Ciaran McBreen is a teacher, certified professional mindset coach and recently published author.

Bridging the gap between parents and teens

Complications of social media and digital devices widens divide

An educationalist is drawing on his vast experience and research in helping to bridge the gap between teenagers and their parents/guardians. The title of Ciarán McBreen’s book ‘Listen’ speaks of the frustration, and hurt of young people who feel they are not being heard, and also of parents who may not be equipped with the communication skills to help their teenage child at crucial junctures in their life.

The gap between generations of parents and teens has of course always existed and with the added complications of social media and digital devices it may have even widened.

“The whole idea of my book was to talk about challenges, to build a bridge between adults and teenagers where adults have a new perspective of what it’s like being a teenager in a changed society, because it’s not like what it was when we were in school. Similarly when we were in school, it was different for our parents,” says Ciarán, his Cootehill accent undimmed despite decades living abroad.

Since 2012 he’s been in Dubai where he lives with his English wife and two young children. Aside from the 40-45 degree heat coupled with stifling humidity (“It’s like walking in to a sauna fully clothed,” he laughingly reports), it sounds like a good quality of life. Ciarán teaches in the Swiss International School, a private school which caters for some of the most privileged people on the planet.

“I teach the next president of Kazakstan. I teach the daughter of the sixth richest man in the world. I teach Sheikh Mohammed’s nephew and niece.”

Given the pupil population, it comes as little surprise that the school boasts “phenomenal facilities”.

“We have a 50m swimming pool,” begins Ciarán who is the Head of Physical and Health Education in the school. “We have a 25m swimming pool, we have an athletics track, a Croke Park style football pitch – it’s like a carpet, an auditorium the size of probably the biggest cinema in Ireland, it’s unbelievable, it’s phenomenal. But you don’t get the craic I had in St Aidan’s Comprehensive in Cootehill,” he quips.

Not all his professional career has been spent such luxuriously resourced surrounds. He started out teaching in Hounslow in West London two decades ago, where many of the children were refugees fleeing war, of from impoverished immigrant backgrounds, or were students from London who had been rejected by all other schools and dismissed as the ‘worst of the worst’. “It was a tough school in which to learn your trade – let’s put it that way,” he says diplomatically of an institution now closed.

“You are talking really poor socio-economic backgrounds. I might be walking down the corridor at lunch and see a child standing on their own, and I’d sit down beside them and have a chat. By having that chat they’d start telling me about their home life and mum’s never at home. We had drug addicts, we had prostitutes. It was crazy. Bottom line is - there was an absence of parents in the household in London.

“Then I came to Dubai and again I found myself having these conversations with teenagers where mam and dad are not around because they are CEOs or managing directors. You had the low socio-economic wealth in London, and the massive wealth in Dubai, but the same problem was there – an absence of parenting.

“So often, through these conversations, you could see it in their eyes, they are literally screaming, ‘Bloody hell, give me some time. Listen to me!’”

Through ‘Listen’ Ciarán shares the stories of 20 different young people to highlight issues frequently faced by teenagers today, such as school pressure, body image, bullying, friendships, jealousy, disorders, disabilities and studying. By simply retelling the children’s stories, readers will be able to empathise, and take some comfort from the knowledge other teens are struggling with similar challenges.

“If Johnny tells me his story about his body image, the reality is there is many more Johnnys out there who can relate to this story. And when Amira talks to me about her anxiety going into school, if we can give Amira a voice, then there will be many more Amiras out there who can relate to her story.”

In addition to inspiring other students facing similar challenges to begin speaking about their experiences and concerns Ciarán anticipates it will open the eyes of parents too.

“Indirectly we are letting parents and adults know what’s really going on in the life of a teenager,” says Ciarán, who is also the Student Wellbeing Coach at the Swiss International School.

The Celt notes that many parents would love nothing more than to listen to the teenage child open up about their worries, but they can’t seem to get their child to engage properly.

“Lots of parents want to talk, and its’ actually the student who may be blocking it,” agrees Ciarán.

The guidance Ciarán offers in addressing the communication gap between teenager and adult is gleaned from his work over many years as a teacher working in schools operating across the broadest spectrum imaginable, and also research conducted across 38 countries.

Each chapter is broken into two sections, the first devoted to the children telling their story, and in the second, Ciarán responds to each young person’s story with a module from what he brands his ‘CMB Wellbeing Warrior Programme’. He is confident readers will pick up the “skills and tools” to approach the problems tactfully.

“The teenager tends to play the victim in lots of these stories,” he reports. He gives the example of a female being bullied who wants to tell her father about it.

“Let’s just respect the fact that dad doesn’t have the skill to have a conversation like this, because nobody taught dad. Instead of blaming dad in this example, I’m getting Olivia to appreciate that dad just doesn’t have the skills – so what can Olivia do to help dad have a conversation like this? We’re trying to give control to the student to start working these skills, not just on themselves, but the parent. The whole thing is to bridge the gap – if we can bridge the gap for communication, for openness, then there will be lot less anxious students and anxious parents, because they are talking to each other. It’s a lost skill.”

Part of the reason talking and listening skills are deemed lost skills is due to the omnipresent phone. He notes that parents regularly give out about children constantly being on the phone, yet they are regularly using their smart device.

“We need to model behaviour – we can’t tell a teenager to behave In a certain way if we don’t do it ourselves.

“Of course all of this is easier said than done, but it’s to try to get away from this directive approach and to try a non-directive approach when we are dealing with teenagers. What I mean by that is to treat them like adults, have a conversation with them. If they are stuck in the phone the whole time, have a conversation – ‘What is it you are looking at?’ ‘What do you like about that?’ Create conversation. He also recommends asking teenagers to do tasks, as opposed to telling them as they simply want to be treated like adults

“It’s self determination theory: if you’ve got a role in the decision making system, then you have a role to play in the outcome – you want it to work, so involving teenagers is very important.”

Ciarán recalls a recent chat with one parent who told him that, try as she may, she couldn’t get her 14 year old daughter to listen to her.

“When your 14 year old daughter was a baby, and she was waking up all night, you were frustrated and tired, but you served her needs – you went to the cot and comforted her and fed her and got her back to sleep. The bottom line is you didn’t give up on her, so why give up on her now when she’s 14, 15, 16?

Heartbroken

“I see heartbroken parents – they’ve lost their little boy or they’ve lost their little girl for a couple of years, but then they get them again and they grow up to lovely young adults. But there’s always this few years where they don’t want to listen to mam and dad, they’re not being the nice child they used to be and the relationship has broken down. And the relationship gets more and more damaged the more you fight it – the more you give this warrior pointing finger: ‘You will get to your bedroom!’ You will do as you’re old!’ You are not wearing that! This kind of stuff.”

“Once parents can appreciate that its a phase and work with the student then you have a far better chance of that phase not being as bad as it needs to be.

“The big thing is you get through that phase, but at what cost? At what cost did it take for Paul to turn out to be a good lad again. Did he lose his friends? Did he lose the trust of his family? Was he bad at school?

“And what we are trying to do here is, and this is what I mean by bridge the gap, we are trying to soften this phase as much as possible to minimise the cost.”