112: When You Feel Inconvenienced by Your Teen's Choices | Parenting With Less Frustration

So if we think in terms of a model, let's get clear on a few things.

What your teenager eats or doesn't eat for dinner.

Where does that go in a model? If you're new here, the model is a coaching tool I use to show how your thoughts create your feelings, your actions, and ultimately your results.

I teach the whole thing in episode 109, so go back and listen to that if you want the full explanation.

In your teenager's CTFAR model, what they eat or don't eat for dinner goes on their action line.

They have thoughts about food, which create feelings, which drive their decisions of what to eat or not eat.

Now, their decision of what they eat Where does that go in your model? If you look, circumstance, thought, feeling, action, result, what they choose to eat is your circumstance.

So anything anyone else says or does, anything that happens in the world, that goes on your C-line of the model.

That's a circumstance.

That's the one thing you can't control.

The other four-fifths of the model you have complete control over.

So let's make a model.

We're going to make this specific to the food frustration today, but for those of you listening who may not have this same issue at your house, you can use this same process to navigate whatever it is you're facing.

So the first thing we're going to do is start with your model.

Understand what you are thinking and feeling before you try to make any changes in your home.

So on the C-line of your model, you want to start with a circumstance that is really facty.

So if you wrote like, my teenager just wants the same thing for dinner every night, that might be kind of a generalization, which makes it harder to solve because it feels really big.

So we want to get something that's very specific and that's just 100% facts.

So it might be like, my teenager said the words, I want pizza when a different dinner was served.

Or my teenager did not eat what was served and ate pizza instead.

You want to get a circumstance line that is pretty boring.

It doesn't have drama and it's just what we call factsy.

Okay.

Then once you get a circumstance, then you would put in, what is your thought about it? Like step back from your teenager's actions and let's get into your model and just look, okay, what are you thinking about this circumstance? You might be thinking something like he shouldn't eat the same thing every day.

Or this is an inconvenience to the person who planned, shopped for, and cooked the food.