Transcription
[00:00:00] Casey O'Roarty: Hello, welcome back. Welcome to the Joyful Courage podcast, a place for inspiration and transformation as we work to keep it together while parenting our tweens and teens. This is real work people. And when we can focus on our own growth and nurturing the connection with our kids. We can move through the turbulence in a way that allows for relationships to remain intact.
[00:00:27] My name's Casey O'Roarty, I am your fearless host. I'm a positive discipline trainer, space holder, coach, and the adolescent lead at Sproutable. Also, Mama, to a 20 year old daughter and a 17 year old son, I am walking right beside you on the path of raising our kids with positive discipline and conscious parenting.
[00:00:46] This show is meant to be a resource to you, and I work really hard. To keep it really real, transparent, and authentic so that you feel seen and supported. Today is a solo show, and I'm confident that what I share will be useful to you. Please don't forget, sharing truly is caring. If you love today's show, please, please pass the link around, snap a screenshot, post it on your socials, or text it to your friends.
[00:01:12] Together, we can make an even bigger impact on families around the globe. If you're feeling extra special, you can rate and review us over in Apple Podcasts. I'm so glad that you're here. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Enjoy the show.
[00:01:32] Hey there. Hi everybody. It's me. I'm back. Oh my gosh. What a crazy few weeks. Is anyone else out there riding the never ending sick train of 2025 like me? Are you on the train with me? Man, I thought I was in the clear a few weeks ago. I even got to go to a music festival, which was really fun. And then last week, last Monday, literally woke up feeling like I had been hit by a truck.
[00:02:02] So, so achy and feverish, but cold. Oh my God, it was awful. And even right now, I, like this pod, I wrote it all out yesterday from my bed and it was a week later. So brutal. So anyone who's feeling like crap as you listen to this, I get it. I see you. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on with us humans, but man, take care of yourself.
[00:02:33] Cause this whole. 2025 flu and cold season is a no joke. It's no joke. It's no joke. It's super lame. So yeah, take all the things. Do what you need to do. If you feel achy, go to the doctor because Tiamu flu is real. My husband got sick and right away I was still You know, in my flu land, and I shared my Tamiflu with him before we could get him to the doctor.
[00:03:01] And I mean, he has made a complete recovery, even as I continue to like cough up nasty stuff and have dips in my energy. So, highly recommend within the first 48 hours, if you can get into the doctor, say, I need Tamiflu, if you're into that. All right, so, hi! Hi. Enough about that. Did you listen to this week's interview with Dr.
[00:03:25] Paul Ri? I re-listened to it and really appreciated it. I would love to know what you think I noticed after I recorded it, and you can kind of hear it in the interview. I was a little bit worried about his advice for dealing with oppositional kids. Some of what he shared felt on the punitive side. There was.
[00:03:51] a lot of like, we're going to take away their screens because that's what they care about. And even in the role play, I felt like there was some dismissiveness of me as the teenager, and it didn't really feel like there was a lot of taking into account the kiddos experience. And, you know, his whole book is basically about how gentle parenting isn't useful for the toughest kids, and he offers these other alternatives.
[00:04:18] And Man, some of our kids are really, really tough. I just had to keep reminding myself, and it shows up in the interview, like, these aren't kids that are, like, disrespectful sometimes, or, you know, pushing back sometimes. These are kids that are really in it, right, and we've tried all the things, and we've had all the conversations, and it isn't going anywhere.
[00:04:44] For me, it was useful to remember as I listened that it's not like a new behavior. This is how we respond. This is kids that are deeply stuck in defiance. And it really kind of highlighted for me just how deeply I am entrenched into Being curious about what's going on, like, I'm not willing to take kids, to take teens at surface value around like, oh, they're just defiant, or they're just hard, like, there's got to be something else going on under the surface that's motivating, that's conditioning, that's misinterpreting, right, there's something going on, and I think I brought that up in the video.
[00:05:24] interview as well. Like, what are their beliefs behind the behavior? What's going on under the surface? What about other things in the child's life that they're making meaning of? What about how they're feeling in the family? So, at the end of the day, it's important to remember that sometimes kids need more help than we can provide.
[00:05:44] Right? And so what I appreciated about Dr. Paul was, he was clear and firm, and there was an invitation to parents to really stand in their confident authority, in that way of being. Like, hey, I've got you, we're gonna be okay, and I'm gonna hold the line. Right? And some of what he shared, like, when our kids get violent or aggressive towards us, call the cops.
[00:06:11] Could I call the cops on my kid? I mean, I've never been in that situation, but I've definitely been in the situation where what's going on with my kiddo is bigger than what my family can hold. When we were navigating school refusal, school dropping out and potential eating disorder. I remember talking to somebody in the eating disorder world and saying like, yeah, you know, I'm a parent coach and positive discipline.
[00:06:39] And she was like, yeah, positive discipline isn't going to work here. And it reminded me, and I'm grateful for the experience because, you know, sometimes We have to just do whatever it takes to save our kids and from the outside looking in, it can look punitive, it can look, I mean, it can look a lot of different ways and so I just want to acknowledge that when we are in the deep, deep trenches of pain and suffering, when we're witnessing our kids in those trenches, we're going to do what it takes.
[00:07:13] To help them claw their way out. And so I wanted to highlight a post from the Facebook group today. An anonymous parent posted it there recently. And I'm going to use her post to create today's show. So this parent wrote, My 13 year old is going into residential mental health care this week. And I am so, so sad.
[00:07:37] The program we found seems really good, and she is open to it. It's been an incredibly long season of deep debilitating anxiety, and she's gotten to a point where she really can't go to school. I would love to hear from anyone who's been through this, and how they navigated that time while their child was away.
[00:07:56] So first and foremost, I want to acknowledge this parent for being willing to share in a public forum about what they're going through with their daughter. That takes courage and vulnerability. And I also want to acknowledge all the people that commented and shared support and solidarity and good thoughts to this parent.
[00:08:24] Many of us, we find ourselves in impossible situations with our teens and our tweens. And we have to make what feels like impossible decisions. And it's scary. And there's no perfect answer. And self doubt is real. And we don't know who to listen to. We, as a community, we're in a mental health epidemic with our kids right now.
[00:08:51] Like Dr. Paul mentions in the interview, this was going on, this was happening before the pandemic. Pandemic just kicked it in the ass. It's real and it's big and the state of the world and access to screens, none of it is making mental health any easier for our teens. And they're struggling and we're struggling, right?
[00:09:14] We, the parents, we're struggling. We don't know what to do. A lot of us, I know I can speak for myself when I say I didn't have a lot of mental health, like mental health, wasn't a thing for me. It didn't show up as. I didn't feel despair. I didn't feel anxiety. I didn't see people navigating this in my life.
[00:09:41] And so when it came up in my family, and I was the parent, I didn't have a lot to hold on to. I couldn't find my feet. It was really, really hard. And it's important to remember, right, behavior is It's natural and developmentally appropriate for our kids to have mood swings. Dan Siegel calls this the emotional spark of adolescent brain development.
[00:10:07] Teens are moody. They swing from super pissed off to totally fine to sad to enthusiastic to completely annoyed with us. Or maybe that's a constant. They feel all the things and they feel things big. They feel things hard, and some of what they feel is for the first time. And you've heard me talk about this before.
[00:10:30] The first time feeling something is a lot. Heartbreak, disappointment, loss. Love, excitement, anticipation, nerves. The first time feeling something is big. And when it's your first time, you don't realize that you won't always feel this way. That there's another side to heartbreak, to nerves, and even to the elations and excitement and joy that can come up during adolescence.
[00:11:03] Right? Feelings evolve. We know that. Right? Because we have a long history of feelings evolving. But when it's your first time, you don't really know that. So it adds to the extra. And so keep in mind that we as parents, we're so codependent. And I mean, like. The whole, you can only be as happy as your saddest child, that idiom, boo, thumbs down.
[00:11:33] Parents can easily, myself included, be on the roller coaster ride and it's painful. I know, I've ridden it and I had to learn how to get off and let it go by and be okay with letting it go by. Lisa DeMoore talks about the hot potato. You know, our kids are holding all these hot potatoes, right? Hot potatoes are hard to hold, they're hot, they're painful.
[00:11:56] Sometimes our kids, you know, when they don't want to hold it anymore, they hand it to us in the form of venting, or sharing, or unloading. And then they're able to move on because now we're holding the issue or the hot potato, right? And then we're being burned or suffering. I was talking to my sister just today about this.
[00:12:13] She was like, God, you know, I, I don't, I'm, I'm trying not to get in the quicksand with. My kiddo, I don't want to get in the quicksand. If we're both in the quicksand, then I am not useful anymore. Right? And I shared with her about the hot potato. It's really challenging to bear witness to what our teens are moving through at any given time.
[00:12:39] It's really hard not to be codependent. It's really hard not to be enmeshed. What do we do? What do we say? We want them to feel better. Right? We want them to know that we have their back and that we care. We want to help, right? We want their pain and suffering to go away, especially when it's really affecting us in no shade.
[00:13:05] I mean, of course it's going to affect us because we're their parents and we love them. And we need to back off and trust our teens and be available without being amassed, be available without being in the quicksand. And you know, there's the everyday quicksand. And then there's some of our kids who are in the really, in the depths, right?
[00:13:29] They're having emotional experiences that are off the continuum. They're outliers when it comes to mood and anxiety. And these kids, these outliers are crippled. I had that at my house. Their emotional experience got in the way, or is getting in the way of life, of relationships, of trying new things. And this is a time of life to be doing all the new things, to be meeting all the new people, to be navigating relationships, learning how to be in life with each other, moving through all the ups and downs, right?
[00:14:09] Moving through the ebbs and the flows. This is the time of life for that. And some of our kids are shut in. They're missing out. They're opting out. And they're not having the typical experience. Because their mental health is getting in the way. And so we ask ourselves, Oh my gosh, what's going on? Do they need help?
[00:14:31] We start to recognize like, Okay, this is bigger than me. This is bigger than what our family can hold. What do we do? How do we encourage our kids to get the help that they need? And the parent who posted in this community talked about how hard it was to find support. That it's been a process to get to the point of admitting her into a program.
[00:14:54] They shared later in the comments about being disappointed in the therapist at times and, and disappointed with the school. I have clients with kids who clearly need something and are unwilling to talk to somebody about it, unwilling to go to therapy. And like I said, I moved through this with my own daughter, I remember.
[00:15:13] I mean, we were, she wouldn't leave the house. It was intense. And when I made calls for therapists, when I got referrals and called and found out, okay, yeah, the wait list is six months, or I called the, you know, the one child psychologist in my area. And the person that answered the phone literally said, there's a wait list for a year.
[00:15:37] A year. I was like, why are you even answering the phones? That seems pointless. I get it. It's so frustrating, right? It's so frustrating. It's bigger than our families can hold and help feels elusive. And I'm sharing about this today because I think there are so many parents, so many teens that are struggling and need help.
[00:16:00] It feels isolating because no one's talking about it. I get it. We want to keep our kids private stuff private. But along the way, all we see out in the world are what we think are normal, well adjusted families doing just fine, that it's only us, that it's only our family, and we're not doing each other any favors by keeping what's hard hidden, right?
[00:16:26] Our kids need help. Our parents need help. We need community. We need community. And so, where do I want to go with this today? I want to focus on how to know when it's time for extra help, where to find it, how to encourage our kids to participate, how to navigate the opinions of others, and how to take care of ourselves along the way.
[00:16:49] You know, you might have kids that are typical developing, everything's going well. No big deal, but you might have a friend that you know is struggling. I would encourage you to send this show along to them. Right, because I think it's really important to be in community through this. Right, and to feel seen in what's hard for parents.
[00:17:19] So how do we know when it's time for extra help? I already mentioned this, you know, the emotional distress is getting in the way, right? Perhaps our kids aren't going to school, aren't engaging socially, are giving up on activities. There could be some withdrawal, unwillingness to share with you. There could also be some unhealthy coping, which looks like substance use.
[00:17:46] Misuse, screen overuse, self harm, right? These are all really useful coping mechanisms, but disastrous in the long term, but ways for our kids to navigate or avoid the pain and whatever's hard for them. So do you need extra help? Are these things going on in your household? Are these red flags? If the answer's yeah, it's time to find extra help.
[00:18:15] And where do we go to find extra help? I recently was supporting my daughter in finding some mental health support. And, She's in a place where she needed me to do it for her and I was willing and honestly, the first place I went was Google therapists in Bellingham, therapists that work with young adults in Bellingham and poked around and went into psychology today, which is a great resource.
[00:18:47] You can put location, you can put types of therapy, you can filter it down. Another way to find support is through word of mouth. Do you have a therapist? Can you ask your therapist for some support, some referrals? Can you talk to your friends, community members, the school psychologist? Remember, School psychologists often have access to resources to vetted support in the community.
[00:19:15] So go to your school psych and say, Hey, I'm looking for someone for my kiddo. The hard thing is you have to do the work. You have to do your research. You have to ask around and you have to keep asking around. I remember for me when I, I knew who I wanted my daughter to work with and there was a wait list and I didn't let it stop me.
[00:19:35] And I kept kind of poking at this particular therapist, and eventually she had an opening. Now the parent who posted in the community about her child going into residential care, they talked about going and visiting a couple of facilities and finding out, oh man, there's very different energy in these two places.
[00:19:55] You get to check things out. You get to do your homework. I am kind of fascinated by the, quote, troubled teen industry. And I love to listen to podcasts just about, you know, especially in the 80s and 90s. There were some not great things happening for youth mental health. And it's tragic. I think that it's really important to explore, not that you wouldn't.
[00:20:24] I mean, of course you're going to do this, but. You know, really explore the places that are places for teens to get healthy, and I would encourage you if you're in that space and looking for that kind of support to be sure to ask if there's families you can speak to who have participated in the program and get their input.
[00:20:44] I also appreciated that Dr. Paul mentioned in the interview, finding someone who works primarily with kids and teens and who have been doing it for at least the last 10 years. I mean, that's really important because teens are tough, man. They know how to jump through the hoops, and it's not a character flaw.
[00:21:05] They're doing what they think we want them to do. They're not going to lead their therapist into their darkness. The therapist needs to know how to work with teens in a way that leaves them feeling safe enough to share. So do some interviewing. Ask around. And then you, maybe you find something, how do you then encourage your kids to participate in their own healing?
[00:21:28] This is really tough, whether it's seeing a therapist or an intensive outpatient program or inpatient, getting our kids willingness to take part in their healing is everything. I remember being in that DBT program with Rowan, it was a six month program, and it took about three months. For her to really, like, lean in, I think on one hand, it feels overwhelming to know that they are the ones that are going to make the biggest difference in their mental health, and then shift into, like, an empowered feeling, like, it's empowering to know, like, oh, this is on me, I can change this.
[00:22:07] So it's just really hard. It's really hard. And I think when we talk to our kids about it, we get to say what we see and remind them that there are people that are trained to help them, right? It can look like or sound like, you know, you've been really low lately. And you haven't been spending time with your friends, you don't want to go to school, you've stopped doing art, and I just, I see you hurting, and life doesn't have to feel this hard.
[00:22:36] I made you an appointment to talk to somebody, and then you can follow that up with something like, yeah, I know it can feel weird or scary, but what's going on with you, it's bigger than our family, and we need the help, you need the help. Right? We go to the doctor when we're sick. We go to the therapist when, you know, there's mental health support that we need.
[00:22:59] And then we get to validate. Right? I know this isn't what you want, and I love you too much to let you go on without support. I don't think we can bribe, threaten, or force therapy on our teens. I think this backfires and in the end, it isn't helpful, but we can keep up the gentle pressures and the nudging as we continue to also work to see them, to validate them, to believe them, to connect with them, right?
[00:23:32] It's all these things all the time. It's that gentle pressure. It's that confident authority. We don't need to plead. So notice your energy. And it makes sense if you feel desperate. It makes sense if you are pleading with them. I get why, but check your energy and really be in that solid place of like, babe, I see you.
[00:23:55] I see you hurting and it doesn't have to be this way. Let's find you some support. And it may take a while for them to be on board. It's probably going to take longer than you want, which is annoying, I know. But keep at it, keep leaning in, keep letting them know that you see them in their pain, and then it doesn't have to be this hard.
[00:24:18] And then, you know, there's the opinions of others. Oh man, aren't we so generous with our opinions? And it's super annoying because nobody else has been in your shoes. And I know for me when things come up and people start, you know, everybody's got the same opinion. Everybody's got the same advice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:24:41] I know. I get it. I know. I hear you. Yes. I've tried that. Yes. I get it. It's so annoying, right? And in my experience, I had to cut people out. I had to cut my parents off. I was already full of self doubt. I didn't need more. I didn't need to hear from them about what I was doing not being the right thing to do or that I should just do something different.
[00:25:04] I had to set personal boundaries with my family. I had to set personal boundaries with my friends. There was a very short list of people when we were really going through it that I shared with. And that was to protect myself and that was to protect my family. So you get to do the same if you're moving through something with your kiddo.
[00:25:30] Other places I think that are so important are places like Al Anon and NAMI, support groups with parents who are moving through similar things. Find people who get it. Find people who have been in your shoes and share with them and let them hold space for you. Ask for what you need, right? I remember when I was pregnant, especially the first time, and people were like, oh man, let me tell you about my birth story.
[00:26:03] I would stop them and I would say, if you didn't have a good experience with birth, then you need to wait until after I've had my baby to share your story. I would not let people tell me. hard birth stories. I was also completely obsessed with birth stories. I read, you know, all these books about birth stories, but as far as like people wanting to share, I didn't want to take on their energy or their trauma if they had really hard birth stories that they wanted to share.
[00:26:32] So I said, no, thanks. We'll talk later. Right. Or we can say things like, Hey, I want to share with you and I need you to just listen without giving me your opinion. And if that's going to be too hard for you, then let's talk about something else. Or if you know you don't want to talk about what's going on with someone, you get to say, I love you.
[00:26:52] And this isn't something I can share about with you right now. I'm taking care of myself by not sharing. How to navigate the opinions of others is really, you know, it's this call for us to really be, again, in that confident authority and in that place of boundary setting. And it's hard, especially with family members who are used to giving you unsolicited advice and opinion.
[00:27:20] So I see you in that, and you get to be strong. You get to cut people out if you need to. And it doesn't have to be forever. It can be temporary. For me, it was temporary. And I would text with my dad and my stepmom, but I wouldn't get on the phone with them. That's how I took care of myself and my family.
[00:27:47] And what about taking care of ourselves? What else? So, I keep mentioning this book that I'm reading, The Power of Intention, by Dr. Wayne Dyer. And one of his quotes that I love, that he's pretty known for, is, if you change the way you look at things, The things you look at change. So I want to invite you to play with mindset.
[00:28:15] Is what you're moving through happening to your family or for your family? And think about what happens if you're willing to look at things happening for your family. What opens up? Is this happening to your kiddo or for your kiddo? I remember saying this to Rowan and she was like, uh, no. I'm not having this conversation with you, but I do believe and I know for me moving through some of the things that have shown up in the last five years have happened for me.
[00:28:50] They've grown me, they've made me someone who can sit with parents and sit with people who have been through the hardest things, some of the hardest things, and to say, I get it, I've been there, I know your pain, I see your pain, and to hold space for them. What happens when we are willing to change our mindset?
[00:29:09] What happens when you're willing to have faith in your child moving through what they're going through, growing through what they're going through? And can you see how Having faith and sitting in faith that they're going to move through it is also a way of taking care of yourself. And then, of course, taking care of your physical body.
[00:29:31] How are you taking care of your physical body? Are you moving? What does that look like? Are you going out in nature? Are you breathing fresh air? Are you taking care of you? Are you eating food that nourishes you? Are you listening to what your body needs? Are you resting? I remember when things were really hard with my daughter and I would go to bed.
[00:29:58] And if I laid down, my mind would just spring into action and spring into worst case scenarios. So one of the things that I did to help myself is I would listen to an audio book. I listened to the same book over and over or the same series, which is Outlander. Any Outlander fans out there? There was something about first off the narrator's voice.
[00:30:22] The story that I knew so well that I didn't have to pay too much attention, and the cadence, I would slow it down. And it kind of just allowed me not to be in the loop of worry. It gave my mind somewhere else to go as I would fall asleep. You get to also take care of your emotions. and your emotional space.
[00:30:41] You get to find community. You get to get your own therapist or your own coach, right? You get to take care of you because what you're moving through, what you're witnessing is hard and it hurts. And it's nothing we thought we were signing up for. I get it. You get to take care of yourself. It's hard and scary to move through a mental health breakdown with your kiddo or an eating disorder or substance misuse.
[00:31:09] It's so freaking hard. No one sees this coming, right? And there's no roadmap, which is completely annoying, right? There's no perfect formula or steps to take that are laid out around what to do when our kids are struggling. And for some of us, this is part of our life unfolding. So for whatever reason, or for no reason, witnessing and supporting our teens as they move through these hard years, is what we're being called to do.
[00:31:43] Can we find peace inside of the struggle? Can we experience the experience in a way that doesn't tangle us up and take us down? Can we be with all of it without allowing it to take over our life? We have to untangle and trust that our kids will one day be adults. Looking back at this time, and when you think about that, what do you hope that they say?
[00:32:09] What do you hope that the advice is that they give to their 13 or 15 or 17 year old self? And I recognize that it's easy for me to ask this as I am five years out of our hardest days. But time will go on, you and me, we're all living in a snapshot and things will always change and evolve. If I could go back in time and give myself advice, as I witnessed what was so deeply challenging for my daughter, I'd say, it's going to be okay.
[00:32:42] This is her journey. She's living it. She's growing and expanding along the way. Just show up and love her through it. Keep having faith in her and trusting her process. I know it doesn't feel like it now, but she is going to be okay. She's going to find her way. She's going to find her way out of the hole that she's in.
[00:33:05] It's going to grow and evolve. And it's, it's going to be okay and you'll be okay too, listeners. You're going to be okay. Things may be hard and dark right now, but you're moving through it and I see you. We all do. So keep showing up. Keep showing up in the community. Keep asking questions. Keep supporting each other.
[00:33:29] You aren't alone. We don't have to do this alone.
[00:33:36] So that's what I've got for you today. Sorry about my voice, I know that it's pretty raspy. Um, I'll be back on Monday with a new interview, and next Thursday with a new solo show. All the love. All the love. For whatever you're going through today, all the love. And again, like I said at the top, if you know someone who's moving through hard things right now, please send this to them and let them know that they're not alone and just hold space for them.
[00:34:04] Cause it's really, really hard. It's really, really hard. All right, my friends, go have some water, go move your body, take a nap if you need it. I'll see you next week.
[00:34:20] Thank you so much for listening in today. Thank you so much to my Sproutable partners, Julietta and Alana, as well as Danielle. And Chris Mann and the team at Podshaper for all the support with getting this show out there and helping it to sound so good. Check out our offers for parents with kids of all ages and sign up for our newsletter to stay better connected at besproutable.
[00:34:45] com. Tune back in on Monday for a brand new interview and I will be back solo with you next Thursday. Have a great day.
See more
