Dori Durbin:

Welcome to, that's Good Parenting, the podcast where we search for simple steps to reduce your parenting stress. I'm your host story, Durbin Children's book illustrator, coach, author, and podcaster. And today, today I'm joined by someone who works with kids, teens, families, has made a huge meaningful impact.

And if you haven't met her yet, you're in for a treat. Her name is Becky Funk and she brings a unique blend of insight, experience, and connection to the emotional world of our teens, especially. She helps these families understand what's happening before even the teen years arrive on top of that. So, Becky, welcome to the show.

Becky Funk:

Thank you so much for having me back. I'm excited. Uh, I love talking to you. 

Dori Durbin

Nobody knows this, but we've already talked for a half hour before you I know recorded this. We a lot that we share and it's always a pleasure and. You actually have already been on, you were on episode 1 28 called Is Your Teen's Attitude [00:01:00] Actually Anxiety?

And if listeners haven't heard that yet and maybe haven't met you, I would love for you to tell them a little bit about who you are and what you do. 

Becky Funk:

Yeah, sure. My name is Becky Funk, like you mentioned. I am a former high school teacher and former college teacher turned teen anxiety coach. I'm also a mom of two young adult men now and a wife.

Um, I have battled anxiety my entire life and you know, back when we were growing up, we were just told, you need to develop thicker skin, you need to toughen up, you know, you need to learn to get over it. And that did not work well for me. So I tumbled through my twenties and my thirties learning how to try and get a handle.

All my emotions and my anxiety. And so I married my love of working with teenagers in the classroom with what I have learned in navigating anxiety and learning to overcome that. And so I am so blessed to be working with teens now, helping them do the same. [00:02:00] So Awesome. I love the fact that you not only have this experience behind you, but you also come at such a straightforward and honest perspective that, um, teens can't help but listen to or at least hear nothing else.

Yeah. And, uh, you know, part of your supporting families I know is people usually probably come to you after things have gotten to a higher level. So, um, we talked a little bit on the last podcast about this, but just for people to know, how would I know if my team is actually suffering with anxiety?

Just a couple quick tips for those parents. Sure, yeah, we're gonna talk. There's the obvious ones where you have the big emotions, the eruptions out of nowhere. There's also the quiet, you know, one's crying at the drop of a hat, snapping back at you, unseemingly out of nowhere. These are the kids who might procrastinate putting off an assignment.

'cause starting it just feels so overwhelming for them. You can tend to [00:03:00] just look in their eyes and see that something is just not right in there. Yeah. Yeah. And they're probably the, the same kids that are starting to either shrink away or. Uh, rub bump heads with their parents too, over things that maybe didn't matter before.

Yeah. When you ask them, like, Hey, did you do your homework today? And they're like, gosh, why do you always have to be so mean to me? You know? It's like, whoa, I just asked you about your homework. It was just, that's, there's probably a lot, there's so much going on inside of them, like so much overwhelm that you can't see and it's just this one little extra like, question on there that was just, you know, the, the, what is it?

The, what's the saying? The straw that broke the camel's back, you know, and it just sets 'em over the edge. And you are unfortunately, fortunately, the safe place for them to like, let it all out because they've been holding it all together at school, um, with their friends. And so you at home tend to be the one to, to get that end of it.[00:04:00]

Lucky us. Lucky us as parents, right? Yes. So one of the things that we didn't talk about last time that I really wanted to come back to was talking about the six big six patterns that you see in kids, um, especially teens when it comes to perfectionism, emotional regulations, some of those issues. Um, and I know that just even talking with some of my authors, like these are patterns that start really young.

There are little kids that deal with the big six. So can you talk to us a little bit about the big six and what that represents for the team? Yeah. So the, it's the first thing I do with every teen client that I get. We do like a lifestyle audit, and I call it the big six because we look at what are you drinking, caffeine and water wise, what are you eating and how often, how much are you sleeping?

How much are you on your phone and how much is it with you? We talk about how much are you moving your body, and I don't wanna call it exercise 'cause we're not talking about like lifting weights or anything big. [00:05:00] And coupled with that is also getting sunlight. So those are the six things, and that's the order that I talk to them in.

So I'm gonna paint a picture of what my typical overachieving teen client's day looks like. I know this is not for every teen, but I tend to work with the perfectionist people, pleaser, overachieving, teens. So they wake up in the morning after being up late at night. Doing homework and then they go, have to get up at like 6, 6 15 out the door.

At least in our area. It's gonna be by 7, 7 0 5. They're probably driving to school. If they catch the bus, they're usually on the bus much earlier than that. And then they have to get to school, park, walk to their, walk to the school and get to class by seven 40. So they're probably running late getting outta the house because they're still drowsy.

So they don't eat breakfast. They grab the energy drink out of the fridge, you know, their monster or bang 'cause they are drowsy and they want a little pick me up. Or they [00:06:00] stop at the local coffee shop for their iced coffee on the way. And then they're sitting in school for at least two periods. We have block scheduling as most schools I think do.

So we have lunch during third period and so they've gone through two full classes on an empty stomach and nothing but caffeine. And some of those aren't gonna have lunch until after they've been through their third class too. And then they're finally eating and then they have another class and they have a little flex at the end of the day where they're trying to scramble to get all of the homework done that they can, because then they're probably going to cross country practice, you know, after that.

And then there's the school play. 'cause they also wanna be involved in the school play and they have dance class at night. But we also need a job because we need money to pay for the things we wanna do. And there's also, I wanna apply to college. So we need service for our college application. So I need to volunteer somewhere and a probably an NHS.

And the list just goes on and on and they don't have any [00:07:00] time for themselves. So it's a matter when I start working with them, it's like timeout. Let's hold on and take a look at like everything that you are doing. And I mean, I'm gonna say right up front, this is isn't even the big six, but this is the one thing I say is you can be doing too much of a good thing and that'll stress you out.

Mm-hmm. Yes. You need to back off and you may have to say no to something that you do like to do. So let's prioritize them and figure out what are your non-negotiables. Like these are the things I wanna do. Because that right there gets to the overwhelm that we just talked about, that kid's gonna be stressed 'cause there's no downtime in their schedule at all.

So when you say, how's the homework? They're freaking out. They're gonna like jump down your throat on that. So to get back to your question with the big six when I'm working with them I think this was your question, I'm just assuming it is and moving on. Okay. So I, the very first thing that [00:08:00] we do is take a look at what they're drinking.

And I do this because it's the easiest one for them to change out of everything. How many energy drinks are you drinking a day? How many iced coffees? And it's usually not a, a good number. And that's usually on an empty stomach, you know? So it's like, let's start and trade those out for some less caffeinated options.

And this is where you have to play. Like, I'm not telling them what to do. I'm like, well, maybe instead of an energy drink, what if you grab a Sprite instead, you know it's gonna be less caffeine, it's still gonna give you the bubbles, it's still gonna be the sweetness. And then we can like, keep toning that back, you know, if you need the iced coffee, just get a decaf iced coffee and see how it goes.

And then what I challenge them to do over two weeks is notice how your body responds. Expect the withdrawal. You're gonna have headaches because you've had so much caffeine, but. Does the anxiety stop? Is your chest no longer tight? Are you no longer clenching your jaws? Is your hand no longer shaking?

[00:09:00] Like, do you feel more relaxed? And that is a very quick win for them. You, I mean, nine times outta 10, if they're drinking caffeine and they make those adjustments, they automatically start to feel better. And then I couple that with how much water are you drinking? Because I'm gonna say this right.

A dehydrated brain is an anxious brain. Hmm. So a lot of times they're fueling up on the caffeine because they're so tired all the time that they're not drinking all the water they need to be. So it's like a double effect onto the anxiety. So I challenge them to change the drinks that they're drinking in terms of caffeine, but also add in some water and see so.

That's the first one that I always tackle with. 'cause they're gonna get that immediate return on that. You get a lot of pushback on that first one. I get a lot of eye rolls on that one of like, don't tell me you're gonna make me take this away. And I was like, but it's your choice. Like, we're just gonna experiment.

And, and so yeah, there will be, there will [00:10:00] be some pushback, but I'm like, I'm not taking it away forever. We're just playing with it. We're just gonna, you may come back in two weeks and say, Nope, it didn't do anything. Okay, fine. Let's move on to the next one on the list and see what happens.

You know? And so we kind of go through it, go through it that way. But I do get the You're gonna what now? Yeah. And that they've been in that state for so long that they're not sure how to function outside of that state. So it's probably scary. It is. It is. It really is. And because, and this brings me to like another one the, well the second one that I always do is eating because you need to grab something other than just the energy drink out the door, whether it's drink cheese, goldfish, granola bar or whatever.

So they are eating more regularly throughout the day and that always helps them feel a little better too. So when they couple those two together, they can see that. But the core, one of these six and the hardest one for them to change, you think it would be the ca, the caffeine. But the hardest one is the sleep.

That is where [00:11:00] they struggle the most because their schedule doesn't allow for it. And teen, sometimes parents don't wanna hear this, but it's true. And it's been around since I was in college in the nineties. This isn't like brand new, I promise. Teen circadian rhythm shift. So where our bodies start producing melatonin, like at like early evening, mid evening, I think.

I'm not exactly sure on that. So that we can go to bed at a decent time. And wake up and go. Teens don't start producing that melatonin until like two, three hours after us, which is why they're night owls. That's why teens have trouble going to sleep early. Like even if they had nothing else on their schedule and they had the free time, if they went to bed at nine or 10, they might not still fall asleep until midnight and they would just toss and turn miserably.

Right. So teens also need eight to 10 hours of sleep each night because they're, I always call teenage years, like toddler 2.0. I think I said that before, like there's so [00:12:00] much. Development going on in their body. And you remember, like, I remember taking my boys to the pediatrician when they were little and you would see, I remember one pediatrician was like, they grow when they sleep.

And I was like, they what? And they did like, I would put them to bed one night and the next morning they seemed bigger. And I don't know how that happened. You could see it. And that same is happening during our teens. Like their brain is growing and developing while they sleep. So if they're not sleeping, their brain's not able to do what it needs to do to develop.

So on top of like an already later bedtime, now they need more sleep than we do in order to accomplish all of this growth. School starts at seven 30 in the morning. You can't change that. So yes, I'm a very big proponent of schools, high schools starting later. But that's the hardest one to change. But when I can help my teens.

Shift their [00:13:00] schedule and get some good quality sleep in. That's the one that makes, that takes the heat off like right away. That's the one where they're like, oh my word. I can't believe how much better I feel just getting a full night's sleep. Wow. And do you, so if you have a, a kid that is in that schedule and in that trap, can't go to bed early.

How do you start to undo that? I know caffeine would be one of the first ones, get rid the caffeine, but then how do you start to unravel such a, a huge pattern, right? So that's where it's like, do you need to be doing all of the activities that you are doing? Um, and so we take a look at that. We tweak their schedule a little bit.

There's probably some areas where they can get some homework in. Earlier, you know, if they're in the school play, they're, they're not always on, you know, they're working with other actors, so there's downtime, you know, it's making, making use of the time that you have in school, which is hard 'cause they, they're social beings too.

They wanna talk to their friends. So we try to like sneak things in and shift things and make their mornings a [00:14:00] little easier. But there was also just a study out recently that showed teens can actually make up a definite deficit of sleep from the week on the weekends. So we parents, we need to let our teens sleep in on the weekends only up to two hours.

So not like, you know, not, they should be waking up before noon, like just two hours extra. So if they're getting up at six, they're sleeping in until eight on the Saturdays. They teens don't like me saying that either. But there is research now that shows they can make up some of that deficit on the weekends.

Wow. I wish I would've known that when I was a teen. I would've been sleeping in. I know. I would've loved that. I love sleep. Sleep is my favorite thing in the world. Yeah. And sleep is probably one of those things. Like there, there is some social pressure to not going to bed early. You don't wanna be that person that went to bed at eight and everybody else was up to midnight working on the project.

Or just texting each other. Or texting each other, which is a whole nother thing we [00:15:00] will talk about. Yes. Um, but even like the expectations of, okay, so I'm a high achieving driven kid that wants to excel in everything I do, and I'm not gonna go to bed unless something's done. Right. Um, so they put that much more pressure on top of themselves.

Yeah. That's What does that do that to your central nervous system? It's got to do something. It's not good. It travels it because I have not, I don't know all the right words to say, say, but like you, your nervous system needs that downtime. When you're sleeping and it needs a little downtime throughout the day.

You know, if you're constantly throwing stress after stress, after stress at your nervous system, um, I think I shared this before, but it's such a true thing. It's like taking an eraser and just scratching at your arm over and over again. At first it's not a big deal, but when you constantly keep doing it, you're rubbing your arm raw and you're essentially doing the same thing to your nervous system If you're not ever giving it a break, [00:16:00] and it's like, not just like scrolling on your phone kind of break, but like a really true, honest, good rest for yourself.

Doing something that you love that brings you joy or sleeping. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. Okay, let's talk about the phones. Okay. It's a huge thing because. As we know, our world operates on phones. Like if I lost my phone, I think I would cry just because I wouldn't know what to do. Right. Teens are a whole lot more addicted to our phones than even we are.

So, and I know social media wise, it's a huge deal. So tell me what you find with teens and phones right now. Yes, teens. I find it's actually twofold. I, I, you made the comment. They're even more addicted than we are. There's. Some teens that are not, and they have a very healthy relationship with their phone and they know that they spend too much time in it and they have no problem asking the parents to put the, um, restrictions on, you know, or whatever the need is.

So there are definitely some teens that handle it [00:17:00] really well. I would say probably handle it well than our parents do, you know, the other side of the generation, but there are definitely teens that struggle to just put the phone away to put it down. And a lot of times we, the focus is on how much time are they spending, right?

We have to set a screen time restriction or what are they looking at? But a lot of times it's really the notifications that are going off, they don't necessarily. Notice it or think it's an issue, but every time your phone, like you see something come up and you have to take a look at it, that's a stress on your system that's pulling you out of whatever you are focusing on to pay attention to something else.

So it's a little stressor. Some, and I, I'm not a fan of Snapchat as an app only because it. Constantly brings them into needing to create that streak, you know, that they have going with their friends. And that becomes in itself a whole new stress level. [00:18:00] Even if Snapchat was nothing else, you know, fine in every other way, shape, and form.

It's the fact that it has created kids needing to open their app every single day just to shoot a random weird picture to keep a street going, right? And they get a lot of anxiety. If they're the ones to break it, what are they gonna think of me? What if they, what, if this is the only thing holding our friendship together right now girl, it's probably not.

And if it is, they're not the right friend for you. That's a whole different conversation. But they put so much pressure on these things. And then the texting, just texting alone. When we were kids, we had the phone attached to the wall and somebody could be listening in and, you know, it was, you weren't going so you weren't going anywhere.

But now they have their phones in their rooms and even the best, some of the kids that I've talked to have the best intentions. And when putting it down, somebody starts texting and then, you know, at 10 o'clock and the next thing you know it's midnight and you've been just texting your friends [00:19:00] for two hours.

It's that socialization they crave as a teenager. They're looking for their identity apart from parent, who their people are and their purpose. Everybody starts looking for that during their teen years. So that texting is filling that, these are my people, whole in their heart. So it's hard for them to just put it down because what if they don't like me then anymore?

Then that's not even to mention the location services that are turned on in the apps. And then you have head games of, wait, why are Jenna and Maddie together? And I'm not there? Like, what are they doing? How did this get started? Why wasn't I invited? You know? And it could be something completely innocent that they just both ended up being at Target at the same time, but you now, you've told yourself a whole story and you've made yourself miserable in the process. Yeah. That really, that piece of it makes anxiety just so much more pronounced. Yes. Um, just knowing that you're not part of what's going on. Or I even just I was telling you about [00:20:00] best friends on Snapchat, you know, and like you snap people in case people don't have a clue what we're talking about.

If you snap people on Snap Snapchat and you snap them often enough, you become best friends. And I know that there's been conversations where it's been like why are they a best friend with so-and-so when they're my best friend and why aren't they talking to me and why is this happening? Depending on how they have their settings, you can see what's going on at a high level and looking down, but you don't have any information that they're just answering a yes question or whatever.

Yeah, no, like. Turn those features off. And that's the hard thing to do. That is the hard part because there's a fear of missing out. If I turn, if I delete Snapchat, if I turn off my phone at eight o'clock, you know, if I, whatever, eight o'clock's, maybe pretty early for teens, but for me at eight o'clock, you know, like if we do those things, then what are the things I'm missing out on?

But every teen that I've challenged to take, like a, a detox has come out on the other side saying That was [00:21:00] really amazing and they really liked it. So it's, it's hard to get them there, but once they do, they always see the benefit on the other side, having to communicate in different ways or, you can still meet up with your friends.

It's just gonna look a little different, you know, and it's, and this is the thing. I don't mind my kids having a phone. It's everything that comes with the phone. Mm-hmm. You know, so you can still call yeah, like, let's turn off everything and just, you can still call your friends and say, Hey, let's go to the mall.

Let's my, they actually still go to the mall now. Like, that's a thing again, you know, let's go hang out at the park, let's go wherever. So yeah, you don't have to turn everything off, but the detoxes is huge for them. Yeah. I can't imagine. Um, some of the situations that I've seen I don't have intimate information about what's going on, but I've, I've seen kids, even like at the airport or something, they're just on the phone, and then we get on the airplane and it's like, like they [00:22:00] don't know how to function because it's all, it's disconnected, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, having that space to know that they can exist without the phone and still function and everything's okay. Yeah. Trivial as that might seem. That's actually a huge deal. It really is. It really is. Like it is not a part of you. It is a part, it's, it's a device that is a great tool in certain situations, but you also have the freedom to say, I need my peace, I need my sanity.

I'm gonna take care of me right now by putting it aside. And it's all about boundaries. You know? It's learning to set that boundary and trust that you have good friends that are gonna understand it and hopefully partner with you in it. How great would that be if you as a friend group decided, you know what, we're not texting after nine because we know we all need to get some sleep.

We all need to get homework done. We all need, you know, whatever. It would take a lot of the FOMO out, you know? It would totally, it would totally. That's the big reason. So let's just nip it in the bud right there. That's [00:23:00] awesome. Those are some really big changes in just six steps too. Yeah. Like if you go through progression, do you go through each one and achieve each one before you move on to the next one then?

No. We may not ever get anywhere, yeah. Yeah. So I teach them and I give them the power and the control to, to make the decisions. It's about testing it and realizing how your body responds to it. Um, so we try to walk them through those. And then the last two that I didn't even talk about, our movement, just because they sit all the time.

They're sitting in school, they're sitting in front of screens when they come home. And if they're working or you know, doing cross country, then yeah, they're out and getting some exercise. But that's not the case for the more academic types that are taking a ton of AP classes and now have like a ton of homework they need to go home and do.

So go out and take a walk. That takes all that takes care of the last two, just go out and take a walk and get some sunshine. 'cause the sunshine is good for your soul there. I don't know exactly what the science is behind it, but I [00:24:00] know that there's something there for your vitamin K levels. And yeah, just moving your body every day is good for studying.

You know, study little and walk, study little, take a little walk and that's gonna help you retain what you're learning. So there's a lot of benefits there. I think even the, um, even if the cross country person was running I was just thinking about your comment that, the, they may not need it, but in the same vein, I feel like it would help them.

No, yeah, like, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. I was gonna say like, that's your job. That's a focus, that's not a choice that you're making at that time. So while you're getting the movement and you're getting the sun, what if you just take a nice leisurely walk later and you give your soul and your nervous system a chance to just breathe and relax.

And it, I would say, and it doesn't have to be long, like five, 10 minutes, you know, we get these big expectations in our head that if I do it, it's gonna be this hour long thing. And no, just a little walk around the, a little walk [00:25:00] around the house, a little walk around the block is really all you need. It's interesting that you said the big expectations.

'cause that was rumbling around in my head a little bit with the perfectionist type of quality, right? Yes, yes. Um, I think that sometimes, at least for teens and for anybody who has high expectations of themselves, they feel like if they don't do something right, let's say they don't get the caffeine right, they don't get the sleep right, then the whole thing is just done.

Like there's no winning. Right? But what you're saying is any little step towards it is a good thing. Yeah. Progress over perfection. Always progress over perfection. Any little step you do is not a wrong step. So you're absolutely right. 'cause the perfectionist is gonna wanna take it up. You told me five or 10 minutes is all I need.

I am now setting my bar at 20 and nothing less. And now I can't do that on this day because I don't have 20 minutes and now I'm a failure because I can't even do this one simple thing. Exactly. Set themselves up for failure and trying to achieve something more. Exactly. Exactly. And [00:26:00] I do that all the time still.

Like I have to call myself on it and I'll be like, oh yeah, I gotta back off. Well, and I think it's part of that personality too, so, which causes anxiety. It's like, it's such a cyclical thing, isn't it? It really is. It really is. Yeah. I was thinking too, with the mistakes I think as a parent who has kids that are on that perfectionist.

Level. Um, it's hard as a parent to parent them because you want to like, like if they make a mistake and they're beating themselves up over it, they're a lot harder on themselves than you are, and just trying to help them see a different perspective or not beat themselves up is hard. So do you have any just general advice for parents?

Like what do you do if, let's say they're in the middle of this and they, they can't maintain their 20 minute walk that was supposed to be five minutes and they're messing it up. Right. How do we talk them down or out of that and get 'em back on track? Yeah, you meet them at their overwhelm. [00:27:00] Validate their overwhelm and recognize the fact, help them.

You can't tell them, don't ever come in and just tell a teen like, you should do this. You shouldn't do this. As you, you heard me saying through all of this, it's like helping them understand what they're capable of, you know, and how, how their body responds to things. I'm not saying you need to stop doing this.

It's let's test it out and you tell me how it is. So that teen, that's that teen that's always making mistakes and like setting themselves up for failure. Always think of like, you know, the test. I hear so many times from parents, like, she came home with an 88 on her test. We were thrilled she was in tears.

Like it should have been an a, what do I say? And you're not, you just, you say like, you, you did. When you say to them, you did well, you're, we're not disappointed in you. They're not hearing that, they're not hearing that because it's, that's not what the core is, but it's saying to them like, you know, you're worth more than a test.

This one test is not going to make or break you, right? [00:28:00] You are not a failure. You are still a good person. This does not define who you are. You know, it's helping them set. And some of those things, even as I was saying them, I could see some of, even my kids be like, no, wait, you can't that you're just saying that 'cause you're my mom.

You know, like, you don't believe it. But it, it's, getting into them and being curious I think is really the key behind all of it, is letting them know they matter more to you than their achievements do. I love you. You get enough. I don't care. That's not changing my love for you. You are still a good person.

I think a lot of times perfectionists need to know that they're good and they're right. And so, and the right part is where that, if I was right, it would've been a hundred and it wasn't, so therefore I'm wrong. But that doesn't make you bad. And it's helping them distinguish between those two things.

And so in cases of mistakes, I always told my, when I was teaching and I told my kid my own kids, like, mistakes are where the learning [00:29:00] happens. And if you never make a mistake, then technically you're never learning anything. And there is no way that, you know, it's funny saying this to a team, but there's no way that you know everything right now.

You know that there is to learn. They think they know everything, you know, but you're, there's a reason you're in school and there's a reason you're taking classes and there's, you know, because you don't know that material, you have to have a teacher teaching it to you. But when you make a mistake on something, you are gonna learn what you did wrong.

And that material is gonna stick with you even more. So I was gonna go, I had a 10 minute walk, that's what I was told I needed to do, but in my mind, I made it a 20 minute walk and now I can't do it. And now I'm a failure because I can't do something simp simple like that. It's, but why? Can you tell me why?

Why you need to, what was the original rule in that? You know, what was, it's just five minutes. Just do what you can. Just do a little walk and just see how you feel. Just, did it work? Did it help? Great. Do you need 20 minutes? No. See, because that little bit did it for you, [00:30:00] is that experiential confirmation, like taking the pressure off of it and making it more, like you said, just a straight experiment versus you should have, you could have, why didn't you?

Yeah, you said that so much better and more concisely than I did. Taking the pressure off is really, I'm like, how do I say this? I dunno how to say it. It's literally taking the pressure that they put on themselves. You're helping to take the, take that pressure off. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm sure that's, that's while it's important for them to learn to do, it's probably really hard because that pressure is what keeps 'em motivated too.

Right. That pressure is what's helping them not make a mistake. They wanna control everything in their environment. Because perfectionists I think, tend to want everything to work very efficiently, right? So if I wasted time, if I made the wrong decision and I wasted time going in that path, that was a waste of time.

It was not efficient and I should have chosen the other way. I should have known to do that. Instead of like, [00:31:00] now I've learned is like I should have known because now I just wasted all this time that I could have been using to do something else on my to-do list. That's so long, you know, and never ending.

And it's like, give yourself some grace. I always tell my clients like, would you say that to your friend? If you were watching your friend go through this and like beat herself up for getting, an 88 on a test, would you be like, darn straight, you should be beating your test? No, nobody says that.

Nobody says that. So talk to yourself like you would talk to your friend, right? Why don't, why don't we do that? So it's learning to give themselves some grace in the process and realize nobody's gonna do everything perfect. And it's okay to make a mistake and learn from it and pivot that's life. So good.

So good. Okay, I hate to say it, but we're, we're down to the last couple questions. I know. Yes. Um, what is one message you wish any and every parent could tell their child today or their teen today? So it's one thing that you wish that they could tell their own [00:32:00] kids. I love that question, and I'm gonna think about it for a minute.

One thing that I wish every parent would know about their kids, what I hear from kids often, the teens, is I just, I don't want my parents to fix me. I just want them to understand me. They wanna be seen, they wanna be heard, and they wanna be understood. So when they. Are upset, don't try to offer advice.

Just say, would you like to talk about it? And just listen or give them the option. Do you wanna, do you want me to just listen or do you want me to give advice or do you want me to help you come up with a plan and let them tell you what they need? And most of the time it's, I just need you to sit here and listen to me.

And when you do that, that's where you're building the relationship and you become that trusted person that they can come to. And that's what we all want, right, as parents. But we, it's hard for us to watch our kids struggling. So we wanna fix it for them, but we can't always do that. They need to learn and build that resiliency on their own.

Yeah. I always think, well, what would I do if [00:33:00] somebody told me what to do? I would do the opposite. Yeah, right. I don't know about you, but I, I don't like to be told what to do, so I'm probably gonna do the opposite. And that's how most teens are gonna react too. Like you can't tell me what to do. Yeah, exactly.

It's exactly. Becky. Okay, so our listeners know this. They can get ahold of you fairly easy, and I want you to share with them how to do that and what else do you have in store for them if they come find you. Yeah. Awesome. So I hang out on Instagram all the time. My handle is at Becky Funk Coaching, just like it spelled be E-C-K-Y-F-U-N-K.

Um, so come hang out there, uh, shoot me a dm. I also have a website. It's the becky funk.com. And I am launching a brand new offer for the holiday season, which I'm very excited about. It's going to help you bring some harmony into your household, bring some peace to it, and help you understand your teens unique, unique wiring, help you minimize conflict.

I mean, who doesn't want that when the holidays are around and they're [00:34:00] home? More, um, how to communicate effectively and motivate them to get things done. By speaking, you're gonna learn how to speak their language, so we're gonna figure out how they're wired, how you are wired, how you're compatible, where you clash, and just, it's like the I every parent is like that.

I've, you that I've been had that has been through this process is like, this is like my personalized manual for my teen. Like yeah, it is. So it's really awesome. So shoot me a DM if you, if you wanna know how to do, you know how to get into that program and I'd be happy to chat with you about it. I'm assuming this would work for your college students returning from home as well.

Absolutely. It's actually works even better for college students too. All those parents that are starting to think, oh, my kid's coming away. Wait, my kid's coming home. This is gonna be different. So yes, I know. Yeah, definitely when they're college days, they're home a lot longer and they've got a little bit more under depen independence, under their belts coming back home.

That's [00:35:00] amazing. I love that it's customized for them too. That's a phenomenal offer for your, your parents listening. Yeah. It's like, it's, uh, it, every parent that I've been through has been like, I thought I knew my kid. It turns out I didn't. I made a lot of assumptions about how they were reacting. We get to the, the emotion that's behind the behavior and kind of like how they're wired.

And every parent has just been like, oh no. Here, hold on. Why did it stop? I didn't do it. Hang on, we're gonna get it back on there. So sorry. That's okay. I'm trying to remember my thought. I know. Don't lose it. Hang on. Keep holding.

Hold on. It's trying. I swear. There it goes. Okay. It says it's recording right now. Hmm. Go ahead and keep going. [00:36:00] Okay. Alright. If you can, it says stop recording. I don't wanna stop recording, so keep, okay. No, we don't wanna stop recording. I'll use delete. So, oh, no, I forgot it. Anyway, every parent that has been through this, this new program that I'm offering has just been, their mind has been blown at they're all like, yeah, I, I've seen, this is definitely my kid, but I didn't realize how, what I was saying, they were interpreting it that way.

And so it, it provides parents with the information to be able to be like, if I just tweak what I say this one little way, now, they're no longer gonna feel like squashed under my heel. You know, it's learning how parents act and respond to different things versus their kids. So it's help helping them speak the same language is what it really comes down to in a very long-winded way, is what I was trying to say.

I, I have a brilliant idea if it ever could come to this for you. Make it an app like, so it's like a Google translator, it's like a teen translator and then you can test out what you're gonna say and see what they think [00:37:00] that it would be. Oh, that's a good idea. My son is a computer science major, so I'll get him on that.

I say, will you take out the trash or should I say, boy, it'd be nice if someone took the trash out. I wonder who that could be. Yeah. Oh, you're getting my minds going. We can have all kinds of like, fun with that. Like you put in your information for your teen and your, uh, your information for you and just it spits out like, yeah, no, this is how you do it.

Brilliant. There we go. Alright, well that was the total side note. So yes. In the meantime, before the app comes, contact Becky on Instagram and get, get ahold of her so that you can have the current version of this. Yes, as soon as possible. Yes. You got it. Very personalized. Straight for you. That is awesome.

Well, Becky, as always, you have so much great information. I honestly like, just feel blessed that we can drain your brain of all this good stuff. And I really feel like [00:38:00] there's definitely listeners out there that could, they know who their child is, they know that they need this extra, and just reaching out to you would be their first step.

So thank you for taking the opportunity, um, to talk with us and taking the time to do that. Always enjoy being here, Dory. Thank you.