Show Notes

Welcome back to The State of Education podcast, presented by One-Room Education.

Today we dive into the often tumultuous relationship between teens and their parents, but with a bit of a twist. Kiera Gray is the 18-year-old behind the psychology-based course Inside the Teen Mind, created for parents to help reconnect with their preteens and teens to bring peace back to everyone’s lives. Kiera talks about everything from the developing brain to the modern education system, and how she was able to create a course for parents as a teen.

Topics discussed today include:

• The impact of parental presence on teens and preteens.
• What teens and preteens really need from their families and how to facilitate that.
• How the parental relationship affects education.
• Tips to reconnect with your teen.
• How home education can set the stage for early success in life.
• What public education looks like to a teen who is experiencing it.
• What the Inside the Teen Mind course is and how to access it.

Who is Kiera Gray

Kiera is a bright, articulate and warm 18-year-old who is on a mission to help parents better understand their children (teens specifically) through evidence-based psychology. With encouragement of her mother, and homeschool teacher, Kiera set out to create a course to bring her peers and their parents back together, by helping parents understand what is going on inside the minds of their teens and how they can reestablish a genuine connection that will last a lifetime.

About Inside the Teen Mind

Kiera is launching the Inside the Teen Mind parenting course for parents of teens and preteen on July 30, 2023. There is still time to sign up! Use the link below to get all of the details for the course.

Details About Enrolment:

Enrolment for the first class is open July 30-August 6, 2023. The first module will be available August 7, 2023. For more info, visit the links below.

Course info: https://insidetheteenmind.lemonsqueezy.com/

Where to Find Kiera

• Website: https://www.insidetheteenmind.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/inside_teenmind
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inside.the.teen.mind/
• Get the Inside the Teen Mind course: https://insidetheteenmind.lemonsqueezy.com/

Quotes from this Episode

The amount of nurturing and support that teens continue to need up until their 20s, your brain is not fully developed until you’re 25. I feel like that particular fact is missed a lot and that’s why I wanted to reach out to you and talk with you. Because it was so interesting to me that a teen would look and say, you know what? Something’s missing here and it’s not necessarily that teens don’t want to connect with their parents. It’s that parents either don’t want to connect with their teens because they don’t want to deal with the emotional drama that goes with teenage life or they don’t know how.

Katie J., The State of Education podcast, presented by One-Room Education. 7/11/23.

I think I have been discovering in my own life and also listening to my peers and my friends as they are going through their teen years. I’ve been discovering that teens need their parents even more, I would say, in the teen years than they have before, and it’s not so much figuring out how to learn from an education standpoint or how to be a good person, but it’s all of those really fine details of like, how to get a good job, how to be a happy person in your life that teens are just not really taught quite as much anymore and they need their parents to guide them.

Kiera Gray, The State of Education podcast, presented by One-Room Education. 7/11/23.

There’s a lot of external influences that they’re being influenced by throughout the day, especially throughout the school year, and I think a big one is peer pressure. We’ve seen so many studies and articles about how peer pressure influences behavior, and I think it’s a bit of a tricky topic for parents to navigate with teens.

It’s something I dive into a lot in my course because it just affects behavior so much and it can change your child and their morals and the way they behave, and I think that for parents it’s just so important to just subtly remind your teen about your familial values, your familial boundaries, what’s important, why do you hold those values? I think another big part of the teen years is coming into your own and realizing you don’t have to have the same values as your parents; and peer pressure again can influence that.

Kiera Gray, The State of Education podcast, presented by One-Room Education. 7/11/23.

There’s a really big push it feels in the teen years to break away from your parents and also in many cases to go against your parents, and by just reminding your teen of your values and especially why you hold them, like “what’s the logic behind that?”, it will help them to ward off peer pressure and not be quite as influenced by it.

Kiera Gray, The State of Education podcast, presented by One-Room Education. 7/11/23.

Homeschooling was a huge credit, and it gave my parents more time to be able to, one, instill the values that they held for us and that they wanted us to carry on, and two, it gave them the time to teach us what trust from them meant. Because most teens are like, “why don’t you trust me?”, and parents are like, “because you haven’t earned it.” 

But the parents haven’t fostered that trusting relationship with their kids from a young age. I have a two-year-old right now, and if I want him to do something, I say, “do this.” But if I give you a choice between, do you want green beans or a salad with your dinner? Right. It’s still green.

You still get a choice. Here’s why we’re eating this. Cool.

And I trust him to make a good choice because I limited his choices. But the older he gets, the more choices he’ll get and the more exposure he’ll get to everything.

And the theory is, because I’ve fostered how to make good choices from a young age, I’ll be able to trust and guide his decisions later on.

Katie J., The State of Education podcast, presented by One-Room Education. 7/11/23.3

Something that’s so important for teens is the ability to talk and kind of rant sometimes if they’ve encountered a really difficult problem. It’s really important for them to be able to talk and get it off their chest before diving into problem solving, which of course is very helpful; and teens want their parents to be able to provide them with good advice, and then often I find that asking your teen, “Hey, do you want to keep talking? Is there more you need to tell me or would you like to hear some ideas?” Give them a choice. 

As you’re saying, that option between green beans or a salad, choice is so huge in every stage of our life, and it hits a new stride in the teen years because all of a sudden teens can make all these choices. But fundamentally, they still want to be given choices by their parents. 

And so giving them that choice. Hey, do you want to talk more? Are there other details that I’m missing or do you want some ideas? Do you want some advice? That can really be huge for them.

Kiera Gray, The State of Education podcast, presented by One-Room Education. 7/11/23.