Disciplining Your Teen Without the Constant Arguments

Podcast Transcript

Dr. Richard So:

Welcome to Little Health, a Cleveland Clinic Children's podcast that helps navigate the complexities of child health one chapter at a time. In each session, we'll explore a specific area of pediatric care and feature a new host with specialized expertise. We'll address parental concerns, answer questions, and offer guidance on raising healthy, happy children. Now, let's talk little health.

Do you feel stuck in an endless loop of yelling, slammed doors, and consequences that just don't stick? It's time to try something new and use techniques that make your teens responsible for their own choices. I'm Dr. Richard So, a pediatrician at Cleveland Clinic Children's. And on this special episode of Little Health, we're talking about tween and teen discipline. We'll discuss how to set firm boundaries and share ways to handle common issues like back talk, conflict, and screen time. My guest today is Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff. She's a Cleveland Clinic Children's pediatrician and a mom to teens.

Welcome to Little Health, Dr. Senokozlieff.

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

Thank you.

Dr. Richard So:

So everybody calls you Dr. Heidi. Tell us about how you got here, your mom experience.

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

Well, hello, Rick. I'm glad to be here. I'm Dr. Heidi. That's because my last name's Senokozlieff, and it's so tough for so many people to say. So over time, it's just morphed into Dr. Heidi, which is great by me. So I'm really happy to be here today and glad to be asked about teens. I have four boys of my own, and three of them are in that category.

Dr. Richard So:

What problems have you had with your teens, and how did you discipline them? How'd you overcome the back talk? Go, tell me a little bit about what your approach is in your practice, and even if you do it with your own kids.

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

Well, I'm lucky enough to have pretty good kids, but just like any of us parents, I've had the same issues that, that others have too. In fact, I think it really helps me be a better pediatrician to understand how stressful it is to be with a teenager who doesn't necessarily agree with your opinion. So my four boys have been through a lot of the same concerns that many of my patients have. And so not only is it nice to be able to have some guidelines offered by some really good sources, but to have some on-the-job kind of experiences too.

Dr. Richard So:

Why does discipline work for little kids? You know, you have a 10-year-old and then it becomes more difficult when they become teenagers.

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

Well, that's an interesting question, and I've got, I've got a 10-year-old myself, so I kind of can understand how parents are scratching their heads once they hit 13, 14, and discipline techniques that used to work for that cute little 10-year-old don't anymore. And it has to do with the brain, actually. The little kiddo brain is a much different brain than a teen brain, and that influences how they take in information and how they spit it back out. So techniques that may have worked like a gem when they were little, suddenly are a real problem when they're big. And it has to do with things that some, some of which they can't control. For instance, their brain, specifically their frontal cortex, is not developed. And the, the issues that we have with impulsivity at that age really has to do with their lack of development there.

But there are other things that influence it also such as emotion, hormones, their environment, their experience, how they interact with other people. All those things come together in an explosion when they're a teenager to help create a perfect storm with their emotion.

Dr. Richard So:

Let's get to the nitty gritty. All right. Yes. Under development of the prefrontal cortex in the kids, you know, which we know covers, like, self-regulation. It can lead to, like, poor choices, behavior problems, addiction. W- what did you, what did you do with your teenager, like, when they wanna vape or try drugs or drinking?

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

So the exposure to all of those things is such a problem in our, in our world at this point. Things that you and I, Rick, never had to, to worry about are things that our teens have to make decisions about at a really young age, sometimes even before middle school. So in, in terms of how do you approach this, you wanna start out with having a good base, a good foundation. So it really is important when they're little to start that process early. So by the time they're teens, you're past building the foundations and into helping them make better choices.

Dr. Richard So:

Yeah. I think it does, does, does come down to, like, family values. I think the most important thing with your teenagers is, is sitting down with them and having an open communication, and that happens in the family at mealtime. Uh, sometimes your values where you're not supposed to hit your brother, you're not supposed to swear in front of other parents. Uh, you know, at age eight, we know little boys, you know, they learn how to code. They all know all the bad words right now. And I tell my kids, yes, you can say them, but once another parent hears you say them, then you're the bad kid. But if you're just joking around with your boys, it, that's normal, all right? But when, when, when they start swearing at you, slamming doors because they broke a boundary, uh, w- what, what's the right approach?

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

So that's an interesting question, Rick. You know, and you ta- you have to take in our emotion and our, our feelings about that also. So you're talking about great communication, and that's really where it starts. So having short conversations is something that I think really benefits everyone. And I think it, it's taken better than long conversations with teenagers about subjects that may be touchy or, or difficult for them to talk about. Things like bad words, they're, they're pretty straightforward. But I can think of some situations where there was really bad decisions made just about how kids were verbalizing something within the wrong setting and ended up to be a disaster or could be disaster. And you and I in the office have seen those situations come up from time to time. So again, I think communication is important, setting the boundaries early on and being able to have your, your teen understand where they can come up to the boundary and not cross it.

That's what's gonna be successful long-term.

Dr. Richard So:

Yeah. I think, like, with teenagers, you know, you're at the point where you're not, uh, necessarily telling them what to do, what, what not to do. You're telling them why, why things are right, why things are wrong. You're telling your teenager, it's okay to make mistakes, you just can't repeat big ones. But when those mistakes happen, it leads to a lot of conflict in the house. So when you're with your teenagers and it, they're yelling at you, you got your boys, they're going high in the heat yelling, all right? I think the most important thing with parents is having your own emotional intelligence is not to meet them up there, all right? Because if you meet up up there, you're showing them that yelling is power and then they're gonna yell more. And you have to model yourself, you know? [Oh, wow. Yeah.] When you're doing that.

I kinda like pretend like I'm a teacher. Teachers aren't allowed to yell at the kids, all right, and battle up in the heat, up in the high, high parts. So when my kid's yelling at me, what I normally do is I come down low and then they'll follow me. And that's like the model behavior that you wanna know where that's nice and calm. But to those parents, it's really important that you learn how to calm your own nerves and not meet your kid and fight like adults. What do you think?

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

I completely agree, Rick. I think when it comes to your emotion, our kids are watching every single move. And when there's an argumentative, explosive nature in the house, they, they learn from that and their routine challenges within their life suddenly become explosive every time they meet a challenge. So I agree, when you, when you want your kiddo to, um, behave in a, in a reasonable way, you yourself have to model that behavior. You wanna inspire them to have the same level of intensity. You wanna inspire your children to have the same level of intensity about the things that they feel strongly, but it's all in the delivery. So I, I think that it's a smart thing to start with when there are issues with it in the home to make sure that you stop, give yourself a pause, give yourself an opportunity to collect yourself and show your kid that you can deal with issues that are difficult without having angry yelling, um, or physical interactions also.

Dr. Richard So:

I think as a parent, learning how to take that deep breath and just pause and figure out where you're at if you're yelling at your child, and if you have to, it's okay to step away. It's okay to apologize to your kid when you come back and just say, "No, I'm sorry for yelling at you. You know, that wasn't the right thing to do. " And just tell them the why, you know, why you broke the family values and what happens. When, when, when you have those conversations, those open conversations with your teenagers, you know, number one, when you're sitting at the meal, you set down your family values, what your rules are. And I think really important too is talking about specific consequences if you do A, this is gonna happen. I think to change behavior in your teenagers, sometimes you need to know the consequences and figuring out the right consequences because there's a lot of kids that it doesn't bother them.

You have to know what they value. And what do kids value these days? It's the phone. <laugh> All right? I think it's okay to take away the phone, take away the internet. Back in the day when we, we got in trouble because we were hogging the phone, we didn't answer the call waiting when dad had a work call, right? We got grounded from the phone. You came home late from curfew, now you gotta stay in for the weekend. These days, kids are a little bit different, or put it this way, the kids are the same because they're still misbehaving, but parents are different. I think parents, a lot of parents parent out of fear. They're afraid to yell at their kids because they're afraid their kids are gonna hate them.

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

I understand what you're saying. Our job is a tough one. Kids need consequences. Ultimately, having those consequences, and, and some of the time, the natural consequence is the best way to, to modify the behavior as opposed to a punishment-based disciplinary tactic. So understanding why that happens is also really important.

Dr. Richard So:

I think ki- like parents, you know, they need to get over their fear hating them temporarily. We all hated our parents at one time or other, but now that we're adults, we love our parents, we take care of them. I think new parents are the modern parenting because the, the new disciplinary ways is that you have to always be positive. When you and I are growing up, it's like, "Hey, mom, can I play outside?" No, clean your room first. These days, you have to be careful with your wording because you have to be positive, "Hey, mom, cop outside." You always, I always say, "Yes, clean your room first." It's the same outcome with a different message. If you get in trouble with, like, where you don't know where to go, you always have to remember, try to be positive with your kid. You have to reward your child.

So again, I think what you're doing right now has long-term consequences that we're hoping are positive down the road.

Dr. Richard So:

Yeah. I think the open communication with your child brings trust. If you have your rules, your values, you've talked about consequences that are fair, okay, and you encourage them to make good decisions, I think they have to have the opportunity to negotiate their consequences. Like, was that fair? And I think that builds mutual respect, and I think that's what teenagers are going through as they're going through the identity crisis, and I think the bottom line is to build the fidelity and the trust and the parenting style that you have for them.

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

Well, one tip I might give a parent if they're struggling with a child and, and being defensive about their choices is when you, when you make a mistake, you form a consequence that's related to the error that they made, and you make it with a timeframe in mind. So having a broad or general consequence doesn't necessarily institute a desire to change what they've done, but making a time-wise consequence, so maybe they were using the phone past the time in the evening that they were allowed to do, and you've set a boundary that they've gone past. So a good consequence might be that they lose their phone privileges for a certain period of time at a certain hour of night, and as they accomplish that consequence and they consider that and follow through with that, then they earn the privilege to have that right back. And I think coming up to those boundaries that you set for your kids and sometimes even passing them is a great learning experience.

You wanna do consequences for things that are less of a concern, so when they hit, they hit a problem that's more significant, they know how to manage it, and they know that they can work together with you to earn that back. So it comes down to setting a foundation and following through with that through all the different circumstances that they, they come up against. It could be your phone, it could be drugs and alcohol, it could be sexuality. These are all big trigger issues for kids, and we wanna have our kids make the right choices when they come up to those tough situations.

Dr. Richard So:

What do you think the difference is between discipline and punishment?

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

So punishment is certainly something that most all of us consider to be a negative emotion.

Dr. Richard So:

Yeah, I, I, I think it breaks the will of the child.

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

Yes. Sometimes there's no way around it. Sometimes a punishment is something that is gonna come down the pike, but you wanna try and move generally towards the consequence end of discipline. Discipline is just managing-

Dr. Richard So:

There's an opportunity to learn.

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

Yes.

Dr. Richard So:

Versus if you break their will where you're not giving, you're not rewarding them, you're not giving them what I call a buyback. We'll talk about that a little bit. I think you establish in the child feelings of guilt, which can lead to being withdrawn, can lead to anxiety, and even feeling depressed. And when you're in that type of situation over a long period of time, you seek things that will make you happy and can lead to drugs, alcohol, and other types of addictive behaviors. Going back to buybacks, so part of the disciplines that I use is that we call it job cards. Have you ever heard of job cards? So if you break the rule, you have to do jobs around the house. You gotta clean the baseboards, depending on how severe the rule that you broke, you get four cards, you can get two cards, you can get five cards.

And they're just usually the things I don't like to do around the house. You gotta clean the toilets, and it's not their regular choice. You gotta clean out the trash cans, you know, that's good discipline. You're not breaking the will of your child, because in those disciplines, you're actually doing something better for the house, for the family, and your home.

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

I do think you have to find what commodity is meaningful for your child when you're talking about discipline. So teens, I think a lot of times, and certainly cleaning and being a part of family chores is, is something that gives you an opportunity not only to get those tasks done, but to spend the time that you want with your kiddo. But other disciplinary tactics that are very effective, at least in my house, is changing the opportunity to spend time with friends, um, taking electronics down a notch. Those are, those are two examples of commodities that might be important in my home. It might be different in another house. What you have to find is what that is, and you have to center your discipline tactics on, on those things. Not always do they have to be difficult choices, but I think it's effective if you're able to employ the disciplinary tactic and then overcome the issue together.

Dr. Richard So:

Let's take a couple years back, tweenagers. What do you do when they roll their eyes at you or they side eye you?

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

Again, we talked about this earlier, Rick. It's, it's really important that your kids see how you react to that and being calm and not responding to that might be the, the best way to handle a situation and mirror the, the kinds of emotion and interaction you want to come from them.

Dr. Richard So:

Yeah, I agree with that. Like, with our generation, if you rolled your eyes at your mom because you didn't do your chores, I think that escalated the fight. Don't you roll your eyes at me, young lady. <laugh> And that doesn't solve the problem. I think with modern parenting, one of the things that we need to do is you need to learn how to ignore or even sometimes celebrate the eye roll or the side eye. Because in the grand scheme of things, with modern parenting, you don't escalate the fight. You don't escalate the conflict. What you're supposed to do is you laugh it off, "Ha." Or I turn into Charlie Brown's teacher, wah, wah. Because what the side eye means is that you're a good parent. It means you have boundaries and you're creating friction because our job as parents is to create friction. So when I get the eye roll from my teenagers, ha, ha, ha, do it some more.

Because what does that mean? If my teenagers aren't rolling their eyes at me twice a week, then I'm not doing my job as a parent.

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

You know, and I think, Rick, too, I think it's okay to tell parents that we all make mistakes. We're also human. So there's gonna come a time when that eye roll is gonna have a response from me or another of that parent of that adult teen. So, and it's okay to react, step away and come back to the issue at hand. And I think it's important to know when you, when you fail to maintain your composure in those situations, that it is, it's a good opportunity to talk to your kiddo about how you wish that you might've done it differently, but that, that humanizes all of us. We can't always expect us to react to that in a positive way, so that's an opportunity for a learning experience between your teen and, and you that maybe you can laugh off later.

Dr. Richard So:

So how do you stay close to your teens when they're always pushing you away, they're striving for self-independence, you know, what do you do?

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

I think this comes back to the being a friend conversation. I think it's really important to distinguish being a parent versus being a friend, but it also is important to have your children be part of, and be part of their life so you understand what kinds of things they enjoy, the people that they're around, and how they interact with that.

Dr. Richard So:

So when we talk about keeping your kids out of trouble, parents, you know, are afraid that their kids are gonna start smoking, start drinking, start vaping. I think an important part of setting your family values is that you kinda gotta help pick their friends, set them up in the right ways, because knowing where they're at, who they're with and what they're doing, that's parenting. And if you lose that, bored kids will find something else to do, and you shouldn't fear your kids yelling at you.

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

I think, again, it comes down to foundations. You, you have your foundations laid out, what things you'll accept in your house and what things you won't. And you would hope when that situation comes in front of them, that they have the foundations to be able to resist those choices, and that's also peer pressure that comes with it. But ultimately, I think experiences happen sometimes regardless of everybody's well-set intentions. And in that moment, you have to decide how you're gonna approach it. And I think the way to start is to consider why they were in that position, as you said, in the first place, and why they, they went down that path. And it's important, I think, to talk about, is there something underlying that they're seeking? Are they lonely? Are they feeling anxious? Are they depressed? Was it something that was in the moment that was impulsive?

Those are all different options that take you in a different direction when you talk about the consequences.

Dr. Richard So:

Yeah. What are some other red flags you look for your teenager when discipline's not working? And what do you do?

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

So I think when, when you find that your discipline isn't working, you, you have to go back to the basics and say, "Am I approaching this correctly?" Or maybe it's not you that you need to look at. Maybe you need to find someone else that's a trusted source for your, your teen, someone they can go to that can elicit an opportunity to, to dig deeper into the issue or to help with a resolution. Sometimes we don't even know the right questions to ask. We have quite a few resources at the Clinic and ancillary resources that are there for these situations, such as psychology, psychiatry, and all of these, I think, we utilize within our offices to help with situations such as this.

Dr. Richard So:

Yeah. I think our goal as parents ultimately is to get them out of your basement by 25. <laugh> They gotta be able to cook, they gotta be able to clean, they gotta be able to handle money. Don't fear parenting your teenager really hard. You love your kids. If their actions make you dislike them, think about what'll happen if they do these actions with people who don't like them. They care less about your child and they're gonna be harder on your child than you will ever be. They'll punish them more severely. Don't let it happen.

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

Well, it's interesting that you said that, actually. I think some of the best conversations I've had with my own boys have centered around making their choices and how that makes them attractive to others. So, for example, when a child makes a mistake such as vaping or truancy or even more significant ones, I think it's really not a bad thing to ask them to self-reflect on that and say, "Look at, look at this situation. Before you get into it, have your opportunity to have an out because once you have that situation, there are things that I can't turn around as your parent. And when you are gonna be compared against other people of your age and your gender or for your future college application or your future job, how does it look when you have these things that are holding you back versus someone who doesn't have them to an unbiased source, who are they gonna choose?" And I think that's an effective way of getting through to that age group also, because they, they want ultimately to be the one chosen.

So making sure that they connect their choices to consequences down the road and how that can impact them is an important way to, to talk to them about this.

Dr. Richard So:

I like your approach. Number one, with discipline, because you have, you have that open conversation with them, which builds respect and trust, and it's not punitive where you're breaking their will. And when you do it your way, it's not to get them to behave how you want. That's not the goal when we're doing discipline, rather it's to help them learn, learn the life skills. An important part too is learning that emotional regulation, you know, which you have to model to your child where you're not yelling at each other. And the bottom line is learning appropriate behavior. What's socially acceptable, what's not, and the most important is why.

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

True. Rick, I, I think we all wanna put good people out there. We wanna raise our families to have, to have good adults that come out into the world. Our goal is not to keep them within those four walls for an unspecified amount of time. So I think it's important for all of us and, and really exciting to see our successful teens become successful adults down the road. And I think this is a great way of approaching it, and I'm glad that you asked me to do this to help our families and our community to do the same.

Dr. Richard So:

Thanks, Dr. Heidi, for coming in today. Your insight about being a good pediatrician and a fantastic mother is fantastic information.

Dr. Heidi Senokozlieff:

Thank you.

Dr. Richard So:

One of our biggest takeaways from today is that setting firm boundaries is an act of love, not just a punishment. Be consistent because you're raising a responsible adult, not just aiming for a quiet house today.

If you would like to schedule an appointment with the Cleveland Clinic Children's pediatrician, please call 216.444.KIDS. That's 216.444.5437. Thanks for listening to Little Health. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To keep the Little Health tips coming, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, or visit clevelandclinicchildrens.org/littlehealth.