13 Reasons Why and Parent-Adolescent Communication


Written by Alexis R. Lauricella, Ph.D. & Drew. P. Cingel, Ph.D

Communication can be a very powerful tool for educating and supporting youth. When children are little, we feel that the “why?” questions will never end. By the time our children are in middle school, however, we wonder if we will ever be able get a response to a question that is more than a “yeah” with an accompanying eye roll. We know that getting tweens and teens to talk about anything can be a huge undertaking and getting them to talk about the serious, important, and scary parts of their lives can be nearly impossible. But, maybe, entertainment media can help.

To the surprise of many critics, our recent research, published in a report for the Center on Media and Human Development at Northwestern University demonstrates that viewing 13 Reasons Why – an intense, graphic, and emotional original Netflix series about a teen’s suicide – may have supported conversation between teens and parents. Somewhat surprisingly, even the adolescents felt the show supported conversation with their parents and many adolescents reported that they actually asked their parents to watch the show.

Although the show was developed as an entertainment program, Netflix creative executive Brian Wright acknowledged that they wanted this to be something that supported communication and enhanced empathy; our research suggests that it has done just that. Parents in four regions around the world reported that they felt it was easier to have conversations about tough topics with their adolescent, including sexual assault, depression, and suicide after watching 13 Reasons Why. Additionally, many adolescents reported that they feltmore comfortable talking to peers, parents, teachers, and counselors about these same topics after viewing.

Parenting experts suggest that parents should learn about the things that are of interest to their adolescent as a way to connect, but as many parents know, finding a shared interest between a parent and teens can be difficult. This research suggested that 13 Reasons Why may be that shared interest, or at least a shared experience that can help prompt parents and adolescents to talk about these topics.

While the 13 Reasons Why is intense and covers some very tough topics like peer sexual assault, online and offline bullying, and suicide, these are issues that tweens and teens around the globe experience. It is often hard for parents to get their teens to open up about their own personal experiences with these issues, as teens are seeking independence and are desperately trying to convince themselves that they don’t need their parents like they used to. However, teens do need their parents and want their parents to know and talk about these issues with them. The problem is that they generally don’t know how to ask or talk about these topics – and neither do their parents. This is again where a show like 13 Reasons Why may be of help. By watching the show together, or even separately, parents and adolescents can have a shared experience. Parents can get a glimpse into a fictional storyline that, according to many adolescents, feels like an authentic depiction of high school life. Adolescents can have faces and names of fictional characters to provide some distance in order to discuss issues, emotions, and circumstances that may be happening in their own lives. Rather than talking about their own struggles, they cantalk about how they can relate to the characters in the show.

While this research demonstrates that this show can help many parents and adolescents feel more comfortable talking about these difficult topics, parents and adolescents asked for more resources to help them have effective and positive conversations with their children about these topics. Netflix provides additional resources here.

Overall, this research points to the powerful role that media can have in bringing parents and children together in a shared experience that supports conversation for many families. Although certain depictions may seem intense, we found that exposure to 13 Reasons Why helped many adolescents feel more comfortable expressing their thoughts about mental health to supportive adults, and prompted many parents to discuss these topics with their teens. These are important, positive findings in the context of parent-child communication, and the well-being of adolescents.


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Infant Conversation











Hope these ideas help and happy chatting!

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Pregnancy and Parenthood





Here are a few good parenting reads to get you going:

Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman

The Happiest Baby on the Block by Harvey Karp

How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm by Mei-Ling Hopgood

Nine Steps to More Effective Parenting 



HuffingtonPost Parents

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In the United States, we tend to link the word “postpartum” to two things: 1. depression and 2. body/weight loss. But postpartum from a medical perspective means “relating to or happening in the period of time following the birth of a child” according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.  Unfortunately for new mothers, there is not a whole lot of information about this period of parenting.  When you google “postpartum” you find resources on almost exclusively on postpartum depression or things related to helping your body heal  or how to return your body to what it looked like pre-pregnancy, rather than the multitude of experiences that are all occurring immediately following the birth of a child.  Unlike the massive world of pregnancy-related guidebooks and information, there is very little in terms or resources or advice on how to survive those weeks postpartum for new moms!

While WebMD provides some basic information about the first 6 weeks postpartum, these simple paragraphs and tips do little to prepare a new mother for the reality of what is to come.  A friend of mine reflected on the experience just two weeks postpartum and said “I feel like they need to stop giving classes about labor since that is the fastest and easiest part. Instead, there should be extensive classes on surviving the first few weeks.”  Anecdotally it seems like people are relying on word of mouth advice and input that they receive immediately following the birth of their child, when they are most exhausted and overwhelmed and likely struggling to take any information in.

Why are new moms feeling so overwhelmed and so unprepared?

Well, because everything about giving birth is a new experience and there is nothing else that really happens in our life that is  so completely life-changing.  When else is your body changing daily for 9 months of pregnancy only to experience one wild day of labor (if you are lucky) in which your body has to physically remove the thing it has been growing and nurturing for nearly a year? Physical changes, check. Beyond the obviously physical experience, your hormones are going wild inside of you now.  Oxytocin, endorphin, and adrenaline help to regulate labor and delivery but these are all over the place postpartum as well. Wild hormones, check. All of this happens in the hospital (usually) and then they send you home.  With a brand new PERSON that you just created. A person who can’t talk to explain him or herself.  A person who  can only communicate in screams and cries! And a person who needs you to  feed it, clean it, and help it sleep constantly, and read its mind for when all of these things need to happen. There is no other life experience like this, hence why it is so difficult to be prepared.

That being said, you can’t easily prepare for much of anything in life and a lot of it can be life-changing, like  pregnancy, for example.  But yet, we try. We create resources and books, and we find experts that help to guide us through this novel and major life-changing experience.  The same should and can be done to help at least begin to prepare our new moms for the the wild and exciting and completely life-changing experience of bringing home that new beautiful baby.

More awareness and more resources are needed to help parents with all aspects of parenting, including this very emotionally and overwhelming period of postpartum. Here are a few resources that might be of helpful for moms and dads to be:

The SH!T No One Tells You: A Guide to Surviving Your Baby’s First Year by Dawn Dais

Natural Health After Birth: The Complete Guide to Postpartum Wellness by Aviva Jill Romm

Mothering the New Mother: Women’s Feelings and Needs After Childbirth: A Support and Resource Guide by Sally Placksin

WebMD Postpartum

MayoClinic Labor and Delivery, Postpartum Care


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Adolescent Development

While this blog often focuses on young children,  children do grow up and parents eventually become the parents of adolescents. Adolescents is an interesting time in development in which kids are going through a second round of quick and intense physical, emotional, and cognitive development.  I think most parents think and recognize the physical and emotional development changes, probably because they are the changes that are directly in your face: giant growth spurts, voice changes, and sudden unpredictable moodiness.

The cognitive changes are less likely to be front-and-center for parents but are fascinating when they are considered. Adolescents are in what Piaget calls the Formal Operational Stage. A stage in which we begin to use more scientific, systematic thinking and in which we develop the capacity to truly think abstractly.  Unfortunately, these abilities to think and process more critically can have an impact on the way in which adolescents see themselves and also how they think about the world around them- for both the good and the bad.

During adolescents, teens are much more self-conscious and self-aware.  They tend to think that the world is more focused on them than it really is.  As a result, they become more self-conscious and try to avoid embarrassment.  At the same time, adolescents also feel that bad things couldn’t happen to them, even though cognitively they are able to understand risk and consequences better than in their early childhood days.  During adolescents, they develop a sense of invincibility which can lead to increased risk taking behavior.

Without getting too much into brain development, remember when your preschooler and elementary-school aged child had a hard time paying attention, following directions, and keeping different tasks in mind (first clean your room, then find your book, then you can play)? Interestingly, the part of the brain responsible for many of these actions, the prefrontal cortex, is still not fully developed by adolescence.  This plays a part in the risk taking behavior of adolescence because this is also the part of the brain that helps us weigh outcomes and controls our impulses and emotions.  And despite previous research, we now know that this part of the brain doesn’t even fully develop until the mid to late 20’s.

So why does this matter? I think sometimes parents of adolescents are as confused and overwhelmed as the teens themselves.  This is a period of rapid change and both parents and teens are adjusting simultaneously. Understanding that your teen is still not able to fully think like an adult, despite being bigger and already smarter than you, may help parents adjust their expectations and understanding of where their teens actually are in development.  Also, knowing that so much of their teen’s brain, body, and emotions are still in the process of developing and changing, may help parents predict and handle the situations that arise.


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All Mothers’ Day








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Parenting and Technology

On Tuesday, the Center on Media and Human Development at Northwestern University released a reported titled Parenting in the Age of Digital Technology to a packed audience in Washington, DC.  The repot has received a lot of press (see links below) but I want to talk about the findings of this report for parents (and with parents who want to comment!).

We surveyed a nationally representative sample of American parents of children under age 8.  That means, unlike a lot of the research that is reported in the popular press.  This is a sample of parents in the US that represents the entire US. This wasn’t a survey of  just white, middle income parents like many studies consist of; parents were economically, racially, and geographically diverse.  Also, parents were parents…. not just mothers: 42% were fathers.

There were a LOT of findings in this 31 page report. The press mostly jumped on a great headline: Parents Show Little Worry about Media Use.  But I want to talk a bit more about the findings that may be more relevant to the parents who on a daily basis are using or negotiating media use with their young children.

1.  Parents have a lot of concerns for their young children. Across all age groups, parents are concerned about the health and safety of their young children- almost half of the parents we asked said they were either “very” or “somewhat” concerned. Fitness and Nutrition also was noted as a concern for many parents.  Yes, media use was lower on the list of concerns, but 25% of parents of children under 2, 29% of parents 2-5, and 35% of parents ages 6-8 say they are “very” or “somewhat” concerned about media use.  Parents clearly have a lot of things they are concerned about: health, fitness, sleep, behavior, school, and yes while not quite so intensely as some others, some  are concerned about media.

2. Parents and children today live in a variety of environments that need to be studied even more deeply. Some families are active media users: TVs in the child’s bedrooms, many hours of technology use by parents and children, etc.  Some families are light media users: TV use is less frequently occurring (although, use is not zero for these families).  Technology is a part of nearly all families lives these days: just how families use it differs. For some families media use is a popular family activity, for other families it lands lower on the list.  But families today have access: TVs, Internet, Smartphones, Tablets, etc. It seems that the ways in which families use media differs by family type.

3. Parents do use media as a parenting tool but it’s not the only tool they rely on. Parents today are busy and they recognize the time crunch they are under.  Sometimes they need to keep children busy while making dinner. Sometimes they want to reward or punish their children for certain behaviors.  When these types of situations arise, parents get creative.  They use a variety of tools: books, toys, activities, TV and now that many have access to smartphones and tablet computers they use those tools too.

This is just the surface of this report.  There is a LOT of great information about how parents parent now that there is so much technology access in their homes and in their pockets.  More findings from this study will continue to be published to better understand the lives of parents and families in this age of digital technology. Stay Tuned!


Chicago Tribune

New York Times

Fred Rogers Center

USA Today


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