If It Works, Why Stop?

Our family is a dog family. Over the years we have slowly been trained to keep our food away from the edge of the counters in the kitchen. I know, we are supposed to train the dog, not the other way around. One thing I have noticed about the behavior of our dogs is that they can be almost completely trained out of the the habit of checking counters for food, but one accidental food discovery will start the whole process over again. If the dog repeatedly finds that there is no food left on the counter, he will stop looking. As soon as the hunt is successful, there will be obsessive checking of the counter for food. The interesting part is that when the searching turns up unsuccessful, the hunting will eventually stop. There is a parallel here with teens who seem to be hunting for an argument. 

If you are raising teens, you most likely have one or more in the house who will go through a stage of picking arguments. While this stage is a part of adolescent brain development, I have a hunch that it presents itself differently based on the personality of the teen. Signs of this stage include things like throwing topics out into conversation with a bold claim attached to it, an insult that came out of nowhere, or constant rebuttals to comments made by others. There are various reasons that explain why this behavior intensifies during the adolescent years. One thing I have noticed when these moods strike is that if the desire to argue is not fed, they most likely will stop ‘hunting’ for it in that situation. 

Similar to our dogs, when a teen repeatedly finds that their behavior does not lead to gratification, they will cease to try (as often). The challenging part for the family is to resist the urge to jump into a debate or argue in response to their challenge or insult. Some teens are SO good at knowing what buttons to push! When faced with a challenge to your core beliefs or a disrespectful comment, it can be so hard to remain calm and not give it attention, but it could be the key to decreasing the behavior you are seeing. If you find yourself in this cycle with your teen this week, try to quit taking the argument bait. 

For coaching through this and other cycles we fall into with our teens, contact me to schedule a session today!