How to deal with a defiant teenager

I'm mark Andreas and we're going to be learning the first half about Wolverines and their natural habitats and then the second half we're going to be learning to dance so that's what you all came here for right waltzing with Wolverines is the name of my new book about my experience working at a wilderness therapy program for teens so I worked two years in this program how many of you work with teens and how many it for those of you who work with teens how many is it in a therapeutic context and how many of you have teenagers are at and how many of you used to be teenagers okay great how many of you are teenagers Oh awesome my job wasn't official therapist it was to be a field instructor which meant that I was in charge along with a co-leader of a whole group of eight teens I would be with them 24/7 for three weeks at a time we go off backpacking into the rocky mountain wilderness and my job was to first and foremost keep them safe keeps them from getting eaten by bears attempt to keep them from running away they were all sent by their parents so most of them were there against their will they didn't want to be there so there was a wide range of behaviors resistance and defiance and frustration and anger and all kinds of stuff those with me with themselves in the group every new expedition that I went on out on I had no idea what kind of crazy new adventure would would unfold I like to joke that it was nice going in and having our plan because I knew that at least that wouldn't happen there was one night when I was out on shift and I was going around giving out the medications so students who were on medication and I came to one students tent I unzipped his tent after asking and I was getting ready to give his meds and he was searching around inside his tent frantically looking around looking around pulling up his sleeping bag and his pad just like he's like I can't that's not anywhere I can't find it and I'm like Roger what are you looking for and he's like my cross my cross I can't find my cross anywhere and then in front of my eyes he reaches down onto the bottom of his tent and picks up nothing and holds it up and I could almost see the see the cross and he puts it on his head anything Wow actually he was trying to get it on his head but it was difficult because it wasn't actually there and so I quickly discovered that he was having some sort of experience on some other drugs that I had not yet given him and I wasn't sure where he had gotten them so we called the 911 I went down to the hospital with him and they discovered that it was likely an OD an ibuprofen I had no idea you could OD on ibuprofen but apparently you can and they said he just needs to wait it out and he'll be fine and so after that night we went back from Denver went back up into the mountains and got back you had him back into his tent I went to sleep it was like 5:00 a.m. and then I get woken up at 6:00 a.m. and my co-instructors saying that one of the other students is wandering around barefoot cutting his feet in one of the rivers sort of dazed and confused and apparently he had had the other bob the other half of the bottle of ibuprofen it had kicked in a little bit later for him another time we woke up and discovered two kids missing and we went down found out that the program pickup truck had been hijacked these two kids had snuck out in the middle of the night they broke into one of the 16 passenger vans and scrounge around in there and and found my backpack that had my Subaru key in it my Subaru was nowhere nearby but they thought that maybe it worked that maybe it was a pickup truck key and it happened to work so they took the pickup truck into town and the first thing you want to do in escaping a wilderness therapy program is to get some new hoodies and like this one that I have here and some new moves Billabong hats and stuff like that so they broke into a ski shop got themselves some new hoodies and and and then drove the wrong way down a one-way street in a police car was coming in the other direction so that ended their escapade another time we had a student who wanted to get himself discharged and so he peed in a water bottle and started drinking it then he pooped and into his hand and started chasing the other students and staff around so I was called in from the other group thankfully it wasn't my group when I got there he was brandishing some tent stakes and and attempting to stab or threatening to stab us with these tent stakes so these are just a few of the more extreme examples this this wasn't like what every student did but it gives you some sense of some of the wide range of behaviors so students would you know defy me they would defy each other they would get in conflict we had group conflict they would threaten to commit suicide or hurt others or myself or just refused to do anything that I asked so I worked for two years as a field instructor before I decided to move on to my private practice and when I did I my boss shook my hand and he thanked me he said I'm going to really miss you like when you were out on shift I knew that whatever kind of crazy went down you would be you would take care of it I slept well and I'm really going to miss you and then he said something that surprised me that I didn't realize he said you know when I first hired you I thought you wouldn't last be on your first expedition he said I thought that the kids would eat you up and I was oh really interesting he said yeah you were just so kind and innocent I thought they would you know I didn't think you would last pass your first expedition so a lot of today is going to be about how that was possible for me to still be kind and innocent in a sense and yet still be effective as well one of the foundational things that I learned in this experience that was for me was the underlying number one thing that allowed me to be successful as a leader for so many years of so many different things that came up and this was a experience that happened to me on my second expedition we finished our backpacking or hiking the kids had set up their tents in this meadow where we were camping two of them started working on their creating making dinner for the group the rest of the group was doing their journal assignments well at least that's what I wanted them to be doing that was the daily practice was to do journal assignments and they would turn those into their therapists at the end of the day so I told them it's time to do your journal assignments and most of the kids did and one of the students said I'm not going to do mine and I think oh so I was very clever and I said well you can have dinner as soon as you do your assignment that'll take care of that and and she said well fine I won't eat dinner and I go oh power control battle and Here I am a new leader and I'm feeling like oh no like this may seem like kind of a small issue but I can't let her get the best of me here I can't let her win this you know then what other kind of challenges might I start getting the whole group you know it could be mutiny this is so I felt I felt threatened rule number one was don't get into a power control battle rule number two was if you do get into a power control battle win it that's what we were taught as leaders so I thought oh well I screwed up rule number one I mean Here I am in a power control battle so I'm going to win this so I said well if you don't do your assignment I'm going to take away one of your overnights now what is an overnight the this was our main point of leverage as leaders the students if they did well on expedition and and followed through with all our expectations then they got to earn time with their families at the end of the expedition they could their families would fly in and they got to you know shower in the hotel and not be camped in the wilderness I got to listen to music have candy and go to restaurants and stuff like that so these overnights even if they were even if there was a lot of conflict with their parents these kids very much valued their overnight so I said don't do your assignment I'll take away your overnight ha that'll do it it didn't work she said fine take away my overnight and I'm like oh crap what do I do now so I said well if you don't do your assignment I'm going to take away all of your overnights and that was all I had so I walked away and I felt really bad about it you know I was like I was like man I just blew that totally out of proportion and I was just praying that she would do that stupid assignment so I wouldn't have to take away all her overnights because that felt very unfair to me I wasn't in this job to coerce kids into following my will I didn't get into this because I wanted to see how many kids I could control or or impose my my authority over so it felt really bad to me and it really got me thinking even though it was kind of a small thing thankfully for me she did the journal assignment so she let me off the hook over my next off shift I was thinking about this how can i you know I don't want to win power control battles that I get into what's a better solution here because I'm not in this to as I said to assert my authority on these kids I'm here to support them and help them and give them more tools so then when I came back on my next shift something that my boss said to me got me thinking even more he was telling me updating me on the new group I was going to take over which was this group of eight kids and he said he said mark this group is doing great they're they think their leaders are gods and I kind of bothered me a little bit to on the one hand you know Nick's obviously they're the group's safe so Nick's happy in that sense you know he doesn't have to worry about them you know out being out of control and doing something that could that could be to somebodies physical harm but at the same time that what those leaders were doing really was their strategy of leadership was to get into power control battles and win them and they were very effective at that and in a certain sense you it sort of worked in the sense that they were effective leaders they were being followed by this group of kids but what was the larger goal here in this program where did we want to teach kids to just follow the smartest and strongest leader wherever they happen to be leading or did we want to teach these kids to think for themselves and make their own choices and and this is really kind of their last phase to learn that before going into adulthood they're pretty soon they're going to be making their own choices whether that's just to follow the strongest and smartest person or to think more for themselves and make choices that are right for them so I wanted to I want to do to do the second way I wanted to avoid actually ever having to get into a power control battle ever so I decided that I was never going to get into another power control battle with a student ever again that was my goal at least and it worked for me so in the future in situations when when a student would say something like I'm not going to do that journal assignment often you know I learned that any defiance any opposition is actually just a sign that there's some need there that's not being met and so what a great opportunity to find out what that is and and learn about that so instead of taking that as a as an affront to my authority after all the whole reason I'm here is to support these kids to be with these kids so I I realized I'm on the side of the kid I'm never not on the side of the kid and if I don't ever put myself in opposition to them then I'm never going to get into a power control battle with them so oh you don't want to do the assignment oh well you know what do you need that will make you that you'll feel good about doing the assignment often it would be something as simple as like oh I haven't filtered my water yet Oh awesome great thanks for letting me know go filter your water and then you can do the assignment or my tent you know there's I set it up on this big rock I want to move it over here somewhere other times it would simply be you know they'd have something emotional going on but they just wanted to talk about and it didn't even quite realize it themselves until I asked them oh what's going on oh man I'm homesick you know just tops talking to chummy about it a little bit and then they're ready to do the assignment you know other times I'd take a different approach they'd say man I don't want to do this assignment and and I you know I'd get even more angry at them I'd say I don't want to do this program this whole thing is like you know and I'd take off my hat and throw it on the ground pick up rocks and throw them and just just a whole tension temper tantrum and you know they'd be kind of like whoa whoo whoa this guy's out of control and then I just walk away or something and they could do the assignment or not or whatever other times other two other times they rewind anything oh do we have to do the assignment I'd say have to do the assignment no you get to do this assignment this is a honor this is a privilege and your words shall be written down and recorded and passed on through the generations generations of monarchs turds students will read the words of Robert and know that he was good so think think think carefully about that journal assignment so there were lots of ways of staying with them having fun having humor but staying on their side and never being in opposition to them of course still sometimes the students would never they would still refuse no I'm not going to do the assignment okay that's actually fine and and I would say you know I certainly wouldn't want to you know I'm not in this job to make you do anything and first of all I can't and second of all if I even if I could I wouldn't want to because I don't want you to be doing anything that you don't want to be doing yourself so you know I'm here to support you and and doing what's right for you and that kind of thing again getting back to the meeting the needs and you know if you don't want to do the assignment that's fine you can work it out with your therapist and I'm just really here to support you and getting what you want and your ultimate goals of I know you don't want to be in this program I know you want to get back home and and figure things out with your parents and get your life on track for your own goals so that way kids could refuse and did refuse to do things all the time but it no longer was a reflection of me as a leader because I never put myself in that position of asking for something that I didn't actually have control over so I changed their rule I slightly changed it to never get into a power control battle but if you do get into a power control battle just get back out of it again for loads more stories and 48 principles for staying out of power control battles click the book cover to find waltzing with Wolverines on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback

Channel: Mark Andreas

Views: 33,577

Rating: 4.6781611 out of 5

Keywords: teens, teenagers, struggling teens, defiant teenagers, defiant teens, power struggle with teens, power struggle, power struggle with teenagers, how to make kids listen, parenting without power struggles, how to talk so kids will listen, how to deal with a defiant teenager, wilderness therapy, troubled teens, troubled teenagers, badteen, waltzing with wolverines

Id: cyEOgYxwJgo

Length: 15min 40sec (940 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 07 2017