Ed Gerety
One of the great lessons that some of the youth of today are understanding is that you focus more on the effort than you do on just the results. It's not just about what you're achieving but about who you're becoming and what you're experiencing on the way toward achieving that goal.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Welcome back, everybody, to another conversation on the Parenting with Impact podcast. I am thrilled to welcome our guest today, Ed Gerety. I always love it when we get to talk about that blend between leadership and parenting. My husband is a leadership and executive coach. I'm a parenting coach, and he often says, "We do the same thing—just the size difference may be a little different." He's working with executives talking about their teams. I'm working with parents talking about their kids. They're a little shorter, but otherwise, the issues are very much the same. So, Ed, welcome to the show. It's great to have you.

Ed Gerety
Thank you, Elaine. I'm really excited to be here and excited to spend some time with you and your listeners.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Awesome. Well, tell us, what is it? You're a leadership coach, but you also have a podcast about parenting. So, how did you get into doing this work with parenting teenagers?

Ed Gerety
Sure. So, I've been working with teenagers for three decades now. It's been 30 years. I started my own business in college, working with middle and high school students, talking about goal setting, respecting and responsibility, and making positive choices.

Then I got married, and my wife and I—we have two kids. Then, the kids went from being elementary to pre-teen and now teenagers. As we started to navigate the teen years, we started to realize, "Wow, you really are not given a manual on how to be a parent," especially as a parent in those teenage years. And so from that, I was like, "You know what? It would be cool to do a podcast and start to delve deep into how we navigate the teen years." And that's kind of how it evolved.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
I love it. And I have to be honest, I'm of the opinion that teens get a bad rep. I actually think parenting teenagers is one of the most fun things you can do as a parent. So I do have a little bit of inverted bias, if you will.

Ed Gerety
I feel the same way, Elaine, especially because I spend a lot of time in middle schools, high schools, and colleges. One of the things that I found is that, yeah, I think teenagers and even the youth of today—they do get a bad rap. There is so much hope, there's so much resilience, and there's so much innovation among the youth of today. It is truly inspiring.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So there's so much hope, resilience, and innovation among the youth today, and yet there's all of this stuff in this space about how they're resistant and not resilient. I'm trying to remember the name of the book by my bedside table that I can't remember. That's not what the common lore is right now.

Ed Gerety
It's not. I think one of the ways that we can help our teens is because I think teenagers are hit with so much information about social media, their group of friends, and all the different influences that when I was growing up, I didn't experience or even have to navigate. I didn't have to worry about Instagram, Snapchat, or my attention being pulled in so many directions.

So, I think one of the most important things that we can do as parents to help them navigate those teen years, build their confidence, and find their way in life is to really create open communication with our teenagers.

We need to create a safe space for them where we can openly communicate and let them know that they have a safe space to talk with us about what it is they're going through and what it is that they're experiencing. So, I think open communication is just one of the most important first steps in really helping our teenagers deal with the journey of growing up.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
I couldn't agree with you more. And before we get to the solution, I wanna go back to—let's frame what we're really dealing with here. In our community, we're dealing with parents of complex teens. So, they're not just teens dealing with social media and friend groups and being bombarded with content and opinions and everybody producing themselves, but they're also doing it in a world where the expectations may be out of alignment with their developmental capacity.

Or in a world where the parents are afraid and fearful for their future in a way that impacts them differently. A lot of our kids have developmental delays, so we're dealing with all of the issues of today's teens kind of on steroids.

So, I want to go back to what you said that you see them as resilient, hopeful, and innovative. Talk a little bit about how you see that showing up for today's teens.

Ed Gerety
I see it in terms of some of the teenagers that I've worked with. When they set goals for themselves, whether it's to make the varsity team or to get the lead role in the play, they're actually starting to realize that when we talk about resilience and perseverance, it's not just about the goal.

It's about who you become and what you experience on the way toward that goal.
I think one of the great lessons that some of today's youth are understanding is that you focus more on the effort than you do on the results. It's not just about what you're achieving; it's about who you're becoming and what you're experiencing on the way to achieving that goal, and we can teach that to our kids through our example.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Let me give you a context, and then I want you to dive in and double-click on that a little bit.

Ed Gerety
I like that. I like that a lot.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
In our world, we do a lot with the coach-approach around exactly what you just said. We're trying to help parents see how important it is to focus on the process and not just the outcomes and to bring our kids through the process of problem-solving again and again.

Because instead of just handing a solution, if we take you through the process of problem-solving, then as you say, "It makes you stronger and better in the process."
Then you begin to figure it out this process becomes super important for kids with executive function challenges to achieve their outcomes. So, what examples do you have about that?

Ed Gerety
Sure. It's easy to say you have to have open communication with your teen. But it is really more like—"Well then, how? How do you do that?"

One way is that when you're having that conversation with your teen—and teens are complex because relationships and friendships are so complex in those years. The complexities of relationships and the changes that they're going through. So, when you're having that open communication with a teenager, make sure that you're communicating with them through curiosity, not judgment.

"Am I really being curious? Am I curious about the questions that I'm asking my teen? Or am I asking a question where they're going to feel like they're being judged or made wrong?"

So I have to make sure that I'm having that open communication—that I'm truly saying, "OK, wait a minute… without judgment, just being curious—how are you doing? How was your day today?"

And making sure that the questions we're asking are open-ended, not just, "How was your day?" and they go, "Fine," or "OK."

It has to be more opening. More like, "Did anything funny happen in school today?" And maybe they say, "Well, there was one funny thing…" and then you could say, "Say more about that." Or, "That's interesting."

But you've got to keep asking those open-ended questions. And then Elaine, I know you talk about this in your work—"In order to ask open-ended questions and go in being curious without judgment, you have to be present."

You have to be present, and that's true in any relationship. But I think it's more important than ever with our teenagers because they know if you're not present. They know it in a heartbeat. And as soon as they know you're not present—you're just asking a question out of habit or "How was your day?" while looking at your phone or paying attention to something else, they shut off. You lose that opportunity. So you really have to be present in order to have that open communication.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
No question. I couldn't agree with you more. I'm laughing a little bit as I'm listening to you because I have a note on my computer—sometimes I come up with something based on coaching someone or coaching a group—where it's like, "This is a topic I want to write about." And the note on my computer says: "Stop moralizing and teaching."

Ed Gerety
I love that.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
It's counterintuitive, folks. The way to get your kids to actually find the moral of the story or to learn what they have to learn—is for us to stop teaching. So, we can invite them to learn what they have to learn instead of what we have to learn. Is that fair?

Ed Gerety
I think that's completely fair. And with that, you also have to be vulnerable enough and open enough that when you aren't present or you weren't listening—to say, "You know what? I'm sorry. I missed that."

I'll give you an example. Our daughter is a senior in high school. The other week, we were in the car, and she started telling me a story about her friends and the college application search. I had asked her about it, and then I got distracted. I missed part of the 10-minute thing. She said, "Do you know what I mean, Dad?"

And I was like, ugh. So I had to be honest and say, "Shannon, look, I'm sorry. I lost that last two minutes of what you were saying. I got distracted because I was thinking about something else. I'm sorry. Can you say that again? I am listening."
That vulnerability—we're not perfect; we make mistakes. So yes, it's easy to say, "Lead by example," "Be a positive role model."

Well, I think being a positive role model and being an example for your teen is also letting them know you don't have it all figured out. We're all trying to communicate effectively. We're all trying to be curious. We're all trying to be resilient and persevere. But there are struggles and setbacks. I think that's so important.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Well, and here's what I want to offer to the parents who are listening who are also complex themselves—to those of us who have our own ADHD, anxiety, autism, whatever it is we're dealing with. We are going to lose the thread sometimes. That is part of the nature of the way our brains are wired. And what you're saying—modeling transparency for them, teaching them how to navigate that in life because they may be dealing with it too—is a really powerful skill. I mean, in my house, you will constantly hear somebody saying, "Hang on. Can you say it again? I didn't process what you said." "I heard it, but I didn't process it." That happens in our house a lot.

So what you're saying is so important—which is that our job is not to appear as if we've got it all together. It's actually to model what it means to be human and to live a life of, "Oh, you know, sometimes making mistakes and then showing how you can be honest and transparent about that without being self-flagellating or self-judgmental, just being matter-of-fact about it."

Ed Gerety
Absolutely. You mentioned something at the very beginning of our conversation that I think is so powerful, too. It's like, "What do we want for our kids? What do we want for our teenagers?" We want them to be safe, and it's that balance. I want my teenagers to be safe, but in their teenage years, they're striving for independence.

And so it's that balancing act of: "We want them to be safe, but in order for them to grow, we also have to be able to let them go and explore and be independent."
And so, how could you do that as a parent to a teen?

It could be something as simple as—I've heard this from a number of parents—putting their teenager in charge of making dinner for the family on a Saturday night, saying, "You're in charge of making dinner for the family."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
"What can I do to help?"

Ed Gerety
Well, yeah. "What do you mean?" Like, what do you mean? "Here's $50. Get in the car. Go to the store. Make us dinner." And it's just like—it's a great opportunity.

We did something similar with our son—not so much around making dinner, but we did it when we were booking a flight for a vacation. We actually had him sit right down with us, and we had him learn how to book the flights. He was a junior in high school.

"How do you book the flights? How do you enter all the information?" And now he's a sophomore in college, and it's incredible. When he came home for break, he said, "Dad, some of my friends—they don't even know how to cook or do their laundry. They don't even know how to take a bus or get on a train."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So, all right, we're going to take a quick break, and then we're going to come back, ‘cuz I want to continue this.

Welcome back, everybody! My guest is Ed Gerety, and we're talking... really, what we're talking about is how do we prepare our kids for adulthood—to take on responsibilities. And there's something casual about what you're saying, which is: just tell 'em to make dinner Saturday night, or just have 'em sit down next to you.
If the relationship is strong enough and trusting enough, you can do that.

I want to emphasize that because you said, "We want our kids to be safe," right?
Our kids want to feel safe, too. And part of what makes them feel safe is feeling that they can trust us. So the catch to telling them it's their night to make dinner, or to come sit down next to you is to make sure that they don't feel like it's a trap—that you're trying to catch them being wrong or making mistakes.

But that you're actually creating an environment that makes it OK for them to ask questions and learn how to do it instead of feeling like they have to know. Is that a fair kind of transition there?

Ed Gerety
I think that's so important, too. Also, you know—nobody knows your child better than you. And so sometimes it's like, "OK, go book our family vacation." And you think this is going to be such a wonderful thing, ‘cuz our child's going to learn how to take responsibility.

But what if they're not ready? What if they're not just ready to handle such a big responsibility? What if they're maybe going through some times where they don't even really have the confidence right now to even just go to school? Now, we're giving them this empowerment.

So you have to know—where is your teen along the way in their journey? And if you do give them some independence or some responsibility, is it in alignment with where they're at developmentally, emotionally, or socially? Because otherwise, then you're creating an unmet expectation. And you're creating something that was supposed to be a positive experience into a frustration and anger and maybe even a resentment of like, "How could you put me in that situation?"

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Well, and I think that happens a lot with complex kids because we think, "Well, you're 15. You should be able to..." And that "should" becomes a should-ing all over everybody.

Ed Gerety
As soon as you said "should," I already got defensive. I already got like... yeah.
And when a teenager hears that, it's like fingernails down a chalkboard.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So what are some ways that parents can invite their kids to take on some responsibility in a way that kind of meets them where they are? Any tricks for that?

Ed Gerety
Knowing what interests your teen and what they're really curious about. If they're really interested in art, maybe say, "Hey, would you like to go to the museum this weekend?"

And they're like, "Yeah, I'd love to go to the museum," ‘cuz they're passionate about art or maybe they love going to the movies. So you meet them where they're excited or where they're really curious about something. And then maybe there's an opportunity for them to spread their wings—to gain a little sense of personal responsibility, of independence.

You could say, "OK, great. You go into the movie theater and get the tickets."
Because they're excited about the movie theater, it's something they're comfortable with. But now you're giving them a little more ownership in the process.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
You know what strikes me as you say that? In my community, many parents and their kids are really interested in all kinds of games on screens. There is a whole variety of screens, and many parents are demonizing screens.

So your example was going to the theater, but what if what the kid's really interested in is... I don't know, Pokémon GO or Minecraft or playing games on the computer? How do you address that?

Ed Gerety
It's really interesting that you say that, Elaine. I was doing a parent program about a month ago, and I said, "You tap into what your child or teen is curious about, and you feed that fire."

I remember saying, "If your son or daughter—if your child—is interested in animals, loves dolphins, and wants to be a dolphin trainer, then feed the fire of their desire. Expose them to as much as you can about the world of dolphin training." Well, I said that, and this parent raised their hand and said, "Really? Really, a dolphin trainer?" She said, "I'm not really interested in my child being a dolphin trainer." I mean, we could spend a whole podcast just talking.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
OK, I have a story to tell you. I just gotta tell you—I had a chance to be a dolphin trainer for four days.

Ed Gerety
That's so cool.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
On vacation, it was one of the best things I ever did in my life. And the best part was that I got invited back because the guy said, "You know, you're kind of naturally good at this." These dolphins—they're a lot like teenagers.

Ed Gerety
I love it. That's great. I think that's so important—you have to feed that curiosity. Feed that passion.

I'll give you a great quick story. I speak at Fordham University in New York every year as part of their orientation program—their transition program for new student orientation. I've been going there for years. At one of the orientations, a senior orientation leader walks up to me and goes, "Hey, you're Ed Gerety. I remember you spoke at my orientation when I was a freshman."

I go, "You remember that?"

He goes, "Yeah. You actually brought me up on stage, and you had me do this whole goal-setting thing—from 'I want to...' to 'I will...'"

I'm like, "That's great!" I go, "Do you remember your goal?"

He goes, "Absolutely."

I go, "What was it?"

He says, "I will be an Oscar award-winning director here in New York by the age of 35."

And I looked at him, and I said, "That's so cool." I asked, "Are you still studying film at Fordham?"

And Elaine—he looked right at me and said, "No."

He said, "I started out in film, but the more I got involved with it, I realized it wasn't so much film I was excited about—it was music. And the more I got involved with music, I realized that's what I want to build my life around."

I said, "That's so cool. What's your new goal now?"

He said, "My new goal is to have my own music production company here in New York by the age of 30, representing the top hip-hop artists in the world."

I said, "That's so cool. What are you doing now to get closer to that goal?"

He said, "Well, right now, I have an internship with Sony in their international marketing department."

But see, the point is: he never would've gotten here if he hadn't started way over there. And what if someone had never fed the fire of him wanting to be a director? And said, "You want to be a director? Here—go for it!"

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Well, and this goes back to why the process is more important than the outcome. Because you think the goal is X, but the goal may not be. But you can't know that until you get in there and you start moving in the process toward it. And I think we as parents get so locked on the goal that we forget that the destination isn't really the thing. It's how you get there.

Ed Gerety
Especially when you're talking about complex relationships or the complexity of life, you have to get focused. When we talk about perseverance and resilience, Elaine—and you know this—our resilience and our perseverance do not come from achieving the goal, from the victory or the win. Our perseverance and our resilience come from the setbacks that we turn into comebacks. You know, the obstacles we get faced with, we turn into opportunities.

I heard a great quote—I think it was Harrison Ford the actor, or maybe it was George Clooney. George Clooney said, "I have learned nothing from my successes. Nothing. But I have learned everything from my failures and from my setbacks." And I think that's so beautifully well said.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
I love "turning setbacks into comebacks." It's a beautiful sentiment.

All right, let's take a break, quick shift, and we're going to come back to kind of complete this conversation.

But let me let everybody know how they can find out more about you. As you can hear, Ed Gerety specializes in public speaking and leadership development. He also writes books and hosts a podcast called Parents Navigating the Teen Years.

All of that is available in the show notes and at his website at edgerety.com. So, I strongly encourage you to go check it out.

So, Ed, what have we not talked about that you want to mention, or what have we talked about that you want to highlight?

Ed Gerety
You know, I think there's a lot of things we can teach our kids. I think one of the most important things we can teach our kids is having compassion and respect for others and for yourself. And in that same breath is, to really teach our kids that daily practice of gratitude.

A deep appreciation for their abilities, for the opportunities that lie before them, and for the people in their life. And to really let them know that. To really model that, and to really express that gratitude to our kids.

You know, as our kids get older—we both know this—we say those "I love yous," and maybe they don't always come back as quick or as often as they used to when they were younger. But they're still listening.

And they need those "I love you," "I care about you," "You're special," "You're important." They need that even more as they grow older, not less—especially in the complexities of the world we live in today and tomorrow.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. My youngest kid, who's now in his early to mid-20s. All of my kids—I used to say a lot, "I love the way your brain works." Especially when I couldn't understand the way their brain worked. But there's something about acknowledging the little things—the things that we think we're supposed to take for granted that we shouldn't be taking for granted.

When we're recording this episode, we're just completing the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. And we had a dear family friend, who's an extraordinary cook, in town with us for the holiday. And my son, my husband, and my husband's best friend were all cooking together. It was beautiful. And the friend made a comment about my son that he never would've heard.

And so the next day, I said after the friend left, "You know, Uncle Greg left, but I want you to know what he said about what it was like to be in the kitchen with you." And I watched my son take it in. It wasn't any major thing. It wasn't his life's work or anything else. But to watch him hear me share with him what another adult had acknowledged about him—an adult that meant something to him—was really precious. To say, "This was really precious to him. This is what he saw in you." And if I hadn't told him, he never would've heard it.

Ed Gerety
Absolutely. To express that gratitude and to cultivate that gratitude. The only way you can really express and cultivate that gratitude is to pay attention. You have to pay attention. And you have to be in the present moment. And I think that is such a challenge for everyone in the world we live in today.

You've got to stay present, pay attention, and be intentional. You have to access that ability to be intentional—it's so important. And to your point, you focus on the outlook and not the outcome. That's one thing we did with our kids—even from the very beginning when they started school.

We never focused on the grades. We always focused on the effort. And now, with college and high school coming to an end, even when Shannon came home with a report card here in her senior year, she did awesome. She got phenomenal grades. We celebrated the grades, but we really celebrated the effort.

And she took pride in that. We said, "Wow. I see the grade, Shannon. That's a great grade. It's a beautiful letter. But the effort is so much more inspiring to Mom and me than that grade." And she knows that, ‘cuz we've constantly said that and reinforced it. And that is a great life lesson to give our kids.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
It is. And the other piece I'll offer to add to it—when you're playing with language—is to say: "You know, we're proud of you, but it doesn't really matter. I bet you're proud of yourself."

Ed Gerety
That's beautiful.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
I love to shift it back to them. "I bet you're proud of yourself." "I hope you're proud of yourself for that." "You deserve to be proud of yourself."

Because I think a lot of times our kids are raised in this world that says being prideful is bad. But we want them to learn how to be appropriately—respectfully, gratefully—proud of themselves for what they're doing because the solutions are in the successes.

Ed Gerety
Such a great point. When I grew up, it was kind of like, "Don't get too big for your britches," right? "Be humble." You know, you won the big award, but it was like, "Quickly get off the stage."

I spent the last 10 years of my life just staying on stage, just to acknowledge the applause—‘cuz I used to just run off the stage. Because, oh, you know, you don't want to... you don't want to look like you're basking in the limelight. But it's like, wait a minute, you're cheating the audience of that.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Such a great point. It's a huge shift. And I got it when one of my kids was really young and came home from some religious school or another and said, "We're not supposed to be proud." I'm like, "OK, let's talk about that. Let's break that down a little bit."

Ed Gerety
You make a great point. Elaine, you make a great point about that. And when you say, "You must feel really good about yourself for what you just did, or what you just experienced, or what you just created"—That's part of that open-ended question too.

To also be able to say that to your teen, to your child: "How does that make you feel?" And then not answering the question for them—because I have a tendency to do that with my kids. Like, "Hey, you must have had a great day today." Well, I guess I just answered the question for them.

So like, "Yeah, I had a great day today." Instead, I was going to say, "How was your day?"—and instead I already projected to them how I'm expecting them to answer.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
That's true. Always a pleasure to hang with you. Thank you for the grace and the optimism that you bring to the work that you do and to this generation that needs it. Man, these kids need a champion in their corner who really believes in what's possible for them. Thank you for that work that you're doing.

Ed Gerety
Thank you.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Before we wrap, do you have a favorite quote or motto that you want to share with our audience?

Ed Gerety
My friends sometimes laugh when they walk into our house. They call it a "walk-in fortune cookie" because we have quotes all around our house.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
My husband's the quote guy, too.

Ed Gerety
I could give you a favorite quote every hour on the hour. But I'll share one of my all-time favorites—it's by Richard Bach. He said, "You are never given a wish without the power to also make it come true."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
I love that. Is that from Illusions or Jonathan Livingston Seagull?

Ed Gerety
I think it's from Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah, one of my favorites from back in the day. Excellent. All right, good friend. Thank you, thank you. I appreciate you very much and more to come.

To those of you listening, take a minute to check in with yourself. What did you take away from this conversation I just had with Ed? What are you aware of that you might not have been aware of 30 minutes ago? What's important to you now? What do you want to bring forward with you into your week? What's one A-ha or insight that you want to glean from this conversation and bring forward with you into the week?

As always, my friends, thank you for what you're doing for yourself and for your kids. Thank you for tuning in. It makes such a big difference. Stay with us. Click forward. Tune in to the next episode with Sarah Rosensweet. It's a fabulous conversation, and I'll see you on the next one. Take care, everyone.