What Are They Thinking?: The Neuroscience of Nagging in Parents and Teens

If you've ever caught yourself reminding your kid—again and again—to get that homework done, check in with the coach, or finally read that book, this episode is for you. I dive deep into the psychology and brain science behind why we nag, how it impacts both our stress levels and our kids’ behavior, and what we can do instead to be more effective, compassionate, and calm.

I share a personal story from my own household (yes, I'm guilty too!) and explore what’s really going on in the minds of both the "nagger" and the "nag-ee." You’ll also hear a powerful example of how one family made a simple shift in communication—and had their best night in years. If you want to support your child in a way that actually works—and feels better for everyone—don’t miss this one.

Episode Highlights:

[0:00] - Introducing the workbook: The Seven Principles for Raising a Self-Driven Child
[1:10] - My own struggle with nagging during my son’s senior year
[3:00] - Why we nag: the emotional drive behind our reminders
[4:35] - The illusion of control and the stress of unfinished tasks
[6:25] - Brain science: what happens in the mind of the nagger
[8:15] - What nagging does to kids’ brains—MRI findings from a key study
[9:55] - A story of a family overwhelmed by homework stress
[11:10] - A simple 3-step plan for changing the dynamic
[12:55] - The power of phrasing: how supportive language changes everything
[14:20] - Shifting from nagging to nurturing—and why it works
[15:41] - About PrepMatters and how we support students without added pressure 

Links & Resources:

If this episode has helped you, remember to rate, follow, and share the Self-Driven Child Podcast. Your support helps us reach more people and create more content that makes a difference.

If you have a high school aged student and would like to talk about putting a tutoring or college plan together, reach out to Ned's company, PrepMatters at www.prepmatters.com

Transcript

Ned Johnson: 0:50

Hey, folks, Ned here, like me, you want your kids, your students, honestly, all the young people you know, to thrive, and you know how much you can help. But like me, you probably also recognize that you fall short more than you like to, in part because we tend to revert to old ways. We hear a great suggestion or learn a new approach, but to easily fall back into the same darn things that didn't work before, it isn't easy, which is why I'm really excited to share with you that Bill and I have a new book out this spring, the seven principles for raising a self driven child, a workbook. Our goal is to make it easier to put into practice more of the advice from our first two books, the self driven child and what do you say? Full of reflections and exercises to do yourself with your partner and with your children, we want to help make the self driven child way your way, so you can, more often than not, be as effective as you want to be with your kids in ways that we know you want to be if you get a chance order a copy bill, and I and your kids would be grateful when we remind our kids it makes us feel less stressed in our minds, we nag to be sure that bad things don't happen, that good things do happen, but also, and we may not have thought about this to decrease our own stress, like my wife and me with our son, we feel more in control when we nag for the moment, but until the task is done, it remains on our mind, and when the thing finally does get done, do we feel better? But predictably, we often start looking for the next thing to worry about. Welcome to the self driven child podcast. I'm your host, Ned Johnson and co author with Dr William stickstrud of the books the self driven child the science and sense of giving your kids more control over their lives. And what do you say? How to talk with kids, to build motivation, stress, tolerance and a happy home deck, Tito ergo sum. I say it again and again, therefore I am. Am what a loving parent, a nag, an effective parent. Yes, no, if you've ever been curious about the brain science of nagging for both the nagger and the naggy, take a listen. I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast during my son's senior year, when he had been deferred from college. He worked like a madman to do the best he possibly could, to get all of his grades as high as they could be, to better position him to get into that college of his dreams. He is ADHD, quite capable, but a little prone, okay, a lot to procrastination. And my wife and I were watching this ongoing process and trying to be supportive in all the ways that we could. But to be completely honest, we were a little nervous too. He was working hard. He was anxious, and so were we. But with an ADHD brain Matthew has had, has still has a tendency to do everything a bit at the last moment, he had a book he was needing to read for an English class. And my wife kept checking in and said, what page you're on. How's it going, what page you're on? And I got swept up into this insanity as well. And between the two of us, we were probably asking him every half hour what page he was on. At some point, he just invented a number I'm on. PAGE 110, fantastic. I took a deep breath, my wife took a deep breath, and we left him alone. He, of course, had not started the book. So what was going on? Why do we parents nag? Okay, why do some of us as parents nag? Love, concern, anxiety about things that need to get done. The brains of people when they're nagging show that we are fixated on what others are doing, or, in this case, not doing. And to be fair, part of parenting involves hyper vigilance. We had these little blobs who explored the world by finding everything they could and sticking it in their mouth. Don't eat that, my goodness. And we get stuck in that way of thinking. And of course, we no longer have infants or tots, but now teens who are also figuring out how to navigate the world, not by sticking things into their mouths, but maybe by finding out just how late can you do something, how close to that deadline. And it can be a little crazy making like your kid is swerving towards the cliff, knowing full well his mind that he's going to stop or swerve before he gets there, but as the parent, oh my gosh, do you picture the end of Thelma and Louise and nagging is a way for us as parents to feel a greater sense of control and nagging, not only. Lee, in our minds, helps us make sure that our kids get the thing done, but it soothes her on anxiety, much like anxiety or OCD, it's a bit of a compulsive behavior. When I remind my kid, I feel, Ah, okay, great. He's on it, she's on it, it's gonna get done. So I'm we really worry about her kid until he gets his homework done, until he turns in the paper, until she asks the coach about what time practice will be. If these are things that your kid has to do, not you, and if they matter, of course, you worry they're important, but you also have a low sense of control. And so until the thing gets done, you keep thinking about it, thinking about it and that open channel of an uncompleted task. It's a high cognitive load. You worry about it when we remind our kids, it makes us feel less stressed in our minds, we nag to be sure that bad things don't happen, that good things do happen, but also, and we may not have thought about this to decrease our own stress, like my wife and me with our son, we feel more in control when we nag for the moment, but until the task is done, it remains on our mind. And when the thing finally does get done, do we feel better? But predictably, we often start looking for the next thing to worry about. It's rough to be a nagger. It really is. But what's going on in our brains in that role? We're usually a tad bit dysregulated, not fully the non anxious presence that we would like to be, certainly those couple months of my son's senior year, I was more worried about his academic performance than I had before, because now it really felt like it mattered. And one of the most stressful things that we can do is feel that we are responsible, not only for our responsibilities, but for those of other people too. Because, of course, we can't really control them, and feeling responsible, but with a low sense of control is, by design, pretty stressful. From a brain state when we're in that controlling, anxious mode, we're not going to be happy. Empathy is not possible, and we're not fully parent of the year material, if we're completely honest, if this becomes a habit, or there's more than one thing that you're nagging your kid about, the more things that we try to control, the more we track, the greater our cognitive load. And with that high cognitive load, we get what psychologists call allostatic load, the cumulative physiological wear and tear on the body caused by chronic stress. So let's try to avoid that. And of course, the more stress we feel, the more we seek a greater sense of control, which makes us apt to wait for it nag. So let's go back to my son, Matthew, when my wife and I were watching this task not get done, thinking that this book was the most important thing in his universe, not even asking him what else was on his plate, we were nagging him in ways that were not obviously effective and made us feel better. But what about him? Well, to begin with, he just flat out lied to me. I don't blame him. I blame me. But what exactly is the brain state of the Nag e Well, this is pretty good. There's a great study that was done about 15 years ago, researchers named Ron Dahl and Jennifer silk, and they put young people, tweens and teens, into a functional MRI and played them a recording of a nagging parent. In this case, was moms, and it was the thing that drives me crazy about she was, why can't you with things that were often repeated and heard and therefore probably triggering to that young person, also delivered with a touch of energy that was a little dismissive, a little critical, a little condescending. You can picture that voice. Maybe you've heard that, or you have not yourself from time to time. So what was going on in the brains of those kids when they're hearing this recording of a nagging parent? Ooh, well, the limbic system, miglin, all that jazz, the emotional anger, negative, emotional part of the brain, big activation, the prefrontal cortex that helps us regulate emotions, got turned down, and something called the temporal parietal junction, the part of the brain that helps us be empathetic, got turned down. So what did this look like? In sum you had tweens and teens who were pissed, who didn't care what mom thought, and who were spending no cognitive energy at all trying to figure out how to fix or attend to the thing that drove their mom crazy. Okay, so what might we. Do instead. Well, allow me to share a story from a terrific family I know who reached out to me with this email. Hi Ned. I hope that you and the family are well, I continue to think of you often in here, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Unfortunately, we're in the midst of another homework crisis with our son, who is now 17, and in junior year, when it really matters most. On the bright side, as far as we can tell, he's in great shape with every other aspect of his life. Can you recommend the parent coach? We've pretty much given up on helping him to help himself, but we're hoping that we can get some help for ourselves. Many thanks, loving dad. So I say, Hey, I'd love to talk with you. Can we get on a quick call so we hop on a zoom call? I said, well, thanks for reaching out. I understand how frustrating this is been. There done that, if I may. What kind of help have you been giving him that you're now going to stop giving him? Well, we remind him to do his homework. Oh, okay. Well, how's that working? Not very well. He's up all night. He waits till we go to bed, he then watches YouTube for hours, and then he does homework between one and 4am and he's completely turned upside down with his sleep. That has got to be stressful for you. Oh, you're not kidding. So if I may, how often do you ask him about his homework? Well, not that often. It's really my wife who reminds him a lot. Okay, so for you, three or four times a night, sure, which probably means twice that, and your wife twice that, three times that Sure, which probably means possibly even more. Who knows? So let me ask you, so this rascal gets home from sports about seven o'clock. You guys peace out for bed about 11. So you are asking him, reminding him, trying to support him about his homework. What every 30 minutes, 20 minutes, 15 minutes, 10 Yeah. May I offer a suggestion, sure, when he comes home, can you ask him, do you have a plan for what you need to get done for homework? Oh, I do. I do want to make him show me the plan. Respectfully, don't ask Him to show you a plan. Just ask him, does he have one? And if he says yes, trust Him. And if he says no, offer to help him make a plan, and whatever he does, go with it. Step two, ask him on that plan. Is there anything I can help you with? Again, Dad and Mom are both super bright, super academic, super capable, competent, blah, blah, blah, fully developed prefrontal cortices. These people can help, and they're inclined to want to help. If he says yes, follow through. If he says no, trust him. That's it. Well, you probably can't go from every 15 minutes to once a night. So then ask him, is it okay if I circle back around in an hour and a half to see not if you've gotten your homework done, but whether there's anything that I can be helpful with, that's it. That's it. Try it. One, do you have a plan? Two, is there anything on that plan I can be helpful with? Three, is it okay if I check in in a little while to see whether there's anything I can be helpful with That's it. That's it. We talk a little more. He goes off. I get an email from him that night, 10:35pm Hi, Ned, not sure if it was you or the circumstances, but we had a great night. Tonight. I offered help, and he agreed to come up with a homework plan. We set a schedule, and he hammered his way through it. It's the best night that we've had in years, perhaps ever. So as a parent, what might it look like for you to help put this plan into action? Because I can't guarantee it's going to work as well for you as it did for this dad and his terrific kid, but if you've not yet read our second book, what do you say? How to talk with kids to build motivation, stress, tolerance and a happy home. Chapter Two is the parent of a language consultant. And what we do, we offer help, we offer advice, we let kids make their own decisions, and we let them solve things with our support. Offer as much as we can. So it might be questions like, Would it help me to remind you? Would you like me to bug you a little if you did, how often is there a better time for you to remind you? Is there a worse time? Is there a time that drives you crazy? Is it better if I do this by texting? Would you like me to put a note on or under your door before dinner? After dinner, never during dinner. You tell me, how can I help? And what you're doing is giving, ideally, the exact same terrific advice that you've always been giving, but you're changing and reframing the language a little bit so it feels more supportive to your kid. You may have been super supportive all the way along. I know I was trying with my kid, but by being a little bit more respectful, we don't activate parts of the brain and turn down the empathy parts of the brain. We do this in way just by changing the language a bit. The brain science shows that when we are offering advice in a supportive. Way, rather than a nagging way, brains work really differently. Takeaways. First, you won't stop worrying about your kids because you won't stop loving them or caring about what's best for them. And secondly, we can, however, take steps from nagging to nurturing, it'll feel better for you and for your kid, because it is better. It's more respectful and most of all, more effective. I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. Hey folks, over the past 25 years, I've talked to countless parents of high school age students who care deeply about their kids education and how they deal with stress and the pressure to succeed. It can help parents to work with a team they trust won't just pile on more pressure to achieve better scores and grades. That's why I founded prep matters in 1997 to create a different kind of experience for test preparation and academic tutoring. This podcast and my books with my friend Bill Stix root reflect our company philosophy and approach to helping students. If you have a high school age student and would like to talk about putting a plan together, please get in touch with us. Visit our website, at prep matters.com, or while your kids may only text, you might want to actually talk with a person, if so, you can reach us at 301-951-0350