Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Stanley Fish, best-selling author and octogenarian, clues us into the intricacies of arguments: how argument is a more natural state; destructive arguments; how to get out of one; and much more! Grateful to be able to connect with the author of Winning Arguments and The First, Dr. Fish!

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Full show notes

“I
hate you! You never trust me to do anything on my own!”

Your teen yells at you as they storm off to their room. Slam! Yeah, you probably won’t see her again until dinner. Exasperated and confused, you try to retrace the steps that led to this moment. Your teen came home in a good mood today, buoyed by news of a weekend getaway a friend is putting together. She walked in from school and mentioned it to you, hoping to gain immediate approval.

When you asked her for more details about the trip, she grew defensive. She scoffed when you asked if a parent would be going, but you pressed for details. She grew defensive, saying that it didn’t matter if a parent would be there or not. However, the vacation home your teen plans to go to is over three hours away and you are apprehensive about something going wrong when the teens are so far away. Finally, you gave an ultimatum: no parent, no trip.

That’s when all hell broke loose and you began to wonder how tense the dinner table might get later tonight. As a concerned parent, you want to know how to win an argument with a teenager. What strategies can parents use to win? And how can parents manage conflict without it turning to anger?

In this episode of the Talking to Teens Podcast, Stanley Fish shares his research on how to win an argument with a teenager. Stanley has a long resume, highlighted by stints at UC Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Florida International University. In addition to being a professor of humanities and law, he has written 19 books about everything from free speech to the science of arguments.

Stanley’s book, Winning Arguments: What Works and Doesn’t Work in Politics, the Bedroom, the Courtroom, and the Classroom is perfect for parents who want to learn how to win an argument with a teenager. We delve into this book’s methods for parents and teens to keep arguments from spiraling into negativity. Stanley accomplishes this feat by teaching us the red flags of arguments so disagreements can be handled in a civil manner.

Two Red Flags of Arguments

Red Flag #1: The Ideological Impasse

Parents struggling to figure out how to win an argument with a teenager need to know about the “Ideological Impasse. ” Here’s an example of what an “Ideological Impasse” is:

Stanley mentioned the 2010s controversy surrounding the name of the NFL team in Washington, D.C.. Washington had carried the nickname of “Redskins” since their inception in 1932, but in the 2010s, protesters organized and called for the franchise to change their name. There were two sides to this dialogue.

A) Protestors saw themselves as fighting the long history of racism.

B) Ownership saw themselves as upholding free speech and tradition.

Neither side was willing to give in to the other’s idea, thus forming an “Ideological Impasse.” They were fundamentally at odds and it took a decade of stalemate before either side could convince the other.

Drawing out conflict is exactly what parents should avoid when they have a disagreement with their teens. Parents who want to learn how to win an argument with a teenager should avoid prolonged conflicts because it decreases the chance of a productive result of an argument.

Solution: Bridging the Impasse

Once you reach the point of an impasse, Stanly recommends that parents take a step back.

One way a parent can figure out how to win an argument with a teenager and take a step back is to simply say,

“I understand where you are coming from. But can we put this conversation on the shelf for now? I’d like to take some more time to think about this.”

Making a statement that closes the argument while finding another time to pick up the conversation is a great way to de-escalate arguments.

Declaring a ceasefire might not be easy, but it will preserve the feelings of parents and teenagers involved in the argument. This will stop the disagreement from spiraling out of control.

This tip is important for parents who want to learn how to win an argument with a teenager because setting your terms for when an argument happens is like having a “home field advantage” in the argument.

Taking a step back will also allow teens and parents a chance to reproach the issue under controlled circumstances. Here’s a way parents can do this:

Instead of setting an ultimatum about the trip your daughter wants to go on, parents can pause the argument. Setting aside time to discuss this issue in a day or two will give parents time to prepare a controlled discussion as opposed to having an argument spiral out of control.

On top of everything, the strategy of setting a later date and time will help parents who want to learn how to win an argument with a teenager because it lowers the probability of the dehumanization of the “other.”

Red Flag #2: Dehumanization of the “Other”

Stanley mentioned the dehumanization of the “other” as a natural point of advancement stemming from an ideological impasse. Essentially, when an argument between two parties is ratcheted up to an impasse, an emotional disconnect emerges between the opposing sides. Both sides will create an image of the “other” that is created for the sole purpose of being torn down.

A perfect example of the dehumanization of the “other” can be found in the politics of the United States after the election of Donald Trump. On Democratic and Republican sides, images were created of the other party in order to discredit the values each promoted. An example of political dehumanization is:

A) Democratic supporters were called out as communists.

B) Republican supporters were called out as fascists.

Essentially, both parties forgot that human beings existed behind the constructed images of the other group. This caused polarizing attacks instead of humans doing productive work to solve the problems of the country.

Similarly, if parents and teens resort to dehumanization there is little chance anything productive comes of the argument. Ultimately, this will increase the challenges for parents who want to learn how to win an argument with a teenager.

Solution: The “I” Statement

The solution to dehumanization, and the answer to how to win an argument with a teenager, is to elicit “I” statements from the other person. Essentially, when an argument reaches the point of dehumanization, one side will receive pleasure from making the opposite side feel bad.

A method to get an “I” statement from a teenager can be:
  • How does it make you feel when I say you can’t go on the trip?
Eliciting an “I” statement about the argument will cause teens and parents to consider the emotional impact of dehumanization. By reconnecting with the emotions of the other side in an argument, the negativity that comes with dehumanization will be avoided.

Avoiding negativity is helpful for parents who want to learn how to win an argument with a teenager because it feeds an unproductive argumentative cycle. Nothing gets done when each side vilifies the other politically or at home, and by destroying the cycle of dehumanization parents can win more arguments with teens.

Final Thoughts

Unfortunately, arguments are a natural part of the parent-teen dynamic, and avoiding confrontation is never an option. However, the negativity brought to personal relationships because of arguments can be avoided if parents follow Stanley’s tips for how to win an argument with a teenager.

Remember to:
  • Prevent the “Ideological Impasse” by taking a step back from the argument
  • Prevent Dehumanizing the “Other” by using “I” statements to regain emotional connection
In addition to the red flags of arguments parents should be aware of when practicing how to win an argument with a teenager, Stanley and I discuss a host of other topics, including:
  • What to do about hate speech
  • The “Because I say so” argument
  • How to manage authority in an argument
  • Winning arguments by losing
That’s all! Thank you so much to Stanley Fish for discussing how to win an argument with a teenager. For more of Stanley’s insights, check out his books Winning Arguments and The First: How to Think About Hate Speech, Campus Speech, Religious Speech, Fake News, Post-Truth and Donald Trump.

Creators & Guests

Host
Andy Earle
Host of the Talking to Teens Podcast and founder of Write It Great
Guest
Stanley Fish

What is Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers?

Parent-teen researcher Andy Earle talks with various experts about the art and science of parenting teenagers. Find more at www.talkingtoteens.com

Andy: Your book, Winning Arguments really caught my eye because a lot of the things that parents have trouble with in talking to teenagers is, arguments that everything seems to turn into an argument. So I was really interested to see what tips you had in here. And this book is philosophical. You get into really deeply how arguments work and how they work in different contexts. And it's a lot more in depth than I was expecting, which was really cool. So can you talk a little bit about where it came from and what inspired you to write it?

Stanley: Sure. When people think about arguments that is, disagreements, disputes. I usually assume that being in the midst of an argument is a special case. Whereas the more normal case, the more ordinary case is agreement. That argument marks the point at which agreement has broken down for whatever reason. And so then you get into a confrontational or adversarial position. In my view, and it's not only mine turns that around and says, "No that, argument is our natural state." Being in an argument or dispute a disagreement is what life is all about. And that agreement, if and when it occurs is always fragile and temporary.

Stanley: A matter of mounting, some structure within which communication can continue for a while. And I say for a while because at some point that structure always becomes shaky, afraid at the edges and you're back in the stage of open argument. So, I thought I would try to explain how living in a world of argument works, especially in the context of people who want to believe, as I said a moment ago, that argument is special and unique or unordinary whereas agreement is ordinary. Agreement is an amazing achievement which very really is sustained.

Andy: So how do we just get rid of argument.

Stanley: Get rid of arguments. You can't get rid of it.

Andy: We don't want to just agree all the time and have a nice friendly communication.

Stanley: We do. Of course you're absolutely correct. That's what we want. We want to agree but what we find out often in our interactions with family members, with people in our various professional walks of life, with people that you engage with in the streets. What you find out is that certain assumptions that you were making about the way the world is shaped and about what it isn't is not appropriate to do, are not shared somehow by the person or persons you're talking to.

Stanley: That's a moment of unhappiness and distress. Where you realize that what you would assume to be the basis of agreement isn't really there. And then you have to go back and start to try to fashion it again. So argument is not something from which you can escape, and it's not something that you can bring to an end. It's only something that you might be able to manage.

Andy: One thing you talked about early on in the book on page nine and 10 here is a specific type of argument that goes, "Because I say so." Which you say is a version of the argument from authority. I thought this was funny because you'd have a little story in here about how this didn't work so well with your daughter. So, is that just a terrible argument to use or is there ever a time when parents might be able to successfully pull off an argument from authority?

Stanley: An argument from authority is always risky because usually the authority that is claimed depends on an agreement by the other party to submit to it, or at least to recognize it. And when problems occur and when parents find that the assertion or the invoking the argument from authority doesn't work, what is happening is that the whole fragile structure of interfamily respect is being exposed for what it is, a temporary almost fictional construct that can be shaken at almost any moment. And that's what happens when parents suddenly discover that all of the argumentative moves or verbal tricks that they've been accustomed to rely on don't work at a certain point.

Stanley: And it's then when you're tempted to do what I did in that little story that I told at the beginning of the book and that is to lock your child in his or her bedroom or some other act, which doesn't work either. But what you're driven to it by an inability to see how that fragile structure of agreement and the maintenance of civility in everyday life can be regained. It's a very hard thing to do.

Andy: So once you lose authority is there no way to get it back then you think?

Stanley: I think the best illustration from that book of the experience I'm discussing is the chapter on marriage and what happens in the course of a domestic argument. What happens in the course of a domestic argument is that at a certain point, scoring points becomes what each party is trying to do. And the more you succeed in scoring points, the further away from coming back to a moment when you can be in again to speak in a friendly way, it is. So in a way, the way to win arguments in a sense that will actually do all of the parties good is to be willing to lose the argument.

Stanley: Once you're in the middle of an argument, the last thing in your mind is a willingness to lose. You just want to beat the other person into the ground metaphorically, of course. So, you're going to seize on anything that comes to mind. So for example, in the middle of a domestic quarrel which might be about something that happened yesterday, you're going to dredge up something that happened 25 years ago or 20 years ago, or even five years ago.

Stanley: That is you going to be casting around for whatever verbal weapon you can lay your hand on. And then you want to hit the other party with that. Once you're in that mood or once you're in that mode, things are pretty bad. And it's very hard to get back unless a halt is called to the whole thing, just stop, let's get off the train or get off the very ground or whatever your favorite metaphor is. But that itself is hard to do. So living in a world of argument is extremely difficult especially when you want to use argument to win the argument or get out of the argument. It just won't work.

Andy: You talk in your chapter about political arguments, about convictions held at the level of underlying commitments and how once it gets to that point, they're no longer vulnerable to the marshaling of evidence. And you have this example of the Redskins football. Can you walk me through that and why is it that once it gets to that point, it's actually completely impervious to evidence?

Stanley: Because at a certain point, whether or not to retain the name Redskins for the Washington National Football League team becomes less a question of let's say, consideration for others or even a question of economic calculation on the part of the football team owners, becomes more a matter of defending your way of life. So at a certain point those who wish to remove the name Redskins from the football team believe that they are speaking for and against centuries of discrimination against native Americans.

Stanley: They believe that their cause is just and right, not only in a local sense but in a national and even in a global sense. And on the other side, those who wish to retain the name Redskins are speaking out in terms of the freedom to choose their own ways of speaking without governmental or public interference. If I want to call my team Redskins, why should anybody have the power to stop me from doing it. Or if I want to root for a team with the name Redskins, shouldn't I be allowed to do so, isn't this a matter of holding the American way. You see, the issues get ratcheted up quickly to finally each side feels that it's defending truth and civilization against the attacks and underminings of the other side.

Andy: And at that point, there's no amount of evidence that changed your mind because it's-

Stanley: And you will always hear that evidence is coming from the other side and you will look for and have no difficulty in finding motives that underlie that evidence. And you will question the source of that evidence or you will say at a certain moment that's actually evidence from my side. Once things become that interest as they have been in the context of that example there you are and of course today we have a similar situation or structurally similar situation in the person of Donald Trump.

Stanley: If you are a believer in Trump as the devil or as the corrupter of the nation and of civilization on the one hand or if you believe on the other hand that Trump has saved the nation from elitist and anti-American values, there's nothing that you're going to be able to hear from the other side as it will be regarded as evidence that you might consider because everything that you hear from the other side is something you hear from the other side and you know in your heart that the other side is evil. And there are a lot of people on both sides of what we might call the Trump divide who are exactly in this position and you probably know some of them.

Andy: It strikes me though that this happens a lot with an apparent team dynamic where these situations about little daily things turn into much bigger issues where it becomes a matter of you like, "You don't trust me." It's just whatever it is something stupid but it gets ratcheted up to this level where there's an impasse and it's fundamentally impossible to break through because you're both coming at it from different sides of this really ideological debate when it's actually really just a small issue of whatever happened.

Stanley: It's a small issue to which all the weight of the ideologies of the two parties has been detached and once that happens it's very difficult to back to the point of saying, "Wait a minute what we would talking about whether or not to go to the movies tomorrow." How did we get that to the cosmic coral we seem to be engaged in. And the other thing about... Not only about domestic arguments between husbands and wives or partners or arguments between parents and children but the thing about argument in general is that, quite often you're in the middle of one before that that is your present situation.

Stanley: As I put it in the book, [crosstalk] arguments don't begin in the same way that let's say a professional boxing match begins with the ringing of a bell and the two parties come out of their respective corners in a fighting stance arguments don't begin at all. At least they don't seem to begin, you suddenly find yourself in the middle of one before you know it.

Stanley: Pieces of advice that are useful, the ones that seem to me to be useful, draw back from the argument, declare a period of ceasefire, ask the other person to explain how he or she is feeling in a way that might lead you to get back in touch with the real person in front of you as opposed to the symbolic person that has been created by you in the course of the argument those kinds of strategies. I have at least the chance of working, dampening the argument down, if not putting out the fire at least reducing the intensity of the fire.

Andy: You said something interesting in there, you said something about the person that you've created in your mind since the start of the argument. And that's something that I had marked in here on page 99, you said that's the first and most important rule of domestic quarrels, their performances of personality creation. And then also you go on to say, the personalities they create form quickly and tend to stick around for a long time.

Stanley: That's right.

Andy: What exactly do you mean by that?

Stanley: What I mean is that, in order to engage in an argument with someone where you quickly arrive at a level of intensity, you have to cast the other person in a big drama in which he or she is the villain in order to do that piece of casting, you have to attribute certain negative features to that person. And in doing so, you build up a picture of that person which supersedes and in fact more or less obliterates whatever picture of the person that you might've had before the argument begins.

Andy: It strikes me that totally what has to happen during an argument you have to depersonalize the other person to a certain extent in your mind and build them up as the enemy a little bit. And so, that happens before you even realize it. As you were saying, you find yourself in an argument before you realize that it even started. So then, what do you do when you do realize it or is there a way to undo that casting that you done on the other person somehow?

Stanley: Of course, it will depend-

Andy: Or the one they've done on you?

Stanley: Depends to some extent and how far either of you have gone if you pulled out all stops and then said things which cannot be taken back often because they are in some sense true, but are so wounding in their truth that they threatened the fabric of the entire relationship. The great play by Edward Albee, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, is a textbook on how this happens and how arguments accelerate and how the stakes become and higher until you reach a dangerously approach that point where the next move will ruin the structure of the relationship for ever.

Stanley: And when that happens and it does happen that's when you get children storming out of the house or running away from home, you get parents instituting divorce proceedings. Now, in between the argument that reaches those heights and those disastrous conclusion's comes the possibility of therapy of mediation which of course involves third parties. So, there comes a point where you and your arguing partner have done such a good by which I mean bad job of creating the other as a demon that you have to have someone else come in, a third party neither you nor your who can attempt to reintroduce you to the person you knew before you made him or her.