257: How Do I Guide a Kid Who Only Cares About Becoming an Influencer?

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“Rina, I think a lot of people feel like they just don't know how to connect to their”

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So subscribe to ASLisa, the psychology of raising tweens and teens, and join our YouTube community today. Just Google, Ask Lisa podcast, we're here to help you untangle family life. Episode 257, how do I guide a kid who only cares about becoming an influencer? So we're going to talk about how kids want to be influencers.

Is this really a big trend you're seeing? I think a lot of kids think about it. I think a lot of kids follow them. I think there's kids who are interested in it and have aspirations, and then I think their kids were like, "That's going to be me."

I think there's a wide range of how kids engage it, but it's funny. I mean, it used to be they wanted to be rock stars. Right, boys. Totally.

Yeah, a million years ago when I practiced, like, yeah, when boys would daydream about

their fan, it was like they'd be rock stars. Oh, yeah. So this isn't new, but this is the new form. All right. I want to get right into this letter.

It says, dear Dr. Lisa, I'm seeking your help in supporting and guiding our son. Our son is 13 years old and in eighth grade. He's failing many classes at school and would be expelled at the end of this year if he continues to fail as he's currently in a private school. He's gotten into his head that he does not need school.

He thinks that once he has a TikTok account, he'll be making thousands of dollars every month. He thinks my husband and I who make a good living are real losers because we work for a living and can afford luxury items. He's convinced school is useless.

He does not accept any help from us to get himself back on track academically. To complicate matters, he's on the autism spectrum. He is high functioning, but we can't seem to get him to understand the importance of school. We've spoken with our priest, the teachers, and the school. He has an occupational therapist and everyone thinks he's a great kid full of potential.

I don't know how to help him anymore. What can we do?

“So what tell me where do you begin with, this one, Lisa?”

Well, I mean, this is on fire, right? And I think when we talk about, you know, the range of kids I talked about, this kids at the far end of, you know, really like throwing it all over because of fantasy-saving and influence or, I want to take this one actually twice.

First, I want to take it, leaving aside the fact that the kids on the autism spectrum,

that's such a significant variable that actually changes this pretty significantly. So I want to do it first for neuro-typical kids, because I'm also here with neuro-typical kids. And then we'll come back and we'll think about, like, let's layer in, you know, an autism diagnosis.

Right. And then think about it. Okay. So, this is not good, right? I mean, this is not good, this kid.

It's interesting. The thing that I'm reacting to is that he's feeling his classes. Like, I don't love how he's talking to his parents. I don't love that this is his career goal. If he were simultaneously holding it together academically, this would be a very different

letter. Right. What makes this one on fire is the fact that this kid shooting himself in the foot and that the school is, you know, on the verge of kicking him out.

“So where does one start, you know, that's the issue, right?”

Is it this kid's about to fail out of school? And I think, you know, I had such good training, and I'm so grateful for the people who trained me. And I remember one of my wonderful, wonderful supervisors, kind of Jim Hansel, who I actually ended up calling a co-authoring a textbook with, we went on to be very close colleagues.

I remember one time I had a case where things were pretty bad, and he said, "Listen, desperate times call for desperate measures."

And I've always held on to that, right?

Like, there's adolescent stuff, and it exists in a wide range. But every once in a while you come into something where you're like, "Okay, this is on fire. This is actually on fire, right?" And a kid who's failing out of the eighth grade, like, "That's a big problem. That is a big problem."

And I think I'm trying to think it's true, like, what we do about this, but I just want to, like, level set. Like, this is, this is very, very concerning. Like, this is not, you know, things like, we talk about a whole bunch of things that are just, like, annoyances of raising kids.

This is a big one. This is a really big one. What do you think this family should do, Lisa? So, I think there is, there's a lot I wonder about in why this kid is so disinvested

Right?

So, there's two things happening.

One is he's pulled towards this fantasy of, you know, a career as a TikToker, which,

“honestly, among eighth grade kids, that's not that rare, right?”

The kids have these ideas of, like, "I'm gonna go up to your famous, and it's gonna be awesome." Like, that to me does not fall very far outside the, like, typical range. But he's pulled towards that. But what's interesting is there's nothing pulling him towards school, right? That there's, like, he's not attached to school in any meaningful way.

And I assume, from this letter, like, he doesn't even seem to mind that much, that he's, maybe on the verge of having to leave this school. Okay, that should be a huge deal, right? Like, one of the things we know, we have tons of research on this, is, like, kids, investment in school, is often not because of what's happening in the classroom,

but because of the clubs they're in, or the friends they have, or the teachers, they actually like, even if they don't maybe, like, the subject.

And so, the first question, if this kid were sitting in my office with his family,

that would be asking me, like, what is going on with his relationship with school, that there seems to be no glue for this kid, that he's willing to throw it over so quickly. So, that's not exactly an answer, but it's a place to look. Like, why is he so, um, untethered? I, to the lab of the school.

I just think, especially for boys, school is hard, especially in the middle school years. If you're smaller, there's just so many factors that I think we don't think about, or talk about how to help them. So, if they don't have that gluey, so, how do you even create that glue if it's not there? Well, it is interesting, right?

So, it does get to the question of, like, whether you can,

“and I think you should start requiring this kid to do more that plugs him into the life of the school.”

And, you know, it may or may not, I mean, it's very hard.

Like, you can't actually make a kid do well academically. Um, but one thing you can do is a parent is if you feel like my kid, like, fones it in a school and comes home and gets on his video games and has no meaningful connection to this building and the people there and the kids there and the activities there. I think, um, that's a place where a parent might start to say there will be no video games.

There will be no time online until you are, you know, going to this club or doing, you know, and the best thing. I mean, he's an eighth grade, so there starts to be more clubs. Ninth grade, there starts to be lots of clubs. Yeah, and they could be so fun and goofy and like,

I just, I'm like, there needs to be something that, a touch of this kid to school and also attach this into something that's not on the internet. That's the other thing. I'm like, feeling myself anxious about as I hear this letter is, it feels like this kid's world is in a digital environment.

Like, it's not. He's connected there or his fantasies or they are, but his relationships are not in the real world. So you've got to find a hook at school, something to tether him to, that he's excited about. Something, right? Or he may feel like, oh, I don't want to leave this place or I don't want to lose this place.

So, you know, that doesn't mean he's instantly going to be like, so now I'm going to start doing my homework.

“But I think that going straight at the academic piece only,”

I don't, it sounds like it's not working, it hasn't worked. So doing more of what's not working tends not to actually work very well. So I would start to think like, where are the other foothold this kid could have in the school community. So he's invested in trying to stay there. So every time I'm at somebody's house and they have a compost set up in their kitchen,

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Do you think you'll grow out of this? Yeah, actually I do.

I mean, what's so essential is that he's 13.

Right? If this were a 15 year old or a 16 year old, I would be like, "Uh, that's not good." Right? I usually see less concrete thinking, less black and white thinking, you know, once kids cross 13 to 15. Right?

And we've talked about this. And it's like, it's such an important topic that comes up over and over again here.

“Because I think people think like teenager and they lump them all together.”

But like, oh my gosh, a 12 year old versus a 16 year old.

Like those are completely different creatures, right?

A 13 year old versus a 15 year old when they've crossed that threshold and they're abstract reasoning. Totally different creatures. So I do think that with this kid and this is a neurotypical kid, right? So we'll come back and do it again. A little bit of it is trying to help him keep it together until he is 14 or 15.

And you can start to say things to him like, listen. 14 year old you is going to be really annoyed with 14 year old you. If you don't get it together academically, because 18 year old you's going to want to have a lot more options than 14 year old is currently making available. That's a conversation you can have with a 14 15 year old that honestly 13 year olds in a matter of how bright they are. They're like, nope, I will be an influencer and a story leave my room.

Right. I mean, it's it's it's really frustrating sometimes as parents. So what should a parent do is they're waiting for their kid to mature and reach that point. Yes, I am. I've several colleagues, wonderful colleagues who take care of a lot of adolescent boys. And like, sometimes they I've heard one of them use the expression of like, well, foot on the neck.

Right. And I'm like, oh, me. I'm like, it's so not. I'm like, you got to come down hard. You know, like, yeah, like, and you know how I talk and think about teenagers. And foot on neck is not high on my list of how anything gets done. But my hunch if I try to like imagine, like, dear colleague who cares for a lot of adolescents. I think he would be like, nope, this kid's going to need, you know, he needs to be in a sport and he needs to be doing a club.

And if he wants to spend time online and we're going to, I want to come back to how much time this kid's spending a line. If he wants to spend time online, you know, that tech is made available through this family. Right. The kid is not buying his own devices. He's not buying his own subscriptions. It comes, it becomes contingent on him actually doing his homework. That you really do tether those things together.

“Like, okay, kiddo, you want to look at influencers all day. Well, then, you know, you need to be actually getting passing grades in school.”

And, you know, if you can do that on your own and get your studying done, you find if you can't then you're going to do your homework in the kitchen. You know, and let's get this together. One of my worries is, what if he gets kicked out? What do you do then? Well, you know, I mean, sometimes kids have to feel the floor. Right. That it's not great. Right. We don't want this for this kid. Frankly, it's better in the eighth grade than the ninth. Right. I mean, if this kid, you know, we hope eventually we'll have good options after high school.

You know, he's in a private school. Private schools can do pretty much what they want. If he's not, you know, a contributing number of the community and, you know, thriving in that environment. They can tell him it's his last year. I hope that their public school district is a good one. I, you know, there may be another private school that they can consider. I hate it that kids sometimes have to feel the floor, but if they're going to feel the floor, let them feel it in middle school. Don't, you know, let this crisis take this kid into high school.

When kids don't take school seriously, is there something that parents can do to make them take it seriously? That'll actually set in. Huh. Okay. So two thoughts run from my head. One is, you can't make teenagers do anything. Right. And as soon as you want to make them do something, they don't want to do it. Right.

So, you know, I always fall back on this story. I just had this fabulous fabulous.

I mean, this kid was so terrific. This junior girl in my practice, and you know, she came in one day.

“I wrote about this, I think, an untangled super grumpy one day. And the reason she was grumpy is that she, her room had been a mess.”

No, it wasn't a room. It was her dining room table. She actually was a kid to study on the dining room table. But a mess a week wanted it, tied it up before the weekend. You know, new, she just been really overwhelmed. I had time to decide to organize all of her materials and get everything cleared up. And she, um, it was before our appointment that she was planning to do that. She walks in the house, her mom is like, you need to straighten up the dining room table.

She was like, oh, man, I really took myself in. But so, okay, so to your question, can you make a kid do stuff? It's very hard to make kids do stuff.

Very hard to make teenagers do stuff. But desperate times, desperate measures. Here we are. I think the leverage you have is that he wants something. Okay, so I think this kid wants to spend time online. Other kids want to go to that concert. Other kids want to drive. Other kids want their curfew extended, right? Like, healthy teenagers want things their parents may not be all that inclined to give them.

“There's your leverage, right? So I think you start saying, you want this, then you have to show me that.”

Now the kid may, and I've seen kids do this, they may do themselves in to take the parent down with them. Like, they may actually be like, you know what, you still can't make me. And I will, you know, it's hard when a kid's like this when they're like, fine, I won't even go online. And I will feel out. And then what are you going to do, right? I mean, and I think first of all, get yourself a good clinician, get yourself, you know, talk to your pediatrician, find a clinician who can help you work this way through.

But I think the first step probably is leveraging something he wants that the parents can tolerate and making that only accessible when he's holding up his end of the bargain, which is to get at least passing grades in school. If you're someone who wears makeup and you have not yet tried Jones Road, I'm not really sure what you're waiting for. I love this product from the ever reliable fabulous body brown. This makeup is easy, looks so natural, feels incredible on my skin. My latest obsession is the tinted moisturizer. It really is moisturizing, which believe me, especially in the middle of the winter, is incredibly welcome. And it gives just this very light and even finish, but it doesn't look like makeup at all.

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“Because if you take all of what you've said and you now apply it to somebody who is on the autism spectrum, what would you say differently, what would that look like?”

It gets a degree of difficulty quite a few degree of difficulty is harder. I think what we can reasonably predict in a kid who is neuro-typical is that once they hit 13, 14, 14, 15, once they get into that sort of, you know, like later puberty or like they're definitely into puberty and they're definitely, you know, the neurological changes of puberty are almost certainly happening, that they will get some perspective and that they can sort of start to think ahead and have a different perspective on the situation.

I think when we layer in a kid who's not neuro-typical and let's say on the autism spectrum, typically that kind of black and white thinking persists that you're actually biting your time is it going to work in the same way it would work for a neuro-typical kid. So that's one thing. The other thing is given that kids who are on the autism spectrum can be pretty concrete, pretty black and white, and they're thinking they see it the way they see it, trying to make them do things. You know, I think with the neuro-typical kid you might be able to make him, if you hold enough stuff over him, trying to make them do stuff, I think can often backfire, I mean it can be very reactive or they can, you know, I've cared some families with kids who have autism, where one family who described as a kid would have fits, I mean the kid would become very, very violent with himself, you know, and bang his head and kind of become undone.

Like that's a terrible place to be in, you know, and you don't want your kid going there and you don't want to do anything getting your kid there. So, okay, so if the kid is not neuro-typical and there's not a sense of time is on your side.

“I think the kinds of things I would suggest is trying to make the case that school will help with the plan that the young person has.”

You could also do this with the neuro-typical kid, but I think you're going to need it for the kid who's not neuro-typical.

So, make the case of like, oh, influencers tell a really amazing story, so that's what makes somebody a good influencer.

Influencers need to track analytics. They need to track what's happening with, you know, the trends in their followers.

“That's math. You're going to need math. Right. I think trying to make that argument might work.”

The other thing I can think of is, you know, if there's an interest in like a studio, like I need a studio for my influencing. I need to, you know, like, more of the carrot, right? I think stick isn't going to work. More carrot. So, say like, we can think about building or, you know, finding way to do your room a little bit to make it more like a studio or we can set aside studio time. We can create studio time as part of your schedule. But to do that, we're going to need you to do this and this, right? So, it's not you can't have this thing until you get the work done, but it's like you can have this other thing once you start doing the work.

And the other thing may be down the line of the dream of being an influencer. So, I am, that's what I got.

That's great. And also what I'm hearing you say is don't crush their dream. Like use it as an opportunity to get them on to the right track, maybe.

“I think that's right. And it's interesting. There's a lot of places in parenting where kids into something the parents not into, right? Like the kid wants to be a drummer, right?”

Or the kid wants to be, you know, going to the military. And maybe that's not the parents thing. On those, if it means they're building a skill, if it means they're learning how to work at something. I think we got to have a lot of attitude for it. Right? Teenagers or teenagers. They're autonomous. Like, if they're developing something, then what either they get good at the thing they say they want to do, which we have to allow. Or they can take that skill set and move it over to other things. Like, they know how to work. They know how to get better at something. They know how to self-monitor their own progress. Right? Like, that can be really good.

Back to the, actually, I would say both versions of this story, right? The neuro-typical, I'm the not neuro-typical. I just, there's such a strong feel. And do you feel this too of like, this kid feels like they're online a lot? Like, they're world is an online world. Like, I would just no matter what, try to vary this kid's experience more. You know, less with the video games, less with time online, more with volunteering, more with being in the world. Find in real life events and things that will force the child to get offline and engage.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, keep on busy. Right?

“I mean, I think we worry about kids being busy, but I'm like, whew. You know what? I would take an over schedule kid over a kid who's online, you know, some, ungodly number of hours a day. Yeah.”

So Lisa, when you step back, what do you have for us for parenting to go? So for parenting to go, you know, it's interesting to think about like preventatives, right? If this is an outcome in the eighth grade that like, now you're really up against it. There's one more year before high school. This kid is like digging themselves in, you know, it does make me think about all of the things that we do as parents to plug our kids into community. And the value of doing that as a preventative of outcomes like this, right? So kids playing sports or kids doing just like school of rock, you know, in some communities is a place where people, you don't kids find their thing and find their people find their band.

And they may feel connected in a really meaningful way. So it just, I feel like this letter just underscores like, it's not just about driving the kid around. It's not even really about like some like that they're going to go out of my college sports. Like next to no kids go out of my college sports. It's that you want them attached to the real world and real people in the real world and real relationships in the real world. Because those are valuable and growthgiving and also because they help to serve as a check against situations like this one.

It's greatly safe. I think it's really hard when you know in your mind, this is a crazy idea. But your child has not had the life experience to realize what you do into kind of like your tongue or figure out the right way that doesn't create a wedge between you and them. So you've walked just through a lot of scenarios here. It's a tough one. I really, I really appreciate people writing us with not, not fluff. I mean, this is a tough one.

Absolutely, it's speaking of a tough one or a parenting topic. I've never heard about that we're going to tackle next week.

Some of us from fantasy a lot of it's online fan fiction. This will be one that I am very interested to talk about with you.

“I cannot wait to hear more. I'll see you next week.”

I'll see you next week.

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