How to Help Your Teen Deal With Anger and Conflict Today I'm Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman.
Sometimes there's conflict that really needs to happen and it's going to end up bringing us to a better place. And if we don't walk through the conflict, then things are just going to stay stuck like they are and that actually can lead to a toxic situation. Um Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller "The 5 Love Languages" . Today, Dr.
Chapman welcomes author and speaker Dr. Jennifer Thomas to help teenagers develop relational survival skills. This is going to be so helpful for a parent who is right there today. You want to help your son or your daughter, but you don't know what to do. Stay with us as we talk about a new resource, A Teen's Guide to Conflict, How to Deal with Drama, Manage Anger, and Mings Right.
Find out more at buildingrelationships.us. Dr. Chapman, did you have a lot of conflict and drama in your life when you were a teenager? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Really, Chris, I did not, honestly.
You know, I grew up in a small town, and mom and dad were both Christians, went to church, you know, Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night, and the kids in the neighborhood played with each other together outside, you know, after we'd done our homework. You know, no, life was not really traumatic for me growing up in these teenage years.
Now, raising my teenage son was traumatic, okay? We might talk about that some today. But it was a different world. And today's even a different world.
So I'm excited about this book, and I'm excited about our conversation today. I don't think I've ever asked you this question. And I know Jennifer wants to hear this too. Did you start driving when you were a teenager? Yes, when I was sixteen.
Sixteen.
So in North Carolina you could get a license when you were sixteen. And uh my dad you taught me how to drive and I started driving at sixteen. What was your first car? Oh, well, let's see. Uh I think my first car I can't even remember.
It was a little Chevrolet Coupe. I don't know what year it was, but yeah. Dr. Jennifer Thomas is with us. Jennifer, have you ever asked Gary that question?
Is this new information for YouTube? Yeah, that's a new one on me. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how that might tie in with his love language. And it hasn't come to me yet.
Well, that his dad taught him to drive, and then you, your son Derek, did you teach Derek to drive then, Gary? I did. I did. And Derek ended up having three wrecks, like in the first two years of driving. And they weren't serious accidents, but little minor scrape-ups.
If the driving training goes well, then you've got quality time together there in the car. Yeah, that's true. That's true. But sometimes with my dad, it wasn't quality time because he was saying, put on your brakes, put on your brakes. Tony Signal, Tony Signal.
Dr. Jennifer Thomas, you just heard her. She's a motivational speaker. She specializes in "The 5 Love Languages" and communication. She's a business consultant and psychologist and co-author with Dr.
Chapman of the Five Apology Languages. She has a doctoral degree in clinical psychology from the University of Maryland, as well as a BA in Psychology and Religion from the University of Virginia. You can find out more about her at buildingrelationships.us and the featured resource. We're very excited about A Teen's Guide to Conflict, How to Deal with Drama, Manage Anger, and Make. Things right.
Just go to Building Relationships.us.
Okay, so let's talk about the need for a book like this. Why did you two decide to tackle this subject? Jennifer, you first. All right.
Well, we jumped into it because we know that life can feel overwhelming and conflict often leaves you feeling hurt. Angry, alone, or all three of those. But with the right tools, anyone can navigate tough situations and build stronger and more meaningful connections. And what we wanted to do was to give people the tools to be able to reestablish communication when things have gone off the rails, to be able to create a passable road again, to be able to talk to that other person that they aren't getting along with, whether it's a peer or an adult, some important coach, parent. or teacher in their lives, we want for people to be keeping the road of communication open.
Yeah, and you know, Chris, having written a book on anger and remembering my own experience with my grand with my son, my teenage son, and the anger situations that we had, which we can talk about later. And knowing that so many teenagers today do have a sense of anger, I mean, that's just one part of, of course, relationships. But also, the fact that Dr. Thomas and I wrote this book on apologizing, because I really believe teenagers need to learn how to apologize, and I hope parents know how to apologize to their children, because parents are not perfect either. And so that was a part of my sense of, yes, we need to write this book.
Yeah. And that whole apology thing. Oh, that we can get into that in a little bit. I just want to be clear, though, this really is a book for teenagers to read, but parents can also be involved. Is that right, Gary?
Yeah, I think we wrote it to the teenager, so it's directly focused on the teenager. But I would encourage parents to read it as well, because it will give you an opportunity to discuss these issues. You could even say to the teenager, why don't you read the first chapter and I'll read the first chapter and on Saturday we'll just take some time and talk about what can we learn from that. It can help a parent with communication, talking about issues that They know they need to talk about, but maybe don't quite know when and how to do it. Yeah, and that will give Dr.
Thomas the quality time that you were talking about earlier. That's right. Yeah, for parents and their kids to sit down and talk together. And as a psychologist, I want to add, for some kids, it's not comfortable to talk face to face.
So maybe it's going and doing something parallel with them. It could be walking, could be going, doing an activity like skeet shooting or something out in the woods, go hiking together. For some kids, if you have trouble getting them to open up, especially when there's conflict involved, it's best to let them be looking out at the world and not looking at you, looking at them. And that brings up the question of conflict is like I run from conflict. I don't like conflict, but at the same time, I see if I look back at my life, some of my greatest growth spurts have been because there's been conflict in my life.
So conflict is not all bad, is it, Dr. Thomas? That's right. When we hear conflict, most of us have negative connotations. And a lot of us, like you said, avoid conflict.
We want to head for the hills when it happens. But so for those people, conflict equals bad. But sometimes that's not true. And we talk about this in the book.
Some conflicts are negative and hurtful, but some are healthy.
Sometimes there's conflict that really needs to happen, and it's going to end up bringing us to a better place. Maybe it's greater honesty. Maybe there's a change that needs to happen. And if we don't walk through the conflict, then things are just going to stay stuck like they are. And that actually can lead to a toxic situation.
Yeah, and I think also, Chris, I would say that. Conflict is inevitable. in human relationships because we're individuals. You know, we all are individuals. We have different thoughts and different feelings.
And obviously there are conflicts between parents and their teenager as well as the teen has conflicts at school with relationships there.
So this is just inevitable. But for a teenager to begin to think along the lines of how do we process conflict, you know, how do we talk our way through conflict? And how do we listen to the other person, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and how to apologize when we need to. I mean, this is a huge area for a teenager to be reflecting upon at this stage of life. The first part of the subtitle is How to Deal with Drama.
And when I hear that word drama, I have in my head what I think you mean. But let's find out what exactly do you mean by drama? And why do teens get caught up in it so easily? Dr. Thomas?
Well, you know, welcome to life. It's unscripted. It's full of conflict. And for this book, we were thinking about how much life is like drama and it's also like improv. Hopefully there's some comedy in it as well.
It's not scripted. And so we use that as an analogy throughout the book. Instead of chapters, we have acts. And we talk about different scenes that teenagers can encounter and how to go through those situations. We give practical examples of how to not escalate conflict, but be willing to listen to the other side, hear them out, let them know that you understand what they've said, and then.
Hopefully you'll get your turn. One of the big areas of drama and of conflict is social media. And I want to go deep into this because I think it's such a huge area for conflict for teens who are then acting out in anger.
So, what do you suggest for teens and parents as far as social media goes? Gary, you first.
Well, you know, we could talk for hours about this because social media, there's many, many positive things there, but obviously there can be very negative things for teenagers and for parents. And I think a huge area of conflict when you have teenagers who start acting out, you know, in anger on social media, you know, spilling out, saying words that they wouldn't say if they were standing in front of the person, but talking about people, putting people down, you know, all that kind of thing is just a small part of what goes on and how technology can put your thoughts out there. And once you said all that stuff and put it out there, it's out there, you know. And so helping teenagers come to think their way through what they're saying themselves to other teenagers or about teachers or anything else, that we need to be very, very careful what we're saying and what we're putting out there on social media. Part of it.
We need for kids to learn that the record will stand of what they've posted, the kind of pictures that they've shared, whether they were holding a cup of alcohol or dancing on tables, those kind of things don't go away. I remember I was with some other parents and one of them told their child, if you wouldn't paint it on the side of our house, please don't put it out on the internet. And so we want them to learn that idea that it really is public. And I think it's hard for teenagers to grasp if they're in their room with the bedroom door closed, they feel like they've got privacy. Also, I want to talk about a book that Gary Chapman wrote with Arlene Pellicaine that is also really helpful in this topic.
It's the one called Screen Kids: Five Relational Skills Every Child Needs in a Tech-Driven World. And they wrote that because they do feel that burden to help give everyone who deals with kids or helps kids the tools they need to help them not get in over their heads on social media and on the internet in general. Yeah, I think along with that, Chris, I would say parents need to be having conversations with their teenagers because. Many teenagers do not yet have the skill of starting conversations with real people, you know, face-to-face conversations. And this is a part of life.
And so learning how to do that with teachers, with fellow students, you know, with parents and other adults, having some guidelines. Of course, guidelines need to be established much earlier than the teenage years, parents, in terms of, you know, what a child can be doing, how much time they spend on that and so forth. But if we've made some guidelines before they get to be teenagers, of course, it's a lot easier than trying to impose some boundaries when they are teenagers. But I do think that open discussions about the positives, because there's a lot of positives about the Internet and so forth. And so let's be positive.
Let's not be negative, but let's also say we need some guidelines. Yes. But that's where that comes into all of our discussion here today. I think it's going to touch on. this in some way.
How does the parent Walk that thin line of not stepping over the boundaries so that you're making the decision for the teenager and allowing them to go through the cognitive ability to make a mistake or to say something that they wish they hadn't so that then they learn. Dr. Thomas, that's a tough thing for a parent to do, isn't it? Yeah, you're right. I mean, we don't want to be controlling parents.
We don't want to be helicopter parents. But we do need to gauge, is this something that my child can work through and learn from on their own? Or are there going to be really big consequences? And so do they need my help? And what we say is the starting point is to ask them.
To be sitting down, having conversations about what are you struggling with? Do you need my input on this? I'll give you an example. I have three kids, but only one is still a teenager. And Russell had played on the baseball team at his high school for three years, and then he got a job.
And he really liked his job. And he came to us and said, You know what, I really hate to let the coach down, but I think my senior year, I'm going to just work my job and I'm not going to play on the baseball team again. And we said, okay, you know, we support you. Whatever you want to do, we'll help you. And what do you need in order to navigate this with your coach, who, by the way, was also his calculus teacher?
And he said, you know, I guess I'll just talk to him between classes. And we would check in with him at night and he was putting it off until it really, you know, it needed to happen. And so we asked him, can you do it tomorrow? Or do you need for us to help you have this conversation with the coach? We could start with an email.
We could draft it together. But Russell ended up bringing it up with the teacher that next day. And it was awkward, you know, which is part of life. The coach wanted him and was disappointed as we expected he might be. But Russell got a chance to, you know, stand by his guns and to say, you know, I really wish the team well and I'll come and cheer when I'm free.
But that can be hard. That's one of the things we're talking about in a teen's guide to conflict is how can you say the hard things, but do it in a way that's respectful or looking at it from the other side's point of view. I'm glad in a way that Russell had that challenge to work through because now he's off at college and he's going to have to let other people down sometimes too. And I'm hoping he's going to do that when there's peer pressure wanting him to do something he shouldn't. I hope he'll brush off that practice he got of saying no.
Hmm. Was there any part of that that that was hard for you that you wanted to see him keep playing? Yeah. It was a little bit difficult for me, but more of the burden of being on the team falls on me. I've got to, you know, help with the, they want to have the team fed before the game, and you got to put all the games in the family calendar, right?
Guess who was disappointed? JT, my husband, who's also very sentimental. He said, oh my goodness, no spring baseball games with him. I don't know if I'm ready to let that go a year early. But we had those conversations on our own and elected not to really share the pros or the cons with Russell because he needed to make his own decision.
Yeah, and I think that's super, super important, you know, to let teenagers make their decisions.
Now, obviously, if they're going to do something unlawful or immoral or that sort of thing, you know, we're going to do everything we can to help them not make those kind of decisions. But I think even there, you know, we have to... let them suffer the consequences if they make a poor decision. But this was a personal thing, you know, with him. And I could see that, you know, as a father, if he's been playing baseball, you'd enjoyed that, you know.
But it's his decision. Either one is a fine decision. Either one is, you know, there's nothing wrong with either way. But that's a good example. That's Dr.
Gary Chapman.
Dr. Jennifer Thomas is joining us. They have written A Teen's Guide to Conflict, How to Deal with Drama, Manage Anger, and Make Things Right. You can find out more at buildingrelationships.us. Let's transition to anger because that is such an important issue, not only for teenagers, but also for parents.
How do you help a teenager with anger when you have anger issues, Gary?
Well, that's what happened to me, Chris, when I had a teenage son. Maybe this is a good place to tell that story because. I don't know, he was thirteen, I think it was thirteen. and he and I got into an argument one night and I was yelling at him and he was yelling at me. And I mean, I was saying some harsh things, and he was saying some harsh things.
And in the middle of that argument, Uh he walked out of his room. We were in his room. And he walked out of his room and walked out the front door and slammed the door. And when he did, I woke up. And I thought, Oh God, what have I done?
Because I knew, you know, here I am yelling at him. I'm an adult. I'm his father, you know. I just, I wept, you know, and Carolyn came in and she said, Gary, that was not your fault. I heard that whole conversation.
He started it. He's got to learn how to respect you, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, you know. But it's kind of hard to, you know, console somebody when they know they were wrong, and I knew I was wrong.
So I just got on my knees and poured my heart out to God, you know, and apologized to God. I said, Lord, I thought I was further along than this. I'm yelling at my son that I love. And you know. And so, and the dog barked even on that one.
And so. Yes, sorry about that. That's okay. It's real life. But anyway, when he did come back in, I said, Derek, could you come in here, son?
And I just poured my heart out to him, you know, and apologized to him. And then he said, Dad, he said, that was not your fault. He said, I started that and I should not have been yelling at you. And he said, when I was walking up the road, I asked God to forgive me and I'd like to ask you to forgive me. And I said, well, I'll forgive you if you forgive me.
We hugged each other and cried, you know. Then I said, Derek, why don't we try to learn how to handle our anger without yelling? I said, well, let's just try this. The next time you feel angry at me, you just say, Dad, I'm angry. Can we talk?
And I'll just sit down and listen to you. And we'll try to learn how to talk our way through anger rather than yelling our way through anger. And I said, if I'm angry with you, I'll just say, Derek, I'm angry, can we talk? And that was a huge step in our relationship. You know, we really did learn how to talk to each other rather than yell.
I've sometimes said that was one of the saddest nights of my life because of what I did, but one of the happiest nights of my life because my son just demonstrated to me he knew how to apologize. And I knew someday he'd be married. And he would need to apologize because he wouldn't be a perfect husband, you know. I hear emotion in your voice, Gary. When you told that story, you were right back there in that house when he was 13, weren't you?
Yep, yep, I remember it. I remember it. And I share it because I think a lot of parents, you know, have yelled at their children and said harful ho hurtful things to their children and and some of them have not apologized. You know, and they they just they they have barrier between themselves and their teenagers because they haven't apologized.
So I think that what you're pointing out is the truth that a parent, in order to be a good parent, you don't have to be a perfect parent. In fact, you want to show some of those, you know, the struggles that you have in your own life so that your kids see how you deal with them. Jennifer, can you unpack what happened there with Gary and his son? Yeah, I mean, I love that example because there's a lot of humility in it, which is what God calls us to be, is humble. But if we have pride in our spirit, it can make it really hard.
And so we encourage people whenever you need to apologize, whenever you perceive that barrier between yourself and another person. It's so important to be willing to look at your own part in it, to be willing to look at that log in your own eye to refer to scripture. And then in that, to be willing to go quickly to the other person. I like that the two of them didn't let it fester for a long time because that's where we see broken relationships between parents and their children or even their adult children when they're older. And for me, that is one of the most sad and heartbreaking things that I experience in my work as a counselor and as a coach because there's just such a helpless feeling that can come with it.
And then I love that their story had a happy ending where Gary modeled how to apologize and set Derek up for success with that skill. Yeah. But there are teens, and I was one of them. I think, you know, growing up in the church, I thought, well, if you are a Christian, you're not supposed to be angry and you're supposed to be a peacemaker. And so, what happened was something would happen and I'd stuff it.
I'd just press it down and keep that to myself. And you know what happens with that? It bubbles over.
So, Gary, talk to the teenager that might be listening about a biblical way to manage their anger without just stuffing it down.
Well, you know, the Bible is very clear, anger is not a sin. You're right. A lot of Christians think it's a sin, but the Bible says about God, God is angry every day with the wicked. Anything God experiences is not a sin. But the Bible does say, when you're angry, Don't sin.
It's easy to sin when you're angry, and we often do sin when we're angry.
So I think the very first step in handling anger is to admit that you're angry. And that's why I said to my son, you know, if you feel angry, just say to me, Dad, I'm angry. Can we talk? Because you don't need to stuff it. You need to talk about it.
And if you stuff it, it'll show up in your behavior later on. And it also creates an emotional barrier between you and the other person, whether it's your parent or whether it's some friend of yours.
So I think admitting that you're angry and just go to the person in a kind way and say, you know, I just want to share something with you. I'm really struggling. I'm just really feeling angry. And maybe I misunderstood you, but I heard you say this, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, and I just felt angry. Did I misunderstand you, you know?
And give the other teenager a chance to respond to you. And I can tell you, not many teenagers have learned this lesson that I just shared. They haven't done that. They tend to either respond to anger with anger. You know, if somebody yells at you, you yell at them, or they tend to stuff it like you did.
I mean, that's the more common thing. And that's why I think this book is going to help a lot of teenagers realize how to respond. Respond to their anger in a positive way. They don't have to feel guilty about it, but how do you respond to it and learn how to do it in a positive way? This is the Building Relationships with Dr.
Gary Chapman podcast. He's the New York Times best-selling author of "The 5 Love Languages" . We have some great help for your relationships at our website, including today's featured resource by Dr. Chapman and our guest, Dr. Jennifer Thomas.
Their book is titled A Teen's Guide to Conflict. how to deal with drama, manage anger, and make things right. Find out more at buildingrelationships.us or go to fivelovelanguages.com. I want to know why it's so important for teens to learn to make things right. When they've hurt someone or have been hurt themselves, and how do you do that?
Yeah, so here we're talking about the skill of apologizing. That's what needs to happen when someone has been hurt or offended because it creates an obstacle between us and the other person. And if it keeps happening, it's like bricks in a wall. It's going to build up until we can't communicate with each other at all. And a concept that Gary Chapman and I developed a few years ago is called the five apology languages, and it goes hand in hand with "The 5 Love Languages" .
The concept is really simple, and we share it in a teen's guide to conflict. We talk about that what one person wants to hear in an apology may not be the same as what someone else wants to hear in an apology. And so we need to put ourselves in the shoes of the recipient and figure out, have I said what they need to hear? And this can be a real challenge because we grew up with different parents and different teachers who gave us a script for what really counts in an apology. And I see it often where people will say, for example, A married couple might say, Well, my mom accepted I'm sorry when I apologize to her but guess what The other person's parent Would respond to I'm sorry by saying, Well, sorry isn't enough.
You have to give me some action. I want you to fix it or make it right, or I want to see what's going to be different next time. And so we lay out all the five different things that people might want to hear in an apology. And if you don't know what they're waiting to hear, we recommend that you use all five. I would also say, Chris, that the parents themselves may not be aware of this because they're probably still saying whatever their parents taught them to say.
You know, if they say, I'm sorry, they're still saying, I'm sorry. They don't realize that there's other things that some people need to hear. And so I think this book, the original book, of course, written to adults, but I think, again, discussing this with a teenager, man, if that could have happened with thousands of teenagers, their parents could discuss this whole thing of apologizing and how to apologize and learning how to speak all five of these languages, it would help so many relationships.
So I think this is a real Big part of this book is teaching teenagers and letting them learn how to apologize. And again, as parents, we have to set an example as well. Our model. Is the most powerful lesson we can do.
So we study this, learn it ourselves, and then learn how to share it with our teenager, and they're reading about it themselves. You can have great conversations about this topic. Yeah. If you're the offender, it's like you've got to figure this out and how to amend that. But what if you're the one who has been offended?
Your feelings have been hurt. There's been some kind of conflict or anger toward you, and you feel bad about that as a teenager. I think a lot of, you know, again, I'll go back to the whole stuffing thing. There were times when I didn't have any idea what I felt. And someone would say, well, you're angry.
I'm not angry. You know, no, there's something.
So, is can a can a parent? Dr. Thomas, help a teen identify what is really going on, what they're really feeling down there. Yes, and I want to underscore what Dr. Chapman said about anger, that it's not a sin to feel angry.
Actually, that's a God-given gift that helps us to recognize when something's wrong. And so if we teach that, that's a starting point with our teenagers for them to be willing to acknowledge that they have anger. Another tool that I like to use is to talk about how anger and sadness can be two sides of the same coin. And sometimes it's easier for a person to talk about their sadness or for other people to talk about their anger. And so I would shift the conversation towards whichever one seems to fit them and their situation.
Yes. And I think taking the initiative, Chris, to go to that person, if you've been hurt and you're feeling angry, by another teenager or by your parents or anybody. You know, you lovingly confront them. And I say lovingly, you don't go with a hard, you know, harsh word, you just say. Mom or John, if something were bothering me, would this be a good time to talk to you about it?
Well, they're dying to hear it now, you know. They probably say, Well, yeah, it'll be a good time. And you say, Well, you know, when you da-da-da-da-da-da-da, here's what I just felt like that was so wrong. It just hurt me deeply. And I just want to share it with you because I value our friendship.
Imagine teenagers learning how to talk to each other like this. I mean, this is huge. And we're teaching them a skill that is going to, they're going to be, they're going to need this as long as they live. Yes. You know, because people are going to hurt them.
And so we need to learn how to lovingly bring it up to our parents or to anyone else. And a lot of parents haven't learned how to do this yet. But good relationships require that we lovingly confront people. If they don't come to us and apologize, we lovingly confront them. And if we do, chances are, and we do it in the right way, they want to hear.
And they'll say, oh, well, I'm so sorry. I didn't really mean that. And sometimes they explain it to us, and we realize, oh, okay, I guess I just misunderstood that. Right. You know, some of my most moist eye moments with our own kids, and we have nine of them, so there's been a lot of conflict through the years.
Yeah, that many kids. But some of the best moments as a parent is when I will hear one of the kids say to another, especially when they were teenagers, you know, what you said there really hurt me. Instead of just saying, well, that's the way she always is, or he always acts that way, and I know he's going to respond with this. They took, it was a risk, but they took the step to move toward that other sibling and said, here's what happened, and this is how I felt at that. And a lot of nine times out of ten, The other sibling has responded, oh, well, exactly what you just said, Gary.
Oh, I didn't realize. I didn't mean that here. Let me explain that, you know, and there's this, you know, they didn't necessarily embrace and hug after every one of those, but there was understanding and they moved toward each other rather than staying, you know, way far apart. That's the goal, isn't it, Dr. Thomas?
Yeah, Chris, I love that example because you're talking about people going ahead and taking the risk and saying, this was a problem for me. I didn't like how this went down. And one piece that I might add to this is we talk in a teen's guide to conflict about the challenge of assumptions. And that could be a problem if we're offended at someone and we assume that we know why they did what they did, or if we even assume that they agreed about what happened. And so my advice is for people to say, this is what I remember went down last weekend or last week or whenever it was.
Do you remember it the same way? or was it different in your view? And then that way, if we move on to the confrontation, we're not going to be backstepping to agree or disagree about what happened. We can do that up front. And it's all about ideally being brave enough to address when we have conflict with people and hopefully for both sides to extend an olive branch of peace.
Before we take a break, can both of you share a practical tool or a step from the book that teens can start using right now as they listen when a conflict comes into their life? Gary, you first.
I think I would say Uh if you can as a teenager Say, I want to have good relationships with people, my parents as well as my friends. And so any time that I misunderstand somebody or something they say or do hurts me. I'm going to learn how to say to them, Can I share with you something that's bothering me? Would this be a good time to talk about it? And if so, then say, well, here's what happened, and at least here's what I heard, and maybe I misunderstood this, but I want to share it because I value our relationship, and I don't want anything to get between us.
You know, something like that. to me, is one of the first steps they can make and say, I want to learn how to do this. It takes courage to do it, to be sure, but you're going to find it's going to be a lifesaver in terms of your relationships with your parents or with fellow teenagers.
Well, I think, Gary, you hit the nail on the head. That's a great point. And one example of an idea. From the book that I'll bring up, where we've tried to be really practical and to give examples, we talk about having direct versus indirect communication styles, and we give an example of Kate, who tends to be very direct, and Layla, who is more soft and indirect, and the conflict that can come about from that. And I've often seen this, where someone like Layla, who won't want to let people down, may be evasive, may kind of end up stringing the other person along because it's too hard for her to say no.
But actually, I like the phrase Clear is kind. And what that means is if I'm clear. To Kate and letting her know, no, I'm not going to be able to go to an event with you this weekend, for example, then Kate can go and make other plans. And that makes me a good friend, not a bad friend, for saying no. And a related part of that is that our yes needs to mean yes.
So if Layla says, yes, Kate, I'm going to go with you, then Layla needs to put it on her calendar and make sure that she's not scheduled to work or anything else to where she's going to let her friend down. These are all skills that we practice as teenagers and then we use throughout our lives. Dr. Thomas, there's something you deal with in the book called ghosting. And for the parents who don't understand it, teens probably know exactly what you're talking about.
What is ghosting and why is it a problem? Yeah, so ghosting is when we just disappear on someone. We don't respond to them. And the problem is that they don't know, well, did she not get my message? Is this phone number no longer good for her?
Should I keep trying? You know, it's just a big question mark. It's the opposite of clear and direct communication. And as a recipient of ghosting, which I have received, unfortunately, I can say it's really, it's frustrating. It's also very confusing.
You're not sure, well, should I keep trying or should I not? And it raises a lot of questions. For me, when I go through that, did I do something wrong? How can I make it better? And so I think it's really respectful in our friendships and also as we grow up and we're in work relationships to just.
Let a person know if you don't like what's happening. and you don't want to talk to them rather than simply disappearing. Hmm. But you can understand why they would do that, right, Gary? Yeah, I think, yes, because all of us, and especially teenagers, remember, teenagers are still in the process of growing up, you know.
But the more they can learn about these things, the easier it's going to be when they get to be adults. But yes, even for adults, if you heard something, you saw something, and it hurt you, or you felt like it was wrong, the other person did. Or maybe they called you, you know, after they had done something, and you thought, oh, I'm not going to mess with that right now. And you don't respond to them if it's a phone call or if it's a text or something. We need to recognize if we're going to have relationships, we've got to be open to each other.
We've got to share with each other. If we're hurting, we've got to share. If we've been hurt, we've got to share. And we want to learn how to do that. If you can learn that as a teenager, you're setting yourself up for one of the most positive skills in having.
Good human relationships because everybody is going to experience. Hurt. From time to time, and from time to time, we're going to hurt somebody.
Sometimes it's not intentional. But if we learn how to acknowledge our own failures and to apologize for our own failures, And learn how to lovingly confront those who hurt us, we're going to have good relationships. It's absolutely necessary. You're not going to have positive relationships, you'll have a whole string of broken relationships if you don't learn how to do these two things. Oh, it's so important.
And you mentioned something just a minute ago: texting, because I have, you know, kids or a flurry of texts they go through with the family and everything. It's like, I don't, I can't even keep up with it. It's very easy to miscommunicate with all of the technology that we have, especially with texting. You talk about that, Dr. Thomas.
Go ahead. Yeah, this is one of the points that I'm always trying to make with people is our communication really suffers when it's through printed or typed matter. What we need is to be able to read their body language and hear their tone of voice, because often that will soften the message. Another problem with typing to each other is we can't realize, oh, this isn't landing well. They're getting upset.
Look, if it's really bad, maybe they're starting to cry or their face is getting red with anger. And so if we were there in person, we would stop. But if we've typed out a message, they're going to keep reading it until they get to the end of what we've written. And it may simply be way too much, too strong a dose of truth for them. And it may also be that we wrote what we shouldn't have.
Maybe we wrote it in anger. And it's not the truth of how we really feel about them and how much we really care about our relationship. And so anger can mean danger. You know, it's only one letter away. And we don't want to be texting those messages.
I'm going to give an example here of my own parenting.
So I realized in watching my daughter Lydia that she and her friends were texting back and forth all the time. And she would also text with me. And especially once she got her driver's license, I remember one Saturday she was out shopping and she was texting me about something that she wanted for me to buy for her. And I hadn't approved that particular purchase. And so our texting.
Became a little stilted because I wasn't giving her what she wanted. I wasn't saying yes. And so I could tell she was getting a little frustrated, and I wasn't sure how to respond. I realized in that moment, oh. This is probably what she does with her friends too.
When there's conflict, because you're already texting with each other, it's like you stay in that same mode. And I thought, if I want her. To reach out to a friend and say, wait a minute, I value our relationship too much to argue with you this way. Let's go meet for coffee. I'm gonna have to show her how to shift gears.
And so that one Saturday, I just texted back to her, Lydia, this is going into conflict. And so we're going to need to talk it over.
So you can call me on your cell phone or you can come home and we'll talk it over. But I'm finished with this text thread. Wow. Wow. Listen, mom dead.
Did you hear that? And and then and the but because the goal is not to say no to her or get get your way as the parent. The goal is to communicate clearly and to be respectful of the teenager, right? That's right. And I use a rule of thumb that texting is good for communication when it's positive or neutral.
But when it's no longer positive, maybe we're in neutral, but it's heading negative, then that's when I want everyone to stop and think about: uh-oh, I'm crossing over into negative territory. My tone of voice is really going to matter. I need to speak to them at least over the telephone or preferably face to face. Gary, real quickly before we end here, you connect conflict resolution with your faith. How does having a relationship with Jesus change the way you approach fights and arguments and misunderstandings as a team?
Well, I think when we have a personal relationship with Christ and we take the Bible seriously, And we sin with our anger because the warning of the Bible is don't sin, you know, when you're angry. And we do. It will lead us, because of our relationship with God, it will lead us to go apologize to the person. And I think it makes all the difference. Non-Christians don't have that concept.
They don't have a relationship with God. They don't necessarily have, in scriptures, they don't know what the scriptures say. But the principle is true. And if you're not a Christian, you're not ever going to be perfect. If you're going to have good relationships, you have to learn how to apologize and you have to learn how to lovingly go to the person who has hurt you if they don't come to you.
And always, I think doing that is going to set you up to have positive relationships. Yeah. Dr. Thomas, before we end here today, I want you to talk to the teenager who's listening right now. Maybe their parents said, you've got to listen to this.
And if they are, we understand that. But the teenager feels overwhelmed because they've got a lot of conflict in their life, got a lot of drama, there's anger there. What do you want to say to that teenager?
Well, I want to say think about when you need to bring in your helpers. Often teenagers will keep things to themselves or they'll just take it to their friends. But I want for you as a teenager to think about. My advice, which is do not keep secrets about dangerous problems. Whether it's your problem or your friend's problem, if it's dangerous, then that's a time when it's important for you to talk to a parent, teacher, coach.
Counselor, pastor, or someone else. And to that teenager, I would say as well, if you're just completely overwhelmed, then that can be dangerous because we're concerned about people having suicidal thoughts and actions. And if any teenager is struggling, I invite them to call 988, which is our national hotline for that. or they can now text. Talk to 741741.
There is help out there and no one has to be alone.
Well, Dr. Thomas, I want to thank you for the energy you spent with me in putting this book together and also for being with us today on Building Relationships. And I want to say to all those who are listening, whether it's parents or teenagers, if you're a parent, I hope you'll get this book and give it to your teenager. Ideally, I hope you'll read it with your teenager. Each of you read the chapter separately, sit down and ask, what can we learn from this chapter?
This can be a wonderful growth experience for you.
Well, thanks for bringing me in on this, and it was a pleasure to be able to write the book with you. And Dr. Chaoman, I really love your book dedication on this title. It's To Every Teen Who Would Like to Make the World a Better Place by Building Healthy Relationships. May it be so.
Praise and amen.
Well, what an excellent resource. If you go to the website buildingrelationships.us, you'll see this featured resource by Dr. Chapman and Dr. Jennifer Thomas: A Teen's Guide to Conflict: How to Deal with Drama, Manage Anger, and Make Things Right. Just go to buildingrelationships.us.
And as we get closer to Christmas, we're going to look at how to receive and reflect God's great love for you. Hear that conversation in one week. Before we go, let me thank our production team, Steve Wick and Janice Backing. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in Chicago in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute.
Thanks for listening.
