Eps 332: Solo Show- The Challenges of Giving Up Control with Our Teens

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Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
So why is it so hard to let go and get out of the way? Because we're scared, because we want to know we're good parents, because it's hard to trust our teens knowing what they want. Does that make sense? It's hard to watch them make mistakes, and it's hard to let go of our our dreams for them. There's grief there. Right letting go of our dreams, of our vision, of our narrative. There's grief there. Hello, my friends, welcome to joyful courage, a conscious parenting podcast where we tease apart the challenges and nuances of parenting through adolescence. I am your host. Casey overrti, positive discipline trainer and adolescent lead at sproutable, a company that represents not only the growth of children, but also the journey and evolution that we all get to go through as their parents. I am walking the path right next to you as I navigate the teen parenting with my own two kids here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, joyful courage is all about grit growth on the parenting journey, relationships that provide a sense of connection and meaning and influential tools that support everyone in being their best selves. Keep those reviews coming, my friends, I'm so grateful every time you jump into Apple podcasts to share what you love or don't love about the show. So speaking of reviews, I got some feedback recently about the show notes. So show notes are what is captured from interviews and solo shows and shared with people who listen. There's we try to make sure there's links to all the resources mentioned, and we put the extended show notes on the website. And I recently got some feedback that it's annoying that you have to go to the website for those show notes. And the reviewer requested that we have a short summary available when you listen through, you know, Apple podcasts or Spotify, or anywhere other than the website. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk with Rowan, who is my show notes guru, and invite her to capture the essence of the show in one or two sentences, so that if you're trying to decide what you want to listen to, and you're kind of scrolling through the titles, which I try to make the titles, you know, pretty close to what the content is. But if you need a little bit more, we are going to work towards having a few sentences that capture the summary of the interview. So thanks for feedback on that, and thank you listeners, thank you all for being here. We are over 1 million downloads and 300 plus episodes strong, and you have taken us to the top 1% of podcasts worldwide. And I so appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Today's a solo show. I hope that there are plenty of nuggets for you to take away.

So I made a reel. I made a reel. Do you know what a reel is? Those little videos that you see on Instagram and Tiktok and, well, actually, my kids tell me it is not the same as a Tiktok. Anyway, I have mixed emotions about reels, like, I can't really bring myself to do the pointy thing. Like, you know, the reels, the videos where people are pointing and the words show up. I don't feel like I can be a lip syncer Even when it's really funny audio. I have lots of colleagues and friends that I see doing a really good job with that, and I'm good with that. I want to do them because they seem to be a really engaging way to be succinct around a particular con, you know, a particular piece of content. And so I made one. I've made a couple, but I made one that got a lot of attention last week. And it was me talking about getting out of our kids way, getting out of our kids way, allowing them to feel the tension of life, handing over responsibility. I can't remember exactly what I said about it, but it got a lot of attention. It's on my Instagram. I dropped it into my Facebook group as well. And you know, there were a couple of parents who were curious about this whole idea of getting out of our kids way. And I know I've talked about it a bunch of different times, and I'm going to talk about it again today, because it is one of those things where, you know, we can hear it a bunch of different ways, and maybe it lands a little bit better. I'm also currently guiding, gosh, three or four different couples through some one on one coaching and noticing that there's this. Yes, you know, people come to me for coaching when they're like, Okay, and over our heads. We need support. We're ready to invest. You know, typically, parents come to me for coaching when things are really challenging. And you know, the first couple sessions that we do, I'm feeling out how, you know, the mindset of the parents, right and helping them shift from this rewards, consequence model into relationship centered, getting out of the way, basically model. And that's hard. It's hard for parents to even kind of recognize that that's where they're at that really, a lot of parents come to me wanting new and different ways of using rewards and consequences, and that's not what I bring. And even when I make that clear, you know, when we do the Explore, call and they get to know me and I send them some podcasts so they can know me deeper, it's still it's such a different way of being with our kids that it still is hard for parents to truly understand and shift into a different come from. So anyway, it's on my mind, this whole getting out of the way and shifting into relationship and something that happens, you know, parents are like, Yeah, I'm totally down with that. I'm down with that model, getting out of our kids way. But what about right? What if they're doing scary things, or what if they aren't living to their potential? Okay? So here's what I'm talking about. When I am talking about getting out of our kids way, I am talking about allowing our kids to feel the consequences, good or bad of their choices, not the consequences that you are imposing on them, but the actual, real consequences of their choices. I'm talking about helping our teens connect the dots between moving towards what they want or making it harder for them to get there, helping them see how their behavior is affecting what they want, and I'm talking about allowing them to consider what their vision is, and supporting them wholeheartedly in their vision. Okay, so let's get into this. So what if they are doing scary things? Okay, there's a couple realms of the whole scary things thing, right? Like there's the novelty seeking that's developmentally wired into their brains, right? Like they are wired for novelty seeking. They're curious. They have that extra dopamine that gets hit. They are, you know, they're raring to go, right? Who you be, what you practice inside of the novelty seeking when you find out that they've done, you know, something that is not making you so excited. Maybe they got drunk, maybe they are experimenting with weed, maybe they're sneaking around and not telling you right who you be as you explore that with them. You be curious, listen to understand, being emotionally honest here, right? Meaning that sounds like I'm really scared about this, and I'm going to tell you why, and just allowing them to hear you, and also allowing them to talk to you in a way that helps with those fears, right, recognizing when those fears are yours and not necessarily, you know, like recently, for example, my son wanted to go to this big party, you know, party at the moon tower. If anyone gets that reference, you are my people. Party at the moon tower. It was out in the middle of the woods at this big gravel pit. The kids were all spending the night. There's gonna be this big bonfire, right? My mind immediately goes to, oh, God, drunken teenagers fighting and non consensual, you know, sexual behavior. I mean, I went right there. I went directly there, like it was, in my mind, this party was going to be just total debauchery. And I told my son, I said, you know, when I think about alcohol, which I know there's going to be alcohol, my mind immediately goes to violence, or, you know, being in a place where you can't stop yourself from hurting somebody else. And we talked about that, and I also identified that a lot of my fear comes from my own behavior as a teenager, and that puts my son in a box, right? That makes an assumption that because I did XYZ, he's gonna do those things, and he might do those things, but he's gonna do those things for different reasons than I did, because he's in a different family system. He has a different relationship with his parents. He's a different person. And you know, we get to tease that out in conversation. I share my values. You know, when we find out that they are doing some novelty seeking and we're not really excited about that, we get to share our values. Here's what's important to me, here's what's okay with me, right? Here's what's. Not okay with me, and at the end of the day, you walk out the door and you make choices for you. So let's co create some agreements that feel good, agreements about curfew, agreements about driving, agreements around. You know where you go, who you're with. CO created agreements. Now sometimes you know there's other layers to this. There's mental illness, there's addiction, there might be extreme risky behavior, if that's what's happening, seek outside help, and that's for your whole family, right, not just your child. When things are getting scary, like really scary, and you feel like this is bigger than our family, get support. Get support for you, get support for the family system, get support for your child, and remember, I did that whole series around alternatives to punishment this past spring. I'll make sure that the playlist is in the show notes. That's a great just re listen to that, because I really tease apart what it means to shift into this mindset of relationship centered parenting versus leaning heavily on punishment and consequences when our kids are doing all the things right. So the other thing is, what if they aren't living up to their potential? So this came up on my Instagram feed. When I shared this reel, a friend of mine was like, Yeah, I get that, but if I don't step in, you know, he's gonna lose opportunity. He's not gonna basically, I don't think she said living up to his potential, but that was pretty much the premise, right? Again, who you be? What

are you practicing in the relationship with your child, curiosity, listening to understand, using emotional honesty, sharing your values, CO, creating agreement. The other question is, who has been holding responsibility? Right? A lot of our kids, you know, when they've lived 1214, 1618, years, of you doing everything for them, of you pushing them along, of you setting up a dynamic where they're being rewarded for their efforts, like rewarded, meaning, like external rewards, not just the reward of like I did really well and I earned that you are actually creating a dynamic where you're responsible for Their effort. You're responsible for what they're putting out, and it also clouds what it is that your child wants. It becomes what you want, what you see. You know, it's painful for our kids. It's painful for our kids, and it's like, why should I bother like, this is so important to you. You know, keep you parent, keep making the effort, right? You keep making the effort. And let's tease that apart, because some of it, it's so much of this comes back to moving over to the passenger seat like this is the time as our kids move into adolescence, and are in adolescence, they need high reps, high repetition. They need lots of experience being in the driver's seat, right? And letting go of control is so hard. Letting go of control is so hard, and this is where conflict starts to build when we don't get out of the driver's seat, when we are hanging on because we're scared and we think we know better. This is where conflict builds. Teenagers don't get the practice of responsibility because we're holding it for them, the safety nets are so high that they don't feel the tension. It becomes a problem between them and us. Their behavior is a problem between them and us, rather than a problem between them and what they want. And resentment builds. You know, our kids start to think to themselves, all my parent cares about is school or controlling me, or how I look, how I'm presenting to the world, right? The sooner that we can let our kids practice being in the driver's seat, the sooner they're learning the skills they need to launch and like, please hear me when I say, this isn't about doing nothing, right? This is a shift away from the idea that we need to give rewards and consequences to make sure our kids do what we think is best for them, and moving towards the idea that they get to discover what is best for them, and move towards that in a way that develops their skills and deepens them into their own sense of knowing themselves and self awareness. And now remember, again, I did that whole alternatives to punishment series, and we dive deep into this. So why is it so hard to let go and get out of the way? I. Because we're scared, because we want to know we're good parents, because it's hard to trust our teens knowing what they want. Does that make sense? It's hard to watch them make mistakes, and it's hard to let go of our our dreams for them. There's grief there, right? Letting go of our dreams, of our vision, of our narrative. There's grief there. And you guys have heard me talk a lot about this with my experience with Rowan, right, and the choices that she's made, which, you know, today, I'm in awe of that kid. I am in awe of that kid, but when she was, you know, having a mental health spiral and dropping out of school and, you know, smoking a lot of pot and going through, you know, her stuff, I was so scared. It was not the narrative that I held, you know, and it was really confronting to me. And there was a lot of grief. I've moved through a lot of grief around that and who she is today, the skills, the tools,

the person, the way that she knows herself, the way that she knows what she wants. I mean, it blows my mind. It's so far beyond who I was at 19 years old, and it's because of what she's navigated. It's because of her own intersection with life and feeling the tension and learning from it, being willing to learn from it, having space to learn from it. I was always, and have always and will always, be a soft landing for her, and I get to practice really trusting that it's her journey that's growing and developing her, and there's so much power there. There's so much opportunity there for her. Yes, so let's do some real time support for the community. So I'm going to talk about a post or two that showed up in the joyful courage parent of teen Facebook group, and I'm gonna use it to tease apart what I'm talking about here. So one mom recently posted, I'm new to this group, and I just listened to the podcast. I love what I'm learning, and everything aligns with my parenting journey. It's all about connection, my role in things, alternative paths, supporting my teens, positivity, trusting their journey, seeing them as humans and realizing that my job is to influence and not boss or control, I find, though, that I get lost in how to actually parent this way. For example, my teen isn't in school and would love to Game and Watch TV and YouTube for most of the day he does a small chore, spends a little time with me, and we all have family dinners, all great, but does this approach suggest I support him wherever he's at meaning allow him to spend most of his day on a device, trusting his own path to adulthood? Or do I still have a role in setting limits and having expectations? I know a technology is a beast of an issue to navigate, but it's hard to understand how it factors into parenting when you want to support your child, but also wonder how much of a role it plays in preventing your child from getting on their path and using tech to tune out and avoiding all the hard things life has presented. I know it's hard to know how much to push, encourage, expect and how much to accept, support, trust, just curious how parenting from this perspective would approach this type of situation. So first of all, always grateful when someone shows up in the community and shares. I'm always grateful for that. And this mama got tons of really powerful support from other parents. I mean, I'm sure you're listening thinking like, oh yeah, technology, pain in the ass, right? Here's how I responded to her, I said, I believe that this style of parenting is good for all kids. It is a style of being with all the people in your life while centering relationship and mutual respect. This is how we get to world peace. You asked, Does this approach suggest I support him wherever he's at, allowing him to spend most of his days on a device, trusting his own path to adulthood, or do I still have a role in setting limits and having expectations? And I would say that positive discipline is both and of these two things, I would push back that supporting him where he's at is the same as allowing him to spend most of his day on a device. To me, meeting him where he's at is acknowledging that he would like to have his days play out that way, that his days are playing out that way, while also co creating and setting some limits, holding health and well being as the centerpiece, right? And I told her, you know, this is a bigger question than a Facebook response can offer. That's why I brought it to the podcast. It's a shift in mindset. It is building relationship with him so you can get clear and help him get clear on what he wants. I'm encouraged by this parent when she said, you know, he does a small chore, he comes to the dinner table. What else did she say? Spends a little time with her like those all are indicators, to me, that there is space in the environment to do some collaborative problem solving, right? Yeah, so getting clear around what he wants for his life, what his interests are, and help him navigate the years ahead, with a compass pointing towards his goals and ambitions and coming back to what he wants. And I wrote positive discipline, which is my foundation, and the foundation for this podcast, and everything I share in the group is both kind and firm. Kind meaning we focus on nurturing relationship and recognizing that this is where our influence lies, and firm meaning there are boundaries and limits and structures that the family lives inside of, and it's messy, no doubt, but it's respectful, and it looks different, right? Like here's what's missing from this exchange between me and this parent is I don't know this parent. I don't know her family. I don't know what kinds of routines, and I'm going to mention that in a minute, I don't know what the structure currently is, right? So I'm kind of coming from a place of limited knowledge, but wanting to share, from what you told me, I wrote, I'm left wondering what is getting in his way, what's under the iceberg with school and schooling for him, because she mentioned some school stuff. I'm curious about the routines you have set up at your house, and what kinds of conversations you're already having about screens and screen limits. I'm wondering where he falls in birth order and what relationship and one on one time looks like with the parents. These are the places I am curious about that was my response, right? That's my response to one parent. So again, we're actively parenting. It's not like we're not parenting when we get out of the way. We're just parenting in a different way. We're parenting in a different way. You

music. So here's another example from the joyful courage for parents of teens Facebook group. It says seeking help and getting my teen up in the morning, nothing wakes this kid. Seriously, a train could pass through his room. It's become like an hour long process of me waking him up, which neither of us like. I know part of it is school avoidance. Part of it is him being more of a night owl than a morning person. But I'm really needing ideas again, another parent who got tons of support from the community, because so many of us can relate. What I wrote was, this sounds really hard and annoying. I know that I love my mornings, and I can get really resentful if they get hijacked. And you know, I mentioned, I know the school year is nearly over, so you know, this might be a little too late for right now, but I'm really curious about what your son sees as his problem in the morning, and what types of solutions he can contribute to the discussion. Some questions I would ask include, tell me about the morning. For you. What makes it hard to get up? What do you need in the morning? What do you notice about me in the morning? How can we create a win? Win? You may need to acknowledge that you've done him a disservice by being the one in charge of figuring out how to get him up every day. It may be worth some exploring around what he ultimately wants. Again, there it is like shifting the focus from what you have to do parent towards what does he want? I mentioned to her, I know you said school avoidance and being a night owl. Is there a better educational setting for him that would meet his needs and goals? Is he willing to explore that with you? You know, sometimes it's not a kid problem, it's a system problem. Can you feel the work of getting out of the way and allowing our teens to feel out the driver's seat in a way that's helpful, not hurtful, right? It all takes work. I get that listen. In the past week, I have seen my individual therapist. I've had a Reiki energy session, and I did an hour and a half couples therapy date with my husband yesterday. Guess what shows up in all of those places? My work, my work, right? And I'm the parent educator, I'm the podcast host, I'm the leader of the charge, right? And I'm actively working on letting go of the idea that my way is the way and that everyone else needs to get on board. It creates pain and suffering for me and for the people I love. It's dismissive, it's disrespectful, and it creates disconnection. And as much as I get super irritated with my therapists when they say, like, that's a you problem, that's not a husband problem, that's not a kid problem, that's a you problem, I know that it's true, and I'm willing. I mean, is it humility? I don't know what it is. I'm willing to look inside at the places where I am holding on and, you know, creating

the dynamic that I'm experiencing.

So yes, every day we get to choose into this practice, my friend. So take care of you, to nurture that willingness to step in each and every day. Stay connected via the podcast and the community. You got to hear from a couple people from the joyful courage Facebook group, which is free and open to everybody. Use it. Please use it. It's an awesome community. So stay connected, listen to the podcast, be in the Facebook group, and again, like I mentioned at the top, if you want a deeper, more high touch experience with me, consider joining the membership for additional support. It's a really special place. All right, so I hope that today's podcast was useful. We are in the works of, kind of deciding what the summer is going to look like. I will not be coming out with new shows this summer. I think what I'm going to do is pull out the Greatest Hits, like I've been doing on Thursdays, shows for y'all to revisit and remember that were powerful conversations that are in the vault. I think that's what it's going to look like, and I believe we're going to do weekly or biweekly with those. So stay tuned. Stay tuned. Keep opening your emails. I'll continue to connect with you via email through the summer, and I love you. I'm so grateful that you listen and that you find this useful, and I love getting feedback from you, so please, well, listen. If you have a five star review, leave it on the podcast app. If you have constructive criticism, feel free to just email that to me. That would be great. I'm just getting either place. I can handle it. I can take it. I want to know what's useful about the pod for you. And you know, any places where you wish I would cover, you know, different topics, or you have a guest in mind, shoot me an email at Casey, at joyful courage.com, and I'm happy to read it and respond. So stay in touch. Have a beautiful week. I believe I'll be coming back to you, gosh, on the fourth of July. So here we are heading into summer. All the love. Bye,

yay. Thank you for listening. I

adore this community. Seriously,

I love you guys.

I am so happy to bring you shows and conversations that matter to you. I am just so grateful for your listenership. Listenership is that a word? I'm so glad that you listen, and when you let me know that you listen, it's super special.

Don't forget about the membership. Okay, I'm gonna say it. I

think this is the third time, so don't forget about the membership. Be sproutable.com/membership. Will get you to the page where there's more information. You can join. The wait list. Doors will be opening July 1, and there is a limited space, so check it out now. Get on the wait list so you don't miss those emails. Yeah, just feeling grateful. Thank you Rowan for taking care of the show notes. Thank you Julieta and Alana for being the Dream Team. Over at sproutable, I'm so grateful to be a part of that team.

Thank you Chris [email protected]

for making the shows always sound so good. All right. Peace out, peeps.

I'll talk to you soon. Bye. You.