The Power of Reflective Parenting: Empathy and Understanding for Raising Resilient Teenagers

Monday - April 1 2024, 11:49 UTC - 7 months ago

Dr. Sheila Redfern, a consultant clinical child and adolescent psychologist, advocates for reflective parenting during the challenging teenage years. She believes that understanding the teenage brain and empathizing with their experience is crucial for building resilience and security in young people. Using reflective parenting, parents can help their teenagers manage their emotions and relationships in safe ways, reducing the risk of mental health problems and promoting a sense of connection and belonging.

Helping teenagers to understand what is going on inside their own brains is the key to helping them mature into resilient and independent adults, research suggests. Sheila Redfern, a consultant clinical child, and adolescent psychologist, proposes that rather than focusing on stamping out difficult behaviors, parents should teach teenagers to manage their feelings and relationships in safe ways. Dr .

Redfern says that although parenting teenagers is uniquely challenging, with concerns about social media use, self-harm, risk-taking, and other difficult behavior, this stage can be full of enjoyment and connection. In her new book, How Do You Hug a Cactus? Reflective Parenting with Teenagers in Mind, she advocates for reflective parenting – which involves trying to understand what goes on in the teenage brain – as essential for building resilience and security in young people, to navigate through the storm and stress of adolescence .

Understanding the neuroscience of the changing teenage brain can really help parents to empathize and connect with their teenage children. This is not just a time of physical and neurological change, but also of great vulnerability. It's during this period of development that teenagers are much more likely to engage in risky behavior and develop a mental illness. The statistics from the UK NHS research on child and adolescent mental health show that in young people aged 17 to 19 years, the rate of mental health problems rose from 1 in 10 in 2017 to 1 in 4 in 2022 – the biggest challenge to mental health being anxiety and depression .

The focus in reflective parenting is on keeping a connection with your teenager and helping them to manage, sometimes overwhelming and unwanted, feelings. This is one of the most important skills for life you can teach your teenager. Dr. Redfern explains that while we used to think most emotional development occurred in childhood and was fully formed by around age 7, we now know that this continues into early adulthood .

There are three basic biobehavioral systems that enable humans to adapt to our complex social environment: the reward system; the mentalizing, or 'social cognition' system, which is our capacity to understand ourselves and others in terms of our feelings, desires, and values; and finally the stress and threat system. During adolescence, these three biobehavioural systems are being reorganized in the brain and, put very simply, this reorganization of the systems leads to patterns of thinking, behavior, and responses to others, including parents, which may be difficult to understand, seem illogical, highly reactive or self-destructive .

Where adults think with the prefrontal cortex, the brain's rational part, teenagers process information with the amygdala – this is the emotional part. This leads to strong emotions that can evolve very quickly, without the logical part of the brain having a chance to evaluate them. Dr. Redfern also points out that during this time, the teenage brain is highly sensitive to what others think of them, and prone to social anxiety .

This 'imaginary audience' the teenager believes they are the center of other people's attention, focus, and evaluations, for better or worse. Adolescents are also alert to pick up on others' emotions and expectations. For example, an adolescent stands more at risk of being hurt emotionally, by a text message sent or not sent from a peer, than adults would in response to the same situation. Dr. Redfern believes it is essential for parents to empathize with their teenager's experience .

Rather than finding something their teenager does outrageous or strange, a parent should try to put themselves in their teenager's shoes. This might mean thinking 'What is it like for my teenager in this situation?' or 'What might my teenager be feeling right now?'. For example, if a teenager is feeling anxious about an upcoming exam, a parent could help by acknowledging their child's feelings and offering practical support or strategies to manage their anxiety .

Dr. Redfern also suggests that parents strive for a balance between connection and setting boundaries as their teenager struggles for independence. Teenagers need a sense of connection and belonging to reduce the risk of mental health problems and to develop resilience. However, this does not mean giving up your role as a parent, as boundaries can be healthy and reassuring. It also means being confident you are doing it for the right reasons and not just for your own gratification and feelings of being a good parent .