Introduction: Vanessa Van Petten is a parent/teens expert and author. She is 23 years old and is the author of the inspirational parenting teens book; You’re Grounded: How to Stop Fighting and Make the Teenage Years Easier. Written when she was just a teen herself, the book provides an interesting insider’s perspective on relationships between teens and parents today. Van Petten is the author of the blog Teens Today. Bea Fields of Millennial Leaders recently had a chance to chat with her and this is how it went down!

Bea: Vanessa, I would like to hear a little bit about that story behind your book You’re Grounded, your work with teens and their parents. How did you get started in this work?

Vanessa: It’s interesting because I always say that I think my work started more from a place of anger than being inspired by something. The anger turned into something that was inspiring. It started, because I was not really getting along with my parents. I thought they, especially my Dad, didn’t get me. He was so strict. He didn’t understand anything that was going on with young people, and I really felt like I was being treated unfairly. I started talking about it and exploring this challenge, and I began to realize that a lot of my friends felt similarly.

What was hard for me was that at the same time this was going on for me, two of my good friends got busted for marijuana. They had little baggies in their car, not even enough to get high from. They had left it out on the seat of their car, and the security guards walked by, saw it, and they were busted.

These two friends of mine seemed like they were screaming to get caught. Once they got caught, they got expelled from school, and they didn’t even feel remorseful at all. I remember going to talk to them afterwards (and my parents did not want me talking to them) but I remember going to see them and saying,

“What were you thinking, and why don’t you feel bad?” They said “Well, we really did it to make our parents angry. We did it so that they would actually realize that we’re angry at them and that they’re being bad parents.” I said “You realize you ruined your own life to make your parents angry? You must have had a lot of anger.”

That was really shocking for me, and was a turning point for me, because number one, my anger at my parents was definitely heard and felt everywhere else, so it made me feel a lot less alone with that; and two, I realized that what I was going through wasn’t nearly as bad as some other people, that I actually was semi-lucky.

The more I started interviewing people and realizing what they were going through, I began to realize: “Wow, maybe my parents aren’t so bad.” I also found that a lot of other kids were so relieved when they heard my other stories. Being honest with other teens and telling my stories about my own challenges was the best way that I could help them. The teens I talked to appreciated my honesty.

Bea: Very interesting. We just completed a survey. We surveyed over 300 Gen-Ys on the topic of leadership and what they felt they really wanted from their leaders and honesty came up as the very top response.

Vanessa: Yep. I wish I had almost known that beforehand because I feel like it took me three years to figure that out that authenticity and being really genuine is so critical to connecting with teens and young adults. When I do speak about it, I often get questions I don’t know how to answer, and I’ll say to them, “I don’t know the answer. I don’t know, but here’s what I know other people have done,” and people are just so thankful that I don’t pretend to know the answer.

Bea: As a parent of three Gen Y young adults, I know how much they want to hear their parents just be honest about their own challenges as teens or young adults. There is a sense of comfort knowing that your parents had a few challenges along the way.

I want to go back to the topic of your anger serving as a source of inspiration for your work. How much of the creative process do you believe begins with people getting a little bit fired up?

Vanessa: It all comes from that source. Creativity can start with anger or passion, yet I believe that those two words are used interchangeably way too often. I think that I use the word anger because I think that people understand it, but part of my inspiration was also just me being really passionate about why I was always felt like I was being treated unfairly. I really believed I had and still have a cause. So any type of passion is actually really important to finding mission and finding motivation/inspiration.

Bea: I like the distinction between being angered and being passionate. So tell us a little bit about your mission. What are you really up to in the world? What’s your mission?

Vanessa: I just wrote this down the other day and I think it really sums it up in one sentence: I really want to be the sparkplug that ignites the world to care. I really like inspiring people to get more self-care, whether it’s teenagers, and I work with teenagers a lot about self-care, treating your body right and making sure that you get good grades. I think that all falls under the category of caring for your future goals, caring for your health, caring for your friendships, caring for the relationships in your family.

On my blog, I’m constantly writing about how to care for your husband, how to care for your kids, how to encourage your kids to care for you. A lot of it is about that and inspiring people to just self-improve. From a very young age, I loved self-improvement books, which is such a weird thing to like, but I would read self-improvement books from the age of ten or eleven just because I really, really liked them and I like the principles behind them. I loved the idea of affirmations and that you could wake up one day and decide that you want to change a bad pattern and you can actually change it. It made me feel very powerful and in control and it was in such a positive way, so I really like encouraging others to do that.

Bea: You’re 23. You’ve already written a book. You’re out making things happen, so what would you say all came together, Vanessa, to allow you to really jump in to where you are now at such a young age?

Vanessa: I think that the moment that I realized that understanding human behavior could really make change was pivotal for me. I actually snuck a book of my parents called “Why Men Don’t Listen and Why Women Can’t Read Maps.” It’s by a husband and wife team: Barbara and Allan Pease. I was eleven at the time, and it was a book that I don’t think I was allowed to read because it focused on human, men and women relationships. I saw it on my mom’s counter and I was fascinated about it, and I immediately thought: Oh, I so want know the difference between men and women. I remember reading it so closely, and I read it six or seven times and it made me understand everything about my Dad and my brother in such a different way.

As an example, I learned why I would get so irritated when my brother wouldn’t play with me because he was playing G.I. Joes, I understood that was actually because men are more single-tracked minded, and I had never been spoken to that way. I had never understood that people act the way they do because it’s actually just a human behavioral thing; it’s more scientific than I had known before I read the book. That helped me be a lot less angry, and it made me realize how important those books could be in shifting your framework of understanding people in your life, and I knew that I was going to write a self-help book after I read the book.

Bea: How old were you at that time, eleven?

Vanessa: I was about… I was between eleven and twelve, yeah.

Bea: So given everything you have learned and experienced about human behavior, Vanessa, what would you say is the secret parents need to learn in order to create magic with their teens?

Vanessa: I think there are three things. The first is really listening without judgment and deciding before the conversation even starts that you’re going to keep an open mind and that you have no idea where the conversation is going. With this approach, as a parent, you will be shocked at what comes out of your mouth. Many parents assume that they know what their kids are going to talk about when they get home from school, or they have expectations about what they are going to say or do. If you take a different position and think “You know what; I don’t know what they’re going to say, but I’m going to listen really carefully,” you will be so surprised at how many little things will sneak into the conversation that is different than what they said yesterday. I think parents often miss little hints and things going on with their teens, so listening with a really open mind and without judgment are key to getting your child to open up more to you. They will feel like they can say anything to their parents, and they’ll be safe to speak it.

The second thing is to figure out what the emotional anchor is. At age 23, I am just now beginning to understand this, but a lot of teens will be complaining about something, such as “I can’t believe our teacher. He didn’t tell us this would be on the math test. I took really good notes and I swear he never mentioned X components; and I if I had known that X components would be on the test, I would’ve studied it,” or “My friend didn’t call me and I really wanted to be invited to the party and I can’t believe she didn’t call me and tell me.” What I always say to parents is: Help them figure out what the emotional anchor is. With the teacher situation, the emotional anchor is usually something like injustice. The kid feels like something is not fair. They feel too young to do anything. They feel like they’re being treated in an unfair way. If you can shift the focus onto the emotion behind the current event, you can take the anxiety out of the current events. So by saying, “Wow, is this about you feeling like you’re being treated unfairly in school, or is this just your feelings of the way your relationship is with teachers in general?”, you can shift the conversation off the person or situation and onto the emotion. Once you do this, you will hear your child say more about other types of injustice they might be feeling. It’s actually quite magical to help your teen step back from their own circumstances for a second and talk about the emotional anchor.

The third thing is to just let your teens know that they can always do again whatever they want to do…there’s always another chance to do over something they want to be different or better.

Bea: You’ve talked a little bit about your past and your situation with being angry with your Dad and angry with some situations and now that you look back on that, is it making sense for you? Are you seeing that that was part of a much bigger picture?

Vanessa: Yeah, this is sort of a funny one, but I’ve learned over the past few years that the way I thought as a teenager was that I seemed to think in superlatives. Each thing that came my way was always ”the worst,” “the best,” “the most.” Everything was very extreme, including my emotions, including the way I felt about school. I either hated it or I loved it. There was very, very little gray. There was very little in between, and there was very little waiting time before I made my judgment on something. So what I always share with parents and teenagers is: When your kid gets home and it’s the worst math test they’ve ever taken in their entire life, it actually does feel that way. It actually genuinely feels like the worst test of your entire life. So belittling it by saying, “Oh, it’s not so bad. You’ll make it up with next one” is really harmful for your relationship and also it doesn’t serve them in the way that they need.

When I’m talking to teenagers and they’re really feeling awful, I will literally will match them on it, and the teens seem shocked when you repeat back their words, tone and emotion. So if they’re saying, “Uh, my hair’s… It’s so ugly today, I just can’t believe it and everyone hated me and I looked awful.” I literally will say back to them, “Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe your hair was so ugly today and everyone hated it and it was so awful.” They literally will look back at me with shock on their face and they’ll say, “Oh, it wasn’t that bad” because they’re used to seeing us as adults be in the gray area and that’s okay for us. That’s where we live. So when we match their extreme emotions and mirror it back to them, they’re so shocked.

Bea: You do make a good point. I know that when I was a teenager, if I had a bad hair day, or if my face broke out, it was the worst day of my life. So if a parent is greeted with that type of emotion, they should mimick back what they heard with the same tone and emotion?

Vanessa: Yeah. I actually think that matching them on it helps in so many ways. Number one, it can really help them see how excited they are about it or how upset they are about it and it can put them in check, or they feel like you’re really truly being empathetic with them and they’re bonding with you, and they really feel like: Oh my gosh, she gets it or he gets it. She gets it. She gets me, and that can be also a really good tool for creating connection. But that’s the one thing in looking back on my life as a teen, and I can now say: “Wow, I really, really did think in extremes, and I’m so happy to be in the gray area. I’m so, so happy to be a little bit more patient with myself.” I also think it’s important for teens to be able to hear from someone younger that these extreme emotions will get better as they mature more.

Bea: Let’s talk about your role models. Who would you say has had the greatest influence on you and your success? Who created magic in your life?

Vanessa: I would definitely say that would be my dance teacher. I had a dance teacher all through high school and would still have access to her when I came home through college. She was this woman who I so admired because she was still young enough where I could feel like I could relate to her, but she was older than me by about 10 years…enough so that I could learn from her wisdom and experience. I just so admired her because she was following her passion. She decided to teach dance even though people had told her it was a career that was really hard to make money in. She decided to do it, and she did it very differently. She decided to teach palates as well as dance and open her own studio and she really had become an entrepreneur and was also able to keep a lot of her creative projects by doing her own performances whenever she felt like it. She was so happy and put together and she really didn’t mind what other people thought about her business. She was really so fulfilled that she was able to help people part of the time and able to be creative part of the time and could be successful doing both. She would take months off and she would go travel in Italy and do dance performances. I thought: Wow, she created this life for herself where she came from a family of businessmen, of people who were traditionally corporate, and she created a life that was helping others and being creative. She was constantly taking new classes and dedicated to her own learning, and I am just amazed and what she does.

I think knowing her and watching her life has really changed how I looked at life. I realized that you can have it all if you set it up that way. You don’t have to go into a traditional workplace if you don’t want to. You can start a business that happens to tap into your creative talents. My parents are wonderful people, and I love them to death, but they really went into very traditional careers. My parents became lawyers because they were told that was the best job at the time and that was it. They didn’t think about whether or not they wanted to do it. They didn’t think about whether it would be good for them. So, to see my dance teacher choose a different path and to make it work for her life has been huge for me.

Bea: I really admire that and that brings me to the next thing I want to ask you about. Generation Y is having a big impact on our culture today. We’re seeing work change. We’re seeing a bigger focus on global issues, on social issues, on the environment and what you would say that Generation Y is doing to help create this change that we’re seeing?

Vanessa: I know this is a bit cliché, but I think Generation Y is really thinking outside the box. When I talk to younger people about starting a business and when I ask them what they want to do, they will say something like “Oh I’m really, really inspired by helping to fund light fixtures in Africa so women can actually cook and read at night and do their work at night.” I’ll say, “Wow, so how do you want to support this cause?” They’ll say, “I’m thinking about writing an eBook or how this could change African women’s lives and then putting it up at the different websites in September so that everyone in the world can get this eBook for free.” To me, that is such a great idea, and so different. They are able to think of totally different ways of doing things.

Bea: Yes. I have noticed the same things about Generation Y. Your generation is so creative, civic minded and positive. What do you believe creating magic is, just generally speaking? What does that mean when you hear this term?

Vanessa: When I think of creating magic, I think of harmony, having harmony in your relationships, having harmony with your goal and your job, being able to balance everything in your life with health and friends and family and business and responsibilities. Creating magic is the complete equal synergy of all those aspects of your life and all your goals.

Bea: I would’ve never thought of it that way. Talk more about that balance and synergy.

Vanessa: For me, it’s having the one sentence about helping other people get motivated for self-care or helping inspire self-care that touches almost everything I do, whether it’s sending an email or going to the grocery store or buying that donut or whatever it is, thinking for just a second if it matches that principle because that brings me right back to harmony which brings me right back into creating magic. So, if eating a donut is going to make me feel like I’m treating myself and enjoying the moment, I call it dancing in the moment, then that is 100% creating magic. So I always tell teens to think of a goal…any goal…if your goal is to have a happy school year, maybe it’s as simple as that, and no matter what you do to just check in with yourself for just a half of a second before you do anything and say, “Is this contributing to that goal?” Then you’re always going to have magic.

Bea: Are there any parting thoughts that you would like to leave with parents or teens or really anyone who’s wanting to create magic in their relationships?

Vanessa: That it does get better. If it’s already amazing, it’s going to get better. If it’s really you’re going through a hard time, it will get better. Teens do come back around. I have a great relationship with my Dad now and I did not always. There’s stages and it will get better, so just keep that in your mind.

Bea: Well that is a wonderful note to end on. Thank you Vanessa for all that you are doing for teens and parents around the world.

Vanessa: Thank you so much for doing this with me. It was really fun.

(On behalf of Lee Cockerell and the Creating Gen-Y Magic Team, I would like to extend a thank you to Bea Fields for conducting this interview. Bea is the author of Millennial Leaders and Edge: A Leadership Story. Bea is also leading a great series of research and Gen-Y resources over at Gen-Y Buzz, which we covered a few posts back! Thanks Bea for conducting this great interview and for creating magic in the lives that you influence and teach!)