259: Why Is My Teen So Snarky?

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

kid anymore.

I'm Rina 9 and welcome to Asli, so the psychology of raising tweens and teens, and

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Just Google, Ask Lisa podcast. We're here to help you untangle family life. Episode 259, Why is my teen so snarky? Well, that was quite an episode last week on Smutty Fan Fiction, Lisa. Yeah, we'll have you checked it out, maybe take a look.

You know, can I tell you the silliness? I am now worried that if I start looking at that site, that it's going to change the algorithm in my home and start pushing stuff to my kids, okay, okay, but all right, so maybe you need to go to some internet, go to some internet cafe, Rina, and like have that. Have that with this fanfiction.

Well, I just don't want to change my opinion of Harry Potter, too. There's that. But there's that. There's also that. So we talked a little bit about that, and you know what I loved about our conversation

last week was, it's still the topic of sex, you know, and how do you approach it and talk about it. But today we're moving on to another S snark, so many kids are so snarky, and you have presented a whole other reason to be as to why they potentially could be. So I want to read you this letter that we got from a listener, dear Dr. Lisa.

My 15-year-old daughter is snarky, like really snarky. She was in seventh grade, a switch flipped, and has been this way ever since. When she was in middle school, I went through a quote, "morning period" for my sweet, spunky, creative, and curious daughter.

“I know that snarkiness and teens go together like croissants and coffee, but I really think”

her behavior is more extreme than her peers. She says she hates school and complains a lot, she's on her phone all the time, despite her best efforts to control it with the iPhone, parent controls.

Her behavior has been really hard on the family and her two younger sisters are always

getting their feelings hurt, despite looking up to her so much. Recently, she opened up a little bit, and she told me that she feels sad a lot, despite working hard in school, she said that she feels less motivated, and has even started going to bed around 10. And she's always been a night owl.

I would love to hear your thoughts about the connections between irritability and teen depression, and when a parent should worry, thanks for your wisdom. I am always so grateful for your podcast. Okay, I love that we've got this issue brought up to the forefront, but do you think the parent should be worried here?

I think yes, I think the parent is raising, especially towards the end of the letter, like the real concern about irritability, and one of the things that we've talked about, and I will take any opportunity to talk about, is that depression and teenagers often looks like irritability, it looks like snarkiness, it's how we miss depression and teenagers, that people dismiss it, it's like, "Oh, there it goes this snarky teen."

And so I think that there are very legitimate questions to be asked here about whether or not this kid should be evaluated for depression, and maybe treated for depression. I think that that, I want to put a pin in that. I think there's other questions that we want to actually chase down here that are raised in the letter, but I think for out of the gate I will say, if this family called me and

my practice came in, that would be a diagnostic rule out, you know, something I would be thinking about really closely. You think of teenagers as being snarky, but I don't know that necessarily the correlation between snark and depression, is that something that you see often?

In teenagers, if they're depressed, the answer is yes.

And I remember, I mean, I learning this in my training, and it is something you actually have to learn in training, it's not something that's understood broadly, and it's actually very unique to adolescents, that when little kids are depressed, they look a little bit more like depressed adults, they can be sort of weepier, low, and little kids is often like we call it somatic symptoms, like they're tummy hurts, and they've got headaches,

“and that's how we can start to diagnose depression.”

And adult depression, you know, tends to look like the way we picture it, you know, it was sort of a lowness. There can be some irritability for sure, but it's more low mood, low affect, all of that. If I hear about an adolescent who is cranky with the adults at home, cranky with the

And it's a lot of it's sort of the universality of it that I'm looking for. That for me is like such a flag for depression, and I mean, I remember, so when I was in the middle of graduate school, I had enough time, I was like moving along well enough of my program, but I could actually go back to Denver for a summer and just work, like I didn't have to stay on campus and do my grad school work, and I took a job at the Denver

Children's Home, which was, and it may still be there, like basically an inpatient setting

for adolescence. So these were kids who were struggling enough that they could not be cared in and outpatient setting, and they were also a lot of kids who were sort of in the system that they were in foster care that they had very, very hard lives. And I remember we had this boy show up, and he was like 14 or 15, and he was kind of awful

to be around. Like, and I hate saying that, but he was just like such a prickly porcupine, and so unpleasant and no matter how gently or kindly you tried to approach him, he was just awful, just terrible, like, if felt terrible to be in his presence, and I remember I was like, I was like 23 or 24. I was like very, very young in my training, and I remember one of our attending psychiatrists

“is like, this kid has depression, and I remember thinking, what are you talking about?”

That kid is nothing about him reads depression the way I've understood it, and I remember

they started treating him to depression, including meds, and Rina Honestika three weeks later we were looking at a different kid. And so, really, like, made that mark on me of like, okay, do not miss this, do not write this off as just teens being teens. So how do you tell the difference between snark and depression?

So I do think there's that universality piece, right? Like, what are the things, and I think this is a theme that's sort of emerging in the season of like, what is like typical about teenagers that we need to be okay with, right? One of the things is typical is sometimes the kid is pretty, like, grumpy or spicy at home, and then the parent goes to, like, school conferences, and the teachers are like, oh my gosh,

your son is just so lovely, you're so charming. Yeah, right. Where there's like this big gap, you know, it's not fun at home, and you don't want to have it be all the time, but like, that's not unusual. So I don't necessarily get anxious, I don't, I don't, I don't say anxious as a right way

to say that. I don't want to start to think about, oh my gosh, this is a kid depressed.

“If I hear that they're getting along with everybody, but they're folks, right?”

Like, for me, I'm like a good one. That's something else altogether. That's a family issue, but if I am hearing that it is across the board, and, you know, even their friends are irritating to them, like, that is for me a time to start to be concerned, to do a deeper dive, so it sounds like you're saying, it's snark with irritability that

you might need to be lookout for. Snark irritability, and like, everybody bugs them, not just like, this teacher bugs them, or these parents bug them, like, it's got to be everybody, or nearly everybody. Like, I think that that's the kind of thing we want to be looking for, but there's some stuff in this letter.

I think, raises some other questions for me that I don't want to, so one was that the kid, they can't get the kid off the phone. I was going to ask you about phone use next. What's your saviour? A lot of kids spend a lot of time on their phones.

They do, and it gets to this really interesting, big cultural conversation right now, that we have about what causes mental health problems in kids, and there's a lot of thinking that phones cause mental health problems in kids. There is not universal agreement on this in terms of the academic field.

“I think that we like to get into the weeds of it, as we should, around, who's vulnerable”

and who's not, but I will say, when there's pushback on that idea of, maybe phones don't cause depression, the pushback usually takes a form of like, once kids are depressed, they may be spending more time on their phones, and that's probably not good for them. So I'm not going to say, oh, yeah, the phone's causing her depression or causing her, you know, ill mood or bad behavior or snarkiness, but I will say, okay, by the time a kid is there,

spending a huge amount of time on their phone is probably not going to help the situation. I don't love kids spending tons of time on their phone, and I sure as heck don't love it, if they are having problems with their mood or their behavior or their relationships. There's a lot to be said about getting older, you know, I feel more confident in general,

things bother me less, and it's helped me focus on what really matters in life, which is basically,

of course, my relationships. At the same time, there are parts of getting older that are not my favorite. I don't love how creepy my body can feel, and my skin can feel dry and my nails can feel brittle, but there is something to be done, and what I am doing is taking bud's natural collagen peptides.

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and tell them that we sent you. Do you know what stood out to me in this letter?

Was the parents like, oh, and she's going to bed at 10 o'clock. She's a night owl. Does that also have an impact? Were you concerned when you heard about the sleep pattern? Well, it was interesting because with the mom, the way I was like that caught that too. And what she said is the kid used to be a night owl. And now she's putting herself to bed as early as 10. And so like how will this kid this kid's like 15? Like 10 o'clock? 10 o'clock's like not terrible for 15 year olds. But then I'm

“like, okay, well, how late was she going to bed before? That's what I was wondering. Yeah. Yeah. And so,”

you know, I think a lot of kids 10 o'clock is good if not early for them to get to bed, especially if they've got a big academic schedule that keeps them up late with homework and things after school. But it made me concerned to hear that she had been staying up as late before that. And it also, from the way the letter was written and I don't really know the whole story. It also had a quality of like that the night owl out on this was not seen as a problem or may not have

been something that the parent was pushing back on. I think it is a problem. What we know is that

you know, at 15, you know, basically high school aged kids, they need nine hours of sleep in

night. Like very few kids are getting anywhere in that department. But like no kid even going to bed at 10 o'clock at night is getting nine hours because they would have to be up at seven, usually they have to be up way before them. So as we sort of try to like, you know, move into this letter and like tease various elements apart, I do think there's a question about depression, but also when I'm doing diagnostic work, if I hear that a kid's not sleeping very much,

and my hunch is this kid is not sleeping anywhere near where she needs to be sleeping, that to me is where we start because kids who aren't sleeping enough look depressed. And once they start sleeping more, they often look a lot better. So before we say, yep,

“this is a kid who has depression and needs to be treated accordingly, I think we need to remember”

the basics matter and basics like getting enough sleep are really important to address before making big diagnostic assumptions. I love the episode we did with Lisa El Lewis who looked at sleep because she really gave us good perspective on why that's so important. The other thing in this letter that I'm looking at here Lisa is she's got younger siblings who idolize her and are watching her behavior. Were you concerned about that when you heard that?

And she's been very hurtful to them. Yeah, what do you mean you've got kids for a close to each other and age? Like what do you make of that? What was your type of, I mean, you know, some of that you see often in dynamics of older younger siblings, but I can see how when someone's really, really started, if you've been around people who are really, really snarky, they say things that can kind of cut to the bone a little bit and aren't really funny,

but just you don't need to cut down somebody by saying that. And so I really worry about the impact on younger siblings who idolize their older siblings and are really being torn apart.

question of does this kid have depression? Whatever else, like this is not working, right?

What is happening at home is not working and she's being really hurt on her siblings and, you know, the letter writer doesn't say this, but I also imagine like this has been fun to parents through either, right? This is not pleasant. And understandably, when a person is really suffering, especially from things like depression, we don't often talk about what it feels like for everybody around them. But Reena, it is so hard to live with somebody who's depressed. It is so

hard to live with a kid who is so unpleasant. And I just think back to the kid we had on the inpatient unit. I mean, I was only there eight hours a day and that kid was really wearing me down.

“So I think when we think about like motivation to fix this and to get it on track and to”

take seriously that this kid is suffering and also causing suffering, the impact on the siblings is a real thing. Like that should not be minimized. And I think this parent deserves to enjoy a more pleasant relationship with this kid. The kid deserves herself to feel a heck of a lot better than she does. And her siblings should not have to feel like they are kind of punching bags as this kid is 15 year olds working things out. So it is concerning it's very hard

on the family. Often when a kid is suffering, we don't talk about it enough and I know why, you know, we really want to focus on the needs of the kids. But like this is also very real and these are other kids. What would your advice be to the family when you're dealing with a child to

may possibly have depression? So if this kid were in my practice, I think the first thing I would

do is really home in on the sleep question. Like I have found clinically, like you deal with that first because you kind of can't see what you're dealing with until the sleep question is managed. So I would be asking a lot more about sleep I'd be asking where the phone is at night. You know how I feel about phones and rooms. If the kid was deeply resistant to having their phone out of their room, I would make the case that until the kid is feeling better, it needs to happen.

You know, when the kid feels better, we can revisit it. But as long as the kid is feeling this lousy, we're going to start by putting sleep in place and making sure it's going well, figuring out what the barriers are addressing them and getting sleep in place. I would want to see this kid sleeping recently for a couple of weeks before making any further decisions. I would be curious

“about whether she can be busier in a way that spends as less time to spend on her phone. Right?”

I remember one of my favorite supervisors saying that people feel good about themselves for the things they do well. I wonder if asking her to do more activities or more service or something would have a double benefit of less time to just be on our phone and more time to actually do stuff she could feel good about. I would do a two, three, four week assessment of, you know, if we get sleep in place if this kid's busier and less on our phone, if she's doing stuff

she cares about, does her mood start to shift, does her snarkiness ease? I would be asking all of those questions at the same time Reina. I would not drag my feet on this. Really? Yeah, I think about, you know, and I would, I would have in my mind clinically, I would have in my mind, does this kid need to be on meds? Like that would be in my mind. Do you, I'm so surprised

“because, yeah, what really surprises me about this episode, you know, as we were digging into”

and researching it, I just never really understood the correlation between snarkiness and depression.

I just think snark is part of teens, you know, like what teen isn't snarky these up? Well, snarky sometimes, but if we do all these things, right? If this kid is snarky across the board and then we do all these things, right? Sleep is in place. She's less on our phone. She's busier with good things and there's still this cranky, cranky, unpleasant and also the kid is complaining. She's like, my motivation is low. I do not like school. Like, she doesn't feel good either,

right? She's not making people around to your feel good. She doesn't feel good. So, you know, I'm just like imagining this and I'm filling in pieces here. So, with that, caveat in mind, one of the kinds of things I have found myself saying clinically to families in a situation like this is to say, and beginning to have a really real question about whether or not there's a biologically-based depression here, whether or not there's a major depressive

disorder at work because we're doing all the right things and they're not really working. Here are your options. I am very happy to work with her in psychotherapy to see if we can get psychotherapy alone, talk therapy, to relieve her depression. We could at the same time get a psychiatric

talk therapy. You as a family can choose, I will also tell you what my recommendation would be

“and I will usually make a recommendation and I would probably say, I think we should probably get”

the ball rolling on a psychiatric consultation. It can take a long time to get with a psychiatrist, meds themselves to can take a long time to work, but I don't want to lose too much time with her feeling this bad without doing everything we can't help or feel better. I think that's close to what I'd be saying at this point. I remember when we were starting this podcast and there were just so many decisions to make all at once, right? From topics that we would

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be sure to tell them you heard about it on the Asklisa podcast. You know, this sounds really serious. The way you're laying this out, this isn't something, as you said, to take lightly, is there any concern for you if you just don't catch this? What happens if you just let the snark continue, don't address it? Write it off as just normal teen behavior. Do you see this like later the years,

like how how can this affect someone's well-being into adulthood?

“I think you're hearing and you're asking about like my urgency around this?”

Yes, that's exactly right. Yes. Yeah. And and I think what you're hearing and I'm like hearing it too. Right. It's sort of interesting to like think through, you know, how would I handle this as a clinician? I think one of the things that I have come to through experience and practice is that like teen years are like dog years. Like a year of their life is like seven years of ours. Like so much happens. There's so much going down. And it's so much like think about like

trajectory, right? Like they're getting themselves on trajectories. And so I don't like to lose time with a teenager who is suffering because it does shift their trajectory. Right? If this kid is, piss them off teachers, not making friends, not taking school seriously. Like all on the back of a depression that goes untreated, that is going to dictate how 16 years or 16th year, 17th year, 18 year, options are going to look. So it's funny rena, as we think it's through together,

“I find myself at this point in my clinical career being more easy going about most things, right?”

I mean, the last episode, I'm like, what? Okay, fan fiction. Like it's hard to find. Right? So like, more easy going about things that maybe would have gotten me more anxious or reactive early in my training or early in my career. And then more interventionist and more urgent about things than I probably would have been when I was younger. Right? If I see eating pathology, I am like we are on that like yesterday. If I see a kid who I think actually their mood is swamping their

capacities, their mood is getting in the way of their relationships, their schoolwork, their

ago. Like I don't want this kid losing another minute. I don't want their trajectory changed

by something that we could have treated. So as we talk this letter through, I know what I want to rule out, but having ruled those things out, I would probably be all over this. Yeah, thank you for that because, you know, I hear the urgency and I see what's snark. That's not a big deal, but I like how you've laid out for us when it can be a big deal and when you need to pay attention.

100%. And I'm so grateful for the letter, right? Because it really is,

“I think describes how a lot of people feel like, I guess this is just teenagers, but is it?”

Right? That's the question in the letter. It's exactly right. So what do you have for us for parenting to go? You know, we don't often talk about meds on our podcast. And I know a lot of families have a lot of worries about considering medicating their kids. And it's a real concern. I think

it's not something I ever recommend lightly. And often when I am talking with families about

whether medication makes sense, whether it's for ADHD or depression or something else, we are weighing costs, right? The cost of medicating a child versus the cost of not medicating them, right? And so there may be costs associated with medicating kids. Though by and large, we know these medications to be very, very safe. And you know, like we have good psychiatrists who do

“good work that hopefully families can access. But when parents have reservations and I think it's”

something worth considering, I will also point out like they're real costs to not doing this, right? If your kid could have felt much better and had a better trajectory as a result, and we don't do that, she may end up with many fewer options at 18 than she deserves. And so meds aren't simple. They're not all good by any measure. Like they're definitely complexities with them. But we do need to kind of look at them in context and look at what it means for the kids

development over time. Appreciate the guidance Lisa. I feel like back to back, we've had two topics

“that I never thought we'd really dive into, but just the complexity of the teenage years that”

I don't think I ever appreciated until I became a mom of teenagers. Yeah, no, they are wonderful and complicated. And they're my favorite. They certainly are. They certainly are. And next week Lisa, we're going to talk about is my son, two obsessed with his girlfriend. Love in the time of the teenage years of forward chatting with you about that. I'll see you next week. See you next week. Thanks for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to the Ask Lisa podcast,

so you get the episodes just as soon as they drop. And send us your questions to Ask Lisa at Dr. LisaDemore.com. And now we'll work from our lawyers. The advice provided on this podcast does not constitute or serve as a substitute for professional psychological treatment, therapy, or other types of professional advice, or intervention. If you have concerns about your child's well-being, consult a physician or mental health professional. If you're looking for additional resources,

check out Lisa's website at Dr. LisaDemore.com