Teen Behaviors: Understanding Why

Hi, and welcome to the Parenting Your Teens podcast. I'm your host, Chris Taylor, and like every week we take a question we received from an audience member at home and I answer it so that parents have practical tools that they can use in working with their kids today. 

Now this question comes from John from Cool, California. Now, I don't know about you, but that's the best town name I've ever heard, Cool. Just so it happens that it's not far from my town here in Folsom, California, so big shout out to John just up the road. And so what John asks is why do teenagers have behaviors to begin with. I mean, that's a great question, right? Because once we understand why our teens have behaviors then we can really do something about changing them. 

Teen behavior is a personal responsibility

So here's the way we're going to look at that is not by focusing on sort of like the individual triggers because I sometimes think we get too lost in this idea of triggers being everywhere and we always have to be aware of everybody's triggers. And that's just not really possible, and it doesn't teach kids how to manage that for themselves either because they're relying on somebody externally whether it's an environmental piece or an actual person to stop them from having this behavior to begin with, and that's just not the way the world works. So we're all about trying to grow young, strong, independent teenagers into young, strong, independent adults who can meet and manage the challenges that life throws at them. 

So here's the thing - what causes behaviors in teenagers is the same that causes behaviors in adults. And what we want to really be focused on is needs. We as human beings have core needs, and when those core needs go unmet we have a behavioral response to try to get that need met. Now as adults we're better at doing that because we're more mature, we have more life experience, we have the ability to regulate ourselves emotionally more effectively. But when we're teenagers we're all dysregulated, our brains aren't fully developed, and so we really kind don't stand a chance if the expectation is just we do that on our own. 

In conjunction with that, we just don't have the control to make those major life decisions because we do live in a home, we have parents, there's authority figures all around us that are constantly guiding and telling us what to do. 

Teens have a deep need for connection.

So what we really need to know about for need fulfillment is that needs are the drivers of behavior, and that for teens there's three core needs that we want to focus on. So the first of these is the need to connect and belong. Now we all want to be a part of something, teens want to be a part of friend groups, social groups at school, they'll change the way they talk, the way they dress, their interests and hobbies just to gain access to those groups. 

Adults will have friend groups, we change less in response to those but we still do. Just think of the first time you met that person that maybe became your spouse or that you fell in love with, how did you adjust how you normally were to sort of win their favor, right? That need which is love-based, it's a connection need, is so powerful that we will really adapt and change some of the core pieces of ourselves to get access to that. 

Your teens are no different; they just do it in different ways because they don't verbalize that need so they end up acting it out. Slamming a door is a way to pull a parent in to assign a consequence; it backfires on the teen because once they get the consequence now they're upset because they felt like they were punished for wanting to connect. 

Parents can do a really good job of identifying these needs earlier on by basically checking in - am I spending a lot of time on my phone? Am I working too much? Am I being present in my kid's life in a meaningful way? 

Teens need to be able to escape uncomfortable situations

Now this leads to the second need, right? Because a lot of parents will be like, "Yeah, I try to be present in my kid's life in a meaningful way with conversations, with interactions, but all I did is sort of Stonewall shut down and withdrawal," right? And so I get parents to understand that kids get overwhelmed really quickly, and sometimes they honestly just don't see value in that interaction in that moment. And if we're honest, a lot of the requests coming from parents are really intrusive or they're very demanding on what we want kids to do whether it be chores or homework or a certain action that we want them to take into home. So what we want to do is make sure that we were allowing for the kid to meet that need of escape and avoidance, right? 

Now we don't want that to be indefinite that they just get to escape and avoid, and that's just all it ever was, because obviously they do need to function as a member of the household. But if we reinforce that just enough and we teach them that they can meet that need, that we have as far as maybe a chore, a task or homework piece on their timeframe then they're going to be able to remove themselves from it initially and then circle back around eventually. 

Now we're going to talk in a future episode about how you can create a structure to support that so that you're not having to go back like every minute or every five minutes or ten minutes until the kid finally just blows, and then nothing good comes of that because you're in this conflict cycle all over again. 

Teens need access to what they like

And so the third need that we want to focus on is the need to gain access to an activity or an item. Now think of all the things that your kids like or the things that they'd like to go do, and think about what happens when they ask for those things and they're not able to fulfill that. Usually there's some sort of behavior, some level of aggression or defiance, maybe it's just like a more sort of lower level rudeness or tone that they display. But it's all about that control to meet that need was taken away from them, so now they're responding in kind with this behavior to try to force the issue, right?

Now in all of these needs there's a way to help kids meet that on their own, and like I said we're going to talk about that in a future episode on how to structure that so that they have that space and that control to do it on their own, it reinforces their need for independence, it eliminates the need for parents to nag or argue, but it ensures that the actual thing needs to get done whether it's a task, an activity, whether they need to have a conversation, whatever that might be. So we don't have time in today's episode to talk about that. 

John, I appreciate your question. Why do teens have behaviors? I hope I answered that question. 

For all of you who are listening or watching who might have a question of their own, please send those to chris@parentingyourteens.com. And also if you have more interest in learning how to end teen defiance and disrespect once and for all, please visit the website www.parentingyourteens.com, there you'll find a ton of resources and tools that will help you do that very thing. 

Thanks, everybody, for tuning in, and we'll see you next time. 

About Christopher Taylor, MFT

Christopher Taylor, MFT is a teen expert, therapist, author, and speaker with 16 years of experience working with teens and families. He provides teen and family therapy services in Folsom, Granite Bay, El Dorado Hills and surrounding areas. Chris is the author and creator of the Back to Basics: Tayloring Your Teen For Success Program, consisting of the book, workbook and online course.