Alabama's Morning News with JT
Adam Holtz tells us what we can learn from Inside out 2
An official message from Medicare. A new law is helping me save more money on prescription drug costs. You may be able to save too. With Medicare's Extra Help Program, my premium is zero and my out of pocket costs are low. Who should apply? Single people making less than $23,000 a year or a married couple who make less than $31,000 a year. Even if you don't think you qualify, it pays to find out. Go to ssa.gov/extrahelp paid for by the US Department of Health and Human Services. Welcome back to Alabama's Morning News. My name is John Mounts. I'm filling in for JT today and I have a daughter. She is 14 years old and let me tell you being a single father of a teenage daughter is it's something else. And if you've seen this movie inside out too, I can't tell you how very true, how very true this rings true to me when I was watching it. I watched it with her and I couldn't help but think how many of the struggles that young Riley was going through that she's going through. Joining me now from Plugged In, which is focused on the family's site, is Adam Holtz. Adam, welcome to the show. John, thanks for having me on today. I appreciate it. Team Mental Health is an overwhelming problem right now and parents don't know how to cope with kids. Some of the changes kids are going through. Parents don't even, we don't remember when we went through it and so it's hard to relate sometimes. That's exactly right. And if you've watched the news anytime in the last couple of years, you may have seen new stories about rates of teen mental health issues like anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and extreme cases really going through the roof. And scientists are sort of coalescing as much as scientists ever do around the idea that social media seems to be contributing to those rising rates of anxiety. Sometimes we don't know what our kids are going through and even if we're aware, it can be difficult to know where to make that connection. Like you, I have a 13 and a 15 year old daughter and a 17 year old son and I find that it can be difficult to know how to communicate. And so the nice thing about a movie like Inside Out 2 is that it potentially creates a bridge that we can use as parents to talk with our kids about issues, especially like anxiety. That's the biggest one that comes up in the movie. Yeah, the new character they introduced who was very anxious all the time and anxiety is running Riley's life. And I think anxiety does run our teenage children's lives because they are so worried about so many things that we as adults have long since stopped worrying about. But they're so worried about what if this person says this to me and looks at me this way and then I look at them and what are they going to think of the way I looked at them. And they stress out over all this stuff and these problems because they don't have the life experience, they don't realize how insignificant they are. So to them, they are the end of the world when these little problems happen. Well, and I think that was true with us too. I think what has changed today is the social media and technology component, it amplifies it all. Everything that we felt when we were going to adolescence and for me, that was in the late, you know, in the late 70s and early 80s, I remember some of those feelings. But I also know in those moments where we felt embarrassed or we were insecure, they were hard moments, but they didn't get broadcast to the world. And so now with the advent of social media, not only do you have that experience the first time, but it potentially gets projected out there in ways that really, like I said, amplify that sense of anxiety and that's what researchers are finding. And I think the movie does a great job of showing how Riley experiences that. She has two of her old kind of best friends and then she's got a new friend and I won't get into the nuts and bolts of the plot. As only to say, she feels this tension between her relationships and it's a big deal for her. And I think as parents, we can, we remember maybe, you know, broadly speaking what it was like, but you lose sight of how it almost feels like life and death for them. One of the things I've also found Adam is sometimes when they ask a question, they don't mean for us to get into the details that we're willing to go into. And sometimes, sometimes they're just asking it out of frustration and they don't want an answer. Sometimes they want an answer, but they want like a one sentence answer that, you know, I don't know that just stupid was what they're kind of hoping you'd say. And if you have anything more than that, Dad, why do you have to be gross? You know, and then it's hard to, you can see that I have a daughter that age. So you, it's hard to figure out exactly what they're looking for, but at the same time, give them what they need. That's exactly right. And we want to be careful not to like, you know, just open the floodgates on them and shoot our fire hose and answers because finally, you know, they're giving us an opening. And so I think, you know, basics like just paying attention to their body language. Are they listening? Are they engaged? Are they leaning in? Or are they shutting down and rolling their eyes when you get to the second sentence? And that'll give you a clue, I think, with regard to how far, how far do you take that conversation? Adam, what do you do when your child has a friend who maybe is not, you know how they have the friend you hope they emulate? And then there's also the friend that you wish they didn't emulate and they seem to gravitate towards them. What do you do when they start to seek out their guidance rather than your own? Well, I think we have to play the long game, right? I think that my, my daughters have some friends that I really like and some others that I am less crazy about. But I think that if we're developing that relationship with them, that gives us a chance to influence and potentially to speak into their lives. And it may be that there are moments of frustration for us as parents, right? Like you're talking about, it feels like you're going down the wrong path or hanging out with the friend who influences in a way that we're not crazy about. But I think if we clamp down and try to control everything, in many cases you're going to get a hardened or rebellious response. But keeping those lines of communication open, letting our kids know, "Hey, I want to be engaged with you." But I do love it when my daughters especially come to me and say, "Hey, I have a friend who's doing this. What do you think about?" And yeah, just being available to talk and to give input and to relate to them as much as we can. Adam Holt, the director of Plugged In, focused on the family's entertainment and technology review website. Thank you so much for joining me this morning on Alabama's Morning News. An official message from Medicare. A new law is helping me save more money on prescription drug costs. Maybe you can save too. With Medicare's Extra Help program, my premium is zero and my out-of-pocket costs are low. Who should apply? Single people making less than $23,000 a year or married couples who make less than $31,000 a year. Even if you don't think you qualify, it pays to find out. Go to ssa.gov/extrahelp. Paid for by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.