I wonder if you’ve had this thought:

All this stuff Ann talks about is great if you have a “typical teenager”.

But there’s no way it would work with my kid…who’s fill in the blank…extremely stubborn, high strung, has ADHD, has ASD, has anxiety, has depression, is using substances, won’t talk to me, doesn’t care about consequences, won’t go to school…whatever it is.

If you’ve ever had a thought similar to this, I’m here today to give you lots of hope. Don’t go anywhere – you need to hear this.

This is Speaking of Teens and I’m Ann Coleman, attorney turned parent educator, here to help you learn to parent your teen in a way that provides them with a better outcome and brings your family more peace...and it’s all based in science and personal experience.

So, let’s get to this. The strategies and skills I talk about on this podcast and in Parent Camp are based on decades of scientific research by world-renowned experts in various fields of study related to adolescents and parenting. On the parenting side, the primary underlying principles are authoritative parenting (kind but firm parenting), emotion coaching (paying attention to your teen’s emotions while also correcting their behavior), with a bit of motivational interviewing and other communication techniques thrown in. Additionally, I concentrate on a parent’s emotional health and emotional intelligence because that impacts every facet of your parenting.

And on the adolescent behavior side, there’s developmental psychology, adolescent neuropsychology, basic neuroscience, emotion science, and on and on.

All of these principals apply to your situation, no matter what category you would put your child in.

And if you listened to Tuesday’s episode you know it doesn’t even matter if you think things have gotten so bad with your teen that you’re considering residential treatment – these strategies will help.

Let’s consider the teenager with ADHD – I consider these kids typical teens squared – and I had one. It’s a lot – I totally get it. So, you may feel that you need a totally different parenting strategy, but you don’t. What you may need are additional strategies related to helping them manage their ADHD as it relates to school and different areas of their life…and lots and lots and lots of patience and emotional regulation yourself (which I teach).

Kids with anxiety, depression, using substances…same thing. They need extra support and strategies related to their particular situation but the underlying principals for use at home, are the same.

All of these kids are going to be like the typical teen only more emotionally dysregulated, have much bigger reactions over much smaller things, and have a much harder time calming down once their emotions have taken over.

So, you apply what I teach, you work on your own emotions (which are no doubt going to be even more ragged than most) and you practice and practice and have lots of empathy and lots of patience until you see the changes. And you WILL see changes. Will it be harder, more intense, take a little longer? No doubt. But it will work – especially when combined with other strategies being given them from their own support person.

If your teen is refusing to get help themselves right now, you can still use the strategies I teach until you have a stronger emotional connection so they will then consider taking that extra help. You just have to be more patient and trust that it has worked for so many others and it can work for you and your family too. Do not give up hope – there’s SO much hope!

My son has both ADHD and anxiety, was using substances and had depression and we turned things around when he was 18. And this was a kid who literally put his fist through solid wood doors and had anxiety so bad he threw up almost every morning before school.

Learning how to coach your emotionally dysregulated teen through their meltdowns, learning when to keep quiet and stand back, learning how to say what to say when they’re not dysregulated, learning to connect with them emotionally…it makes such an enormous impact that it makes me sad that every parent doesn’t understand it. It makes me sad that therapists who see teens don’t talk to the parents about this, it makes me sad there are still parents out there thinking it’s just their teen that needs “fixing” when they can do so much by learning and changing their own behavior.

What if your teenager is high strung or stubborn or doesn’t seem to care about consequences – any issue you might consider extreme or out of the ordinary, I can assure you, it’s quite ordinary and things can change.

Have you listened to the series I did on how our behavior can make our teens’ behavior so much worse? Episodes 151, 153, 155 and 157.

What happens so often is at the first sign of trouble (a lie, breaking a rule, making a bad grade, refusing to do something) we double down, we push harder, we punish, we invade their privacy, we lecture, we treat them like a child, all of which threatens their autonomy.

And their autonomy – having a say in what happens in their life and being treated with respect are enormously important to them during adolescence. So, when we do things that threaten their autonomy, they push back to show us, they’re not having it.

They talk back, act like the punishment doesn’t matter, ignore it, ignore you…THEY double down on the behavior you tried to correct. And then the fight is on…you control and threaten their autonomy even more by adding more punishments, yelling, shaming…and they continue to push back even harder.

In Parent Camp I teach you how to change your own behavior so you can stop this spiral. I teach you how to manage how you think and feel about your teen and their behavior, how to talk to them, how to teach them about their own emotions and how to get things back to a place of equilibrium for everyone.

Put out of your head that the situation with your teenager is so a-typical that Parent Camp can’t help you. If you do the work and you want to see change, you will.

…………………………..

Now, I will say that it’s much harder for some of us to do that work – to make the necessary shifts in our mindset, to learn how to manage our emotions and adjust our parenting behavior – I get that. It’s been engrained in us for decades that we must make our kids and teens behave the way they’re supposed to. We must control them and force them to be obedient or they’ll be spoiled, entitled brats who will never make it in the world. We’ve been taught that we’re the boss, what we say goes and that our teens don’t have a say in the matter. That sounds bad when we say it out loud, right? But isn’t it true?

We’ve been taught that teens aren’t allowed to make mistakes – that mistakes are bad and not to be tolerated under any circumstances. So, we either jump through hoops to make sure they don’t make any mistakes, or we try to punish those mistakes right out of them, failing to realize that mistakes are necessary to learn and grow. None of us instantly became adults – we made mistakes and learned as we went. Ahhh, but we’ve either forgotten our mistakes or they’re very much in the forefront of our mind and we don’t want them doing the same thing!

 

Of course, for some of us it’s not so much the parenting mindset that trips us up but our own emotions. It can be especially difficult for some of us to accept our teens’ mistakes and move forward parenting them in a way that promotes connection.

Their mistakes terrify us, and we feel if we’re not punishing them, we’re not doing what we should to protect them from themselves!

It can be so difficult to understand that the control and punishment and our own emotional dysregulation are most often the very things driving their bad behavior…that if we learn to regulate our emotions, treat our teenager with respect and empathy and understanding and compassion, that they’re much more likely to be able to make decisions about their behavior that aren’t driven by the need to try and prove to us that they can do what they want to do!

When you’ve gone through all the different methods I teach to regulate your emotions, but you just don’t seem to be able to change the way you think about your child or their behavior, or manage your emotions and change your behavior, it’s time to seek counseling for yourself. Sometimes there are things in our life that impact our emotions that we just can’t put our finger on or work our way through without therapeutic intervention. There’s absolutely no shame in that – as a matter of fact, I think we owe it to ourselves and our family to get help if our emotions are such that we can’t make the necessary changes in our life.

The bottom line is – no matter what’s going on with your teen, the basic concepts, strategies, skills, tools I teach in Parent Camp are the starting point. You can’t skip over them and hope that someone else is going to just come along and fix your teen for you and make everything better.

Every day that goes by that you pray or wish or daydream about change but aren’t taking the necessary steps to make those changes happen – is a day you won’t get back.

If you still feel your situation is different and are concerned that Parent Camp might not help you, reach out to me at acoleman@speakingofteens.com. If you’re listening to this episode before August 29^th, 2024, there’s still time to register for the fall Parent Camp cohort. The link for Parent Camp is at the bottom of the episode description right where you’re listening. The next cohort doesn’t start up until Spring 2025 so get in now and start making those changes in your home.

That’s it for Speaking of Teens today, I’m so glad you were here with me – be sure to go check out Parent Camp right now and join me Tuesday August 27^th for another very special episode with a mom who’s been through Parent Camp and wanted to share her experience with you.

Until then, remember, a little change goes a long way.