Psychological Safety in the Home For Teenagers.
Recently, I've been spending some time watching a television series titled 'Intervention'. It is a documentary series designed to show the impact of substance abuse on people, some of whom are teenagers and mostly youths.
In each episode I watched, I tried to narrow my focus to what could have led to this young girl or boy picking up this habit that later grew into an addiction that has now brought the whole family to its knees.
During my research, I discovered, amongst other things, something that stood out which can be best captured as the lack of “Psychological Safety" in the home. Home, they say is where the heart is. This phrase means that in an ideal situation, your family and home always stand out as your number one place of solace, refuge, and support. And to this, I am adding psychological safety.
What is Psychological Safety
According to Amy Edmondson, a Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, Psychological Safety is an environment (or in this case a home) where everyone believes that candor is welcomed. Other words for candor will be honesty, truthfulness, and sincerity, just to mention a few. Dr. Amy went on further to explain that lack of psychological safety in an environment can lead to apathy and unexplainable anxiety, which are two ingredients that teenagers do not react very well to.
Now, because I am tailoring this to the home or the family unit, I will redefine a home with Psychological Safety to be one where the entire family or stakeholders in the family, believe that sincerity, truthfulness, and honesty are always welcome. The perception and assumption amongst all family members in the home is one that every member of the family knows beyond every reasonable and unreasonable doubt that our home is a safe place to fail, share your struggles, make mistakes, and ask questions that can lead to learning.
With psychological safety, every member of the family knows for sure that in our home, we are safe to bring our victories, our setbacks, our scandals, our struggles, secrets, and so on, with the assurance that the information shared and opinions we give would not be used against us in any way. It will serve as feedback with which the family channels its efforts towards a stronger family bond.
The Temporary Disconnection
Research has shown that there is a certain phase in a teenager’s life where they tend to disconnect emotionally from their parents and transfer that connection to another adult outside the home, one they see as their role model due to certain values or traits, in line with what makes each teen unique. (Baumeister & Tice, 1986; Twenge, 2006).
This is a trying time for teens and young adults as they embark on the journey of self-discovery, which may involve questioning family values and wanting to go out there and make their own mistakes. For the boys, this translates as going out there to ‘be a man'. And these days it really does not have too much to do with age; it is more about exposure and experience as the number of teenagers who are dollar millionaires keeps increasing thanks to the opportunities that various social media platforms offer. Parents must make sure they have more than their words to offer teenagers during this time. It must be something more and that is where having psychological safety in the home becomes particularly important.
In my few years of working as a teen coach and mentor, where I have had the privilege of playing the role of an ‘outside’ connection, I have always maintained that the role of parents in raising their teenagers is so important that a wrong perception along the lines of trust, truthfulness or psychological safety in the home, can lead to a long, tumultuous journey of fights, push-back, rebellion, and addiction if not properly managed.
As a teen mentor, my work is not to parent a teenager, nor is it to direct parents on how to parent their teens. Rather, it is more of being and building a bridge between teens and parents, using the feedback from both parties, as a support tool for the journey ahead.
The Intervention TV Series
In one of the Intervention episodes I watched, the subject, a young woman and an alcoholic who needed help explained how her parents were just putting up a facade for the cameras, trying to pretend they really cared about her. She told the interventionist how for the past 10 years she had tried to communicate to her parents how their actions were pushing her away and they just would not listen to her. In trying to cope with this feeling of neglect at a crucial time in her life, she took to alcohol and later ended up an alcoholic, bringing the whole family to its knees as she almost lost her life. Now, because the cameras are on, her parents are acting like they really care for her. When this feedback was given to her parents, they felt she was just being delusional.
In another episode of Intervention, a young man picked his habit of drug use from both his dad and his elder brother. In this case, the home was a safe place to practice drug use, even though his dad was in a way trying to exempt himself from culpability by insisting that the young man should have known better and followed the parent code of “Do as I say and not as I do.” The interventionist took some time to address the dad’s view on this.
Plato Philebus, an ancient Greek philosopher made this quote extremely popular, and it is good to capture the full phrase which is, “To be sure I must; and therefore, I may assume that your silence gives consent.” The major thing here now is the word “assume” which in recent times most authors agree is the lowest form of knowledge.
In trying to shed more light on what she meant by psychological safety, Dr. Amy explained that silence in an environment where psychological safety exists should not be taken as consent. Everyone in the family should be given room to speak up, to respond. This builds trust, connection, and commitment.
In parenting today and trying to cultivate the home as a safe place with elevated levels of psychological safety, most parenting experts are saying that silence should not be taken as consent. Silence should be probed further, as teenagers are known to have their own opinion. An atmosphere or a home with psychological safety would see all stakeholders feeling very free to share their take during sensitive family discussions like a change of school, change of environment, relocation, choice of friends, websites to visit, hours to spend on the internet, choice of career, meal plans, and so on. The key thing is that all stakeholders feel safe, happy, and enthusiastic about partaking in the discussion knowing that their opinions no matter how off the mark they might sound, will not be taken as one coming from the ‘odd one out.’
A home Lacking Psychological Safety
A lack of Psychological Safety at home can lead to apathy, where teenagers are just present at home only in their physical body, but have left home emotionally, just waiting for the university admission as an escape, never to return home. This results in a situation where when they go away to school and opt not to return home for long holidays, preferring instead to stay in school and suffer than come home to the unconducive atmosphere at home.
Another likely outcome of a home without Psychological Safety is one where everyone in the house acts out a script to just fit in, not pulling their weight. The home is just a comfort zone and instead of a developmental ground. There is fear, anxiety, and a lack of creativity and even the one who is creative is not eager to share as the atmosphere is not right and there is the fear their suggestions may lead to more tension. As parents, it is our responsibility to lead the charge of ensuring that there is the presence of psychological safety in our homes.
Cultivating Psychological Safety in the Home
Who is responsible for psychological safety in the home? It should be the responsibility of everyone in the home, with the parents taking the lead. Psychological safety in the context of the home is where all the family members or stakeholders in the family, believe that sincerity, truthfulness, or honesty is always welcome. This means the general atmosphere at home is one of trust and candor, both in perception and assumption. The home becomes our safest place to make sincere mistakes, a place of grooming and nurturing teens and their self-esteem. How do we cultivate psychological safety in the home? How do we ensure that the atmosphere at home is one that discourages apathy and encourages an atmosphere of love, trust, and sincerity, which are good ingredients for establishing psychological safety in the home?
Every member of the family should be willing and ready to own their mistakes, starting from the parents to the children. How we treat each other after an apology has been tendered for a genuine mistake is important. To create and maintain an atmosphere of psychological safety in the home, everyone should try to show that they are doing all they can to rebuild any broken bridges their mistake may have destroyed.
Here are a few suggestions.
- Create and maintain a feedback channel
Every member of the family must be willing to create and maintain a feedback channel that is safe for all to use and not feel scared about it. Yes, the father leads, but all must be involved in establishing the channel and its integrity.
The feedback tells the active player the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it may sound, with the right motive and in an atmosphere of love. We are not always going to get this right, but with the right attitude, especially for those of us who want our homes to be psychologically safe, we must constantly put in the work. So sometimes, parents should have unrestrained meetings with their children, where whatever they say about their parents and their style of parenting, would not be used against them in any court of law (so to speak). It would be treated as feedback for Mum and Dad to work on. This also applies to the teens as they also receive feedback from their parents at home.
2. Ask the right questions and find common ground.
As a parent (or the teen in the family) ask questions and try to bring all dissenting conversations to a conclusion that is a win-win for all. If you want to create a home where psychological safety is present, then make sure you ask the right questions, making effort to bring dissenting conversations to a conclusion where everyone is satisfied with the final decision.
For example, things like Dad having to ground the kids for staying out late or not doing their homework and questions about why the homework was not done should be asked and answered. When punishment is to be administered, the recipient should be made aware of why they are being punished, which understanding should help prevent a recurrence of the offence. It is all about standards, honesty, sincerity, and candor and this will not happen in a day.
Do not punish child A for doing something wrong and when it comes to child B, your favourite, you shift the goal post without any explanation. This will break the trust in the home and can lead to apathy. If you must do this, bring your reason, and discuss it. The goal here is the loving unity of the family and not who is the most loved, liked, or most intelligent in the family. Ask the right questions; do not react to questions as if you have just been insulted and again, bring all dissenting conversations to an amicable conclusion.
3. Be vulnerable and allow room for others to express themselves.
This is like the first point, owning your mistakes. Parents who are very real and allow themselves to be vulnerable to their kids will set the tone for the kids to always feel safe to share their own weaknesses in the home and not outside.
I remember once, one of my daughters lost out in a competition in school. I knew how hard she had prepared for that competition and when I heard she lost, I knew I had to show up for pickup time as she would really need a safe place to cry. When I saw her in her class, she smiled at me, and we walked down to the car. I asked her how her day was, and she said fine. The moment we got in the car away from all her schoolmates, my girl started crying. I told her it’s fine, this is a safe place to cry, I will join you in this crying because it hurts me too and we comforted each other. We moved a step closer that day in our father-daughter relationship.
A home where psychological safety truly exists may not be a perfect home, which simply does not exist. It would, however, be a home with certain kinds of traits that will help foster good self-esteem in the teens, enable a strong family bond, better life coping skills, and provide a sound ground for grooming.
Please join in the conversation
As I always say, I am not a reservoir of knowledge and this is not a case of one cap fits all, so I am sure some of you may have some wonderful suggestions you can add to the ways in which one can cultivate psychological safety in the home.
I would love to hear from you too. Do join this conversation by sharing your thought in the comment section below.
Also please feel free to like and share as we go about mentoring teens and young adults each day. Thank you.
Chris Aluta(Teen Coach and Mentor).
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