teens

ParentsNovember 20, 2017

How to get your teenager to open up to you

Guest writer
teens

Louisa Woods is a high school teacher and counsellor and a mother of three. She knows teenagers. Here she shares her advice on getting your teenage child to open up.

A very wise 15 year old once said ‘We’re just worried about being judged and sometimes don’t know what to say or how to say it.  Our parents need to show us or tell us that we can tell them.’

It’s not rocket science, I suppose; most teenagers want some assurance they’re going to be safe, respected, and supported before they choose to open up to the adults in their lives.  It’s important for parents in particular to realise, though, that teenagers won’t automatically assume those things about talking with you.  Sometimes they have good reason to believe sharing is more likely to lead to conflict than to comfort; sometimes it’s our own behaviour that has led to such a belief. As key adults in their lives, we need to create a relationship with our teenagers which fosters open communication and supportive interactions.

It may be easier said than done, especially if communication between you has typically been tricky, but examining the way you approach your teenager and the attitudes you hold about adolescents and their place in the world can help you to make the changes needed to create a safe and supportive sharing environment and to have effective conversations.

Take the lead, but don’t put too much pressure on.

’Tis a tightrope we’re walking, this parenting thing.  Sway too far either way and you’re going to get a wobble on or plummet into certain doom.  There is a balance to be struck, as with any relationship, between pressure and support.  Teenagers want to know you’re available, but they don’t want to feel compelled to talk.  They’re grateful if you ask questions to help with understanding, but will retreat to the safety of small talk if you start grilling them for details.  There is a vast difference between conversation and interrogation and teenagers are quick to notice when you turn the spotlight on.

A little bit of understanding goes a long way

Stephen Fry, whose turbulent young life held few hints of the success and wisdom he has gone on to achieve, wrote ‘No adolescent ever wants to be understood, which is why they complain about being misunderstood all the time’ (Moab Is My Washpot, 1997).  While I’m a fan of many of his pearls, this is one I’m not buying.

Yeah, okay, there’s complaining.  Ranging in intensity from bellyaching to lament, it’s a feature of many conversations with teens; they assume most adults don’t get where they’re coming from, and the most unhappy feel a similar disconnection from their peers.  Young people are generally hyper-aware of others’ opinions and responses, and many find the thought or actuality of their actions and ideas being misunderstood a source of anxiety and frustration.  Many have good reason to complain, just as we all do at times.

Underlying the gripes and angst is a desire for connection.  Most teenagers are either searching for someone to understand them or hanging on to those people who do.

True understanding comes from empathy, from a real attempt to imagine yourself in someone else’s place and make a connection with their lived experiences and feelings.  I don’t think there’s a person alive who doesn’t appreciate empathy.  And teenagers are not simply grown-ups in waiting.  They are already real, whole people, complete with dreams and aspirations, needs and desires, beliefs and fears.  Our interactions with them should respect that wholeness.

Nothing’s trivial.

There is little more infuriating and disheartening when you share something important, something about which you are passionate and emotional, than a patronising response.  Too often adults dismiss young people’s points of view as being uninformed, immature, or bound to change.  Too often we trivialise the issues they are facing, the things they are anxious about, the emotional ups and downs, and their relationships by viewing them as phases, fads, as driven by hormones.  Too often we say we understand but we’re really just giving them a metaphorical pat on the head to pacify them before they hit the ‘real world’ and its ‘real issues’.

Like the three-year old whose earnest attempts to master new vocabulary are greeted with laughter or cries of ‘You’re just so cute’, a teenager does not need your condescension or platitudes.

Most teens would rather straight-out, honest disagreement as long as it’s coupled with an openness to hearing their point of view.  At least a dissenting argument invites discussion and a chance for real communication and, as a result, better understanding.  More, it implies a degree of respect—in disagreeing, you are showing you care enough to make an effort to change their mind or actions.

And please, don’t be the adult who could fill a seat in Monty Python’s Yorkshireman sketch.  I don’t care if you did live in a rolled up newspaper with your family of 17, downplaying a young person’s issues and experiences because ‘they don’t know they’re born’, ‘it wasn’t like this in our day’, or ‘other people have things much worse’ is not only disrespectful and decidedly unhelpful, it’s also a bit dense.

Things can undoubtedly be worse, there will always be someone who is suffering more, but our shit is still our shit.  Squashing down our feelings and telling ourselves our thoughts and problems aren’t valid does more harm than good; seating guilt at the top of the emotional heap simply adds to the hardship.

Of course, if you’re wanting to avoid further conversations with your teen, please continue your story about the cold tea you drank out of a cracked cup.

No-one likes an ‘In my Day’ story.  No-one.

Listen, listen, and then listen some more.

One of the great pleasures in life is engaging in conversation with a skilled listener.  Even better, the follow-up chat where they mention some little detail, proving they were not only listening, but have remembered what you said.

There’s a line in Fight Club about the joy of meeting people who ‘really, really listen to you…instead of waiting for their turn to speak.’  For teenagers, growing up in a world where other people’s likes, comments, and shares are valued more than whatever it was they posted in the first place, having someone who is more focussed on what they’re listening to than on their own response is a precious gift.

Look, I know they sometimes talk drivel.  Don’t we all?  It’s not really necessary to take note of everything coming out of their mouth when they’re behaving like the talking version of the energiser bunny.  But do pay them the courtesy of listening, just as you would anyone else, and be on alert for important snippets they might slip in as openings for deeper conversations.  They’re not stupid; they know how to segue from the mundane to the critical once they’ve tested the waters.

Regardless of the topic, quell the urge to jump in with your reckons, helpful advice, ‘at leasts’ or judgements.  It’s good to ask questions for clarification purposes but other than those and a few indicators you’re keeping up, wait until they’re finished.  Pause for half a minute before you speak; if they fill the silence, keep listening. Repeat.

Unless they ask, don’t bestow advice upon them like you’re some sort of expert and they the inexperienced apprentice—even if you do happen to be an expert, resist.  It’s empowering and more likely to have an impact if adolescents are able, with support, to come to their own conclusions and make independent decisions.

Just be there.

Even if they’ve turned down your offers of conversation since the moment they turned 12, the fact you keep offering means something.  Having a constant, supportive adult can make all the difference to a teen’s well being and resilience.

It’s a bit like having a block of chocolate hidden in the back of the pantry – you don’t have to eat it, but knowing it’s there makes you better able to face the world.  Just as there’ll likely come a day when you’re glad you’ve got chocolate on hand and ready to go, the day will come when being able to come to you and talk is exactly what gets your teenager through.

It may be a challenge to be consistently open and available for the adolescents in your life.  To keep you going, I’ll end with the words of yet another wise young person who wrote, when asked what she wished her parents understood, ‘I want them to know that I love them even though I might not show it all the time.’

Louisa Woods is a high school teacher and counsellor, currently filling her days looking after her own three children, writing a bit, singing a bit, and reading as much as she can.

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ParentsNovember 17, 2017

The littlest patients: New Zealand’s leading neonatalist discusses her life-saving work

Guest writer
Charlottes_Foot

Today is World Prematurity Day, and this month is Neonatal November. To mark the day Lee-Anne Duncan talks to Wellington Hospital’s Dr Max Berry about the importance of neonatal research.

What’s the reason musician Stevie Wonder is blind? He was given too much oxygen when he was born six weeks early. Research has shown how to do this safely now, so who are the forward thinking doctors doing this kind of research these days? Who is innovating the care we give and provide to pre-term babies? It’s doctors like Max Berry.

Dr Max Berry is devoted to helping give preterm babies better outcomes. Her legion of tiny patients and their parents are right alongside her. In Wellington Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), parents wait beside their newborns. They feel helpless, but also helpless to leave. As the nurses move quietly, checking babies, taking notes, reassuring and soothing, the parents look forward to the day they ‘graduate’ the NICU for home.

And most of the 1000 babies who come into the NICU each year do leave, as the unit has a globally impressive success rate. Due to decades of science and research, with the help of thousands of premature babies, consummate clinical skill and gritted determination, a 500g baby (that’s a block of butter) can now usually live and grow up. But with what effects?

Dr Max Berry is a consultant neonatologist at Wellington Hospital and a senior lecturer for paediatrics and child health at the University of Otago, Wellington. As if two jobs aren’t enough, she also leads two research groups and supervises several of the next generation of scientists and clinicians.

A premature baby’s body must suddenly adjust to tasks it’s not ready for; its lungs must breathe, its tiny, immature gut must process milk. All of these challenges – and so many more – could have far-reaching implications.

Traditionally, if NICU-graduates appeared healthy as children, it was anticipated they’d be healthy as adults. Research now shows that adults born early can be predisposed to major conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and even issues with their own pregnancies. That’s known as the DOHaD (Developmental Origins of Health and Disease) phenomenon.

Dr Max Berry

So while Max and her team are still very much about saving lives, her research is focused on understanding how this difficult start to life influences future health.

“If we knew more about how being born preterm affects them when they’re older, what mitigations, what changes to clinical practice could we put in place now to improve outcomes?” says Max.

Over the decades, research has driven countless changes to clinical practice. The reason musician Stevie Wonder is blind? He was given too much oxygen when he was born six weeks early, causing retinopathy of prematurity. Research has shown how to use oxygen therapy safely to maximise benefits without increasing the risk of complications.

All aspects of care for extremely preterm infants must be thought about carefully. “Even things as simple as lifting the legs of a 500g baby to change a nappy needs to be considered,” says Max. “That means a lot of blood is pushed suddenly from their legs to their main core. An older person’s brain can sense there’s more blood moving and compensates to stop it flooding their brain. A preterm baby can’t. Maybe there are simple things we can do that would stabilise blood flow to the brain. Then we’d do that for all premature babies, wherever in the world they are.”

One of Max’s PhD students, Dr Maria Saito Benz recently won an award for her work understanding brain blood flow and oxygen levels in preterm babies. Using equipment including a bioamplifier funded by The Neonatal Trust and international financial services company ICAP, she shone infrared light onto a baby to measure oxygen levels in its tissues, rather than just its bloodstream, and measured even subtle changes in the baby’s heart rates and blood pressure.

Max says this will help clinicians know the best way to maintain oxygen flow in the tiniest babies. Ultimately we’ll follow those kids up longer term to see how the changes in brain oxygen translate to brain structure and function. Then we can feed back that information, saying, “These are the brain oxygen targets we should be aiming for, for these reasons, and this is how to achieve it”.

While Max and her team are already doing a lot of preclinical and clinical research, there’s so much more she’d like to do. “As well as our local studies, we’re constantly asked to participate in big international studies. Joining forces and having New Zealand babies participate is crucial to developing evidence-based practice that answers the needs of our children. Frustratingly, our ability to fully participate is limited not by skills or willingness, but by funding.”

Some research is supported through The Neonatal Trust, but for much of it Max relies on the benevolence and understanding of other private and public funding streams. And there’s fierce competition for it (health funding applications currently have a nine percent success rate) and there’s always a requirement to show a result and a return – the faster the better. Max often misses out on funding because children take time to develop.

People tend to prioritise adulthood diseases for funding, forgetting that diseases in babies and children have lifelong consequences. If you fund a project looking at strokes and stroke recovery, you’ll know very quickly if it’s effective. But if you’re researching helping preterm babies, you’ll wait years to see a return on investment.

“For me as a neonatalist, and as a mum, this funding approach is nuts. We need to get people to understand the value of our work. If you get it right early, you set these kids on a different trajectory to being healthy children and healthy adults, rather than waiting for them to struggle and fail, then putting all the resources in at the end,” says Max.

Recently Max had to let go of a hugely valued member of her team, a highly-skilled neonatal research nurse. They’re “like hen’s teeth” but Max could no longer afford the nurse’s salary. “Losing her was a huge backwards step. Without her we can’t contribute to many of the studies we’d like to participate in. That’s really challenging because we all must contribute to a greater understanding of what it means to be born preterm, which has huge scope to allow people to manage their health to prevent future harm.”

For example, Max has the go-ahead to study glucose regulation in children and adults born full and preterm to see how they process excess fructose, the main sweetener in drinks.

“We know fructose is really bad biochemically and metabolically. If you’re born premature, are you differentially affected by bad environmental factors, such as drinking fructose? We think so, but we don’t know. If we can find out, as an adult they can make informed decisions about their wellbeing. We’re not chasing down ivory tower factoids – this is real-world stuff that impacts patient care.”

All this and so much more is why Dr Max Berry’s work, and the babies she saves and who inform her research, are such a vital part of the medical future. And why the funding limitations are so fettering and frustrating.

But Max wouldn’t do any job other than the one her daughter describes as being a “doctor’s doctor”. That’s a doctor who saves lives, and figures out how to do it better.

Supporting neonatal research is one of the three core objectives of The Neonatal Trust, who are proudly supporting the work of Dr Max Berry and her team. The Neonatal Trust hopes Neonatal November will be seen as a chance to raise awareness and support for families going through the stress and anxiety of a neonatal journey. You can make a donation here.

Lee-Anne Duncan is a freelance writer with a background in journalism and television production, and a focus on plain English and digital content. She writes regularly for NZ Life and Leisure and NZ House & Garden, and has written for many and varied Fairfax and industry trade publications.

If you want to get involved in the good work Max does and support neonatal families, one great way to do so is to become a regular donor to The Neonatal Trust or donate on their Givealittle page. They’re a pillar of support for families with premature and sick babies, and they’re funding vital research is just a fraction of the work they do.

This post was originally commissioned and published by the One Percent Collective.

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This content is entirely funded by Flick, New Zealand’s fairest power deal. In the past year, their customers saved $320 on average, which pays for a cheeky bottle of wine in the trolley almost every shop. Please support us by switching to them right now!