Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Hi, everybody! Welcome back to another conversation in the Parenting with Impact podcast. I'm Elaine.

Diane Dempster: And I'm Diane. You just get the two of us today.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We are not just.

Diane Dempster: You get the two of us today! I think it's sometimes more fun when it’s just us. And not that I don't love our guests—we always have such interesting stuff—but I love the opportunity to just kind of talk with you about what we've been hearing from parents. I always learn something, and I think you probably do too.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I don't know if I ever told you this, but I have a client in the UK who, every couple of weeks, writes me and says, "Okay, what's this week's theme?" I told her once that we tend to notice themes—like, the theme of the week is what I keep talking about with all my clients. So now she writes every week asking, "What's the theme?"

Diane Dempster: The theme? Well, it’s funny you say that because when more than one of my clients shows up with the same sort of thing, I’m like, “Wait. This is no longer just for them. This is for me.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Or it's for the universe.

Diane Dempster: Or for the universe, right.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And very often, in our world, it’s like, okay, if this is coming up again and again, it means lots of parents are dealing with it.

Diane Dempster: Right.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And it needs our attention, because when we put attention on it, it elevates what other people are paying attention to.

Diane Dempster: Well, and I want to reiterate, Elaine—you and I are parents, and we still deal with this crap all day, every day, right? Both professionally and personally. And so we don't want anybody to think that we’ve got this parenting thing nailed. Although we are definitely further along on our path—not further, just in a different place on our path—because we’ve been doing this for a long time. And we still have all kinds of fun and adventurous things that happen with our kids as well.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, I think that’s the nature of having complex kids. I often say complex kids become complex young adults.

Diane Dempster: And now we’ve got, what, seven? Wait, you’ve got four, I’ve got three. We’ve got seven complex… wait, now I’ve got four.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Young adults. Yeah.

Diane Dempster: I’ve got—I don’t even know—the fourth one. I have a fourth one that I’m not sure if she’s complex or not. Still figuring that out.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Alright, so anyway, today, we’re going to pull back to 30,000 feet. Because we often spend a lot of time working with you guys, problem-solving specific issues. Maybe it’s school refusal. Maybe it’s kids who are cutting, exploring dangerous behaviors, acting out, or experimenting with substances. There are so many different ways that our kids can put themselves at risk, on top of the risks they already face just from being who they are.

Diane Dempster: Well, wait—let’s say it out loud. We’re talking about risky behaviors today.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. Well, and I think risky behaviors show up in all kinds of different ways.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right? For some parents, risky behaviors are kids gaming all night and not going to sleep.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, that’s true.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Or refusing school, or dealing with eating disorders.

Diane Dempster: Or lying, or, like, lying and stealing. I mean, when I think about risky behavior, it’s something that bumps up against either a fear we have or a high value we hold. For example, something as seemingly simple as lying or stealing—it’s on a continuum, right? On one end of the spectrum, it might seem minor, but for a lot of us, we have really strong values around being completely honest. When my kid can’t tell me the truth about whether their homework is done, I start getting anxious that they’re going to become a pathological liar.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right.

Diane Dempster: Or if they’re stealing money—it’s funny, we were talking in a small group the other day about stealing money, and I had this solid recollection of stealing quarters, maybe one or two a month, from my dad. He had this beautiful big coin jar on his dresser, and I would go in there and sneak a quarter every once in a while—probably to take it to the Penny Candy Store or something like that. But it’s different when we’re talking about parents who are dealing with kids stealing bigger stuff—

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Sometimes. Right? I did the same thing, by the way—only it was the ice cream truck.

Diane Dempster: You’d use it for the ice cream truck? Yeah. I lived in a place where we had an ice cream shop.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Okay, so when we look at the big issues, the most extreme, obviously, are suicidal ideation and violent behaviors of various subtypes. And the most mundane is stealing a couple of quarters from the purse.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And there’s everything in between. One of the things I want to say clearly—I was having a conversation on another podcast about this recently—is that when I was a teenager, and I was undiagnosed, flying very much under the radar, I was engaging in substance use, and I was really sexually promiscuous.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And that was a manifestation of my ADHD in a way I had no way of understanding. My parents didn’t know. But when I look back on it, it’s very clear that’s what I was doing. I was seeking stimulation, right? Seeking input.

Diane Dempster: Right. So let’s go back and talk about that. Because I think there’s some misinformation—and some good information—about risky behaviors, particularly in the ADHD population, and about when these kids are at risk and when they’re not.

I mean, I think unmanaged ADHD—and I’m sure it’s true with other diagnoses we deal with—means these kids are more likely to engage in risky behaviors. They’re more likely to be sexually promiscuous, more likely to get pregnant, more likely to use substances, those sorts of things. And if they are managed—so, what’s the difference? It’s like, if they’re managing their diagnosis, Elaine, the trajectory is different, correct?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We have significantly different outcomes. And I don’t know—I can’t quote you the numbers—but I was talking to a mom today who said her 25-year-old was saying he wants more self-control. And what I said was, what he’s really looking for is self-regulation and self-management.

When we use the term "I want more self-control," there’s almost a pejorative connotation to it. There’s almost a blame or shame of “I should be better, but I’m not,” or “If I just had more discipline...” What we’re really talking about is conscious self-management and unconscious self-regulation.

Diane Dempster: Well, and here’s the other thing. When we talk about these kids and the challenges they have, a lot of parents will say, “Well, I can’t get them to take their ADHD meds,” or “I can’t get them to take their anxiety meds.” I’ve got kids in both of those situations right now.

And it’s you getting help for you—let’s remember this. Parent training and behavior management are part of the recommended treatment. So if you’re getting support for yourself—mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, whoever’s listening to this—and you’re actively working on things to help your kid begin to manage, whether they’re on ADHD meds, anxiety meds, or managing it themselves yet, the fact that you’re getting help and figuring out how to effectively engage with them is moving the needle, right?

So I want to kind of let you off the hook. If you’re here, listening, the statistic has already dropped—that your child’s risk level has gone down—because you’re here, listening and trying to find a way to engage with your kids differently than you have been. I just want to give everybody a breath for a second.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I’ll take the breath. And I’ll add—when you apply what you learn. I sent you something over the weekend about that distinction: an insight is just information until we apply action to it—until we do something. So there’s what we understand differently, and then there’s what we do based on that.

Diane Dempster: Well, and it’s interesting, as you say that—what’s coming up with this population specifically. So let’s talk about suicidal ideation, cutting, and some of these at-risk behaviors. If you’ve got a kid with ADHD, anxiety, or depression, and they’ve had a history of that, I think both of us have that in our families.

Our tendency as parents—to, I’m gonna use the word "push," but to insert ourselves into their process—changes because we get afraid, right? It’s this sense of, “If I try to push too hard with my kid, or if I say the wrong thing, or if I don’t do this, or if I do that, somehow I’m going to push my kid over the edge.” Parents get really scared about that sort of stuff.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, so this came up a lot in my group coaching calls last week—in the last coaching groups for young adults and older kids. There’s this fine line we’re constantly dancing as parents, I think, between our job to keep them safe and the reality that as they begin to individuate and become their own separate individuals, we can’t guarantee their safety anymore.

We can’t control it. What we can do is stay in connection and stay in relationship, because that’s where we can have influence.

Diane Dempster: Yeah. Well, I had a mom last week, and she was talking about the fact that she was trying to step back. She said, “Okay, I’m going to step back—unless their life or health is in play.”

And even with that, it’s like, “Wait…” If you’ve got a 16-year-old who’s not getting nine and a half hours of sleep every night—and I don’t know about you, but nobody in my family gets that much sleep—I mean, I work really hard to get that much sleep. But yes, their health is in danger. Yes, there’s research that shows if kids don’t get enough sleep, blah, blah, blah.

But our ability to actually control whether our kids sleep really changes as they get older. I mean, it’s hard—you can’t force somebody to sleep. You really can’t.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: You can’t force somebody to do almost anything at a certain point.

Diane Dempster: And that’s the hard thing.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It is hard. And so the term that I would use is invite. We can welcome them, invite them, encourage them, and inspire them, right? But we have this tendency to come from a fear-based place—whether it’s our anxiety, their anxiety, or both—that just adds insult to injury.

Diane Dempster: Well, and just playing on that sleep thing—it’s the same with any of these behaviors. You plant the seed, you leave the breadcrumbs, you have the conversations, you express the value, and at some point, a lot of times they’ll grab hold of it.

My kiddo, who sometimes would get one or two hours of sleep and then try to go to work or school the next morning, finally said, “Mom, I think I need to start bugging sleep.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I need more sleep.

Diane Dempster: I need more sleep. They started counting the number of hours they were getting, all of that. And so, keep at this. It may take more than a month to figure it out—it may take, honestly, a couple of years.

And don’t worry so much about it, but also don’t put your head in the sand. When we go into these fearful situations, we tend to either get hyper-vigilant or avoidant. We think, “I don’t want to talk about this because I might put ideas in their head,” or, “I don’t want to talk about this because maybe something bad will happen,” or, “I have to control every aspect of their lives.”

Parenting is that balancing act—between involvement, supporting, and allowing. I’m thinking back to the four roles of parenting. When we perceive our kid’s life is in danger, we go into director mode. It’s all hands on deck: “We’re fixing this, this can’t happen.” And it’s hard. I’ll say it again—it’s hard.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So here’s what I’m hearing: if we pull back—really pull back to 20,000 or 30,000 feet—and say, “Okay, we’re dealing with kids expressing risky behaviors, wherever they are on the spectrum, what’s our role in that?”

It’s different if your kids are 10 and under versus 11 and older. With kids 10 and under, our job might be to create a healthier environment, putting parameters and structures in place. But once they’re 11, 12, or older, it’s about fostering their agency and autonomy.

How do we stay in relationship with them in a way that invites them to make better decisions—knowing they won’t always make the best ones? I used to say to my son, “Do stupid smart.”

Look, you’re 16, and you’re probably going to do stupid stuff. But let’s at least do stupid smart. I started with the assumption that at 16 or 18, you’re not always going to make the smartest decisions, but I wanted him to be mindful of the larger context of his actions.

So, if we look at our role in this process, we talk a lot about how much happens in the space of collaboration. What can we do when we’re worried about our kids? Diane, what you said earlier is so critical: if it’s not coming from our fear, and we put our attention on them, we can ask, “What do they need?”

When we know our kids are exhibiting risky behaviors, what do they need from us?

Diane Dempster: Well, I’ll go in a slightly different direction—what’s going on underneath the behavior?

It’s about being curious: what’s behind this risky behavior? Is it about expressing agency? Is it about feeling like they don’t have control over their life?

If you look at research around eating disorders or cutting, for example, those behaviors often come from a sense of not being able to control what’s happening. A child might think, “I don’t know how to fix what’s going on with my ADHD, my anxiety, or my autism,” so they try to take control of some other aspect of their life in a different way.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Or, “I’m feeling numb in the outside world, and this is a way for me to feel something.” That’s often another explanation.

So what you’re saying, then, is step one: once we know the change we want to see to reduce risk—

Diane Dempster: Get curious.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Step two—let’s go back to the model. The model is get curious.

Diane Dempster: Right.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Understand that the issue at hand is never just the surface issue. There’s always an issue under the issue under the issue, right? If we can—

Diane Dempster: And there’s always more than one thing going on, right? Yes, if your kid is staying up until four in the morning, maybe they like gaming more than they like homework. Maybe they don’t care if they get enough sleep. But there’s probably something else—or several other things—going on underneath that behavior.

And I don’t know if we’ve said it explicitly yet, but we’re dealing with kids with executive function challenges. And one of the things that helps with executive function challenges is dopamine. And one of the things risky behaviors bring to the human body is dopamine.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Dopamine.

Diane Dempster: So it’s possible—probably unconsciously—that part of what’s driving these risky behaviors is the dopamine hit they’re getting from it. There’s this intensity of cortisol and dopamine that comes when you do something out of the norm.

And, a lot of times, our kids need more dopamine in their lives.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So there’s a whole—yes, medication, yes, exercise, yes, meditation—there are lots of ways to get more dopamine.

When you get curious, and once you get to the part of “What can I do about it?” one possible action is to help raise your kid’s awareness of their need for dopamine.

So—wait—hang on a second. I want to pull us back into talking about using the model. We’re talking about the roles of the parent. After we get curious, I want to go back to that question: What do they need from us?

Diane Dempster: Well, before we go there—sorry—is: What’s going on with us? Right? It’s this moment of pausing and saying, “I am really scared for my kid’s future,” or “This is really bugging me because it’s so against everything my family always taught me or that I want for my family.”

So, know that in this, there’s potentially a lot of stuff going on with your kid, but there’s also stuff going on with you. I think we said this earlier, but if you’re bumping up against fear and significant value conflicts, you’re not going to problem-solve the same way as you would if you were able to step back and say, “Wow, it’s really interesting that my kid is involved in these risky behaviors. What’s going on?”

Your ability to be curious, to problem-solve, or to do anything else is going to be different if you’re not aware of what’s going on for you in the moment.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That’s such a great awareness. So, there’s: (1) getting clear on what they need from us in terms of our role—whether it’s collaboration, support, or stepping out of director mode and into collaborator mode. Then, there’s: (2) really exploring what’s going on underneath their behaviors. What might be motivating those behaviors? What are they seeking?

And then there’s: (3) understanding what’s going on with us. What are we afraid of, worried about, or concerned about? What are we trying to control?

Every time I hear parents say to me, “How do I get my child to ___,”

Diane Dempster: Yeah, that’s a good one.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I know we’re in a control situation, right? We’re in director mode. So, as we move into collaboration—are we ready to talk about what they need from us yet?

Diane Dempster: Well, I keep interrupting you every time! Right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I think—

Diane Dempster: No? Well, you were just talking about how what they need from us is clarity. It’s about asking: Is this our agenda that we’re trying to insert on them? Or is this their agenda that we’re trying to help them achieve?

And we tend to ask that a lot when we’re looking at whether we’re in collaboration mode or supporter mode.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right.

Diane Dempster: What is our kid’s agenda?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Exactly. So, whose agenda is it? Or what is their agenda? What are they seeking? And then there's this really important element of listening—once we get curious, it’s about truly listening to them. Not listening with the filter of what we think they should be doing, but really paying attention to meet them where they are.

Where are they? What is going on for them? And then slow down and listen—even if it’s hard to hear. I think that’s a critical piece: being willing to hear the hard stuff. The term “matter of fact” has been coming up a lot lately for me.

Diane Dempster: I like to say: answer like a computer, right? No judgment, no emotional reaction—just, “That’s really interesting. Tell me more.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I might take the computer analogy out of it, because the “drone voice” that popped into my head when you said that didn’t feel very connected.

Diane Dempster: Fair enough. I just mean a non-reactive, neutral tone.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Exactly—matter-of-fact.

Diane Dempster: Yes, matter-of-fact.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Being matter-of-fact and non-judgmental is critical. It allows you to truly listen to them and ask questions—questions where you may not even know the answers, and that’s okay. You don’t need to know the answer before you ask. This isn’t about drilling them for information, but about creating an open space for understanding.

Diane Dempster: Well, and what's coming up for me as a parent with a kid, a daughter who was getting up in the middle of the night and was like texting with their friends and blah, blah, blah, and it turned out that one of her friends was in really deep places. 

Depression and crisis and she wanted to be able to be available for that friend, and felt like she was the only one that could help the friend, right? It's the sort of the kiddos and in panic about their friend and they were breaking the agreements, and not getting any sleep and all this other stuff. 

But she was doing it from a place of I gotta be there for my friend. And if the mom had been like, you must go to bed and you have to hand me your phone. And she would have never really kind of gotten to the bottom of what was really going on for the kid out.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, I remember that so much so often. And the thing about I want to be there for my friend is not only do we have kids who are really trying to figure out how to be friends with friends. 

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: But that was something they could do. That felt like something they could, like, there were so many things in their life that they felt like they were not able to do as well as they wanted, or they were disappointing or not following through, and I remember this one specific conversation about a friend and need versus getting the homework done. And they were very straightforward. Like, Mom, I could do this, I could help this friend. 

And that was way more important to me than whether I turned on my math homework. And from a values perspective, I could really honor that we still had to negotiate. Okay, get the math homework done. But I could, I wasn't coming from a place of blame and judgment, when I understood that deeper motivation for them. And I think that's when we're dealing with risky behaviors, we have to understand that, is it Ross Greene says that there are symptoms, right?   

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: There symptom of something of a need of a wanting for help of something not being right. And instead of I'm thinking about this one client who had a very classic, very textbook, ADHD teenage boy. And he would do things like, at 15, take the car out in the middle of the night, like, really, and on the one hand, it was maddening and really frustrating. 

But on the other hand, as she was able to get curious and learn to do this work, she was able to be in conversation with him to help him be clear of his impulsivity and what he was afraid of in terms of his friends not wanting to be with him if he didn't do that and so she was able to have a different kind of conversation with him, that allowed them to eventually curb those behaviors. And it's scary, because you're like, you want to prevent it all. Right. 

And to some extent, our kids are experiential, and we can't prevent everything we can continuously invite them to be in conversation with themselves about ever improving how they want to be with themselves.

Diane Dempster: Well, and I think that there's so I'm gonna be philosophical for a second, I do that a lot. No, but I think that there's another layer to this. And I think that I talked to parents about this along a lot. It's a sort of, what is your perspective about what your role is relative to your kids life's experiences? Is it your job to make sure that nothing bad ever happens to your kid, you're gonna handle things differently than if your perspective is, my kids got their own path, I have no idea what they've chosen to experience in this lifetime. And I've got to do what I can to be there and support them and trust that whatever deal they made with the universe, their higher being God, whatever it is, their deal and not mine, right? It's this sort of that that's the other end of it, right? And it's this sort of grappling with what is my role? My role is to maybe educate my role is to set the pace my role is too, I can only help them up to a certain age or but it's really grappling with, what is your job?  Here?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It's like, it's huge, what you're talking about, I was looking for some notes, because I was reading through some old notes up to this presentation, I listened to a presentation in parenting, not in parenting, it was a coaching presentation that I thought was so relevant in the parenting space, which is exactly what you're saying is that our job is not to prevent bad things from happening from them. 

For them. Our job, I believe, is to prepare them to handle things when tough situations arise, because we want them to be able to function in the world and tough situations are gonna all right.

Diane Dempster: Yes, no, and  I've been dealing with that as a parent, it's like, when you watch your kid, you think they're gonna they're jumping off a cliff, and you're like, hey, wait, you're jumping off the cliff here? Are you sure you want to jump off the cliff? I mean, that's all hard. It's a hard place to be in as a parent. 

Even when your kids are in their 30s or 40s. Or it doesn't often change. I mean, I think that that's the thing is, if you think about what our parents dealt with us, I mean, a lot of us were I mean, we're talking about your own risky behavior. It's like, had this new appreciation for my parents kind of thing to watching me navigate, challenges and risks I wanted to take or not take in my life. It's hard. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, now, but here's what I do, I think does change, like I was just having this conversation with my 21 year old son last week about learning the hard way and learning from experiences. And he's an experiential learner. And sometimes it kind of bites him in the tush. 

And he knows he does it, but what I think changes is their consciousness around it and their ownership of it. Right? like, what's different is I'm not gonna tell him to do or not to do anything at this point. I know better than that. And, he knows when he's making a choice and to take responsibility for whatever choice he's making.

 And, he's not always gonna make the right choice still. And he's aware of that, but he owns it differently. So he's not hiding it from me. He's in conversation with me about it, because there's a transparency in how we're we talk about these issues. There's a matter of factness.

Diane Dempster: But so I want to go back before we close up, because I know we're on tight on timeline and talk about I don't know how else to say this really risky behaviors, right? Because I think that we've been dancing around things that are may not be at the end of things. But when we're talking about suicidal ideation, we're talking about cutting, we're talking about stuff that. Really does feel life threatening.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Potentially life threatening, right?

Diane Dempster: And I think the question is kind of how to wrap up this conversation in that context, because that can be some of the hardest stuff to be dealing with here.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So here's what comes up as I hear that, right? So part of our job is to help you guys be with what it is to parent our kids to be in a situation where it's hard to parent, these kids. And there is a part of us that's about we have to be with it. Right? 

We have to learn, we can't control all of it. And when we're dealing with these really risky behaviors, we also have a responsibility to be in conversation with them. As we've said, to do it matter of factly to do it, I believe transparently, there are a lot of resources on the site, we'll put some in the show notes about, if you're concerned that your kids struggling with depression, or severe anxiety, and may need some additional supports, if you're worried about their safety, like you need you, there's no playing around, right? You gotta get the help. And you got to ask for the help. 

And I believe that if we're transparent, and matter of fact about it, we can have those conversations with our kids felt like I'm gonna give you the space to lead your life do what you do, and how do you think we should handle it? What should our plan be, if I start getting concerned about your health and safety?

Diane Dempster: Right? Well, and a lot of times parents will design around an agreement, it's this sort of, I will give you as much space as what as I can. And what I need from you is for you to raise the red flag if you're feeling really down and down in the in a yucky spot, so that I can be there to help you.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That's right. And kids want to be able to come to us for help. They need to know that it's safe, they need to have permission, they need to know that when they do come with little things, it doesn't explode. So that gives them the space when they need to come with the big things. So managing our own stuff is a big part of being able to be present for them. Because there is this psychic pain, right? That's the only term I have for it. 

That happens when we're watching our kids go through these really difficult and dangerous sometimes or dark journeys. And they've got to sort of find the light, especially when you're dealing with kids with depression, it can be really hard and hard to witness. And, that's part of our journey is that we're on this earth for whatever reason we've been placed with this kid to witness this journey. 

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And that doesn't mean we can intervene. But it does mean that it's really important that we learn how to be with our own issues so that we can be with them dealing with theirs. 

Diane Dempster: Yeah, I think that's a good place to stop. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus Okay, this is hard, y'all. I'm gonna take some time to go through and put some good resources in the show notes for this one because we've got some great stuff on the site.

Diane Dempster: This is a special one that if you're struggling with this, reach out and get some help for you. Because this is I mean, we should say that at the end of every episode, but this one in particular, feeling comfortable that you're walking that line and that balancing act in a way that helps you to not feel scared all day long. 

Because I think that that's what my heart is for all of us as parents is like, it's really hard to walk around being scared for your kids future all day, every day. And so, get some help for yourself in this.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. And that may mean having a Sanity Session with us or emailing the team and letting us know you need some help. We are available to either let if we can support you or if not refer you to someone who can. 

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So, let us know and we will support you in getting you to the resource that's the best fit for you. 

Diane Dempster: Thanks y’all. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I'll say have a great week. Know that you're making a difference for yourself for your kids. Just tune in. Keep doing what you're doing. Keep connecting and allow it to unfold and focus on what you can influence and inviting them to their best selves. Take care eveyone.

Diane Dempster: Thanks, everybody.