07 Mar
Emotions, For Parents, For Teens

7 Ways to Support Teens Through Change

Change for teens, a guaranteed part of life – and rarely easy. Teens have had to face crazy amounts of change over these past few years. As parents, witnessing this may have resulted in many sleepless nights and you stressing over what they’re doing locked away in their bedroom all that time. 

 In the middle of grade 8, my dad was promoted to a new role at his company, meaning we would have to move from Edmonton to Calgary. As my shy, anxious 14 year old self, with a sense of adventure, my brain was working overtime. Moving houses, cities, leaving my friends, and sports club behind in the middle of a school year was terrifying (and a teeny bit exciting). 

Photo by Canva

Whether your teen daughter is changing schools, changing friend groups, undergoing body and brain developments, or adjusting to the ever flip flopping social situations, change is on her radar. Teens can be excellent maskers and may not share with you how they’re feeling. Your daughter may not even know exactly what she’s feeling. Instead, she might constantly distract herself from real life, feel things and not be sure why, and shut down or lash out at the people around her. 

When we first moved, I protested with a food strike to share my disdain of my life feeling like it was turned upside down. I spent many lunch hours hiding in the school bathroom crying. It gave me a little release from some of the confusion, anxiety, and fear I was feeling. 

 One lunch hour the hot tears came before I could make it to the bathroom stall and at that very same moment, a group of the more popular girls walked in. I tried my best to look like I was doing anything but crying, but my mascara streaks and red face betrayed me. My 14 year old self was thinking- 

What could be worse?! 

To my surprise the girls huddled around me and sang “You are my sunshine” until we all burst into awkward laughter. I never became close with that friend group, but that wasn’t the point- some time shortly after that moment, I just kind of knew I was going to be ok.  

Photo by Canva

Even though change isn’t easy, it is often necessary and can even lead to some pretty amazing experiences. Below are 7 ideas to help make a world of difference in your daughter’s life as she steers through teen years full of unknowns.

Change For Teens Tip #1 – Validate her experience– by being curious, asking questions, and listening you can offer your daughter a space to share her experience and make sense of what she is thinking and feeling. You might even share a story of your own change and ask how hers is different or similar.

 

Photo by Canva

 

Change For Teens Tip #2 – Plan where you can– some change comes at us more suddenly, but even in those circumstances, we can do some planning. Invite your teen to examine the situation to see how she (and maybe you together) can plan for things that might come up.

Change For Teens Tip #3 – Help her hone in on her choices– As Jessa (provisional psychologist here at Pyramid Psychology)  talked about in her blog last week ‘How to Handle Change for Teens’, even in the most dire situations, there are always choices that we can make. Finding choices can help your teen have a sense of control when external circumstances are feeling pretty out of control.

Photo by Canva

Change For Teens Tip #4 – Support them to form meaningful connections– feeling connected to people who get it, who your daughter feels safe with and can trust can ease stress felt from transitions. Nothing like a good dose of empathy to help possibilities blossom. The Happiness Pill program is a unique online group coaching experience (with some 1:1 coaching too!) that was designed to give your daughter a safe space to build these types of meaningful connections. If the idea of seeing your daughter build relationships while working on her own joy lights you up, you can get the details for the program HERE.

Change For Teens Tip #5 – Give yourself some of that support sugar- If your teen is experiencing change, you are feeling it too. Whether it’s her behaviour or your own experience of change, the impacts are felt. Take some time to fill your cup with love and care before you try to pour from an empty cup in support of your teen.

Photo by Canva

Change For Teens Tip #6 – Highlight past victories- You can ask your teen daughter about some past changes that she has gone through and how she can use those to help her now. How did she survive or even thrive? What are some things she learned about herself in the process? About others? She may have learned tools to manage change, too!

Change For Teens Tip #7 – Create opportunities for joy and optimism– Change is stressful- so it’s important to offer a different landscape once in a while. Coming up with ideas on how to take breaks, have some fun, and do things that bring her joy, can be a great way to manage some of the stress that comes with change. 

Love, 

Chantal 

 

Chantal Côté (she/her) is a psychologist and teen life coach living in Calgary, Alberta. After over a decade in non-profit and community mental health, Chantal started Pyramid Psychology, a practice dedicated to supporting teens – a population she is constantly amazed by. Chantal is on a mission to help 100,000 teen girls (and their parents) build bulletproof mindsets so they can weather the ups and downs of life. As part of this goal, Chantal has had the privilege of speaking at various events – virtual and live – to support teens and parents.

Outside of this passion, Chantal is often in nature, writing poetry, playing ball hockey and hanging out with her loved ones.

Each week, Chantal writes a blog article in response to issues she hears from the parents and teens she connects with.

If you have something you’d like to read more on – email ideas and questions to info@pyramidpsychology.com or DM us via Instagram or Facebook.

31 Jan
For Parents, For Teens, Teen Joy

3 Ways to Help Your Teen Daughter Stop Perfectionist Thinking

Photo by Canva

“I’m a perfectionist,” she said, breaking her gaze with me to look down at her feet, slightly turned inwards, careful not to crease her sneakers. The smile on her face suggested this was a kind of badge of honour, but the way her shoulders slumped forward as if rocks were stacked on either side, shared a different story, a kind of heavy burden. 

Teen perfectionists, driven by thoughts of meeting an ideal, whether it be an ideal grade, an ideal body image, an ideal way of being or performing, results in a constant “falling short” in the person’s eyes.

Fed by negative self-talk, unhealthy comparisons, and unrealistic  expectations teens who struggle with perfectionistic thinking tend to:

1.Get blocked from starting tasks, leading to things like procrastination or incomplete assignments, as they contemplate the right or perfect thing to say, do, or write

2.Put a disproportionate amount of time and energy on the tasks they are trying to accomplish and when they are not working on them, it is like a constant radio static in their brain reminding them that they should be.

Photo by Canva



(Tackling the Perfectionism Monster is a great podcast to listen to on this topic).

**Tina imagines the way her body “ought” to look. Every day she spends hours looking at images of what she considers the ideal body type. She spends most of her day thinking about or planning around activities that will lead her to this “perfect” image. Even when she’s hanging out with friends or reading her book, her brain constantly tries to pull her into these thoughts and feelings. Perfectionism has Tina trapped in a cycle, pulling her away from much of the enjoyment of her life and consumes her with feelings of stress, guilt, and shame.

Photo by Canva

**Evelyn calls herself a procrastinator and most of the time manages to get her assignments in but often right at the deadline or after her mom asks her teachers for an extension. Lately her English assignments have been piling up. Every time Evelyn opens her laptop, she stares blankly at the page, her brain arguing with itself between putting something down and shooting the idea down before her fingers can start typing. The white page stares back at her, a reminder that if her ideas aren’t great enough, she may as well put nothing at all. 

 3 Ways to Help Your Daughter Break Free from Perfectionism

Teen Perfectionism Tip #1: Swing and A Miss

In order to learn how to walk as infants, we needed to start by getting our body to move in different ways, working our way up to standing, and eventually finding our balance to take small steps. No one expected us to start off knowing how to master this skill. Learning any skill requires practice in order to improve. When teens are stuck in perfectionistic thinking, it can paralyze any attempt to get started on tasks, believing that if they don’t get it right the first time, it’s not worth the risk. Helping your daughter recognize that learning happens through successive approximation, by reinforcing behaviours that resemble the desired behaviour. In other words, whenever your teen takes an action that gets them moving in the direction of what they are trying to achieve, and that action is somehow being reinforced (e.g. your teen seeing improvement, a good grade, praise, words on the page, etc.), the more likely they are to keep taking action. If your teen struggles to get started on a writing assignment, encourage them to start by copying a nursery rhyme or a favourite quote a couple of times on the page. They can delete it afterwards, but by starting there and seeing that there is something on the page, it can help them build momentum to continue writing. 

 

Photo by Canva

 Teen Perfectionism Tip #2: OWN

This one comes from The Wellness Project with Des podcast episode, “Overcoming Perfectionism With Sarah Herd. The acronym OWN stands for Only What’s Necessary- this is great for teens who struggle with constantly putting most of their focus and energy into specific accomplishments they desire. Helping your teen step back and think about what’s most important to them and what fills their wellness cup is a good place to start. Once they are aware of what matters most to them, they can map out where the majority of their time and energy is spent throughout the week and see if they line up. If perfectionism is a factor, chances are this will be out of sync. The OWN acronym encourages teens to take a look at what would be absolutely necessary in accomplishing a task and letting go of some of that extra to free up time for more things they truly enjoy. 

Photo by Canva

 

Teen Perfectionism Tip #3: Failing for perfection 

Perfection is a trap. Having something be absolutely free of defects, flaws, and imperfections is completely unrealistic. The more your teen can learn to accept failure and mistakes as part of being human, the sooner they can begin to let go of this idea of perfection. This isn’t to say your daughter can’t have goals she is striving for. Nor, that she is doomed to a life of endless failure. Sometimes this means as parents, needing to step back in some places to allow for failure. This can be a frightening prospect, where your parents’ imagination might go to the worst case scenario of mistakes and failures that are irreparable and life altering. 

Photo by Canva

Shifting to see most failures and mistakes as opportunities to build your teen’s resilience by teaching them things like changing the script on their self-talk and failing forward, learning from their mistakes, can really help your teen start to step away from perfectionistic thinking.    

Perfectionism can be really tricky and tied to your daughter’s beliefs about her self-worth. The Happiness Pill Program is a 4-month coaching program designed to help your daughter build her confidence, develop healthy and meaningful connections, and learn to get in the driver’s seat of her emotions. If this sounds like the answer you’ve been looking for, please email us at info@pyramidpsychology.com to find out more about our Happiness Pill Teen Life Coaching Program. Our next intake is March, 2022.

**Please note: the people referred to in this blog are a composite of various stories I’ve heard throughout the years and do not represent one specific person.

Chantal Côté (she/her) is a psychologist and teen life coach living in Calgary, Alberta. After over a decade in non-profit and community mental health, Chantal started Pyramid Psychology, a practice dedicated to supporting teens – a population she is constantly amazed by. Chantal is on a mission to help 100,000 teen girls (and their parents) build bulletproof mindsets so they can weather the ups and downs of life. As part of this goal, Chantal has had the privilege of speaking at various events – virtual and live – to support teens and parents.

Outside of this passion, Chantal is often in nature, writing poetry, playing ball hockey and hanging out with her loved ones.

Each week, Chantal writes a blog article in response to issues she hears from the parents and teens she connects with.

If you have something you’d like to read more on – email ideas and questions to info@pyramidpsychology.com or DM us via Instagram or Facebook.

10 Jan
For Parents, For Teens, Teen Joy

5 Ways to Increase Teen Motivation

Photo by Canva

Teen motivation has been fragile over the last couple of years – for parents, too! Many of the teens I work with share that they are struggling finding teen motivation for day to day things – cooking, cleaning, assignments, getting out of bed, etc. Even finding the motivation for the things they want to do is difficult.

This is a big part of why I developed my signature 4-month coaching program for you and your teens – The Happiness Pill Program. Your teen will receive several 1:1 coaching sessions with me, as well as weekly group sessions with other teens who are also feeling a lack of motivation. For you, there are parent office hours to connect and ask questions while we work together to guide your teen to their best life.

Before the program is even complete, you will begin feeling like a weight has been lifted – your teen will be finding tools for motivation and getting back to their old selves. You will feel empowered to walk alongside them. You can find the details here:

The Happiness Pill Program

 

For, understanding why your teen is feeling unmotivated can be a helpful starting point. 

Here are the top five reasons teens share with me for struggling with motivation:

Photo by Canva

Lack of Teen Motivation Cause #1: Stress

Stress is the #1 thing that zaps motivation – and there certainly hasn’t been a shortage in the last couple of years! When your teen feels stressed, or overwhelmed, like they have too many things to do, it depletes their motivation.

The more stressors your teen has to manage, the more it zaps their motivation. It is something that needs to constantly be managed right now.

Lack of Teen Motivation Cause #2: Lack of Desire

Whether or not your teen ‘should’ complete a task or activity is a different question than their desire to do so. If your teen doesn’t like the task/activity at hand, or isn’t seeing the benefits of doing it, motivation can easily be zapped.

Chores and school assignments are two common areas that come to mind. Especially right now, with all the changes in school throughout Covid – things have been delayed, changed, and even cancelled. The mentality of ‘what’s the point’ tends to set in in situations like this.

Photo by Canva

Lack of Teen Motivation Cause #3: Big Picture

As parents it’s helpful to recognize that teens have an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, which is the area of the brain that’s responsible for reasoning, thinking things through, and problem-solving. It is in charge of how your teen evaluates things; their higher thinking structures to figure things out.

Your teen has the ability to problem solve, judge, and rationalize – of course – but these skills are still under construction. This makes seeing the big picture/long-term benefits harder for your teen to consider, in comparison to instant gratification. When a project is due next week but your teen has been invited to hang out with friends, for example: Your teen may not be thinking long-term – seeing that they will likely feel high pressure and stress with completing the assignment last minute. The short-term instant gratification of hanging out with friends right now is a much bigger push for motivation.

While your teen’s frontal cortex is still developing, their limbic system – emotional centre – is highly developed and is often in charge.

This can happen in many other areas as well, including chores at home 😉 Your teen won’t be thinking about the nagging from you later, if they don’t complete the chore. They would rather get instant gratification now – finishing their video game, being with friends, etc.

Lack of Teen Motivation Cause #4: Instant Gratification

With your teens limbic (emotional) system being in charge, they are driven by pleasure; the rewards circuit in their brain. Their brain will respond a lot quicker to things that feel good in the moment, than things that are long term in nature. The instant gratification of watching a few more TikTok videos, as opposed to getting off and going on their bike, or hanging out with their family, will usually win over. This is especially true if your teen is already feeling a lack of motivation.

Photo by Canva

Lack of Teen Motivation Cause #5: Externally vs Internally Driven

If a parent, teacher, etc. is telling your teen to do something, oftentimes it isn’t as motivating because it isn’t linking to an internal sense of reward or value to get the thing done. When I say ‘reward’ I mean pleasure from doing it, or seeing another value or benefit.

If you’re asking your teen to do something that also triggers an internal drive, it is likely to get done quicker.

Part of what I do with you and your teen in The Happiness Pill Program is create a roadmap of where your teen wants to go. Your teen is fully involved in creating the plan, so the steps we take to get there are intrinsic motivators. This is done on ‘Ready-Up Day’, a 1:1 session between you, your teen, and myself. You can book a free 20-minute consultation to discover if The Happiness Pill Program is the best way to motivate your teen and empower your parenting HERE.

The Happiness Pill Program

__________

Now that you can see some of the things that are zapping motivation for your teen – stress, overwhelm, lack of desire, trouble seeing the big picture, instant gratification, and externally driven tasks – it’s important to talk about how you can support your teen to feel more motivated.

Here are five ways you can help:

Photo by Canva

Increasing Teen Motivation: Take A Break

In talking to a teen client recently, they shared that taking a step back from some of the stressors in their life was really helpful to get motivated again. The 24-hour rule is a good one – allow your teen to sleep on it, and then things will look different the next day.

Allowing your teen to take a break, or create some distance, gives them the opportunity to rest, reset, and re-energize. It can give them a new perspective for when they come back to the task, activity, goal, etc.

Increasing Teen Motivation: Evaluate the Goal

You can help your teen to check-in with themselves on why what they are trying to get done is important to them – a school assignment, meeting a health goal (working out, joining dance, etc.). You can guide your teen to ask ‘why did I want to start this in the first place?’ Getting back into the WHY behind it. Understanding the values and hopes behind a goal can bring the motivation back to life.

Photo by Canva

Increasing Teen Motivation: Destress

With stress being the #1 zapper of motivation – and with no shortage of it right now – it’s important that your teen has opportunities to destress (and you too)! Think of people as having various internal batteries – physical, mental, social, etc. – that gauge how you’re doing. The more stress you have, the more those batteries are drained.

When your teen isn’t doing well – their mental battery is drained – it’s difficult to think clearly, make good judgements, or stay focused and concentrated. When the physical battery is drained they may be feeling tired, lethargic, etc.

Reducing stress in your teen’s life allows their batteries to recharge. It also allows them space to think about what it looks like when their batteries are fully charged and in the green zone. They may show up in a different way than they were before.

You can help your teen think about things that destress them. For some it could be spending time alone, connecting with a creative project, enjoying social interactions, increasing play/laughter, leisure activities (reading, watching movies), being outdoors, hanging with animals, etc.

It can be helpful for your teen to come up with a list of 5-6 things that they know help them to destress. Keep the list somewhere they can easily access, and make sure they are using the things on the list over and over again.

Photo by Canva

Increasing Teen Motivation: Set Smaller Goals

Your teen can create small tasks to achieve, a short list, or try a daily challenge. The important thing here is to help your teen to create tasks that are small enough for your teen that they know they are going to achieve it. Creating small things your teen can cross off the list (or place a checkmark beside) triggers the motivation and reward circuit in the brain – the “I’ve done this AND gotten the reward” mentality.

A school assignment, for instance, can be broken down into smaller pieces, like reading 10 pages of chapter three in my social studies textbook. Wanting to take a dance class can be broken into smaller tasks – looking on the website at three dance organizations in my neighborhood is an achievable task to build your teens motivation/reward circuit.

Increasing Teen Motivation: Enjoy the Moment

When your teen is not feeling motivated – ruminating or thinking about past things, or getting stuck thinking about future orientated things in a stressful way (I have a lot to do, what if I can’t make it, etc.) Replaying past things. Not enjoying the moment can zap motivation in the moment. Take delight in what’s happening now. Invite your teen to grab a tea instead of going straight home to do homework, check out a really cool skyline with the mountains in the background. Taking a moment to enjoy what’s happening in the now and allowing that to be wonderful and joyful in the moment.

For further support helping your teen with lack of motivation, you can download our FREE Anxiety Toolkit for Parents Raising Teen Girls HERE – it includes 10 tools as well as several mini webinars delivered right to your inbox. These tools will give you control over what to do next, and take away the overwhelm.

And don’t forget that in just four months, you and your teen could be on the same page, feeling motivated to create your teen’s dream life with The Happiness Pill Program – it includes 1:1 coaching, group coaching, parent office hours, creating a roadmap together AND many online tools & resources. Find the whole list of what it entails here:

The Happiness Pill Program

Chantal Côté (she/her) is a psychologist and teen life coach living in Calgary, Alberta. After over a decade in non-profit and community mental health, Chantal started Pyramid Psychology, a practice dedicated to supporting teens – a population she is constantly amazed by. Chantal is on a mission to help 100,000 teen girls (and their parents) build bulletproof mindsets so they can weather the ups and downs of life. As part of this goal, Chantal has had the privilege of speaking at various events – virtual and live – to support teens and parents.

Outside of this passion, Chantal is often in nature, writing poetry, playing ball hockey and hanging out with her loved ones.

Each week, Chantal writes a blog article in response to issues she hears from the parents and teens she connects with.

If you have something you’d like to read more on – email ideas and questions to info@pyramidpsychology.com or DM us via Instagram or Facebook.

03 Jan
Emotions, For Parents, For Teens, Teen Joy

Teen Motivation: Paying Attention to Teen Interests

Photo by Canva

“I just don’t feel motivated”, is all too common a phrase, particularly for teens who have had their lives turned upside down over the last couple of years. At a time when school, friendships and social experiences are of utmost importance, teens have been required to navigate a lot of their life differently during the pandemic. 

Lack of teen motivation can be hard to navigate as a parent, particularly when you see it affecting your teen’s level of joy, or decreasing their desire for social interactions.

Here are two ways to inspire your teen to find their motivation:

Teen Motivation: Social issues

Photo by Canva

Talking to your teen and asking questions about what matters to them can help them feel more connected. Whether it’s a social justice cause, an inequity they gripe about, or some issue they can talk about forever,  helping your teen hone in on what they are passionate about will drive their motivation. This will lead them to want to be around others who are also passionate about this issue. This feeds motivation to reach out to peers, making a difference, and seeking others with similar views, etc.

Teen Motivation: Collaborative List of Joy

Creating a collaborative list of things that brings each person in your family joy – including your teen,  can be a great way to motivate your teen to be involved in family activities.

Photo by Canva

 

Work towards trying all the things on the list as a family.  Can you think of three things you would add to the list right now?

The Happiness Pill program is a 4-month coaching program designed to combat anxiety and depression, which are often the causes of lack of motivation for teens. Your teen daughter will join other teens struggling with the same issues, in weekly group coaching calls. She will also have 1:1 appointments with me, and an appointment with you there to ensure you’re both on the same page.

Photo by Canva

Lastly, the program includes parent coaching sessions for you as well.

If you’re ready to take the weight off your shoulders and move into a life of joy with your teen daughter, book your free 20-minute consultation to get started:

Book Your Happiness Pill Consultation Now

Chantal Côté (she/her) is a psychologist and teen life coach living in Calgary, Alberta. After over a decade in non-profit and community mental health, Chantal started Pyramid Psychology, a practice dedicated to supporting teens – a population she is constantly amazed by. Chantal is on a mission to help 100,000 teen girls (and their parents) build bulletproof mindsets so they can weather the ups and downs of life. As part of this goal, Chantal has had the privilege of speaking at various events – virtual and live – to support teens and parents.

Outside of this passion, Chantal is often in nature, writing poetry, playing ball hockey and hanging out with her loved ones.

Each week, Chantal writes a blog article in response to issues she hears from the parents and teens she connects with.

If you have something you’d like to read more on – email ideas and questions to info@pyramidpsychology.com or DM us via Instagram or Facebook.