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Lecturing, punishing, informing, and warning teens about dangers are ineffective methods of protecting them.

Parents can tune into their teenager's positive values and biases when trying to impact their behavior.

Parenting teenagers requires a dance of both holding on and letting go.

Raising teenagers can easily trigger parents to feel anxious, powerless, and rejected. How can we keep our teenagers safe and maintain equanimity?

Without effective tools and preparation, many parents understandably default to instinct and use common ineffective tactics, such as warning, advising, informing, or trying to control their teens.

The adolescent brain has been compared to a car with a powerful gas pedal and weak brakes when in the presence of other teens or when expecting to be seen by them (Bulow, 2022; Steinberg, 2008). Further, they are drawn to peers, and then instinctively rev each other up into risky experimentation and sensation-seeking.

But teenagers also use peers to learn social and negotiating skills, as well as begin consolidating an identity in the world separate from their parents. Further, research shows that teens who are too sheltered have as many difficulties later as those who are high risk-takers.

Despite the risks, adolescents must test themselves in the world to potentiate brain growth during this critical window of development (Costandi & Blakemore, 2014).

Parents can have a positive impact on their teens’ decisions with research-backed strategies that appeal to the teenage mind. By leveraging adolescents’ inherent biases and strengths, parents can have a positive impact.

Parental monitoring involves establishing a norm of open dialogue about what their children are doing and who their friends are, including online. In a 2021 CDC survey of over 17,000 teens, teens who felt that their parents knew where they were and who they were with were at lower risk in all areas of potential risk, including mental health (Dittus, 2023).

Being tuned in, respectful, and emotionally present is the most effective way to find out what’s going on and know what limits or tools are needed. Further, when teens feel safe (not judged), seen, and secure with parents, they are more likely to turn to them for help.

The most protective measure against underage drinking, sexual activity, and violence for teens is a relationship with a parent where they feel supported, listened to, and accepted—based on teens’ subjective experiences (not parents’ intentions).

It makes sense, then, that conversations with teens are more successful when parents do less talking and more listening and show interest in how teens feel they are doing, what they think, and their opinions—rather than give advice, information, or tell them what to do.

Instead of telling teens what they should not do, parents can focus on what their teen wants to do. Helping teens do something that is important and meaningful to them is more likely to have a positive impact on their behavior and the parent-child relationship than trying to get them to have restraint.

Parents can also channel their teen’s natural desire and need for peers, novelty, and intensity into healthy challenges, thereby reducing opportunities for trouble (Kazdin & Rotella, 2010).

For example, parents can help teens find structured, supervised activities with other teens—such as team sports or impactful, positive activities for a cause that matters to them.

Teens who develop values and competencies are less likely to engage in dangerous behaviors. Parents can increase their teenager’s strengths by shifting the balance of attention to what they are doing right, and recognizing their positive values and behaviors when they surface.

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Leverage Teen’s Positive Values and Biases

Parents can align with their teenager’s inherent biases in the service of helping them make good choices. Considering what matters to a teen shows respect for their autonomy and leverages intrinsic motivation.

For example, teens may not be motivated to limit their drinking because you warned them of the dangers of alcohol. However, they may decide to stay sober at a party so they can help a friend who's likely to get into trouble. Similarly, a teen may be motivated to limit their drinking to stay on a sports team, be in control of their reputation, or avoid doing something embarrassing.

In these examples, being an ally means recognizing that teens may care more about their friends, their team, or about not being ostracized more than they do about getting hurt. The reason someone makes a safe decision doesn’t matter. When teens (or anyone) feel they are doing something that is their choice, they are more likely to follow through, rather than rebel.

Appreciate Enviable Features of Adolescents

Parents can align with teens by recognizing and respecting the positive momentum of the teenage brain towards excitement, action, novelty, and peers—rather than dismissing teens as rebellious or out of control, or insulting their intelligence by acting as if they’re irrational. Teens’ ability to experience life with intensity and vitality can be enviable to adults, sometimes making us want to shut it down (Bulow, 2023; Siegel, 2013).

Approaching teens respectfully, parents can validate the inherent and enviable predisposition of the teenage brain towards intense feelings and action when around friends, buffering conversation about the downside. Teenagers, sensitive to hypocrisy, can be made aware that ramped-up temptation can hijack reason and seduce them into betraying themselves and their values.

Problem-Solve (Realistically) Before High-Risk Situations

Problem-solving protects teens from danger (Kazdin & Rotella, 2010; Reducing Underage Drinking, 2004; Windle et al., 2008). This process helps teens develop skills to make better decisions, integrating the two brain systems that are not yet well synchronized: feelings/impulses and higher mind thinking/control.

Teens are less at risk when they understand their potential vulnerabilities, provided they problem-solve beforehand about the choices they want to make, and how to be true to themselves in a particular situation.

Using a non-judgmental, collaborative approach, parents can think through risky situations in advance with their teenager, find out their teen’s concerns, and come up with options together. An effective exercise involves fast-forwarding and envisioning how situations are likely to play out and what may get in the way of success. Reverse engineering is an effective way to come up with solutions that work.

The Psychological Challenge for Parents

The challenge for parents is holding teens close enough to provide a secure base from which to grow, but allowing enough autonomy to test themselves. This involves an anxiety-producing dance of holding on—but not too tight—and letting go, but not too much. By striking this balance and being “good enough” (not perfect), parents can provide the foundation for teens to acquire the tools to make safe decisions while they navigate the developmental demands of adolescence.

Bülow, P. (2022a). How the Environment Affects the Adolescent Brain. Journal of Science, Humanities and Arts - JOSHA, 9(6). https://doi.org/10.17160/josha.9.6.856

Bülow, P. (2022b). The Vulnerability and Strength of the Adolescent Brain. Journal of Science, Humanities and Arts - JOSHA, 9(5). https://doi.org/10.17160/josha.9.5.851

Costandi, M., & Blakemore, S. (2014, January 22). Adolescent brain development. Think Neuroscience;. https://thinkneuroscience.wordpress.com/2014/01/22/adolescent-brain-development

Dittus, P. J. (2023). Parental Monitoring and Risk Behaviors and Experiences Among High School Students — Youth Risk Behavior Survey, United States, 2021. MMWR Supplements, 72. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.su7201a5

Kazdin, A., & Rotella, C. (2010, February). No brakes! Risk and the adolescent brain. Slate Magazine; Slate. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2010/02/no_brakes_2.2.html

Reducing Underage Drinking. (2004). National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/10729

Siegel, D. J. (2014). Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain. The Penguin Group.

Steinberg, L. (2008). A social neuroscience perspective on adolescent risk-taking. Developmental Review, 28(1), 78-106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2007.08.002

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