mind for making five to 10% of our decisions and arriving at points of judgment and opinion, the question that is, what do we spend the rest of what what do we do with the rest of our decision making happens in a thing called the instinctive mind, which is sort of connected to a part of our brain at the top of the brainstem called the limbic system, which is our fight and flight reflexes, it's good at pattern recognition, it tends to be very impulsive, it's very efficient at arriving at points of decision really fast. But I can also jump to meat means we jumped to conclusions. So here's the tricky thing is if you've got the average adult still uses their instinctive mind for making 90 to 95% of their decisions and arriving at points of judgment. And we know that for teenagers, their frontal lobe hasn't fully developed yet. So I would suggest and we there's no data I've seen about exactly how this split works for younger generations or young people, I would suggest even less of their enquiring mind is involved in any decisions they're making. So then, like, how does instinctive mind work? And to your point, one of the big things we see with the instinctive mind, and it isn't, it's intensely tribal, it's looking to my peers. What are people like me think about something like this, and that need to belong is so deeply instinctive for us as humans, and as the case for for all of us as adults? I mean, how many times do you d but unconsciously check? Is this person like me? Are they on my side? Do they vote the same way? I do that I had said, the same sort of values? I do. And once we've ascertained that, then like, we're open to what they're going to say. Whereas if it's someone from the other side, we kid ourselves and say, I'm really open minded. I'll read that blog post, I'll read that article. But we're not really we're evaluating it trying to look for holes in their argument, because they're not from our side. Yeah, right

Speaker 1
there that that's not true. Oh, and that too, I'm not even gonna read the rest of this. This is This is crap.

Michael McQueen
We do that as adults. So you can imagine. And because that's that tribal instinct involved for us as grown adults. How much more is that for our kids? So you got a teenager who's that they're called group, that tribal group is doing X, Y, Zed thinking, XY and Z. And then I've got mum or dad, who aren't in my tribe, and they're not my age. I'm already suspicious. They don't know anything. Because after all, I'm 15. That's what every 15 year old thinks. So then you add all of that on to the tribal instincts and that need to belong and all the stuff we're reading about loneliness. And as interesting, what are some of the research I came across and the book was looking at how loneliness or isolation affects the way our instinctive mind works? So this is interesting. We've had a couple of theories around this for years, but we've never been able to test it at scale. And yet, the COVID lock downs were the perfect chance to test this and the University of Chicago looked at these very famous and how does our brain change when we're essentially lonely cut off from the world when we're isolated? And interestingly, during lockdowns when people didn't have physical connections and people were doing zoom calls and teams calls, we still had connection. Well, it's but it wasn't physical face to face connection. You look at what happens in our brains, our amygdala shrinks, it changes shape, it also changes texture. The amygdala is the part of that instinctive mind. That is all about fight and flight. It's very tribal it's very trigger happy. Is it any wonder that during the lockdowns when we were socially isolated and disconnected, we became more angry, more easily offended and outraged about any number of the culture wars, things we saw play out of that time. So you think about our young people for whom we keep hearing, there's this epidemic of loneliness. They're online, they got heaps of friends online, but they have physical connections that is literally shaping or reshaping the way their brains function. Sometimes, if you've got a young person who is really, really stuck in a certain view, or in some cases, just not coping well with the complexities of life, it could well be what they need is just physical connection with other humans. And that's tricky. It's hard to suggest that because I'll tell you, they're fine. But actually, you do see our brains work best when we've got connections with others when we're in community.

Andy Earle
But so, wow. I mean, if if this is off all of this, that you're saying is true. It sounds really bad for parents, for kids are just being so influenced by what, whatever they think everyone else is doing and what everyone else wants them to do, then how can we have any hope to get through to them on something really important?

Michael McQueen
Yeah. Well, the first thing that I mean, this is so much the book is about this whole theme of how do you how do you speak to someone's instinctive mind? Obviously, if the inquiring mind isn't with a game that and what is inquiring mind love, it's all the logic and data and evidence and the rest of it a good pie chart or a Venn diagram, the instinctive mind is different. So what works with the what what works with the instinctive mind is typically, and there's a whole lot of factors involved, but one of them would be high trust being vulnerable with this group. They interestingly, if you look at some of the work from Dr. Paul Zak, who's done some great research, in terms of how we build trust, and rapport and affinity with others, he looks at the role that oxytocin plays. So oxytocin is the body's social bonding hormone. And it's how we unconsciously figure out who we trust and who we don't. And interestingly, what Paul's done over the years is look at what is it that causes us to have that that release of oxytocin and what causes us to not to so we've all had that experience, I can hear you walk away from a conversation with somebody like, I just feel like we clicked we

Speaker 1
connected, we just yeah, we just totally on the same wavelength. Not that

Michael McQueen
in that that's a good way to put that idea of being on the same wave that we are in sync. So it's interesting, where what he's found is that when that when that happens, oxytocin is released. And yet, yeah, those conversations, you'll walk away from somebody, like they said all the right things, but I just don't feel like we clicked. It's because something unconsciously means that you didn't get those trust signals. And there was no release of oxytocin. If you look at this, how powerful oxytocin is, it is the bond that the hormone involved in the bond between mum and baby during breastfeeding, like it's so intensely powerful. As a parent, the first place we've got to start is how do you start getting the oxytocin flowing, because once you've got them that sense of affinity, or on the same page, we're in this together, the path the pathway is paved, essentially, for having influence? So there's a couple of things that Paul would suggest for doing this. The first is vulnerability, just be real. Like, even honestly, and I find this as a parent consistently is like, how often do I go into a conversation with that? They're genuine posture of humility and openness. Like I don't, I don't know what we should do here. I don't know what the best course of action is. Like I spoke on this together. I'd love to hear your input. And just that sense of like not trying to go in like we'd all have it all figured out. There's also some really interesting stuff in Paul's work around the importance of synchronicity, and synchronicities where you where you literally get in sync with the other person saying try and match their, their body language, for instance, and I've heard over the years, all those people say match body language, like if you're sitting there and they're crossing their legs, you cross your legs, if they scratch their you scratch your head, to me, it always feels a little bit contrived or manipulative. So I remember, I was actually interviewing Paul recently and said, say, how do you build that sense of being in sync physically with someone without it being super awkward and contrived, and I love what he said, he just said, if you go for a walk, that is one of the best things you can do, because when you're walking side by side with someone, naturally, your cadence starts to match, you get in sync start

Speaker 1
to realize we're stepping at the same rhythm. And we're kinda, yeah, totally

Michael McQueen
makes a big difference. And he just said, Honestly, if you've got a high stakes conversation, you want to build that sense of trust, go for a walk, and they'd like it can make the biggest difference in terms of disarming that us versus them, me versus us sort of dynamic. So I think that's the most important thing, if we're going to have any influence, you've got to start from a position of humility and openness. And what goes hand in hand with that is just listening. Like, do you go into every high stakes conversations with your teenager, genuinely curious to understand the way they see the world and what shaped their view or you go in with a really clear sense of what you think they should be doing? Because you know, best and you're older and all the rest of it, even if unconsciously, that's the tone or the posture you've adopt. I mean, it's red rag to a bull now wonder they dig their heels in that you can't tell me I even had this conversation this this experience yesterday with our little one, so we haven't got a teenager yet. So he's about eight years of age. He turns eight next month, and it was interesting. So he was out the street in front of our house pushing his bike down the hill, and it would just crash into the into the gutter into the curb and then hit a tree and he just kept doing it time and time again. So I often asked him like, Dude, what are you doing? Like so he actually said, if you do that, again, we're taking your bike off you because you're done. storing stuff. That's not cool. Yeah, he did it well, more or two more times. But that's it. Okay, that is it come up to characters. You can't be reckless and destructive with your stuff that's just not on the later that night. I actually don't know what he was doing or why he was doing it. I thought, listen to my own advice, have I listened yet? I said to him after dinner, I said, hey, Sal, what's going on today? Like, what was the deal with the FBI? He said, I said, the neighbors and I were just trying to figure out whether the bike would be like self driving or not like, what what will be the angle and the speed would need to be at for it to be able to ride itself without crashing. So we were doing different experiments. And I'm like, my partner me was in I wish that asked because that was actually that's a that's a good thing to have that like curiosity and scientific experiment thing. But I jump straight to dude, how dare you, you're losing your bike,

how much we paid for that thing?

All that stuff. Yeah, I just think that that was such a that was just from the last day or so I think it's such an example of what we so often do as parents, but have we actually stopped long enough to listen and not listen to respond, but listen, to understand, not listen to evaluate, but just listen to, to deeply empathize. And that is difficult, particularly when your teenager is doing things that are destructive to their bodies, or their brains, or you just have to do it is not going to help them. I mean, I was thinking about the number of patterns of behavior we're seeing in teenagers right now that really are a form of unconscious self harm in terms of psychology and stuff that they're taking and doing and all the rest of you like, gosh, I just want to protect them. I just want to rescue them. I want to step in and stop this. And because I know best and you do know best as a parent, you actually do it just cut and tell them that it's a whole thing of Do you genuinely understand from their perspective, what's going on for them. And sometimes the tricky thing with teenagers is they don't have the words to describe what they're thinking and feeling. There's so many complex emotions on what's happening hormonally for them, you can sort of leave with questions like I don't know, I don't know what's going on for you. But some of the common stuff that I'm hearing about and reading about for teenagers is like, and you start to share a few words. So the sorts of words, they're not just angry, they might be overwhelmed, or they might be feeling listless, or they might be frustrated. I mean, you try and give them the words to describe what's going on for them. Because sometimes they just need that coaching through like a simple stuff is like nailing down what I'm feeling I'm feeling X fill in the blank, because there's something about language is really important that once we know what we're feeling, then we can identify it and then deal with it. But when there's a sense of just general overwhelm, or just life sucks, or you suck, or I suck, or whatever it is, like those sort of very vague that very vague language is actually really disempowering. So we've been coaching your kids through figuring out how they're feeling. And that requires a lot of listening.

Andy Earle
We're here today with Michael McQueen, talking about how to convince stubborn teenagers who are stuck in their way of thinking, and we're not done yet. Here's a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.

Michael McQueen
There's a real chance to use language in a very deliberate, very intentional way when it comes to asking questions. And again, if we can do it well, the difference you can make is extraordinary, because it's the battles you don't walk into. It's those moments that you defuse the us versus them. And you can even preface questions with signals of vulnerability. Like, I may not be seeing the whole picture here. But I'm just curious about the nasty question. What it does is it diffuses that us versus them dynamic. Just share your stories with the kids. And again, not not just the good ones, the ones that make you feel like yes, and like the hero in the story, the staff up once the ones we made mistakes, often those the stories that really do land, and they stick with your kids in that moment, when they're the kids who got to make a decision as to whether they do or don't do something, it's not going to be your well worded sermon that's going to have an impact. It'll be the story you told them. Like I remember hearing something about this. The great thing is even if they do then make a decision, that's not great. Who they'll come to to talk about it more likely you because he's told a story about startups, you're accessible, you are relatable. I think the sad thing about so often what we see with teenagers is shame. The shame is associated with things they might do where they have regrets. The shame is often based on this idea that they are the first and they are the worst being open with your kids so that they get the sense that they can always come and speak to you that you are open and that you get it I think those are the things that can make a huge influence on how much influence you have as a parent in the lives of your team. You're playing a longer game here at the end of this, you want to have a relationship with strong you want to have kids that want to be around you that want to talk to you. If we succumb at everything they do, or ask for or demand there is something about respect that gets lost that sense of I can walk all over my parents they didn't even know they got holding your ground even though in that moment you might be unpopular and they're slamming of doors and they're shouting that consistency is something that builds trust. It builds respect, but also it makes you someone who's seen as reliable in your kids eyes. So you pick your battles you choose what you're going to put your foot down on and but also make it really clear that there are some boundaries that are not called across and that's easier said than done. I get it. I need it so important if they respect you and trust you that gives you the right to speak into situations later on. If you've lost respect, I mean half the game's gone.

Andy Earle
Want to hear the full episode? Head over to talk Looking to teens.com/register for a free trial of our premium podcast, you get exclusive access to loads of great content with no obligation and your membership supports the work we do here at talking to teens get started today with a free trial over at talking to teens.com/registered. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.