Have you ever pondered the significance of your teenager's safety in school, both physical and emotional? Do you know how it directly impacts their self-esteem and overall development? As a seasoned high school educator and life coach, I interrogate these pressing issues in this enlightening episode of the Empowered Parent Podcast. We're not just talking about fencing and CCTV cameras. We’re tearing open the conversation around emotional safety, a critical but often underrated aspect of making our teens feel secure. This is an essential listen for every parent seeking to understand and better support their teenager's journey towards a safer school experience.
Dig deeper as we discuss how safety, an essential element in the hierarchy of teen needs, influences their daily lives and self-perception. Learn how to engage your teenager in meaningful conversations about their day-to-day experiences in school, and gain valuable insights into understanding their environment better. Get ready to learn practical ways to help your teen feel safer, and how to provide the support they need in their daily lives. This episode is packed with insights that could revolutionize the way you parent your teen. Don't miss out on this vital conversation!
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Speaker 1:
an important conversation because when they don't feel safe, in whatever manner that looks like, it is going to impact how they show up at school. It's going to impact their ability to focus, it's going to impact their level of stress and overwhelm, and those impacts that they're going through eight hours a day at school are going to carry over to when they come home and see you.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to the Empowered Parent Podcast with Renee. Being a teenager is hard. Being a parent of a teenager can be even harder. Each episode we deliver tips, tools, tricks and stories to help you feel empowered, confident and energized as the parent of a teenager. Teenagers want to be happy. Sometimes they just need a little help along the way. Now here's your host, Renee Sinning. Renee is a certified life leadership and success coach for teenagers and their parents. She's also a mom of three young adults and an experienced high school educator of 18 years. Renee is well versed in everything teen. Now, without any further ado, here's Renee.
Speaker 1:
Hey parents, it's Renee, I'm so glad you're here for another episode of the Empowered Parent Podcast. In this episode we're going to talk about does your teen feel safe in school, and I think this is a really important topic and one that deserves some real thought. The thing is, those answers, honestly, can only come from your teenagers. So what do I mean by feeling safe in school? About twice a month, I teach a Teenage Teen Academy bootcamp for the Colorado Springs Teen Court Program. So you've heard me talk about that before, probably, and so what this means is that for these kiddos, they've been sentenced quote to my program for some type of a misdemeanor drugs fighting, theft. But here's the kicker at least 50% of the kids that come to this program come to me because there was fighting in school, and I mean like physical fighting, and the age range is generally between like 12 and 15, once in a while getting an 11 year old once in a while like a 16 or 17 year old, but generally it's like 12 to 15 ish. So we're talking seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th grade. These kids are coming to me because there's a lot of physical fighting in school. So we've had a lot of conversations about that, and so when we talk about does your teen feel safe at school, I mean yes, physically, but also emotionally. So not to get too wishy washy, but if you've ever heard, which I'm sure you probably have have loves hierarchy of teen needs, the idea being that each need builds upon the other. So the basic needs of humans number one, at the very bottom, is food, shelter, water, water, clothing, etc. Those kind of physiological needs. But also, for teenagers, this encompasses sleep, exercise and nutrition, which is huge because, as we all know, in this day and age, teens aren't getting enough sleep. Most teens are not getting enough sleep, not going to go into sleep. In this episode, a level above it, comes safety needs, and so we're talking emotional and physiological. So the question is what's happening at school? What is happening in schools today? I taught in the schools for over 18 years. There was rarely physical fights. And are there safety needs being met? Because for a lot of teens, the answer is no. They just don't feel safe at school.
Speaker 1:
I've had teens tell me and this is not just those coming through the court system that they go through their school day feeling like they're walking on eggshells. I mean, we know, like being a teenager, it's hard right and I was a shy, shy, shy teenager, so I was not the most comfortable in my own skin, and so I know I definitely had moments of feeling that way too. But I'm just hearing this more and more routines feel like they don't feel safe at school. Emotionally, physically, they do feel like they're walking on eggshells. Maybe they're trying to fit in, they're trying to avoid conflict with others or and I keep hearing this way too often is they feel like they have to get into a fight physically to put people in their place or, as they tell me, people are going to see them as weak. What is so hard to hear 12, 13, 14, 15 year olds telling me this? That they feel like, oh, I have to, I have to fight them because if I don't, they're going to see me a week and it's never going to stop. So either I have in the absolute topical of tomorrow or you haven't done that before. That's huge.
Speaker 1:
And then number three is that love in belonging piece you know, emotionally fitting in is tied to safety at school. This support, most of this support and safety comes from friendships. But what about those kids that don't have a lot of friendships? What about those kids that don't have a strong peer group. Where are their safety needs being met? And then at home. Of course, it comes from family, but not all kids are blessed with a family. That, too, is meeting those safety needs. So if these needs for safety which is number two on that hierarchy it's huge. If they're not being met at school and or at home, it's going to impact self esteem. So the question is do you believe that your teenagers feel safe at school? Do they feel safe physically and do they feel safe emotionally? These are basic needs that every teenager has, and so it's an important conversation, because when they don't feel safe, in whatever manner that looks like, it is going to impact how they show up at school. It's going to impact their ability to focus, it's going to impact their level of stress and overwhelm, and those impacts that they're going through eight hours a day at school are going to carry over to when they come home and see you. So, again, when those needs are not being met, it's going to have an impact on their teen self esteem.
Speaker 1:
I am so, so, so passionate about getting to the root of teen self esteem and building that from the inside up, having kids tap into their own needs, their own strength, their own values, because that, too, ties into safety. What I have found to be at the root of almost every teenager I work with is an impact on their self esteem, that low self esteem, that lower sense of self worth, and more often than not it goes directly to those basic safety needs not being met, or not being met to the extent that they need. What about their personal space? Are those needs being met? Do they feel safe physically, or is there bullying happening around them or other forms of personal physical conflict? Even if it's not happening to them, if they're in the vicinity of that, if they're watching that happen to other kids, that can still impact their own feelings of feeling safe physically. Because what if that happens to me? What if I'm next right Emotionally?
Speaker 1:
Are there safety needs being met? Do they feel emotionally safe? Do they have solid friendships? Do they feel like they fit in? Do they have the resources in place at school to deal with any kind of mental health challenges they have, or do they push everything down and pretend all is fine? I know schools do have some resources available, but if kids aren't talking about it, if they're not sharing that, they don't feel safe emotionally or physically, then in pushing it down and acting like everything is fine, that's going to impact their self esteem. That's going to impact their feelings of self worth. That's going to impact how they show up during their eight hours of school. That is a huge chunk of time to be in an environment when our teens may not feel safe.
Speaker 1:
Do they feel safe from things like gun violence? We hear it all the time. It just happened not too long ago in Texas. Hopefully it won't happen again for a long time, but it doesn't take a lot to go into the memory of a teenager. They might hear something one time from something that happened even a couple of years ago and that's still sitting there in their cellular memory and they don't really feel safe from that and maybe they're not talking about it because it's embarrassing.
Speaker 1:
Are your teens? Safety needs being met at school? So again, this isn't just the kids that make poor choices and get caught and come through the courts. This is happening and these are feelings that teens are having that come from all walks of life and that's something really hard for parents to hear and to understand, because the truth is, as parents, when we send our kids out the door to go to school. We want to believe that they feel safe and secure. It's just not happening in this day and age for a lot of teens. So imagine being a 12, 13, 14, 15 year old kid and feeling like you have to physically fight to protect yourself so you won't be bullied or seen as weak. How scary is that right? And that doesn't even take into account kids that have been in situations of abuse or other type of physical traumas and how those situations are going to impact them.
Speaker 1:
Feeling safe at school, a teen that's going through every day feeling like they're lost in the crowd, feeling like they're not, like like they're not pretty enough or good looking enough, like they have to hang out with a certain group just to fit in. But when they hang out with that group they're losing pieces of themselves because it's not who they are. So when a kid feels unsafe emotionally it's going to tug at their self-esteem and their self-worth, but there's a lot of shame attached to that, there's a lot of embarrassment, and so that's a lot of times like kids just go at the flow and act like it doesn't matter, but meanwhile on the inside they're being kind of torn up and I think we know this as adults. Many, many, many adults have not ever been taught the tools to like navigate through the stuff. And then they get into their 30s, 40s, 50s and all of a sudden they're dealing with it at that point in their life. So how awesome would it be to teach teens this at a young age, or at least be aware, so we can help them navigate it.
Speaker 1:
Remember again, safety is a top need of all human beings. But feeling physically and emotionally safe for a teen or tween is heightened. Their brains aren't developed, so they don't have the tools to know how to manage all of these conflicting emotions they're having, and so that safety need is often lacking. And again, in my opinion it is a key factor in low self-esteem and feelings of low self-worth. That's why I'm just so, so passionate about the importance of teaching kids to feel safe within themselves, literally. That's why I created my S-Cubed group program for teens and parents, because I'm so passionate about building that self-esteem in teens, because those safety needs, if they're not going to be taught in the school how to learn to feel safe emotionally, then where is it coming from, right? I mean, I know it comes from a home and from the parents, and I totally get that, but kids just always don't want to listen to us parents.
Speaker 1:
So a few things that you can do to determine if your child does not feel safe at school. Only your child knows the answer to this, and so you got to ask the questions. Now, if you have an open, honest relationship with your teenager, it's going to be a lot easier to have this type of a conversation, because what you're trying to get is really to get them to open up and put aside any shame or embarrassment or fear that they might be having and get them to kind of admit that, yeah, this is what's going on at school. If you don't, it's going to be like, if you don't have that super open relationship no judgment parents, it's just going to be a lot harder and maybe a little bit more uncomfortable, but it's still doable.
Speaker 1:
I'm going to share with you five questions to spark conversation, and you kind of want to set up this conversation in a way so they don't feel like you're going to grill them or tell them what to do. So you could say something like hey, I recently read an article. Or hey, I was talking to a friend about their kid's school and they brought up that there's fighting going on all the time and it got me thinking about that. So if you want to word it, I'd love to talk to you about this, if you don't mind. I'd love to get your perspective so I can understand and even get back to her.
Speaker 1:
Try to get some type of permission from your teen before you kind of go into the conversation. And one thing you could say hey, like on a scale of one to ten, how safe do you feel at school in general? And ten is like totally safe and one is like not safe at all. And then awesome, tell me more. And then you could just start to kind of say, hey, there are a lot of fights at your school. And then again go into whatever something you read, something you saw on TV, something a friend told you what's it like? Do you see this like? How do you deal with that? Because I don't remember that from when I was a kid.
Speaker 1:
And then kind of, you know tweak in the question if they feel safe physically. And then what about emotionally? Do you feel like you fit in? What are you? What stresses you out the most? You have somebody to talk to. Let them know, which I'm sure you already do that. You're always here for them and if they ever feel unsafe or weird about anything they can come to.
Speaker 1:
I'm sure you're already doing this, but I would encourage you to only ask, give advice if they ask, and then you could say, what about gun violence like? And you could just kind of bring it on yourself I'm just really curious about and say, you know, I never thought about how you're at school for eight hours a day and sometimes, you know, as a adult we kind of forget. We forget what it's like to be in that environment for eight hours. And so I am just super curious and how safe you feel at school? Do you feel safe from things like gun violence? Does that scare you? Does that affect your day?
Speaker 1:
And then, as that conversation goes on, you could kind of ask them you know, what can I do at home that I'm not already doing to help you feel safer, or something like that. I mean, these are teens and they're going to share, or they're not. But the more information that we can get from them to kind of be open and honest, it's really powerful to give you insight into what else might be going on in their world and what stressors might be happening that they don't really talk about and, yeah, super important. So I hope this was helpful and, yeah, I'll see you next time. Bye.
Speaker 2:
Sometimes they just need a little help along the way.