In this 201^st episode of Speaking of Teens, first of all I just want to say thank you. Thank you for being here and for allowing me to talk to you each week about parenting your teens.

I feel sincerely honored and extremely blessed that out of the thousands and thousands of podcast listening options you have, that you’ve chosen to listen to me. So, thank you so very much for trusting me to bring you the best scientifically backed advice possible.

And I have to say, I’m always shocked and amazed to see listeners from countries all over the world – the fact that I can connect with you from my little home studio in rural Alabama, is just an incredible feeling.

So, I thought it would be appropriate today, Feb 18^th 2025, since registration is now officially open for the spring 2025 Parent Camp cohorts, to talk to you a little about why I went from practicing attorney to podcaster and parent educator, and specifically what Parent Camp is and how I put it together to help you and your teens.

If you’ve ever been interested in doing a deeper dive with me, please stay tuned for the next few minutes .

PODCAST INTRODUCTION

The primary reason I do what I do today is because I wish we’d had someone back in 2016 or even before, educate us about parenting teenagers.

But like so many parents, my husband and I thought the worst of parenthood was over. Dirty diapers, toddler tantrums, ear aches, sleepless nights—we thought we’d just be skating on through. That was not the case.

What we went through with our then teenage son was really traumatic. I even get confused when I talk about when it happened – I think it was mainly all of 2017 and 2018 but maybe some of 2016 as well. It’s such a blur. If you want the full story, you can listen to episode 10.

Long story short, our son, who is now 24, has ADHD and anxiety, and during high school he developed depression, talked about suicide, was smoking copious amounts of marijuana and dabbling in several other types of drugs, got in trouble at school, and even with law enforcement.

Our lives were a jumble of arguments, fits of rage, massive emotional meltdowns, calls with the school, diversion programs, alternative education, lots of different mental health professionals who didn’t help a thing, a psychiatric hospital, and finally, residential treatment.

And knowing what I know now, with the ability to look back at how I handled things, I feel certain I could have prevented so much of our son’s escalating behavior. And that’s why I want to help you.

One of the most upsetting things about our journey through hell is that although we worked with at least 2 psychologists, 2 psychiatrists, one family counselor, two addiction specialists, (one who worked just with the family and one with our son), not one single mental health professional ever explained anything (that I feel) they should have explained. Crucial, life-altering things like how my fear and anxiety was driving my controlling behavior and intensifying my son’s anxiety and rebellious behavior. Or like how important it is to listen to our kids and acknowledge their feelings.

These are extremely basic parenting concepts that it seems either mental healthcare professionals just don’t understand themselves or don’t bother to share with parents of struggling teens. It’s actually mind-blowing to me that parents are allowed to believe that sending their kid to a therapist will fix the problems going on at home. That’s exactly what we thought – fix him and send him back.

Luckily, I was finally pointed in the right direction by a family therapist at our son’s residential treatment center (and let me just add here – it was me, not my husband – he had great instincts and I pushed back all along the way).

But once I realized what I’d been doing wrong, I immediately began changing the way I interacted with my son, and within weeks things were improving. Our son was learning to regulate his emotions right alongside me. Our relationship improved.

It was nothing short of miraculous and I was hooked. One book led to another which led to deep reading in scientific journals-studies and comprehensive articles.

I wanted to understand how to parent a teenager to avoid the issues we’d had and to do better going forward (but I also immediately realized I had to help other parents as well).

I started out reading about the science of emotions and emotional intelligence, which led me to adolescent neurobiology and neuropsychology, and all sorts of other areas of behavioral psychology and parenting.

I decided I wanted to look at the struggles between parents and teens from all angles, various fields of study, different perspectives and opinions--because experts tackle a problem according to their expertise.

If your teen is struggling with their mental health, or you’re arguing constantly over minor issues, or your worried about their future, or they engaged in risky behaviors, you can present any one or all of these issues to a room full of experts for advice and you’ll get a multitude of different answers depending on that expert’s focus.

The expert in emotions may talk about how you both need to become more emotionally aware and regulated, an expert in communication will tell you how to communicate better, an expert in discipline might tell you how to manage consequences better. All of them are right, but their advice is just a single part of the puzzle.

Combining various viewpoints is the most comprehensive way to solve any problem – especially parenting. Parenting is complicated - it’s not one-dimensional because human nature is not one-dimensional, relationships are not one-dimensional, behavior is not one-dimensional.

So, I just kept researching and making lots of notes and citing my sources as I went.

This was second nature for me – as an attorney I spent 3 years in law school learning how to go deep, analyze, find the nuggets in a pile of information and trace them to the source and find additional sources, and distill it all into the written page so that it fits together and makes sense. And by this point I’d been a practicing attorney for more than 20 years.

I knew I was creating something to help other parents – I didn’t yet know how, but I knew that if I’d been blind to all this information (and obviously didn’t know it intuitively) that there were lots of other parents out there making the same mistakes I’d made.

It took me about 5 years – thousands of hours of studying and writing, citing my sources like a good lawyer – I stopped counting at about 2 years in with over 43,000 words and 378 citations.

I guess it was after about 3 years of research that I started plotting out this information on post-it notes and poster boards to form a roadmap that parents could take to learn what they needed to learn to get the best outcome with their teens in the shortest amount of time.

Now this took a couple more years of trial and error, teaching mini-courses and boot camps, and a membership, to figure out the most important pieces and parts of the puzzle, the order in which to teach them, how to explain it concisely, and so on.

I was creating a multi-dimensional, comprehensive framework to help you decrease the conflict with your teen while strengthening your relationship with them and improving their behavior – that’s no small feat.

This framework is what I teach in my online course, which is the foundation of a weeks-long educational experience, led by me, called Parent Camp. And based on the transformation parents have had so far, I’m extremely proud of my work – because that’s what I want to see – your life and your teen’s life and the rest of your family’s life, transformed for the better.

There are 4 parts to this framework:

The first is learning about how the changes that occur in your teen’s brain impact their thoughts, emotions, and behavior so you can adjust your expectations and increase your empathy for them (which will help you in the second part of the framework) which is becoming more emotionally regulated – a calmer parent - so you can think clearly and implement the rest of the parenting skills you’ll learn in the rest of the framework and stop creating more conflict and ramping up your teen’s poor behavior.

The third part of the framework is all about communicating more effectively with your teen. You learn how to communicate with them to help them become more emotionally aware and regulated themselves, to gain more cooperation, to help them solve their own problems, to prevent as much conflict as possible, and more.

And the fourth part of the framework is all about discipline – how to become more connected and support your teen’s autonomy so they will want to behave the way you want them to, teaching them the skills they for adulthood, working with them on rules and consequences and allowing natural consequences, all to make harsh punishments obsolete.

Now I’ve talked a lot about these various parts of the framework here on the show. And I really hope you’ve been able to implement some of the strategies I’ve discussed to see changes happen at home.

But if you’re still constantly arguing or trying to get your teen to cooperate or they’re biting your head off or lying or sneaking around or doing risky things, stop trying to do it alone and come join me and the other parents for spring Parent Camp.

I’ve done all this work for YOU. I’ve researched and I’ve studied, and I’ve formulated and written, so you don’t have to, and you can avoid the struggles we had.

Parent Camp is a 10- or 11-week, cohort-based, educational experience (depending on the cohort you choose – I’ll explain in a minute). It includes my online course, called The Field Guide to Teens, weekly virtual group coaching sessions with me, email access to me, and a private Facebook group.

Each week you’ll watch some of the video lessons and work through the accompanying workbook to prepare you for our session together. You might spend an hour at most on this.

Then we’ll get together for our virtual group session really dig into what you learned at home. I also stay up to 30 minutes after the session for questions about your specific situations at home.

Again, Parent Camp is designed to help you decrease conflict with your teen, while strengthening your relationship with them and improving their behavior.

Now, I said it’s a 10- or 11-week experience because this time around I’ve added what I call Parent Camp PLUS, which goes an extra week, and the weekly sessions are an hour and a half rather than an hour.

Parent Camp PLUS is for parents of teens that are causing extra disruption, (they may have ADHD and anxiety, depression, are using substances, getting in lots of trouble, you’re at the end of your rope, your relationship is likely hanging by a thread, you may even be dealing with legal issues, and so forth).

So, there are two cohorts for spring:

One for parents with typical teen struggles lasting 10 weeks, meeting an hour each week on Tuesday evenings at 7 pm central, starting March 4^th 2025 and

One for parents who need extra help (like I could have used with my son) – lasting 11 weeks, meeting an hour and a half each week on Wednesday evenings at 7 pm central, starting March 5th.

Now one of the things that sets Parent Camp apart is our weekly live (virtual) group sessions.

Most parenting programs are just online courses that you watch on your own – with maybe a few downloads.

But because I want you to actually get this and really see a true transformation, I hold your hand all the way.

So, in Parent Camp I hold your hand every step of the way to make sure you get it. You get my expert guidance, plus the accountability you likely need to get through it and the community of other parents going through similar issues.

So, I want you to seriously consider joining me in Parent Camp for the fall cohort. I want to help you – I know I can help you.

By the end of our time together, you’ll be well on your way to strengthening the relationship with your teen, decreasing the conflict, and improving their behavior.

The other thing, of course, that really sets Parent Camp apart – and forgive me for bragging a bit here (but as I always heard growing up in the South – “it ain’t braggin’, it’s just fact.”) – it’s my 5 years of research and distilling this information into a framework that’s proven to work. The workbook I’ve created for the course has lots of supplemental information, detailed examples, full conversations, explanations, diagrams, and cheat sheets (and previous parent campers have said this should be a stand-alone product – it’s that good). Again, it’s not braggin’ – just fact! You can read parent testimonials on the information page I’ll share with you.

Registration is open for only one week, from today, February 18^th, 2025 through next Tuesday, February 25^th, 2025 at 7 pm central. You won’t get another chance to go through Parent Camp until the fall.

So, if you’re tired of trying to do this by yourself, but you want to get on the fast track and make life better for you and the rest of your family, please go ahead and register for Parent Camp today.

The link for the Parent Camp information page is at the bottom of the episode description in the app where you’re listening now – it’s speakingofteens.net/parent-camp, that’s speakingofteens.net/parent-camp.

If you have questions, you’re welcome to email me at acoleman@speakingofteens.com.

Alright, that’s all for Speaking of Teens today, I hope you understand a little more about what I’ve put together for you and that you’re ready to join me and other parents in Parent Camp this spring so I can help you turn the tide with your teen.

Thank you for being here with me today and until next time, remember to connect with your teen in at least some small way, each and every day.

I’ve used my skills as an attorney to research, study, distill, compile and teach information to help you and thousands of other parents. I sincerely just want you to avoid making the mistakes I made. I want you to know now, what it took me too long to understand: that parenting a teenager is different from parenting a kid – it takes special knowledge, a mindset shift and very specific skills to get it right.

And by “right” I mean so the results are what you want to see: that your teen feels emotionally connected to you, asks you for your advice and listens and trusts that advice, that you don’t waste precious time in an antagonistic relationship with them, where they’d rather do anything than what you say. That they feel supported and secure and have no need to rebel or act out