9 Truths About Navigating Social Struggles for Teens and Pre-Teens

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Do you find it challenging to explain the intricacies of social struggles to your teen or pre teen? The pre teen and teen years can be a rollercoaster of emotions, especially when it comes to navigating friendships and technology.

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Join us as we explore how Jessica Spears insightful books addressed relationship and screen struggles, empowering readers to decipher healthy versus unhealthy relationship skills from peer pressure to cyberbullying. These are just a few examples of the social issues teens and preteens grapple with daily.

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How can we guide them through these complexities and empower them to create positive change in their social worlds?

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Discover new perspectives on friendship and technology, and gain valuable insights on nurturing healthy relationships with your adolescent. Get ready for an engaging discussion filled with practical tips, real stories, and activities to help your family navigate social challenges with grace and resilience.

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Tune in to episode 24 of grandparents raising grandchildren nurturing through adversity and empower your family with the tools to thrive in today's social landscape.

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Welcome to grandparents raising grandchildren nurturing through adversity in this podcast, we will delve deep into the challenges and triumphs of grandparents raising grandchildren as we navigate the complexities of legal, financial, and emotional support. I invite you to join us on a journey of exploring thoughts, feelings, and beliefs surrounding this growing segment of our society. Drawing from real stories and expert advice, we will explore the nuances of child rearing for children who have experienced trauma and offer valuable resources to guide you through the intricate journey of kinship care.

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Well discuss how we can change the course of history by rewriting our grandchildren's future, all within a supportive community that understands the unique joys and struggles. This podcast was made especially for you.

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Welcome to a community where your voice is heard, your experiences are valued, and your journey is honored.

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As a grandmother and primary caregiver to an inquisitive, soon to be nine year old granddaughter navigating her social world. I understand the challenges that arise with friendships, bullying, and technology. It's a crucial time for kids, isn't it? Questions about friends handling challenges like bullying and the inevitable cell phone discussions are becoming more frequent. Jessica Spears approach piqued my interest for being practical yet relatable. Her blend of social science insights, real stories, and engaging activities unravels the complexities of childhood and adolescence in a way that resonates with both both kids and teens. I'm speaking today with Jessica Spears. Jessica has done a wonderful job of presenting information to us that concerns the pre teen and teen social struggles that we deal with with our children.

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She has a master's degree in social sciences and has made many contributions to media outlets on topics that are related to kids parenting and social emotional learning. I think you'll really be interested to hear what she has to say, and I'm very excited to tell you about some of the books that she's written. She's an author. Her passion for helping kids and navigating social science is evident in the books that she's written. The most recent book, the phone Book, which is about working with the issue of cell phones for kids and BFF or NRF, and the middle school book safety goggles, advised. Jessica, your work delves deeply into social struggles of preteens and teens. Let's talk about why friendship and social struggles, which are so common during these years and which I'm experiencing already with my oldest, who's eight. Why are those so common?

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Great question and thanks for having me, Laura. I'm excited to be here with you. So some really interesting things happen during, during the preteen years, and these changes start at different times for every kid because they're all on their own developmental trajectory.

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But things get a little more complicated from the early years into, let's say, the middle of elementary and especially into elementary school because kids are starting to explore their identity, like who am I and what do I like and who are my friends and where do I fit in the world? That exploration of identity in addition to since they're kids, their social emotional skills are, they're rough. They're just learning how to have healthy relationships, how to navigate conflict in healthy ways. So all those skills are still very raw and they're so the search for identity, the search for connection and belonging, and having still very rough social skills can cause a lot of strife. I see. Often school is almost like a training ground for these social emotional skills. And what I wanted to do is put some good guides in place to help, because kids do need help learning how to behave socially, how to recognize and manage their emotions, all of these are skills that are learned.

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So I wanted to put some resources out there to help because we can learn these skills in ways that are not helpful to us in our relationships, or we can learn them in ways that support our friendships and our relationships. And as you and I know, Laura, relationships are the foundation of life.

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Healthy relationships are so important for us as humans. They're nurturing, they help us grow and thrive.

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So the earlier we can help kids learn healthy social skills, how do we manage these things called emotions? All those things are going to support their relationships as kids, but then actually all the way throughout their lives.

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That's true. And as grandparents raising grandchildren, we've been out of touch with this issue for many years. So getting back into both the issues and today's concerns for children is something that's new to us. So I really appreciate the information that you're going to offer to us today because we want to get a handle on that and we want to do everything we can to leave the best legacy for these kids. So understanding all of this and dealing with modern technology in children is important and unfamiliar to many of us. Yeah. And I think, you know, my generation and before, we weren't really proactive in helping young people learn really positive, healthy social emotional skills. That wasn't a thing. But these days, luckily, it is. And it's actually starting to move into schools and homes more as well. So that's the space where I'm working, too. My first book, which has a long title, BFF, which is best friends forever, or NRF, which I made up, it's not really friends, and it's a girl's guide to happy friendships. And that book grew out of a friendship program that I ran in schools, and primarily girls were there. And that's not saying girls need these skills more than others, just happened to be who was mostly involved in that program. So that book grew out of that. And it gets really specific into, you know, what are the common struggles that happen in the preteen years? And you said your granddaughter's eight, and that happens to be just about the age that I found, you know, eight, eight to 13. Things start to get a little trickier and kids need help and support, how to navigate these things in ways that are pro social and also supportive of themselves. They're all learning as they go. You know, we're human, so we're learning these things as we go. I'm addressing really specifically, you know, often kids in that age range, and what can they do? How can they navigate their friendships in healthy ways? And also what little nuggets of wisdom can we give them so they kind of understand the lay of the land, too, like how friendships work sometimes and what we can expect in our relationships. Yeah, that's great. Those topics come up with my granddaughter all the time, so I'm looking forward to learning more about that through your books. You frequently talk about nine friendship truths in your work. Can you share with us a little bit more about those? Sure. Sure.

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And so these friendship truths are things that we often learn over the course of our lives. But what I started doing in my friendship programs was talking about them earlier, and I found that kids found them to be such a relief.

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I could see their shoulders drop, like, oh, okay, that means it's not just me. So friendship truth number one that kids really liked to hear is our healthiest friendships feel safe and accepting. So just keeping an eye out for the friendships that feel really safe and accepting. Because we're talking with kids and teens, there's a lot of friendships that might not feel that way. And that gets back to maybe kids haven't developed the skills yet to be in a really trusting friendship or to feel like they can really share themselves.

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And I'm talking about more emotional safety, not physical safety, when I say that. So just helping kids understand that in our relationships, we want to try to make them feel as safe and accepting as we can, but knowing that's not always the case. So another friendship. Truth is, everybody makes mistakes. We mess up all the time in our relationships. So recognizing that, realizing that we're going to make mistakes, our friends are going to make mistakes. And then one more, I don't want to overload you with too many, but another one that really supports a growth mindset in kids is everybody's growing friendship skills at a different pace. So that opens kids up to, oh, you know, this person might actually not be great at listening yet, but I'm actually not great at sharing yet. So it's just kind of recognizing that we all have these strengths, and we might have some areas for growth, too. So just all we can really do is control ourselves and work on the things in ourselves that we want to work on and recognize that everybody else is working on their own stuff, too. So the friendship truths are just really kind of high level stuff, but they help kids understand kind of this messy world of being humans in relationship with each other. And I think this information is as important as learning the Alphabet, you know? Absolutely.

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Great. It's a great way to support the other things that they're learning in school from their teachers. I think these are as important, if not more important. I think the friendship truths. I think what's so interesting is that there is important to children as they are to adults.

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These, as you said, are building a foundation for them to be healthy human beings, really, not just to get through school. Yeah, they're good reminders for all of us, you know, because as we go through life, there's.

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Relationships are so powerful in our lives, and when they change, that's really hard, you know? So that's actually another friendship truth. Is friendships have different phases and change over time because we all know what it feels like sometimes when we move out of a relationship for a reason and how hard that is. But just to recognize that that's a truth, that friendships do have different phases and change over time, it can offer us some solace when we happen to be in the middle of those changes, too. So, yeah, I found that these friendship truths are helpful to all ages and can be a real guide for families when, you know, our kids or grandkids are navigating some of these bumps in the road. I forgot how much I enjoyed learning again before I had grandchildren. So it's been one of the great joys that I am experiencing right now. What's the friendship pyramid that you talk about? So the friendship pyramid comes out of my first book, and it's a fridge worthy guide that anybody can actually find online and just print it out and put it on their fridge. If you search Jessica Speer friendship pyramid, you'll find it. But just to give you a quick overview, you know, picture in your head just a pyramid. At the very, very tip, we have our close friends, and I describe what are the qualities of those, but the fact that it's a little small part of that pyramid, it's a good reminder that these friendships are hard to find. And we know that we tend to have just a couple of these friends. You know, they're really special. They are hard to find.

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And recognizing that, too, because sometimes kids and teens will have a gap in their life where they feel like they don't have that. And that can feel really hard, especially, you know, as a teen, where they're all about peer connection. That can feel hard if they don't have that. But underneath the tip of the pyramid, which is close friends, is friends. And I'm really broad with this because I think just having friends in our lives is such a positive thing. And so these friendships are far from perfect. They could be classmates. They could be teammates. They could be cousins.

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They're people that we see often. We know them. We might not know them as deeply as our close friends, but these people are really important. And you never know. Some of these friends could grow into close friends. The base of the pyramid are acquaintances. So keeping an eye out for the friends that might be out there that we haven't met yet, and then separate from the pyramid, I have a little section that I call my not really friends. So the name of the book is BFF or NRF, not really friends. And I wanted to, you know, just put a frame around a relationship that doesn't feel very good, and it might be a not really friend situation. And putting some definitions as to what that feels like so kids can recognize if they're in a really unhealthy situation.

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But I note there it's fine to be cautious but be kind there, because like we talked about earlier, everybody's learning, going through change. We're all changing all the time. We're all growing. So somebody that might be a not really friend right now, you never know. So I'd like to, if I can, avoid labels, avoid labeling that person or that child.

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And I right now, this friendship feels like a not really friend, and you never know in the future, but it's okay if you need to put a boundary in place or speak up more or maybe put a little more space in that relationship. So helping kids understand what really healthy friendships look like and what something that maybe needs some work. And then running up and down the sides of the pyramid, I have arrows, you know, up and down as change, so somebody can go from a close friend back down to an acquaintance or even a not really friend, or back up, and then misunderstandings as running up and down the pyramid, too, because at all levels of our relationships, we have misunderstandings, too. So the friendship pyramid is just kind of this high level look of all the relationships in our lives and some of the behaviors that fuel our healthiest relationships. And just helping kids know that can help them navigate their social world. Mm hmm.

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Great. Let's talk about your latest book, the phone book, which addresses the impact of technology, an issue that us, as grandparents are. We're not as much in the technological world as perhaps other younger parents are. So what inspired you to write that book? So that book I wrote when I had, I have two daughters, and my girls were in the preteens and getting to that age where they really wanted their phones, a phone. And I realized at that point that there was a lot of information I wanted to talk to them about, because giving a child or teen a smartphone is really a window to the world. So there's a lot of conversations we want to have with kids before they have a fully connected device to the Internet, be it an iPad or even a phone. But once they're fully connected to the Internet, there's a lot of stuff that we want to make sure we talk to them about. So I, as a writer of non fiction guides, I dove into the research.

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Would we want, what conversations would we want to be sure to have with kids and teens about getting their own phone, but I wanted to write it for kids because that's kind of my specialty, is writing information for kids. So in this book, I explore all that, but in positive, fun ways, too. So let's face it, there's amazing, wonderful things about phones in tech, and then there's, you know, kind of more challenging and even scary, dangerous things. So I needed to bridge that and talk about both. Every chapter talks about some topic that's really important for young people to know. Maybe it's cyberbullying or digital drama, you know? So those are two different things. Recognizing what those things are and what to do about that, I go into stranger danger, how to say safe online, go into social media, and the positives of social media, but also the drawbacks of social media. It really dives into how to navigate life as a digital citizen as a young person. So kids are really informed and can develop safe and healthy habits. And the book also serves as a really good guide for their caregivers. So if caregivers choose to read that with their child, it prompts a lot of good conversations about all these topics. It's interesting because as a grandparent, and I think there are other grandparents or spouses or partners of other grandparents that have said this to their grandchildren before, because every child about the age of my granddaughter start asking, when am I going to get a cell phone?

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My husband automatically responded, you're not going to get a cell phone until you can afford to buy one yourself, which is probably what his parents told him. And we didn't have cell phones until we did buy one ourselves.

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What's your perspective on that now in today's modern age? How do you suggest that we approach that subject with our grandchildren? And this is such a hard one because everybody's doing different things, which is really hard.

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Every family is approaching this in different ways. My recommendation is to delay it as much as possible, because in the state of technology now, there's not a lot of great guidelines in place to protect kids. In fact, just this week, the very first significant bill is being voted on the Senate floor that protects kids safety and privacy. It's the very first one, and phones are two decades old now. So here we are 20 years later. We're just actually getting to some better safety and privacy guidelines for kids. So we're getting there. I'm actually hopeful that the online world is going to evolve into a better, safer place for kids. But where we are right now, I want to scare grandparents, but I do want to say that there's not a lot of safety protocols out there. So if we can delay things, you know, until kids are more prepared to manage themselves online to see maybe inappropriate content, the better. But that doesn't mean they have to be totally offline. There are devices that are not a fully connected smartphone that are great like, so maybe you do need to connect with your grandchild somehow. There's little simple watches that they could wear that you can just maybe text or talk to each other.

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But it's not social media, it's not a direct connection to the Internet. So I would say start small, start with some really clear family guidelines in place, and there's great resources online.

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If you search family tech agreement, you'll come up with all sorts of examples of, you know, what are the rules for our family? Where are screens allowed? Where are screens not allowed? How do you go about requesting a new app in your family, getting the permissions from your grandparents to get a new application on whatever device you might be using? So you, so that's a great place to start. Put together some sort of agreement that you feel comfortable with, work on it with your grandchild.

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So there's some collaboration there. They understand what the rules are and they've had some say in them and then realize that that document or that agreement is always going to be changing.

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So as they grow and as they get more responsible, you can change those rules. But I think to start, it's good to have some really good guidelines in place. Like maybe there's no iPads in the bedroom at night, and maybe there's no screens during dinner, or maybe all your chores and homework are done, and then you get some time on video games. So think about where do you want to start and put that agreement together.

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But I do think for a connected smartphone, delay it as much as you can until you feel like you're really ready and you could start small and build up to that.

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Great. Now, I know that you've asked hundreds of middle schoolers about the trickiest things about middle school. For them, what insights can you offer based on their responses? Yeah. So when I was researching my second book, my second book is called Middle School Safety Goggles advised. And as a social scientist, I wanted to really talk to kids today about what are the hardest things about middle school. So I went into classrooms and asked them in several ways, small groups or asked them to write things down. Then I tabulated all the results and came up with the top ten trickiest things that middle schoolers told me were hard about middle school. And that grew into the chapters of that book middle school safety goggles advised. So many of the things are exactly what we might expect, you know, that we might remember from our middle school or junior high days. Such as they mentioned, clicks are hard. They mentioned navigating the whole popularity scene is hard. They mentioned that crushes and dating, that navigating that scene is hard. But there were some new things, too, which I don't remember from my middle school years. They talked about social media can be challenging. So a lot of teens or preteens are on social media in middle school, even though the apparent legal age to be on social media is 13.

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But because there's not a good way to verify age yet, or the social media companies are not verifying age in a, in a very good way at this point. So a lot of younger kids are on social media, which in middle school, that can get tricky. As you can imagine, all these young people communicating with each other on social media can sometimes be tricky and leads into what is called digital drama these days. So the drama that we used to have in person, face to face, has now filtered into social media. So those same situations are being playing out online, often in social media platforms. So that was new that students shared with me and also stressed. Students also shared a lot of stress that they're dealing with. Maybe it's pressure from school, maybe it's family struggles, maybe it's the stress of the social world. But I was surprised that that was one of their top concerns about middle school is navigating stress, which may have. A lot to do with the rise in depression.

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Yes. And anxiety issues.

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Absolutely. And you talk about all that in your book, BFF or NRF.

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This specific topic for middle school is my second book, which is called middle school safety goggles. So the first book really dives into girls and friendship. The second book is middle school safety goggles advise. And that, again, is written for middle schoolers, but really talks about middle school, you know, addressing the concerns that students told me were the hardest thing. And then my third is the phone book that goes into navigating life with the cell phone. That's great. I have to read all these books. I'm excited.

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Do you offer these books in Kindle or audiobook format? They are. They're available anywhere books are sold and there are digital versions. They're not audio because they are really interactive, but you can get digital versions of all the books. And like I said, they are interactive because I'm writing for pre teens and early teens. I know I've got to make it fun because these kids and teens are often very much drawn to screens, so I have to make sure my books are interactive so they're filled with quizzes and activities. And the middle school book I was just talking about has some choose your own ending stories, which are a fun way that I explore these tough situations that happen in middle school. So it's more of a choose your own ending story. So, for instance, like the dance is coming up and you and youre friend have a crush on the same person, you know, what might you do and then give some scenarios. But that gives kids a chance to think through what might I do in that tricky situation? How might I handle that? So that was a fun way to help kids think through these situations because part of the reason a lot of these social things are tricky is it's the first time they've ever dealt with them, so they don't know how they might navigate that situation because that situation is brand new to them. So kind of just helping them think through that as these situations start to come in their lives.

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And I know I've looked through them, they're short and easy to get through.

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Are they built so that we read with them or are they more designed for. They're designed for the kids.

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Yeah. And so families do this in very different ways. Some might just hand the book over to their grandchild or their child and that, but then maybe later read it on their own and then, you know, chat about it. Some people might read it together. So especially with the phone book, if you're maybe about to, you know, get a phone for your, your preteen, it might be a requirement that, hey, before we do this, we're going to actually read through this together and talk about this. So I leave that in the hands of the families, but you could do it either way.

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But like you said, they're purposely very easy to read.

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Full color throughout, illustrations, big fonts. I did not want them to be intimidating at all so that kids can pick it up and they're not overwhelmed with text. They're fun and colorful and light and hopefully easy for everybody to get through. Great.

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Do you have any personal stories you want to share or case studies about your work that highlights the impact that these books have made on both children and the adults that read them? Yes.

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And one of the things I still do. So my first book grew out of a friendship program that I ran in schools.

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And I, since that book grew out of that program, it's really easy to use still in school. So I still visit schools and work with small groups of kids. And what I love to see is, you know, by the end of this book, after we've gone through it together and we've done the activities and we've gotten to know each other, how the dynamics in that group have changed. So often schools say they're having a real struggle with group of kids. And also maybe there are some kids that are having a hard time meeting friends. So pulling a group together, working through these things, talking about the friendship truths, giving them some skills about how to navigate conflict in healthy ways, how to speak up in a way that connects rather than divides, that's so empowering to kids. So it's fun to see at the end of that just how much better these kids feel about themselves, but also about their peers. So it's just kind of working through it together instead of just turning a blind eye and letting them figure out on their own, which is what we used to do, you know, but sometimes when we just turn a blind eye and let them figure out on their own, we might not be helping kids. But if we can get in there in a way that's fun and connect with them, we can see some real significant change in kids.

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So that, for me, is still so fun, and I still do that with groups of kids in schools, and it's. And it's fun just to see the change on the ground, especially how kids are feeling about themselves.

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That must feel very conformational for you. Yes. Oh, I love it.

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I just love it. What future projects do you have going on in the work that you're doing? I'm working on a couple more books. I'm working on one right now that actually deals with mindfulness, and you touched on depression and anxiety, which is really high right now for this generation of kids. And so I want a book that helps kids learn how to be mindful, how to regulate themselves, how to settle themselves when things are hard and stressful.

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I'm working on that now. It's been really fun, but I feel like that's a really important topic all of us need in this very frenetic, crazy world, you know, we all need the skills to settle, you know, to pause and take a deep breath to feel our feet on the ground, just to try to find peace within ourselves. So that's my latest project, and then I've got a few others, you know, stirring around in my head as well.

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Especially as a writer and a person who loves this topic. There's no shortage of topics to explore. No. No. And when is that next book coming out? It's just in the written phase. So here's the crazy part about writing traditionally published books is it takes years.

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So that book would not come out for another couple years. Because once I write it, then it gets illustrated, then they turn it over to an illustrator, and then it goes to book design. So that's a couple years out, but it always comes up faster than I think. But, yeah, we're still in the development. Phase of that book, and we can get on your mailing list. You have a newsletter which will let us know when your new future projects are coming out later. Yes, exactly. My website is jessicaspearspear.com, and I do have a free monthly newsletter where I talk about all these topics, helping kids develop social emotional skills or navigating phones. And I do give updates on my latest projects, too. So anybody's welcome to go sign up for that newsletter on my website. What final piece of advice would you like to share with our listeners, especially for those grandparents that are navigating the preteen and teen years in today's challenging social landscape? Well, first of all, just thank you all for doing this amazing work and working with young people through this difficult world. So hats off to you for what you're doing. What I like to remind parents and grandparents is it's never too late. We have all made mistakes ourselves, with our grandkids, with our very own kids. We might not have been taught a lot of these skills that I'm teaching in these books. It's never too late to learn, and it's never too late to repair some of the stuff that's maybe gone down in the past. There's nothing more powerful than repair in my mind. I've got teen daughters now, and I've actually apologized for some things that I did when they were little that I didn't know, like, I didn't learn till later. So I will just say, hey, you know what? I wish I'd done better when you were little was this. And I'm sorry that I manage it that way. And I know now that this is what I would like to do instead. But I just wanted to let you know I didn't do that as well as I'd hoped, offering that chance to repair things in the past, recognizing we're all human, we're all learning as we go. So, grandparents, go easy on yourself. We are all doing the best we can with the skills we got, and it's never too late to learn and grow. That's a great message. I had to apologize to my granddaughter this morning myself. I think that's a great word of advice. Thank you. Well, thanks Jessica for your time. I'm so excited to read your books and learn more about your future projects. I'm looking forward to the next ones that are coming out.

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Thank you. Thank you for having me, Laura, and for the amazing, important work that you're doing. You're welcome.

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Thanks so much for joining us today for another episode of grandparents raising grandchildren. Nurturing through adversity. I encourage you to share your challenges and your successes with us. Your story is undoubtedly one someone else needs to hear.

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You can submit your stories to the links provided in the podcast information. Your contributions will enrich upcoming conversations, creating a more supportive community in which we can learn and grow together. If you enjoyed this show, please share it with a friend that needs to hear. And if you love this show and you're listening on a broadcasting platform like Apple or Spotify, just scroll down in your app and please leave us a review. Thanks again and I hope you'll join us next week for an insightful journey with doctor Malazri Chaudhary Malgari, affectionately known as Doctor Mala, discover her unique approach to blending western psychology and eastern philosophy, unlocking new paths to healing and growth for diverse populations. She's helped thousands of individuals of diverse age ranges and backgrounds, including the military, executives and business professionals, political figures, rural communities, native populations, LGBTQ populations, athletes, couples and families.

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As a motivational speaker and advocate, Doctor Mala's impact reaches far and wide, and I think you'll really enjoy that episode. Thank you for tuning in to grandparents, raising grandchildren, nurturing through adversity.

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Remember, you are not alone.

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Together we can find strength and hope in the face of adversity. Peace be with you and I pray that you find some time this week to listen to your inner wisdom amongst the noise and the pandemonium of this world.