How to Talk Politics with Your Teen in Today's Charged Climate

In this episode, Dr. Cam Caswell and Lindsay Cormack discuss the challenges of engaging teens in political discussions, the decline of civics education, and the importance of fostering critical thinking and open dialogue. Lindsay, author of How to Raise a Citizen, shares her insights on how parents can guide their children through the complexities of political discourse and media literacy. They emphasize the importance of parents modeling engagement, curiosity, and empowering their teens to become informed, responsible citizens in today's fast-paced media environment.

 

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE

• How to effectively engage your teen in political discussions and build open dialogue.
• Why civics education has declined and how parents can fill the gap in teaching their teens about politics and civic responsibility.
• The importance of critical thinking in the digital age and how parents can help their teens navigate information overload.
• How media algorithms impact teens’ political views and how parents can help their teens see beyond echo chambers.
• Practical tips for encouraging curiosity and helping teens develop a deeper understanding of political issues.

 

5 KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR PARENTS OF TEENS

1. Engage in Political Conversations Early: Starting conversations with your teen about politics is essential for fostering critical thinking and helping them understand complex issues.

2. Civics Education is Crucial: Civics education has been declining in schools, but parents have the power to teach their teens about the importance of voting and civic participation.

3. Help Your Teen Navigate Information: Teens are bombarded with information on social media and news. By encouraging critical thinking, you can help them evaluate sources and form informed opinions.

4. Model Political Engagement: It’s essential for parents to model curiosity and engagement in political issues. Your teen will learn by watching how you approach important topics.

5. Practice Listening in Political Discussions: Active listening is a key component of meaningful political conversations. It’s important to not just talk but also to listen and understand your teen’s perspective

 

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RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Lindsay Cormack's book: How to Raise a Citizen
• How to Raise a Citizen: A Parent’s Guide to Teaching Political Engagement

 

EPISODE CHAPTERS
00:00 Navigating Political Conversations with Teens
02:29 The Decline of Civics Education in Schools
04:32 The Importance of Open Political Discussions
06:31 Building Critical Thinking Skills in Teens
10:08 The Role of Media Algorithms in Political Views
12:49 Encouraging Curiosity and Open Dialogue with Teens
15:54 Essential Knowledge for Young Citizens
18:14 Fostering Critical Thinking and Listening Skills in Teens
21:21 How Parents Can Empower Teens to Engage in Politics

 

CONNECT WITH OUR GUEST: Lindsay Cormack
Website: www.howtoraiseacitizen.com
Facebook: @lindsey.cormack
Instagram: @howtoraiseacitizen
LinkedIn: Lindsay Cormack
X: @DCInbox

 

CONNECT WITH YOUR HOST: Dr. Cam Caswell
Website: AskDrCam.com
Instagram: @DrCamCaswell
TikTok: @the.teen.translator
YouTube: Parenting Teens with Dr. Cam
Facebook: @DrCamCaswell

 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Cam (00:01)
Have you ever tried talking politics with your teen only for it to spiral into a heated argument or leave you wondering where in the world are they even getting these ideas? It's frustrating when their opinions feel so different from your own and you may worry that they are heading down the wrong path. But no matter how hard you try to tuck reason into them, nothing seems to get through. This sounds familiar, you're not alone, and we are going to talk about that

I have Lindsay Cormack, an associate professor of political science with me today. And Lindsay specializes in helping teens think critically and engage thoughtfully with the world around them. She's even written the book on it, How to Raise a Citizen. Lindsay is here to share practical strategies to turn those tricky political conversations into meaningful and even peaceful discussions. Welcome, Lindsay.

Lindsey Cormack (00:50)
Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to talking with you.

Dr. Cam (00:53)
Yeah, I'm happy to have you here. So tell us first of all, I love the backstory. What got you interested in talking politics, particularly with our kids?

Lindsey Cormack (01:02)
Well, I've been a college professor for 10 years and I work at a school that primarily serves engineering students called Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. We do plenty of other things, but that's our general population. And so I have these students who are so bright and they're so good at doing school and they go on to like really great careers. But something that I've found as someone who teaches political science is that they come in really not knowing very much. They don't really understand how the government is set up. They don't know what their own powers are in it.

And this is something where at first I thought like, you maybe that's just particular to engineering students. But, you know, after a decade of looking at that and talking with other people and doing research on, you know, how much our 18 year olds actually know, I've come to realize like it is a nationwide problem. We graduate most of our high school students without a rudimentary understanding of the government system that they're in. And so this became a project for me because I don't want college kids to feel not powerful. I don't want them to feel jaded already. I don't want them to feel turned off by a system because I know that say what you will about US democracy. It's one of the best decision-making frameworks that's ever existed in the history of the world. And our children will do better if they understand that system. So that's what got me inspired and involved to do it. I didn't know when I set out that this was going to be a parenting book. I thought this might be a book that was like, here's how some states do it, here's how other states do it. But in the course of researching it, I realized no state is doing it that well. And if we want to change things, we're really going to have to start in another level, and that's going to be in the home.

Dr. Cam (02:24)
Why do you think that kids aren't as informed now about, or have they ever been informed about how the government works?

Lindsey Cormack (02:39)
So it's a really hard question. It's not like there was this golden era of time where everyone was all conversant on how government ins and out were. That's not real. But it was the case that we did have more civics instruction time in our schools, and that has been decreasing over my lifetime, your lifetime, my mom's lifetime, and so it's been going down from the 1940s onwards. And so we are at this place now where if you look at test scores of eighth graders on their sort of like civic readiness, they are the exact same now as they were in 1998. And so the people who are in charge of parenting today are, you know, no smarter, no better. But I think a lot of us are all really frustrated and it's like, okay, well, if we haven't made any gains in how we're teaching you, we probably need to do something else because we see these same sort of results time after time where the adults in the room now, we can say we're going to prioritize this in a different way. So it is, it is the lowest that of all the classroom things, it is the one that gets the least amount of curricular time. And part of that trade off is STEM. Part of that is sort of this idea that we're going to be pushing other things into a day. And so it's not like there was a golden era, but we know that it's down versus the past and we were seeing the results in our indicators.

Dr. Cam (03:33)
Well, I'm wondering too, because the world obviously is very polarized right now when it comes to politics. And I know my daughter was talking about it she was taking a government class and she was so excited about talking. And my daughter is one of these kids that have been watching the news since she was like little. I don't even watch the news as much as she does, but she loves it. So she was so excited to go in and talk about it. And they would not talk about the current election going on right now because it was too politically divisive. And, you know, I think that right there is a signal of are we focusing on the wrong thing?

Lindsey Cormack (04:32)
Okay, so that is like something I hear all over the country is, and you know, and I kind of have a lot of thoughts on why that is the case, but here's the thing. We only get like four or five elections with our kids until they become voting eligible citizens themselves. And so we really only get like four or five windows of training opportunities. And if we say like, you can't talk about this, we can't learn about this, we can't think about this, then we're really sort of hampering their ability to do this when they're older. And we see this, we see this in sort of the data on like who's registered to vote, who turns out to vote, who sort of knows things.

Everyone's playing catch up from the time they're like 20 to 60, and then they have 20 years where they're like in their like, you know, really powerful political place, and it probably shouldn't be like that. But I understand why schools have been hard sites to do this work in. I mean, part of it is to blame with ourselves. When we were doing the research for this book, we interviewed teachers in nearly every US state. And something that we heard throughout the country is that teachers operate in sort of a constrained environment where they're afraid to say the wrong thing.

because then someone's gonna go home, tell a parent, that parent's gonna get mad, they're gonna email them, or the principal, or they're gonna have, know, the whole PTA gets mad. And so they're in a tricky position. And it's not that I don't think they can do this work. I think there's plenty of really good social studies teachers out here who can do this work. But I understand that their incentives are not always aligned to kind of get into that hard stuff because they don't want it to blow back.

Dr. Cam (05:51)
Yeah, that's really hard. And I think too with, and one of the things that I've heard with a lot of parents actually is that not that their kids don't know about it, but they have very strong opinions about everything that's going on because they're bombarded on social media and everywhere else with news without the critical thinking that goes along with it. And so they form these very strong opinions and then they get into arguments with their parents because the parents are like,

I don't agree with that opinion. So how do we help our kids who are getting tons of information? How do we help them think about it critically?

Lindsey Cormack (06:31)
Yeah, this is a really hard and important question because the sort of media environment that our children and ourselves are in and kind of what it looks like we're going to be in for the foreseeable future is one where information comes at us and its job is sort of to persuade us by looking compelling. It doesn't necessarily have to be credible by like, understand who's writing this. I understand who funded this. It's just like, is it sleek enough to like trigger the parts of my brain to say like, that person knows what's happening or this is the right way to think about that.

And so that's like a really hard environment for children to be raised in because they don't have any other assessment tools at their disposal. They're not having to grapple with like finding a different book or trying to figure out who's funding things. And so I think it's one of the very important things that we do as parents is to make sure that we don't just denigrate the stuff they're seeing because it's not like everything they're seeing is garbage, but it is to engage in it with them. And so something that I ask my daughter, I have a 12 year old who has like limited time to see things that I don't see.

But I do ask her, I'm like, what are you hearing on this? What are you seeing on this? And then if it's something where she'll show me like Pinterest, I guess Pinterest is social media in its own way now. She'll show me like, here's what it is. And I think it's important for us to see it too instead of just missing it out of hand because it's not likely that we're gonna see the same things kind of ever. Our algorithms are just so different. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Cam (07:42)
Yeah, we're on different sides of everything on social media, right?

I love this. We see something that our kids are looking at and it is true. Like there's algorithms that'll feed them all kinds of stuff based off of one search. So they can go down rabbit holes that might go down very narrow opinionated places. And when you're on social media and that's all you see, it becomes what you believe everyone believes.

How do we have conversations with them when they are like, this is what I see, this is what everyone is saying, because it's everyone in their feed is saying, how do we start that conversation to help break that down without shutting them down?

Lindsey Cormack (08:27)
Yeah, because we don't want them to feel like defensive. We want to like, you know, legitimate the things that they're coming to us with because we want them to keep coming to us. Something that I think is really important that's kind of tied up in all of this is a basic literacy in sort of like digital media. And I think it's sort of boring to kids, but we have to remind them, we have to let them know that they are seeing things.

that whoever's putting in front of them believes it's gonna keep their attention or it's going to let them disassociate in a way where they can stay there and tell an ad place. And so we have to ask themselves, what are we doing here? What is it that keeps us here and why is it that this tool exists in the first place? We're not paying for this tool, so something else is being traded. it's your attention. it's the insights on what you're watching. So making sure that they understand the ecosystem that they're playing in and what they are, I think that's part one. But part two can be something that's maybe harder to do in a one day setting, but in a longer timeframe, is thinking about what you would see if your algorithm was different. And I'll give you an example that I did in my class. In my classroom this last year, I said to the kids, you know what, let's start two fake Instagrams. We're gonna start one with the seeds of some conservative words, we're gonna start one with the seeds of some liberal words. And I let them pick the list. I said, you guys pick one. And then at the end of class on Thursdays, we would watch about eight minutes of Instagram and see like, okay, what's happening on the liberal Instagram, what's happening on the conservative Instagram.

And never once was there anything that was the exact same. Never once did we see the same content at all. And so I was like, okay, so we understand that we would be operating in different environments if this is what we saw before bed when we were scrolling or this is. It's just a different world. And because there's no crossover, it's just important that they sort of understand that blind spot that everyone has. It's not something that's particular to children. It's kind of particular to our entire media environment. No one's getting the same configuration of things. And so that's like part one is make sure they have to like have a full understanding of that. It's not everyone. It's everyone who's kind of like them. But even then, it's very individualized.

Dr. Cam (10:18)
Well, I think this is true for adults, quite frankly. And I'm not, I'm saying me too. Like we definitely feed in and we've got the confirmation bias where we're looking for things to confirm what we already believe. So it's very difficult for us to hear things that are different coming from our teens because we're very strong and solid in what we believe. And we want our kids to believe what's right, which is what we believe. Right? No?

Lindsey Cormack (10:46)
I mean, that's what we think. I I understand the whole enterprise of having more children or having children at all is like, hooray, I can like make more of me. I can like understand the world. They'll understand it in a similar way. But I actually don't think in political terms, I don't think that that necessarily should be the goal for two big reasons.  

Dr. Cam (10:53)
I agree with you. I'm just saying that's, I think that's a lot of the straight. Yep.

Lindsey Cormack (11:06)
We want them to have the same values as us. Like that's why we decided to like let them live in our house for 18 years. Like hopefully they like take some of the ways that we see the world. But I think politically it's like it's kind of a fool's errand because if you look at the best social science research on this, it's about a coin toss that you can get a kid if you're like, you know, I'm a Democrat and I want to raise a little Democrat or I'm a Republican. I want to raise a little Republican. It's about 50 percent of the time that you'll get that. And if you push too hard, you risk either alienating them from the political process altogether. And they say like, I don't want to do this or.

They say, you know what, I'm gonna rebel and I'm gonna be a Democrat or I'm gonna be Republican, whatever you're not. It also just doesn't really make sense because we know that the parties and the ideologies and the personalities are fluid and changing. And so the party that served you in your time that you were like a teenager or 20 and 30s might not be the one that serves or resonates or speaks to them. That's okay. Like that's okay. Both parties have strengths. Both parties have weaknesses. There's not one that's better than the other. That's why we have like a very persistent two party solution to what we're doing here because they both kind of like work in different ways.

Dr. Cam (12:07)
Yeah, I have found actually because my daughter loved, like she has been waiting to vote. She finally voted this year. She's been waiting to vote for years. I don't know what kids do that, but it's what I love is, is because of her curiosity, it's creating more curiosity in me. And so I'm actually learning more about the different sides because we're talking about them. So it's opening doors for me.

Lindsey Cormack (12:18)
That's great.

Dr. Cam (12:36)
because I'm allowing that curiosity of hers to come in rather than saying this is what it is. I'm like, you know, I've never thought of that. Let's go look at what that is. And it's been really eye opening in a lot of ways.

Lindsey Cormack (12:49)
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense to me. This is something, so the book that I wrote is called How to Raise a Citizen and Why It's Up to You to Do It. And the why it's up to you to do it is like, okay, parents, sorry, you gotta take this on. And when I'm talking with parents who have done this work and they start these conversations with their kids, they're like, I'm learning stuff too. I feel like I'm being raised as a citizen. I'm like, yeah, that's what's gonna happen. That's what discussion does. We give and take and we get different pieces. And I think you must, I mean, you know as a parent, you know as a professional in this space.

Doing stuff with kids teaches us things about ourselves. It reflects things to us, it shows us stuff, and so it's always helpful. And the idea that this is a topic that's off limits or maybe they're not gonna be interested in, that's just not true. We just don't really give them a lot of opportunities to engage on it with us.

Dr. Cam (13:32)
Yeah, I think that's really important. you recommend watching the news with your kids?

Lindsey Cormack (13:38)
You know, everyone has different strategies here. I don't do that. But I don't say it's like a bad thing to do. I think the best thing you can do is make sure that you are dialed in and have an open line of communication so you understand what they are watching or if something's concerning them. It's not a practice in my house to have the news on. It would have been when I was like maybe younger with my dad. But yeah, that's not something I say like, yeah, you need to make sure you're doing that.

Dr. Cam (14:04)
Yeah, okay. I was just wondering if that was a good place to start the conversation. How do you recommend having those conversations with our kids? Because teenagers especially are going to be like, I don't want to talk about that with you.

Lindsey Cormack (14:09)
You gotta go to wherever they are. I think you have to let those entry points happen. And a lot of times, you're right, your teen isn't gonna wanna do that. And so a good time to do it is when you're not facing them head on, but when you're side by side. So that can be on a car commute. So you might have a radio on that says something, or it can be on a walk where you say, hey, have you heard anything about this? And sometimes you'll have stuff that your school's gonna send home. For instance, our school sent home stuff about a school shooting that happened in another state. And I was like, okay.

There's an opportunity, I imagine that they might be talking about it. And so it's just sort of finding those entry points that make sense. Like if you had asked me, you know, like last year, should I talk to my kids about what's happened in Israel? It would be like, well, you know, if that's something that's gonna be in your community, if that's gonna be a conversation that's gonna happen, yeah, you don't wanna be the off limits person. But if you have like a five year old and you're not, know, in a community that's gonna have any sort of relation to this, I'm not sure that it makes sense to say like, hey, just so you know, this horrific, scary thing happened that you have no control of. Like, yeah, so you know your kids best, you gotta go where they're going, you have to understand what they wanna get into and not try to push something into it, because that's not what they wanna do.

Dr. Cam (15:20)
And I think with teenagers, it's interesting, a good place to start is just what have you heard about it? Because chances are really, really, really high. They've heard something. They may not understand it, but they've definitely heard something. And so being able to kind of correct that or not even just correct it, but just start there and go and let's explore that together and figure that out. What do we need to teach kids in order for them to be what do you think is the most important things for kids to understand?

Lindsey Cormack (15:59)
So I have five in the book that I say before your kids can get out and I can do them quickly with you. The first is that your kids need to know how to vote. And you might say like, they're going to learn it in schools. On average, they don't. In 2022, only a quarter of our 18-year-olds are registered to vote. So that is the thing that unlocks every other thing. Second thing is they need to understand the difference between primaries and general elections. And I know this sounds like it's kind of in the weeds, but in most parts of the country, and I mean this in the overwhelming majority of elections, the person who wins that primary is gonna win that election. We have very few competitive elections at the general election, so if you really care about who's gonna have this seat, it's usually gonna be decided in a primary, so they have to know that. I think they all should have read the Constitution at least once before they are 18. I think you might say, schools are doing that. They're not. Most of my college students have never read it. It's, you know, 19 pages long, and it's not something you sit down and say, we're reading this together, but in the course of a lifetime, I think it's good for them to have like a basic understanding of this.

I think they need understand federalism. know, state government does different things than local, does different things than federal. So it's not just like, there's this nefarious people in DC doing all government stuff. It's like, it's your neighbors and your friends who are making zoning decisions and decisions on like, you know, what stoplights going to go up or if this is going to be a Stein, whatever. It's all that sort of quality of life, local area stuff. But I think one of the most important things and one that encompasses all of them. which is this ability to have a hard conversation because that is something that is so missing from the way that we sort of have schooling done. like, they're not really asked to be advocates. They're not really asked to, you know, fight or grapple or dig into some sort of topic that's hard and then come back and be like, OK, and that is what the practice is. So it's developing that muscle memory for hard or uncomfortable conversations of which politics offers a lot of opportunities. There's a lot of chances to do this and they just don't really get that in most of school because we don't focus that much on politics or government to begin with. It's mostly, we know some things, we're gonna teach you some things, please tell us those things back. And a lot of our politics curriculum looks like of like history, where they're like, okay, learn these things that happened 250 years ago, make sure you know them, now you're a citizen. Contemporary politics demands a lot more of us. It demands this like back and forth and flow of ideas, but they can't just learn it on their own. We gotta practice with them. We gotta show them what that is. We can't hide them from that, but we need to do it with them.

Dr. Cam (18:14)
Yeah, get from this a lot of it is general critical thinking. And this is one of those really important areas where critical thinking is important, but also listening. Because I think we do just in general, it seems like we do a lot of talking at and trying to convince is our conversations is convincing and it's not understanding. It's not putting those two pieces together and going, okay, if you strongly believe this and I like you as a person and you believe something very different than me, what are you understanding that I'm not understanding? Because you're not a bad person, so clearly you believe something that I'm not feeling or I don't get. What is that? What am I missing? And I think when we approach it that way, we learn so much more than just, you're wrong.

Lindsey Cormack (19:11)
I think that's absolutely right. And I do not fault any of our kids for being underdeveloped in their capacity to do this because I don't think we do it that much with them. I don't think we show them a lot of healthy examples. I think sort of the online media environment actually kind of incentivizes the opposite. It shows them like, say something crazy, say something mean, make sure it goes viral. When in reality, there is so much more to learn about this world if you approach it like you just said with this like listening and learning, which is, like, what is it? that happened on your journey that got you to this different endpoint. I didn't start that way. I didn't go on that path. And then you learn something about the world. And the marker of, you know, like a successful conversation is not, did I convince someone or was I convinced of their viewpoint? It's, I understand them a little bit better? Is our relationship deeper? Are our bonds more resilient because we know these pieces? And I think that's something that gets hard in politics because we just don't see that as the modal conversation style in any space really.

Dr. Cam (20:08)
Yeah. And I think what's really important and what I want to put out there is this isn't getting your kid to listen to you and saying, well, they need, you're right. They need to listen to me. This is about you listening to them. I think a lot of times we hear it and go, you're right. They need to do that for me. And it's the way they learn is when you listen to them and you question and you try to figure out what is it that you're, what am I missing? What is it that you are believing? What is your perception of this that I'm not getting? And so that's how they learn how to do it because they're watching us do it.

Lindsey Cormack (20:49)
Yeah, and then they get to go ahead and do that when they have their children in a better, more robust way. And this is what it is to have an idea about progress in parenting, an idea about changing, like I say it's this way so it's that way. Well, that's actually not how the world works ever. We get to create sort of the realities that we're gonna live in, and so wouldn't it be better to have a practice that teaches you how to do that?

Dr. Cam (21:11)
Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. So what is something you want to make sure parents step away with from this session, from this interview?

Lindsey Cormack (21:21)
think the biggest thing that I hope parents can take is that this is something that they do need to take on and that they can take on. Because a lot of us think like, know, ew, politics, government, I'm uncomfortable by that subject, or I don't know a lot about that subject, so I shouldn't be the one doing it. But if our kids never see us caring about this, never see us engaging on this, they get the message that they shouldn't either, that it's like for someone else to take care of. And that's not true. We all are sort of athletes in this arena. No one gets to sit by and be a spectator.

And so if you can show them what it is to do that and say, you know what, I can learn a little more. I can have a conversation. I can do that. I think that's the best thing you can do. All the other pieces, know, no one needs to become a government trivia expert. You don't need to know the ins and outs of everything. You need to show and model what it is to care, to learn more, to care, to be involved, to show that this is something that's worth your time. And that's kind of easy. That's like a mindset shift. That's saying like, okay, I can take this on.

Dr. Cam (22:11)
Yeah, I love that. So how do people find your book?

Lindsey Cormack (22:14)
It's everywhere that books are sold online. I think right now it happens to be the cheapest on Amazon. It's also at Barnes and Noble and Bookshop. And then I have a website that's just howtoraesacitizen.com where you can order it directly from me and I'll sign it or send it to someone. You can tell me, know, it's their birthday or they just had a kid or whatever. And I'm like happy to do that and ship it out from my house.

Dr. Cam (22:35)
I love it. Thank you so much for jumping on with us.

Lindsey Cormack (22:38)
Thank you so much for having me and thanks for doing this work. I think it's important that we have more people thinking about these sorts of subjects.

Dr. Cam (22:44)
Ditto for you. Thank you. 

 

About the Show:

The Parenting Teens with Dr. Cam Podcast is your ultimate resource for navigating the challenges of raising teens. Hosted by Dr. Cam Caswell, a seasoned adolescent psychologist and parenting coach, this podcast provides practical strategies and expert advice on how to build stronger relationships with your teen while supporting their emotional and intellectual growth. Whether you're dealing with teen behavior struggles or seeking to improve communication, each episode offers actionable tips to help parents confidently face the challenges of raising teens today.

 

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