Ep 23: The Terror of Teenage Rebellion

Neal Thompson, author of Kickflip Boys, discusses the drama of raising rebellious and defiant teenagers. He reveals some of the strategies he found that worked for getting through to his kids in the end and talks about how he coped with the rebellious years.

Full show notes

Are your boundary lines being crossed like hopscotch? Maybe this problem goes beyond the house, too. Your teen could harbor a greater rebellion towards authority than you know…

Without knowing how to deal with teenage defiance, these behaviors can spiral out of control. They might be skipping classes, dissenting coaches and teachers, and even experimenting with drugs and alcohol in risky ways.

Whatever the cause of this behavior, the stress can leave you understandably wondering how to deal with teenage defiance.

This can feel like a lonely situation for a parent. However, the guest I’m here to speak with today insists you are in fact NOT alone, and there ARE things you as a parent can do. You can learn how to deal with teenage defiance!

Neal Thompson is a father of two wonderful and rebellious boys, and he captures his inspiring story in his book Kickflip Boys: A Memoir of Freedom, Rebellion, and the Chaos of Fatherhood. Neal has learned some valuable lessons on how to deal with teenage defiance in a positive way. A lot of the lessons he credits to his wife.

It’s easy to think within the constructs of societal roles that Neal would be the “bad guy” dad, and his wife would be the “comforting” mom, but it wasn’t really like that for him. He explains that he and his wife are equal partners, and they each have a different style of parenting their two boys. Still, it was his wife who found a lot more success in getting their boys to open up.

Patience

Here’s a lesson about patience from a skateboarder. Neal loves skateboarding, and was thrilled when his boys got into skateboarding, too. His wife was interested because the boys were interested, but she kept her distance from the skateboarding community. When the “dark side” of the skateboarding community showed its edge in the teenage years, Neal didn’t know how to deal with teenage defiance with patience.

When his boys would push back in rebellion, Neal admits his tendency was to instantly go to a place of stress and anger. Neal liked skateboarding culture and was around it all the time, but when the rebellious side came out, he struggled to stay calm. Doing nothing didn’t register as an option when he saw his boys make poor decisions within a culture he loved.

It was easier for Neal’s sons to his wife because she had a calmer demeanor. She wouldn’t yell and scream like he would. She knew how to deal with teenage defiance by creating a safe space and listening. You might be asking, though,

“What is a safe space, and how do you create it?”

A Safe Space

When figuring out how to deal with teenage defiance, Neal noticed that his wife could diminish teenage rebellion by creating safe spaces. Neal explains that to his two boys, being in the car with mom was like being in a protective bubble.

What they didn’t necessarily know, was that she would use trips in the car to have conversations. The boys knew a relaxing car ride with mom and her calm demeanor allowed them to relax. Once they could relax, they could open up.

What’s interesting about the car is that it provides a shared objective. When everyone is in the car, the objective is to go somewhere. Any conversation that happens is a byproduct of the objective and not “a talk.” This reveals an important point of teenage defiance.

A defiant teen will get instantly defensive if you sit him or her down for “a talk.” If the objective is the conversation, and your teen is naturally defiant, then expect pushback and raised voices.

In order to create a safe space, it’s important to identify activities that are comfortable for everyone that don’t necessitate conversation. This can be going for a walk, going fishing, or working on the car. Neal and his wife found that if you can disguise your objective to have a conversation with a shared activity, you can lessen their reaction when feedback is provided. This might feel sneaky and deceptive for some parents, so I asked Neal about that, too.

Trust and Teen Privacy

Parents may be wondering how to deal with teenage defiance when it becomes such a problem that an invasion of your teen’s privacy is necessary. Neal explains his perspective on this with excerpts from his book. He describes a time when he found information about his boys by stealing their phones and doing “stealthy parent work.” With the evolution of technology, this is such an interesting issue, and teens are wondering about it, too.

I asked Neal if he thought his “stealthy parent work” backfired when his boys found out. He explained that the goal is never to spy on your kids. That by itself is bad. But you want to keep them safe. As a first line of defense, stealthy parenting is a poor tool. Being a stealthy parent runs the risk of damaging trust in the parent-teen relationship. Neal’s boys were the first to point out his invasion of their privacy.

However, when the stakes for his boys were as high as intense drug usage and alcohol, Neal found such deception to be almost necessary. He knows some parents will disagree. He also admits he may have crossed a line in some of the book’s stories. He still believes, though, that stealthy parenting should be a tool kept available for extreme scenarios.

In this new age of technology, parents have a lot to learn about how to deal with teenage defiance. What’s important to remember is that the persona of your teen online doesn’t accurately represent who they are in real life.

What Does it Mean to be a “Good” Kid

You might be wondering how to deal with teenage defiance at home, even though everyone around your teen keeps telling you they are the kindest, most hard-working kid on earth. Are we talking about the same kid?

Neal shares a story about how he had a fight with his son one morning. His boy had woken up fairly hungover from a night out, and Neal was mad about that. When his son left for work bagging groceries at the grocery store, Neal was still mad. However, when he stopped by the store later, he was surprised to see that his son had a genuine smile on his face as he helped customers at the counter. It was a side of his son he hadn’t seen before.

He realized that just because his son was an extremely rebellious teenager, didn’t mean his son didn’t care. In fact, he was the good kid Neal always thought he was, but just hadn’t had the chance to see.

Neal has some unenviable stories in learning how to deal with teenage defiance, but the value of his life lessons goes beyond words. The amount of love he has for his kids really shines, and he definitely has one or two words of knowledge for every parent in this episode.

Along with how to deal with teenage defiance, other topics covered include:

• Getting permission to share stories from his family, and the greater nuances of publicly “airing dirty laundry”
• Some clarity on birth order effects
• Why he wishes he had relaxed and stressed less about the future
• Failure
• Trusting your kids to learn life lessons without your help
• The tension of authority figures
• The value of o...