Help your adolescent navigate risk-taking by fostering open communication, setting limits, and teaching decision-making strategies for healthier choices.
"Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from making bad decisions." - Mark Twain
Key Concepts:
● Taking a risk is, very simply, doing something when the outcome is uncertain. This may mean doing something you’ve never done before, but also doing something where you can find a way to step outside of your normal or comfortable pattern of behavior.
● For adolescents, life is especially filled with uncertainty. Their roles in the family, in society, in peer groups, and in relationships are constantly changing, and they are therefore taking a certain amount of risk each and every day.
● Called a “tolerance for ambiguous outcomes,” risk taking helps adolescents to learn and grow. Trying out for a team or a play, eagerly learning new academic content, taking on more responsibility - all require a willingness to take risks.
● Adolescence is a stage of unique vulnerabilities as the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for decision-making, impulse control and emotional regulation, is still developing. As such, it is more difficult for tweens and teens to control impulses and to engage in reasoning around behavior.
● Research shows that when adolescents know or even believe that peers are watching, they are more likely to take risks and that the reward response is heightened.
What to Do:
● Talk. Remember from every tween and teen session we have had that open communication is the most important ingredient in your parent-child relationship.
● Share your own family history around addiction (if there is one). Just like you would tell them about diabetes or skin cancer, tell your children about any family history of alcohol or drug use. 50% of addiction is estimated to be informed by genetics, and experimentation for your adolescent could have a very different impact than it would for another family.
● Discuss warning signs. Using more than their friends, being unable to avoid using, thinking about substances regularly, and even feeling out of control in social situations or the next day, are all signs you want your child to be aware of and feel safe mentioning to you.
● Set clear limits around alcohol and substance use. Research shows that despite what many parents believe, allowing your child to use alcohol in moderation supervised by you does NOT make them safer in the long term. Instead, data shows that children who use alcohol in High School are at a higher risk of heavy drinking in college, of negative consequences related to alcohol (including black outs and sexual assault), and of a lifelong alcohol disorder.
● Share your own struggles with risk-taking. Though it is not always helpful to talk about your “good old days,” you can share what you remember about how risk-taking feels, when it was good, when it was scary, and how you learned to think through consequences for the long term.
● Role play situations together. Talk about what they can say to friends, how they can say no when they need to, where they can go, and what choices they have. Make sure these strategies are mutually agreed upon, and that your child feels they have actual tools to use when they need them.
● Take apart media examples. Support your adolescents to critically analyze media portrayals of risky behaviors and understand how they can be misleading or glamorized. Watch content together that pushes scenarios you are most concerned about and creates an opening for discussion.
● Get to know their social circle. Monitoring the what, where and who is an important parent job. Ask your child’s peers questions you would ask your own child and show an interest in their responses and decision making. For example, ask friends “What do you think of all this stuff I am reading about drinking at parties? Is that really happening?” You can always say something like, “You know I LOVE asking questions and hearing what you guys think.” If your child’s friends think you are a little nutty that’s ok, chances are they also LOVE that you take an interest, talk about things that adults normally don’t, and are more likely to come to YOU if they need support.
● Spend quality time. Research shows that family time is a powerful antidote to struggles with peers, substance use, and risk taking. Find ways to connect over activities that bring joy to both of you, or take an interest in something your adolescent loves (and let them teach you about it).