Let me paint a picture for you.

You feel like every time you open your mouth it causes an angry comeback or an argument with your teenager. You walk on eggshells just wondering how to approach them about anything. It’s been going on forever now.

You get the feeling they just can’t stand the sight of you sometimes. They don’t listen to a word you say and none of the consequences you’ve throw at them for months and months have changed their behavior. It seems the harder you try to get them to act right, the worse they behave!

You can’t understand why they’re acting this way despite the loving and supportive way you’ve raised them – not to mention all the material things they have. It’s maddening.

And you think to yourself – did I give them too much? Where did I go wrong? Why are they this way?

You desperately want this to stop.

So, you spend hundreds of not thousands of dollars and many hours dragging them to therapists, psychologists, anyone who’ll listen, trying to figure out what’s going on with them.

You spend inordinate amounts of time on the internet looking for answers, you feel like you’re spinning in circles…and nothing changes.

I’m Ann Coleman and this is Speaking of Teens.

If you haven’t yet found yourself in a similar predicament – good for you – there’s still time to avoid spending all that money and all that time and getting nowhere.

But if this already sounds too familiar, you’ve backed yourself into a corner with your teen – but there’s also still time to work your way back out.

This predicament happens all too frequently between parents and teens.

I know because I was there just a few years ago – feeling very alone, afraid and nearly hopeless in that corner. I just wanted someone to fix my son, so he’d stop acting the way he was. I spent a full two years spinning my wheels, spending lots of money with professionals who didn’t help, unknowingly making things worse myself, every day.

I spent untold hours talking to school administrators and staff, meeting with them, going to alternative school meetings, and court diversion program meetings.

We spent so much time and so much money on therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists appointments, mandatory drug education meetings.

For two years I searched the internet for the answers, for hope, for someone else who’d been through it and found a way out. I waisted lots of precious time arguing, lecturing, yelling, begging, pleading…and crying on the bathroom floor.

All those meltdowns, all those consequences, feeling absolutely terrified for his future.

All that time wasted. All that time I could have been learning to regulate my fear so I could parent him properly.

All that time I could have been getting to know him better, helping him to grow emotionally, supporting his evolving emotional needs, and strengthening our relationship.

2 years.

But after finally figuring out where I’d gone wrong, turning things around with my son and studying everything there is about adolescence and parenting for the past 5 years…I’m not gonna’ lie - it makes me a little crazy when I hear someone say they just don’t have time or the money to learn these things in Parent Camp.

It will take you between an hour and a half to two hours a week for 10 weeks – max 20 hours. And it costs less than an average monthly car payment – around 3 trips to a therapist’s office.

And I can assure you – not learning what I teach will take up much more time and cost you much more money.

Money aside – let’s talk about your time.

Consider, for example, your son gets extremely frustrated one Friday after school, that he’s lost his phone charger, he’s walking through the house huffing and puffing, slamming and stomping, you ignore it as long as you can and then yell from the family room, “what’s the matter?” He flies into a boiling rage and starts yelling about how you always assume the worst and you don’t listen and he’s talking about things from 3 years ago and he’s getting higher and higher pitched as you say, “can you please chill out and tell me what happened?” “Why are you yelling at me?” But he doesn’t calm down, as a matter of fact he’s now even more enraged and walks into his room, slams the door and a poster frame falls from the wall and crashes to the floor. Now, you’re mad. You go swing open his bedroom door and tell him he can forget going anywhere tonight or tomorrow night and that he owes you an apology. You were planning on a night out with friends, which you now cancel because you have to stay home to make sure he doesn’t leave. Over the span of that night, the next day and night, you have no fewer than 3 more out of control arguments , at least 2 of which involved your spouse and the other 2 kids. You head into Sunday with everyone still grumbling and snapping at each other and Monday morning your son’s still not looking you in the eyes.

Has anything like this every happened to you? I know I just saw a post in my Facebook group about a similar situation that lasted for hours on end. It’s not an exaggeration at all.

So, just between Friday afternoon on into at least Monday morning, the whole family’s been on edge, arguing or walking around on eggshells trying to avoid an argument, not to mention your canceled plans. How do you add up all that time wasted because you didn’t know how to manage your son’s emotional meltdown properly? We could probably say you lost the whole weekend, right? Friday afternoon and night, Saturday and Saturday night, Sunday and Sunday night – Monday morning. I would say conservatively that’s around 25 hours of your life that you were pretty miserable and will never get back.

The thing that really makes me sad for families – for the teens - is that so many parents simply don’t realize these issues are fixable…and you can learn the skills in Parent Camp.

Now, it’s easy to listen to a podcast or read a book and tell yourself you’re going to “try that”. But by the time you’re faced with the same situation again, your emotions take over, your brain shuts down and you do what you’ve always done – what comes easy.

And maybe you’re willing to live with that for now. Perhaps you won’t get really nervous about things until the blowups come more frequently, you find the 3^rd weed pen in a month, or they start sneaking out and lying to you all the time.

But by that point, you’ve probably entered what I call the Parental Control – Teen Rebellion Spiral. The turmoil has begun, and you’ve got a lot bigger job ahead of you to turn things around.

Not that you can’t – you absolutely can. But it’s certainly a lot easier to maintain your relationship and keep the peace than rebuild your relationship and tame the chaos.

You do not want to get to that point.

It’s like waiting until you have diabetes to start eating healthy and exercising or waiting until your car sputters to a stop to change the oil.

Preventing issues from happening is simply easier than waiting until things are so bad that you have to put in more time and more money.

And I’ll tell you - chaos creates desperation and desperation creates more chaos, which wastes more time and more money.

Our lives certainly didn’t get easier, and we certainly didn’t save any money when out of desperation we decided to send our son to a residential facility in California.

So, on top of all the money we’d spent for the professionals, the ER visits, and a hospital stay and spending just about every waking hour for the past 2 years, either worrying about him, arguing with him, or lecturing and punishing him, we were now traveling back and forth from South Carolina to California to visit him and I was studying parity law and fighting the insurance company to make them pay the facility.

Such a train wreck.

We make the time, and we spend the money for so many things that aren’t near as important as the relationship with our kids, their emotional and mental health, their behavior, and their future.

Just think about it. Add up the money you spend on eating out, all the streaming services, apps, Starbucks, the gym, tennis, pickleball…and how much time do you spend on TikTok? Netflix? Playing games on your phone?

There’s both money and the time to spend learning how to parent your teen to best avoid the conflict and the behavior issues and the heartache.

In Parent Camp you’ll spend somewhere around 20 hours (maybe more when you dig into the bonus material) – but this is spread out over 2 and a half months – no more than a couple of hours a week including our weekly group session.

It’s the time equivalent of watching one movie a week. And 20 hours of watching Ryan Reynolds or Scarlett Johanssen – sorry guys – just won’t yield the same return on your investment.

My son and I have a really good relationship now. Of course, we have our moments – I still really have to watch the reminders and the questions.

But I can’t tell you the regret I live with every day because I didn’t find the right resources and master the skills I needed until he was turning 18-years-old. The time I wasted makes me want to cry.

But I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I was looking for and I didn’t know what I needed to change.

Luckily, you don’t have that problem. I talk about the things you need to change twice a week right here on this podcast. I’ve shared a lot of how to do it.

Are you working on it every day? Do you have a group of parents to keep you accountable? Do you have anyone to practice your new-found skills with? Do you have anyone to help you when you get stuck?

Have you been able to make the changes you want to see at home?

Orrrr…are you still trying to figure out how to avoid all the arguments?

Still wondering how to use consequences to change their behavior?

Still trying to figure out how to get them to do what you say?

Still trying to manage their relentless grumbling, whining, and moodiness?

Still worried about how they’re going to manage how to do certain things after they leave home?

Still trying to figure out how to stop the willful defiance, the attitude and the disrespect?

Do you sometimes just feel totally defeated by it all and just want to get a fake passport and hop a plane to Belize?

So, are you waiting on an engraved invitation to change your situation?

Okay – this is the closest you’re going to get. Click the link at the bottom of the episode description for the Parent Camp information page – do it now. And if you want to talk to me about it, there’s a link in the FAQ on that page where you can set up a 15-minute call with me.

If you’re listening to this episode before August 29^th 2024, you still have time to register – the cut off is midnight on the 28^th. If you miss this fall cohort, the next Parent Camp starts up spring 2025. Why would you wait? Let’s change your family’s story right now.

Join me.

Okay, that’s it for me today – go check out the link for Parent Camp and let me know if you want to chat about it.

And until next time, remember, a little change goes a long way!