Give Respect to Get Respect (Even When It's Hard)

Steph: This episode of Your Teem with Sue and Steph is sponsored by teencounseling.com visit teencounseling.com/ytm for 10 percent off your first session. Welcome to Your Teen. I’m Stephanie Silverman

Sue: And I’m Sue Borison.

Steph: We’re so glad to have you here. So we were just commenting about brushing your teeth, was a funny thing we just started talking about. Is it the first thing you do when you wake up?

Sue: Well I probably pee first.

Steph: Oh.

Sue: Because I don’t think I— [Laughter] You know what, this might go with all of my hygiene issues but— [Laughter]

Steph: Are you sure you want to tell this right now?

Sue: I’m just thinking if I want to share this story, but it is definitely not the first thing I do because I want my coffee to be my first taste. That’s something you didn’t know about me after all these years.

Steph: So you can have a cup of coffee before you brush your teeth.

Sue: Oh because if I brush my teeth then it’s gonna taste too minty and I have switched. This is something, Sue you’re going to learn so much about me right now. So I have switched to organic toothpaste.

Steph: Wow. Why?

Sue: I don’t know. So I’m going to go with packaging. I was at T.J. Maxx, as I’m walking down the aisles and I saw, I don’t know, it was really appealing. The packaging was really appealing and I’m start—

Steph: Has it changed your whole life?

Sue: It really has. So it is… it’s not as minty and pungent, it tastes fresh. I am a hundred percent sure it’s in my head but I still, regardless, I don’t brush my teeth first. And in fact…

Steph: Oh don’t say it.

Sue: I’m not going to say it.

Steph: Do you actually forget?

Sue: [Laughter]

Steph: Oh my God. OK. Let’s move on.

Sue: OK. Next.

Steph: Ok so but here’s the other thing about brushing your teeth, I said to Sue, the other people that own brushing your teeth is the Happy Birthday song. Because when the kids were little they were told… The dentist I think used to say to them, “You know I want you brushing your teeth for as long as you can sing the birthday song.” Which is a little weird to like you’re singing and brushing your teeth? It’d be like all drippy.

Sue: Maybe you hum it to your head.

Steph: Well do electric toothbrushes. I thought electric toothbrushes— Aren’t some of them like on a timer?

Sue: Yeah so we just changed our lives with the new electric toothbrushes and we’re probably carrying on too long about this but I do want to tell you that space wise I have a little mouth. I’ll just qualify it. And I’m such a mess after this electric toothbrush. I have to have a strategy. It literally is spraying all over the bathroom. And Stephanie is dying right now, she’s not going to be able to talk.

Steph: Oh my God I’m so sorry for both of us. I’ll just take a bullet. I’m sorry. This is an awful conversation but boy is that funny. You wanna introduce our next topic?

Sue: Sure sure. So what we wanted to talk about today were the little things that we do as parents that make huge differences. And I always loved this concept because, you know, we think about very big changes in our families and what we can do to change the dynamic amongst siblings and to do all these very very big things. But sometimes there really are just little mind shifts and little language changes that make our days happier. They just, you know, your day starts out a little better and ends a little better. So we wanted to just tell you, in our experience, which things made the most difference to us. And I’m actually going to start with what I think is probably the impetus for Your Teen Magazine, now known as Your Teen Media. And I really believe that Parent’s Magazine saved me when my kids were little I had three kids, my oldest wasn’t— I have five I just always had to put that out there but I had three and the oldest wasn’t four yet so that was a lot of little at the same time and my husband was a resident at the time and we had no family in town at the time. Going grocery shopping was a project. It was like the biggest project and I didn’t enjoy it and I didn’t look forward to it. And I read like, I don’t know, four sentences in Parent’s Magazine about a woman who said, I don’t know what they were called, tip of the day or something. And she said, “Oh I made a game out of it. I took pictures that I cut out of magazines and I told my kids to look for those products.” Like it was a scavenger hunt in the grocery store. And I remember doing it with my kids and thinking well that little thing just changed everything. And I wanted more of that as my kids got older and obviously those kinds of tips started to disappear and we’re just supposed to know how to navigate everything after those toddler years which we’re here now today because that’s just not true. So that for me is the first thing I can remember that was small effort, huge impact.

Steph: That’s a good one. In fact I retell that story often when I’m talking to clients and they’re asking about the history of Your Teen or, you know, how certain I was to tell your story. Mine is, and I wish I’d started it earlier, and it came from Amy Speidel, which was when your kid is… Something happens, they lie, they whatever it is. And coming from a place of curiosity. So it removes that you know I always picture shaking the finger at them and saying like, “Why did you do this? Why?” Instead, I’m curious. You know so the example is the kid, you know, has not done any homework all weekend. On Sunday, they talk about how much work they have. Then on Sunday they’re planning on going to the mall or to a movie with friends. And you’re thinking, “OK when is that work getting done?” Instead of saying, “Well I thought you had so much homework.” You’re supposed to say, “So I’m curious how your plan looks for the day with going to a movie and the work that you have to get done.” And then just saying nothing. So that place of curiosity is a really good one. Actually, I would say that’s probably… That is up there with one of two things that I have shared with friends when they’re like, “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do.” And I’m like OK, Use the Amy Speidel, come in from a place of curiosity.

Sue: It works with all relationships because you know saying—

Steph: So true.

Sue: I recently was in a discussion about how to have a conversation around a topic and someone said, “Well why don’t you start with, ‘You must have had a good reason for that.’” Which is kind of… It’s erring on the side that there was thought and in a good way. Right like you’re starting out not putting the other person on the defensive.

Steph: Yeah and I feel like it speaks to, Sue you talked about this I think maybe in our last episode, about preserving their dignity and I think it falls into that same category.

Sue: And guess where I learned that whole line of thinking. From Amy Speidel.

Steph: She’s the best.

Sue: God we love Amy Speidel. So we often have in the magazine a tip from a parent. Parent Hack. We call it Parent Hack. They’re fun to hear because people really come up with some clever ones. Some of them that we actually can’t even talk about right now in our podcast, maybe we can. I’m going to say it. Somebody used the Find My Phone on their kids and then they would know how much time they had because you know they didn’t want to have sex while their kids were in the house and so this gave them a certain amount of time. So feel free to cut that out but it’s fun or not. Yeah but it’s so friggin funny that it is really that clever. They’re like, “Oh you know the kids are an hour away we’re good.”

Steph: Oh that is really funny.

Sue: What my parents hack is right now what I would say is the idea that laundry got tremendously overwhelming for me and I didn’t have a strong enough sense of delegating that to my kids, and I was going nuts. I mean my kids would take the clothes that were theirs or I’d put the wrong clothes their room and they would throw it out into the hallway. Let’s just give them the credit that they left it folded and put it outside their door. But that became the place it lived for the next year because nobody else took it. And I just, I couldn’t do it anymore. Five kids, too much laundry. And so I bought each kid a laundry basket, taught each of them how to do laundry, and changed my life forever.

Steph: Do you think they look back and say wow I’m so glad she did that for us.

Sue: Oh every day.

Steph: Exactly. It really— I remember when you had that idea I thought that was very… First of all, you’re still doing their laundry and now you don’t have all the mix up of the socks and that’s—

Sue: Oh no I didn’t do it for them. I mean you know I did sometimes. But that was just like a way of yes it served both purposes. If I did it, I did one load then I’d bring it back to them. But it also was like relinquishing, you know, you can do your own laundry now.

Steph: I love that I wish I taught them laundry earlier, like why am I doing this.

Sue: We are such mess ups as parents.

Steph: I know we really are.

Sue: Mm hmm. Okay. Next time.

Steph: Next time, wait. Next podcast or next kid?

Sue: Next kid.

Steph: Oh good. OK. Excellent. I was thinking we should have a ninth one. I wanted to bring that up with you.

Sue: Together?

Steph: [Laughter] Think how good we would be.

Steph: Last week I was talking to a friend of mine who was telling me what a struggle it was to get her daughter in to see a therapist. And I remember thinking, “Wow it’s so important.” But the struggle is real as we like to say. And thanks to our sponsor teencounseling.com, there’s another solution that’s a great way to connect with counselors online and find the right counselor for your kid. And I know as a mom how important it is. What I love about their service is that as the mom I got to go through and select what’s ailing my teen. Is it anxiety? Is it depression? Is it ADHD? Is it suicidal thoughts? And I got to be a part of that story. And then once I was able to connect with the right counselor and quickly I get to step out of the story and let my kid enter in a way that feels comfortable for them and that doesn’t mean sitting in a waiting room where they’re worried they might run into a friend. I want her or him to get the help that they need in a way that they can and feels comfortable. There’s no better way for our teens to connect than through their phone to start the conversation which I absolutely love. Our partner teencounseling.com is a fantastic resource. I encourage you to check them out, find the right help for your kid in a way that feels authentic and let them take charge of their own mental health. And in fact Your Teen with Sue and Steph podcast listeners get 10 percent off their first month at teen counseling.com/ytm. Go check them out.

Sue: So we are here with the incomparable Amy Speidel. Amy has been my go to person as a parent for years and years and I feel like what I want to tell all of you is, I hope you have an Amy Speidel in your life. So let me give you a little background about Amy. She is a certified conscious discipline instructor and a parent teacher coach. She’s taught the principles of loving guidance which was developed by Becky Bailey and she’s taught it for over 25 years in seminars and workshops to both parents and educators. And it’s impossible to find a time to get together with Amy because she is out on the road speaking to parents and educators all the time and changing lives of all of the kids that are touched by those parents and those teachers. So your ripple effect is tremendous Amy, and as I’ve told you before, I feel so blessed to have you in my life. So Amy one of the things that Stephanie and I both talk about all the time is how you taught us to be curious when we’re talking to our kids. One of the things that I think you do so well is you give us language, so people will often give advice that says talk nicely to your kid. And what does that mean? We don’t know. So you give real words. So we’re going to give you some scenarios that we’ve spoken with you about in the past and ask you to give us some language that can make a difference in our lives. And I’ll just throw out there that almost every time I talk to Amy about my kids I end up crying. So I don’t know if that’s going to happen today. And it always leads to something grand. These little tweaks that lead to some grand change in my household. This was a big one in my house: swearing. And not swearing like I stubbed my toe but swearing at me because of something that was, you know, some discipline moment, some moment of dissatisfaction. And so Amy what do you recommend to parents when they are not liking their kids tone of voice or the words they’re using.

Amy Speidel: You know I think it’s interesting that you focused first on the language because that is what we focus on the most in terms of how we communicate, what words we’re saying, that I want to take a step back from that just for a second and say that language and communication… Language is only part of communication. The other ways that we communicate are obviously through our body language which a lot of us are aware of, also through our energy. The energy is attached to your intention and the reason that’s so important to be curious is you first and foremost want to be curious about your own intention. So when a child swears at you, the first curiosity is, what shifted in this conversation that brought you into a position to believe that that was going to be helpful in this conversation. And we all do it. We all change our language and the words we use. But there is an intention behind it and it’s almost always driven by emotion that sends us into more of a self-preservation place rather than a communication. When our kids start speaking at us instead of with us we tend to then speak back at them. And now both of us are just throwing words into space but not really communicating at all.

Sue: So is there a better way?

Amy Speidel: Yes. So that the way to shift that, is to notice that something’s changed. That something I said tripped you into an even bigger emotional state than perhaps you were in to start with. Well if I want to be curious about that… If a child says a swear word to me like, “You’re this.” Or you know, just throwing it out into the air. I might say, “It seems as if now’s not the time for us to communicate about that. I would love to pick this up with you when we’re able to speak responsibly again. When each of us are able to speak responsibly.” And the reason that with teenagers that we involve ourselves in that is that it’s unlikely that you haven’t been thrown off by that statement as well that you haven’t participated in it going south as well. So you say, “You know what that indicates that we’re probably not speaking on a level that’s going to help us solve this. So let’s just take a minute and see if we can come back and speak more respectfully to each other.” That’s different than saying, “You’re not being respectful to me right now and I’m not dealing with that.”

Sue: So I love what you’re saying but there’s a certain assumption which is that the parent is going into this not thinking there’s a disparity in power. So in a more firm, affirmative way we have a lot of conversations on our Facebook page where parents believe that they’re the boss. And so how do you get them to shift the mindset that with their teenager it’s worth talking about the we instead of the you.

Amy Speidel: Yeah we at we share what our values are not in the way that we speak about our values but the way we live our values and that has been challenging in our society for decades maybe eons of time. That somehow I say you need to be respectful to me without me modeling that for you. From a brain research position we know that we operate best on modeling rather than on the information that tells us how we’re supposed to be. When someone models that in the conflict, we’re able to identify that as a skill and then move towards that skill more successfully then when somebody models the very thing they don’t want. And you know I’ll go back to very young children. If a child grabs something from another child and then you grab it back from that child and say, “You don’t grab from people.” You’re not teaching them how to respectfully ask for a turn. You’re just teaching them that bigger people get to grab. And in the same way, if I’m angry at a child for being disrespectful and I become disrespectful in the way I speak to that, “I am your parent. You don’t speak to me that way. That is not the tone of voice that you have with me.” I’m using the tone of voice that I don’t want towards them. Does that kind of make sense?

Sue: So one of the things that I would say really pivoted for me when my kids were younger and I spoke with you, was looking at my kids with this feeling of empathy and I had one particular instance where I called you in like a moment of thinking that my kid needed some serious intervention. I don’t know if you remember it Amy but.

Amy Speidel: I think I remember it.

Steph: We all remember it.

Sue: I actually thought my kid needed to come see you the next day like at— Well maybe at that moment and it became clear that I needed to come see you. And one of the things that you did for me, so I’ll give you the back story because it’s I’m probably not the only parent to have had this happen but I might be the only one to admit it. My kid took the keys to go leave when I said, “No.” I did in fact do something I never thought I would do. And I wrestled my kid to the floor for the keys. We were bruised. I mean it was a blowout fight. When I spoke with you, you gave me all of these really beautiful words to use and I always think when you give me words that they’re not my words and I can’t make them sound authentic but I had nothing else to grab onto and so I did use your words. So when something goes wrong when we feel like there’s, I don’t know, what the word is it’s not disobedience but it’s like really oppositional. So what do you recommend to parents. Because we all have it in some format or another like maybe it wasn’t your kid took the keys but in some way we’ve all experienced that. So how do we talk to our kids when what we want to do is what I did what I very badly did.

Amy Speidel: And again you threw gas at a fire. So there was already a little fire burning inside of her. And when we get angry, and rightfully so, nobody wants to be defied by your child and it feels almost less like defiance and more almost like a betrayal at the teen years. Like I have poured so much into you. How could you be that disrespectful to me? Like I have lived this for you!

Sue: I might have said that. [Laughter]

Amy Speidel: What was that?

Sue: I might have said that.

Amy Speidel: Yeah yeah. If not out loud certainly that was just, you know, booming in your head.

Steph: I think she meant out loud.

Amy Speidel: She’s trying to throw you under the bus here Susan.

Sue: That’s OK I’m under the bus, it’s fine. [Laughter]

Amy Speidel: A lot of stuff comes out of our mouths when we feel that dismantled but it is that you’re looking at somebody who’s close to the same size of you if not taller than you and somebody who you have, again, had this close relationship with and what seems to be just deteriorating at the core. There’s so much emotion going into that and it is the tumult of saying you’re trying to be an adult and I only know how to relate to you as a child. So I don’t know. No one knows how to cross that bridge until you start building it together. And the way that you build it together is to recognize first that your relationship is indeed changing. You are not just a kid anymore, you want to be able to explore your own way of getting yourself out of a jam. You want to be able to flap your own wings and make it out of this nest. You want that, and yet, you’re just as scared as I am that maybe you’re not going to have the power and resource to do that. So if both of you stay scared then the argument has to happen because they’ve got to push against your fear as well as their own. If you trust it, and you just recognize that that’s still the person that you’ve poured all these years and love and care into, they’re just wanting to feel powerful in this moment. Then trying to take the power away from them is just going to be like you saw, it’s going to be an actual power struggle literally. So instead of that recognize when it’s game on, for one, when is this just, I wasn’t prepared for this. Didn’t know it was going to happen. Hadn’t anticipated that you were going to defy me in this moment and that’s when just holding steady and saying, “Wow something’s changing or something feels very different.” Because what you’re doing, what you’re suggesting you’re going to do just seems out of character for how I’ve known you to be. So something big must be going on. In other words the more we can drop our own fear and start to wonder about what’s happening. That’s empathy, that’s saying, “What’s going on in you that taking the keys and and marching out with such a frustration and irritation. That’s not like you. That’s not who we are together.” Like call it out in the kindest possible way. “You don’t treat me that way and you don’t talk that way to me.” Can you kind of feel the the release that that has for them? Now maybe they’re going to just walk out and say screw you I don’t care. Right? But you’ve got a platform now on which to build something new. The next time or when they come home.

Steph: I was going to say can you give us those words Amy? What are those words? I think that’s where we all get hung up.

Amy Speidel: When they come back?

Steph: Yes. Or even like what are I think it’s so hard for us even so we’ve got this whole script going in our head but what are the words when we look at them with that intent that you said, and what do we say? What are those words that we say to them?

Amy Speidel: So a couple of things. Based on you know what feels most natural to you. So I’ll give you a few words. When they start really pushing back against you for you to take a deep breath and that is absolutely essential you gotta… you’ve got to get out of your own emotional state, so take a deep breath, relax your entire body, and really in your heart of hearts not in any kind of words but just in your intention wish them well. This is big for them. They’re trying to have a voice and they want to have it responsibly and respectfully that’s all. That’s all it is. And so then out of that, out of that change in your, “I thought I was just giving you instructions I thought I was just telling you what you need to do today and all of a sudden it became an emotional minefield.” I’m going to stop for a moment, gather my own collective wisdom and just say my first words, could say, “Wow something just changed here,” or “Something feels off here.” In other words draw both of you to that curiosity if you can. So that’s one way to do it. Just, “Wow something feels off in this conversation. Something feels off between us.” Like acknowledge what it is that doesn’t feel right between you. Right? Another way would be to just jump in with the empathy. “This seems so important to you that you’re willing to risk what’s going on in our family right now. And that, wow that just seems off for me,” or “That seems that seems unnecessary.” So keep the relationship connected the more you can instead of pushing them to kind of drop the last link between you, keep that relationship as alive as you reasonably can, in that moment. I’m not giving into it. I’m not saying, “Oh you know honey it seems like you’re really upset about this. OK OK. You know what, go ahead and go but you know we really need to figure this out for next time.” That would be the passive give in kind of voice. Sue, that’s not you.

Sue: [Laughter]

Amy Speidel: But some people just want to avoid the conflict so it’s like, “OK OK I didn’t know it was so important to you. OK well then we’ll just try to figure this out later. I’ll I’ll get a ride with somebody.” You know whatever it is, I’m going to try to pacify you so that you don’t keep yelling at me. That happens sometimes. No it’s not that. It’s holding the relationship as so sacred, as so important, that I am not willing to trample on it just because you’re having a hard time holding the plot at the moment. So I don’t have specific words because every situation is different, every moment is different. But what I can say is the more you perhaps walk into it with the, “Wow this doesn’t seem like it is going in the direction that we know to go in our best moments, like it feels off to me. It feels like we’re just getting angry at each other.” Call it out. And this isn’t just for your kids. This is for spouses. This is for mother daughter relationships for the rest of your life. When you notice that a conversation is going off the rails the more we can consciously say, “Wow something changed in the way we’re talking to each other right now and it doesn’t feel like us.” Can you feel the difference in that?

Sue: Yeah it’s so beautiful. So what happens when it doesn’t… You know if the goal is to make it work, however you define work, but the kid leaves anyway. Then what happens when they get home?

Amy Speidel: Again. I might send him a little text message and say that felt a little ugly. And you know we there’s some repairing that we’ll need to do. I mean the good news about cell phones is whether they want to or not they’re gonna look at it. Because we all hear the ding. Keep it really short so that it mostly shows up in the first window, right? That felt that felt ugly. And so we’re probably going to need to do some repairing. Again it’s both the acknowledgement that that was not acceptable. And it also is the realization of repairing is what what my goal would be, not “You are in so much trouble. I can’t believe you walked out this door. You never do that to me again. Stay out as late as you want. The last time you’re gonna have freedom for a long time.” You know, if I go with the irritation, if I have capital letters and a lot of exclamation marks there’s not going to be repairing. But again if I recognize you did the best you could in that circumstance to make sense of what you thought was so vital in your life in that moment then that was game on and we get through as best we can. When you come home then there’s the conversation to say, and again depending on the relationship you’ve built with this kid over time, the relationship is such that, “That is going to do great damage and are in our relationship and in our family. But we can choose to do it differently. That’s not going to work going forward. And I’m guessing you understood that too. So I’m going to count on the fact that while you were away you also realize that that’s not who you want to be in our family. And I maybe I didn’t respond as best I could. And I can say that I went forward with my plan for the night and I assumed that there was no reason to let you know ahead of time because why would I. And yet now I realize that you’ve got a life of your own growing up over here and you’re gonna want to know some plans that our family has ahead of time and that kind of threw you for a loop. So I learned that in order to be more respectful I’m going to let you know a little bit more ahead of the game what what our plans are as a family and what might you do differently so that we don’t end up in the same mess again.” It’s about solving the problem on both sides of the equation.

Sue: But we all we all believe that there’s some punishment. I mean I’m like sitting here waiting for you to tell me, “Take the keys away. They don’t get to drive.” I can just hear our listeners being like, “Okay but what’s the consequence. The kid left.” We’re just using this as an example by the way. It’s every other story that you’re dealing with in your own home as listeners. But we all know it’s the power struggle of, “You’re not the boss of me.” And Amy it sounds like you’re saying there doesn’t have to be a consequence other than communication.

Amy Speidel: The consequence is we misunderstand the difference between a consequence and a punishment. And I think what you’re referring to more is the punishment of this. You didn’t not see. You moved outside of what was acceptable. And now I’m going to punish you for that by taking something away from you that valuable to you. That’s a punishment. A consequence is the conversation itself quite frankly just having to have that conversation and problem solve it is a consequence of my not solving it in a healthier way in the first place. `Now here’s what can happen. So let’s say you don’t want game after game after game to go south. So the first one… first we’re going to have a conversation to say if that was the first time that you ever defied me, I’m not going to lower the boom on you. I’m going to say, “Wow that went really poorly. Something’s changing between us and I’m curious about how we might get back on track.” But maybe there are some changes that this is also indicating. That’s what happens the first time. Now you can setup another additional consequence to say, “So now that we have agreed that we’re going to make some changes in how we do this. Just so you know if you choose to have a conversation about this and work it out in a respectful responsible way as I am also going to work to do. Then we’re gonna be able to figure out how we make sense of your shifting life and what the expectation in our family would be. We’ll make some for that. If you choose to turn off that conversation and just go out and do what you want and not pay attention to what’s going on and what is expected of you, then the consequence will be you’re gonna be reined in a little bit more. You don’t get all the freedom of taking the car and doing all those things. If you’re unwilling to be responsible about how that goes.” That’s our job as a parent, to make sure that when you’re given those responsibilities you also have the ability to follow through on how to be responsible with that. So for instance if your kid gets a ticket you could easily say, “Until we have a chance to really drive together and make sure that you get how to go the right speed in a car, we’re going gonna do that together for a little bit before you are handed the keys on your own.” If they’re in an accident, same thing, anything that happens where there is a misstep there’s a correction to that misstep there is the consequence is you’re gonna pay the ticket the consequences your insurance might go up. The consequence is you have to pay for repairs all of those things are true. The skill building is you’re now gonna be working with me for a little bit until we’re sure you got this thing down so that it doesn’t continue to happen. So we have to remember that the consequence almost always will be a natural consequence anyway. And then we’re going to add an imposed consequence when we feel like we’re gonna help them figure out that they’re better off if they choose the skill they’ve got instead of acting out against us.

Sue: Okay so Amy I feel like there was just a “Phew” in there like “Phew” P H E W, from a lot of parents because there’s this, the talking part is not intuitive for us. But the consequence part the imposed consequence is intuitive. So it sounds to me a little bit like a hybrid of the two. Like we’re not relinquishing the responsibility but we are trying to first figure out what’s going on here. How do we move forward? Does that sound right?

Amy Speidel: Yes because the relationship— and again highlighting the fact that punishing is about getting revenge for the act. They did something that bothered you. That’s why we punish people we punish people so that they’ll feel bad about the fact that they disrupted our happy life on some level. Consequence is about learning to do it differently because it doesn’t work to have this consequence, it works better to have that consequence because consequences swing both ways. There are positive outcomes and there are negative outcomes.

Sue: Okay as everyone now knows this is just a taste of what you can get from Amy. These suggestions, they carry through all of our relationships and they change all of them and I’m here to tell you that it did change my relationship with that child. I could not have imagined that it could have worked the way Amy described it because it seemed foreign to me and I had disbelief but when I implemented it, it actually changed my relationship to this day. So I encourage all of you to either get in touch with Amy Speidel or to find your own Amy Speidel and we thank you Amy so much for your continued advice to help us be better parents. Thanks.

Amy Speidel: Great!

Steph: Thanks for joining us for the Your Teen podcast. If you have any topics that you want us to talk about, let us know on our Facebook page or email editor@yourteenmag.com. Your Team with Sue and Steph is a production of Evergreen Podcasts. Special thanks to executive producer Michael DeAloia plus producer Hannah Leach, and audio engineer Eric Koltnow. You can find more from us at yourteenmag.com, at evergreenpodcasts.com, or anywhere you listen to podcasts. And don’t forget if you like today’s podcast, please leave us an iTunes review. Help other parents find our podcast. We’ll see you next time.