I know this happens to you, because it often happens to me. I pick up the kids from school and ask “How was your day?” I receive a flat “fine” in return. I dig deeper. My kid clams-up and gets mad. Well, my friend, this one of the most common parenting power struggles, especially in the tween and teen years. But Megan Saxelby has a fix for this.
But what if the problem isn’t your kid—or even adolescence itself?
What if it’s the story we’ve been told about this stage of life?
Megan Saxelby, my guest on Screen Less Play More was a middle school teacher for 15 years, then dean of students, and now an incredible parenting coach. Megan explains “the story that society is telling you about this age is actually the problem, not you and not your kid. So let’s just tell a different story.” She has proof that playfulness and cringe are the real ways to connect with your kids.
Megan hilariously suggests, “When they get in the car, do something playful and connective. Ask them ‘who do you think had to hold in a fart today to avoid catastrophe? And they’re like, What?’ and you’re like, ‘I don’t know, tell me about your teacher’s faces.'” Megan reminds us, “We often think that play or connection has to be these huge, big moments and it’s not. The foundations to kids who want to come home at 30 start with dumb stuff you say in the car on the way home from school.”
Here’s part one of Megan Saxelby‘s hilarious and helpful interview on the Screen Less Play More podcast. She helps us all learn how to better connect with teens and tweens.
Magical Questions Can Make Magical Connection With Teens
One amazing way to connect with teens and kids instead of interrogating them is through “magical questions.” These type of questions are ones that everyone wants to answer, but they also want to hear everyone else’s answer too.
Some magical questions to ask at school pick-up:
- What animal could you beat in hand-to-hand combat?
- What kind of rides would be in a theme park for snails?
- What would you do if you were king or queen for a week?
- Would you rather have superhuman strength or the ability to read people’s thoughts?
- Would you rather have spaghetti for hair or celery for hands?
Magical questions to deflate conflict with your tween or teen:
- What embarrassing gift would you like to send your teacher anonymously?
- What one song would you listen to on repeat for one year?
- If you could switch lives with a fictional character, who would it be?
- Would you rather have your farts smell like cookies or your breath smell like roses?
- Which of your friends would freak out most if he/she found a rabid skunk in his/her bed?
Why Connection With Teens Beats Control (Every Time)
Tweens and teens are not trying to be difficult. Their brains are changing faster than at any other point since early childhood. Megan explains “their brain is the most plastic it’s ever going to be, between the ages of 10 and 15. That’s part of the reason they’re so wild right now.” Hence, the mood swings, impulsivity, intensity, and big reactions.
Think of it like growing pains, but for the brain. When we treat every eye roll, door slam, or huff as a character flaw (or a parenting failure), we miss what’s really going on: a dysregulated nervous system asking for connection.
This is where playfulness and cringe can be a parent’s secret weapon.
Using Playfulness To Wake Up Sleepy Kids and Adolescents
So your child or teen doesn’t want to get up in the morning, right? We have all been there. But most of us fall into the trap of conflict. We yell, “come on, you’re going to be late!” We badger, annoy, and get frustrated. Megan suggests however, that it takes the same time to do the task playfully instead of angrily, with much better results.
How can you wake up a kid using play?
- Make a playlist on Sunday night. Put 3 songs that your child loves. Don’t wait for the alarm to go off- just start playing the fun songs outside your child’s bedroom.
- Read a book to your child, snuggled in bed together. They’ll open their eyes to see the pictures!
- Have your tween’s BFF do a voice recording of him/her singing a song that your child hates. Play the song in the morning, and your tween will be so surprised and amused that they will wake right up.
Megan suggests on Screen Less Play More that parents put something in between them, the child, and the conflict point. The enemy is not you, it’s the fact that school is so early. The enemy is not you, it’s the Bluetooth speaker that is playing the music.
How To Make Homework Less Awful Through Play
We all know that homework battles can really put a wedge in the relationship between parent and child. Megan suggests some fun ways to release the tension and keep you from being the enemy. These ideas remind kids that it’s not mom that’s mean- it’s the math. It’s not dad that’s a dud – it’s the English paper causing drudgery. It’s not parent against child, it’s us against the world!
Megan solves this problem through the playful idea of personalized pencils. “For example, I had a [student] who was having a terrible sixth grade year because he had a seizure disorder…. So I had an envelope full of pencils that said “f**K this sh#*” that were gold and bedazzled. And when he had a seizure, I handed the envelope of pencils to him and he was in the hallway…. and the look on that kid’s face…”
Megan says that in her parent coaching work, “I used to tell a lot of the parents, you can get a lot of personalized pencils on Amazon or through this woman on Etsy. Do you have a family inside joke? It’d be perfect for this. You’re in the middle of a terrible homework battle and you suddenly get to the point where you’re like ‘okay, I’m either going to kill my kid or I’m going to walk out of this room.’ And you just walk over and say ‘I noticed your pencil’s a little dull…… You could get ones that say ‘I hate math’ or ‘Pencil for breaking,’ or ‘break in case of homework.'”
Connect With Your Teen Through Memes, Songs, and Cringe
Megan is also a huge fan of memes. As the dean of students at a middle school she would print out a meme, and then write a note on it. “I was notorious for using a photo of a squirrel who had this insane look and the his hands up in the air… And I would put speech bubbles that were like, ‘I’m sorry you made a dumb choice. I still think you’re a good kid.’ And I would go I would hide it in the kids’s backpack or I would email it to them later. It was the idea that for accountability to feel beneficial for pro-social growth, it has to be reconnected to playfulness.”
Another example of conflict that can turn into connection is a common one: Your tween runs upstairs and slams her bedroom door. But, despite your first reaction, this is not the moment for a lecture, it’s a moment for playfulness. Megan advises, “It’s fine to have boundaries around behavior. But in that moment she’s inviting you upstairs to fight with her. For whatever reason, she can’t have a conversation right now because she’s 11 and her brain just like took off to Intensity Town and now it’s gone. So, just let it be gone. And then go up in 10 minutes. Then open the door and don’t have the first thing be correction, have the first thing be connection.”
When you walk in her room, “it doesn’t have to be like, ‘Oh my God, I love you.’ You can go in and be like, ‘Hey, so that felt hot. What’s up?’ And if she’s like, ‘Nothing. You never listen to me.’ You can be like, ‘All right, so looks like this isn’t the time. if you need something from me, I’m gonna be here. Also, that can be a time where you [sing in a silly voice] ‘Are you feeling really angry?” ‘Cuz your feet smell.”
“Just taking their nervous system back from them is sometimes what they need, right? There are playful ways to do that…Some parents might be like, ‘Uh, you couldn’t catch me dead doing that.’ But I I can tell you after working with adolescence for 17 years, all of you would feel a little bit better if you could find some silliness. But that’s also the a great moment to have memes or something dumb or something silly ready to go. You know how many times when I was an adolescent – and I was tough – that my mom would just walk into my room, say nothing, hand me a post-it note that said, ‘I still think you’re great. Sorry things are hard.’ and then just walk away.
Megan reminds us, “Every reaction [teens] have is not an indictment of their character or of your parenting. A kid who has a hard moment and melts down and loses it, that is zero indication of how good a job you’re doing. It has every indication about where their nervous system is currently at.” So don’t beat yourself up as a parent! Their minds are changing a lot, but that can be a fun opportunity to grow closer, not further apart.
Tune in to the TWO PART interview with Megan Saxelby on Screen Less Play More Podcast! She had so much amazing advice for parents on how to connect with teens and tweens that I had to split it into two episodes! More for us!
Episode one is entitled “Parenting Teens Can Actually Be Great: Research-Backed Tools For Adolescence With Megan Saxelby” and episode 2 is called “How To Keep Tweens and Teens Safe Online – Without Tracking, Over-Monitoring, or Killing Independence.”
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Thanks for reading Cringe Is the Bridge: How Playfulness Builds Real Connection With Tweens and Teens!
