When a family finally lands in front of you, what's actually happening in their house? Where's the line between a teenager being a teenager and what you call extreme

teenage behavior? Right.

That's a great first question.

I think it comes down to the types of behaviors and how long they've been going on.

Most teens are going to have normal acting out weeks, days, moodiness, times of defiance, but they move to something called extreme when you have disrespect that doesn't last a week, but lasts month after month after month.

And that disrespect can escalate even to aggression or extreme things like substance abuse or running away or threats of suicide.

These types of behaviors are extreme because they go on forever.

Well,

When a family finally lands in front of you, what's actually happening in their house? Where's the line between a teenager being a teenager and what you call extreme

teenage behavior? That's a great first question.

I think it comes down to the types of behaviors and how long they've been going on.

Most teens are going to have normal acting out weeks, days, moodiness, times of defiance, but they move to something called extreme when you have disrespect that doesn't last a week, but lasts month after month after month.

And that disrespect can escalate even to aggression or extreme things like substance abuse or running away or threats of suicide.

These types of behaviors are extreme because they go on forever.

And like you said in your introduction, the parents white knuckle it.

Yeah,

Conversation piece I want to ask you is that when you say parents aren't failing, they're out of tools, what's the difference between a parenting failure and a parenting tool problem?

Yeah, I mean, we grow up generationally learning how to parent from our parents.

And, you know, like we go to specialists when we have a heart problem.

We don't just go to our general family practitioner.

And dads especially get drug into treatment sometimes.

They're like, this is not for me.

I do not want to be asked another question.

Would you like a card to talk about authority and connection or boundaries and consequences?

Please help."

Well, first of all, I wanna say to that parent and the parents listening that you're not crazy.

You're not alone.

This is happening a lot.

And so the first thing is I want parents to know, hey, uh, don't feel bad.

Don't like go, "I'm...

Am I not a good parent?" No, these are, these are difficult situations.

It's absolutely beautiful.

Yes.

And so one of the first questions I ask parents, if it's a two-parent family or a one-parent family, I'll say, what's your theory or hunch about why your child is having these problems? And inevitably, I get a lot of different theories.

Some are like, I think my kid is frail and incapable.

That's my theory.

Or I think my kid is stubborn or stuck in a rut.

Or I think of my kid as chemically imbalanced.

Or I think my kid needs more limits.

And why?