Power Your Parenting: Moms With Teens

Do your teens need better communication skills—especially when they are wanting something from you? In this podcast I interview Laura Lyles Reagan who is a family sociologist with more than 30 years of experience in practical youth development and parenting coaching. She holds a Masters in Sociology specializing in interactionism and communication dynamics. She is the author of her new book, “How to Raise Respectful Parents” which is a teen’s guide to navigating adult culture by equipping teens with communication skills. Each chapter introduces a new communication skill by using real world examples and conversations between parents and teens.  I’ve invited Laura to be on this podcast because I think Laura will bring a very interesting perspective. In my book Dial Down the Drama I empower moms to reduce conflict by using effective communication skills with their teens especially when there is drama. Laura trains the teens to communicate effectively with their parents and gives them the tools that they desperately need. She teaches a technique called co-creation, which especially helps with the hot button issues of teen life such as failing school grade, desire for more freedom, alcohol use/abuse and social media. You can contact Laura at www.lauralreagan.com. Her book How to Raise Respectful Parents is available at Barnes and Noble and Amazon. The post 028 How Teens Can Get Parents to Hear Them appeared first on Colleen O'Grady.

Do you feel like you worry about your teen 24/7? Does your son and daughter seem to always be stressed? Ready to dial down the worry and the stress! In this episode I interview Jodi Aman, who has been a psychotherapist for over 20 years. Jodi is also the author of You 1 Anxiety 0 Win your freedom back from fear and panic. Besides being a seasoned therapist, Jodi is also a mom of teens and can relate as a parent. Jodi answered these two questions. What tips do you have for  moms struggling with their own anxiety? What can moms do when they see their sons or daughters really anxious or stressed out? Jodi believes you can win your life back from fear and panic. Her advice is practical and based on science. The good news is that  though we live in a fear based culture, worry doesn’t have to define your life or your family. Bio: Jodi Aman wrote the bestseller, You 1, Anxiety 0 to help people WIN their life back from fear and panic. With sharp empathy into the complexities of people’s pain–since she has recovered from her own family chaos and panic attacks–and a keen understanding of how and why people get stuck there, Jodi has decided to dedicate her life to helping people feel less lonely and afraid. Find her at http://jodiaman.com. Check out her videos at http://youtube.com/jodiaman. Get inspired on Instagram @JodiAmanLove. Or feel loved on Facebook: http://facebook.com/jodiamanlove. The post #027 How to Beat Anxiety appeared first on Colleen O'Grady.

Has your daughter ever eaten a big bag of Cheetos and then fifteen minutes later run out of the room and screamed, “I’m so fat.” Monitoring teenage girls and their food choices can be tough for moms. You can tell your daughter is struggling with her body image and you try to calm her down and she gets angry. You try to hold your daughter accountable by asking her if she really wants that second Crave cupcake and well…she doesn’t say thank you mom. Moms know that a healthy diet is important and when we try to help our daughters it can quickly go to drama. In this episode I interview Connie Sobczak, the author of Embody: Learning to Love Your Unique Body (and quiet that critical voice!). She is an educator, speaker, filmmaker, and co-founder of The Body Positive, a non-profit organization where, for the past 20 years, she has skillfully and lovingly reconnected teens and adults to their body wisdom to make more balanced, joyful self-care choices. Her Be Body Positive Model offers a guide for people to create a relationship with their whole selves that is guided by love, forgiveness, and humor. Connie’s experience with an eating disorder in her teen years and the death of her sister Stephanie inspired her life’s work to create a world where all people are free to love their bodies. She raised her daughter, Carmen, in The Body Positive community, where children and teens learn to value their authentic beauty and identity, and use their energy and intellect to make positive changes in their own lives and in their communities. In this episode Connie tells us why she started The Body Positive and why she wrote her book Embody. (which I highly recommend) Connie encourages moms to not make negative comments about  their daughters food choices and eating habits. She states that it won’t help and will only create shame and resistance. Connie has a fresh approach that is practical, helpful, and doable for moms. In this episode she shares her proven techniques of The Body Positive that she has used for 20 years in schools and communities. Connie believes in creating supportive communities so that it’s not all on mom. She also shares what moms can do to help their daughters love their unique bodies. You can contact Connie at info@thebodypositive.org Her website is www.thebodypositive.org. On her home page is a FREE gift for you: 3 ESSENTIAL SKILLS FOR LOVING THE SKIN YOU’RE IN! The post #026 Embodied Mom: Support your teen in being “body positive” appeared first on Colleen O'Grady.

Why do you need a long-term perspective when parenting a teenager? The answer comes from the final Chapter in my book, Dial Down the Drama: Reducing Conflict and Reconnecting with Your Teenage Daughter. It’s important to remember that we were once teenagers and we did a lot of crazy stuff too. Despite our secrets and mistakes we made it safely into adulthood. When you are mired down in the daily drama it is easy to lose perspective. We just want the stress, struggles, conflict, and attitudes to go away and we can end up counting the days till our teen leaves home. It’s important to remember that your teen is a work in progress. Much of these irritations are because your daughter’s brain is under reconstruction. As she matures many of these infuriating behaviors will fade away. But perspective reveals another facet of the teenage years which is what’s good about teens. Teens have many gifts to offer us. They are emotionally vibrant, adventuresome, playful, creative, and lots of fun. They can wake us up from our doldrums and help us break out of our routines. It’s also important to have a long-term perspective on your relationship with your son or daughter. This is what helps you get through the teenage years with your relationship in tact. Dialing down the drama, is also dialing down the potential to do harm to you and your teen. There is a belief that once you ship your daughter off to college that your relationship will magically improve. This is not true. I’ve worked with women in their 60’s who are still having issues with their 90-year-old mothers. You want to create a relationship now that will carry you and your daughter into her adulthood. It’s not to late to rebuild your relationship with your teen. Start creating healthy patterns of communication now. The post #025 Why You Need A Long-Term Perspective appeared first on Colleen O'Grady.

“How to be your daughter’s (or son’s) dream maker” is a complicated question.  Your daughter or son may not know what they want to be when they grow up. Your son is set to get a scholarship for baseball in college but he decides his senior year in high school that he wants to quit baseball. You have your dreams for your daughter. You went to a community college and so you want your daughter to have an opportunity to go out of state to a reputable university. She wants to stay home because she doesn’t want to leave her boyfriend. And then there’s the “dream”. This is the ideal for teens held up by the culture. Your teen is popular, makes good grades, and excels at sports or the arts. They get accepted to the university of their choice with lots of scholarship money. She finds the boy of her dreams in college, who has a promising future. He graduates in four years, and gets his dream job right out of college. Parents (and teens) feel pressured to make the “dream” happen. This is the source of much drama and conflict. Moms can feel ashamed and embarrassed if their teen falls short of the “dream.” This episode redefines what is a successful teen and shows that there are many paths to success. This podcast comes from the twelfth chapter in my book, Dial Down the Drama: Reducing Conflict and Reconnecting with Your Teenage Daughter—A Guide for Mother’s Everywhere. Today’s episode will help you avoid many of the struggles in regard to their future and will show you how to best support, encourage, and motivate your teen to reach their dreams. The post #024 How to be Your Daughter’s Dream Maker appeared first on Colleen O'Grady.

Have you ever felt like everyone in your family is driving your life? I had one mom tell me, “I feel like I’m my daughter’s personal assistant. I wish I had one!” This episode is the practical “how to’s” on how to recapture your life which comes from the eleventh chapter in my book Dial Down the Drama. The first episode of the Dial Down the Drama series was “Are you all Mothered Out?” We examined why mothers tend to let their own needs get bumped to the bottom of the never ending family to-do list. I can tell you after working with thousands of moms, this is not working for us. Here is the reality and this is the challenge. I have never met a mom who wasn’t busy. This is why we tend to let the daily demands consume our life. The problem is when we are speeding through our life we tend to lose control and sometimes our demanding daughter is driving the car. But to create a healthy home environment and live a healthy life, it’s crucial that you learn how to be the CEO of your life. A CEO steps back and evaluates the current situation and determines what needs to change. The CEO keeps the big picture in mind. She knows what are the important priorities are and how to implement strategies to move forward. She evaluates what is a waste of time and where she can delegate. This episode is full of practical suggestions to help you recapture your life like exploring “false obligations.” You can free up a lot of time when you eliminate these false obligations. They are the “shoulds” in our life (I should serve a home-cooked meal every night of the week) and we feel guilty if we don’t do them. In reality, we do have a choice and we can free ourselves from false obligations and decide what is best for us and for our families. The post #023 How to Recapture Your Life appeared first on Colleen O'Grady.

What does your son or daughter need to thrive? This is an important question for both you and your teen. The answer is sometimes personal to your own taste, but often it is applicable to all of us. This is especially true for teens. One frequent mistake mom’s make, is becoming hyper-focused on the teen’s crises of the day, which causes us to miss important information. The episode today comes from the tenth chapter in my Dial Down the Drama Series. This gives you a proactive parenting strategy. Instead of reacting to the problem at hand, we look at the big picture. We zoom out to see all the crucial elements needed for a teen to function at their best. This podcast gives you a checklist to see what’s missing in your son or daughter’s life. For your teen to thrive they need the fundamentals of nutrition, sleep, and exercise. Your son and daughter need a flourishing home environment, a place to belong, and a team of supportive adults. Most of you know this information. The challenge is implementing it, because your teen is not receptive to your suggestions. When your teen argues with you day after day, it’s easy to let go of your ideals and resign that this is how it is. Don’t give up. This episode gives you some practical ways to communicate with your teen on these important topics. The post #22 What Your Teen Needs to Thrive appeared first on Colleen O'Grady.

“You can’t tell me what to do!” Let’s face it disciplining a defiant teen is challenging. Because parents often feel powerless when it’s two hours past curfew,  we can be flooded with a whole array of emotions. At this point we are not thinking clearly. This is why it’s so easy to” lose it”, but “losing it” is not an effective discipline. We may be “letting them have it” but there will be no lesson learned, except how to lose control. It’s important to get back to the basics. What is the point of discipline and what makes it effective? Discipline comes from the Latin word disciplina, which meant “instruction given, teaching, learning, and knowledge. This means that empowered discipline is about equipping, guiding, teaching, motivating, and ultimately empowering your teen. Implementing effective discipline is only possible when you are calm and clear. This takes time. At the moment you learn about her BIG mistake you are definitely not clear or calm. You feel betrayed, disrespected, angry, panicked, and hurt. You may need to wait a day or two to get clear. Effective discipline is strategic. It’s so much more than grounding. See the question you need to ask is not “How could she do this to me” but “What does my teen need to learn?” Remember your teen is a work in progress and though she may look like an adult her brain is under major reconstruction and she still needs your guidance and instruction. Teens are hard-wired to make errors in judgment. This episode will give you discipline strategies and equip you with four potent parenting tools. Don’t give up mom. Your teen needs you. The post #21 How to Discipline Your Teen appeared first on Colleen O'Grady.

How Good Moms Become Drama Mamas is the title of Chapter 8 in my book Dial Down the Drama: Reducing Conflict and Reconnecting with Your Teenage Daughter. In the previous podcast (which comes from Chapter 7) I discuss why teens are hardwired for drama. However, moms can get hooked in their daughter’s drama and even escalate the drama. No mom intends to ‘lose it’ with their daughters, it is an automatic reaction when our daughter’s push our buttons. I surveyed moms of teenage girls and asked them what “buttons” does your teenage daughter push. From their responses I identified The Disrespect Button, The Guilt Button, The Taken for Granted Button to  name a few. What happens when they push our buttons? (I think you know:) We REACT. And our reaction can trigger another REACTION from our teen, and before you know it, you are in a full-blown drama dance. This podcast helps you be aware of some of the typical drama dances between moms and teens and what you can do to break free and create a whole new interaction with your teenager.   The post #20 How Good Moms Become Drama Mamas appeared first on Colleen O'Grady.

The month of May can be a stressful month for both moms and teens. What do you do when your teenage son or daughter lies on the sofa playing on their phone when they  should be studying?. What is your role and when do you intervene? It’s easy to see why moms and teens can fight more during the month of May. Neha Gupta, Founder of Elite Private Tutors, gives us tips and tricks on surviving the month of May with our overwhelmed, stressed out teens with finals and how to best handle the next four weeks without frustration and anger with our children. What typically frustrates moms is the teen’s lack of planning and their apparent lack of motivation. Now there are some teens that are self motivated and plan ahead, but that is the minority. The reason being is  the prefrontal cortex is undeveloped until the age of twenty five. One of  its primary functions is planning ahead and seeing the big picture. So what typically happens is when a teen is left to their own devices they fall more and more behind with no plan of action. Parents can interpret their kids procrastination as a sign of laziness, but often it is a sign that the teen is overwhelmed and doesn’t know where to start. Mom you are needed. This podcast will give you a strategy to avoid the drama and help get your teen organized and on track. Neha shares some of the tips that has helped thousands of moms she has worked with from all over the world. If you want to dial down the stress of May, you are going to want to listen to this podcast.       The post #019 Getting Ready for Finals With Neha Gupta appeared first on Colleen O'Grady.

Have you ever had a “What was she thinking moment?” If you have then you are going to want to listen to this podcast and see why her dramatic flair ups and disrespect aren’t personal. This is the seventh episode in my Dial Down the Drama series. It comes from the seventh chapter, Why Your Daughter is Hard-Wired for Drama. Scientists in the past have blamed crazy teenage behavior on raging hormones, but in the last ten years neuroscientists have discovered there is a lot more going on developmentally. The teenage brain is under major reconstruction. Many of you know that the prefrontal cortex is undeveloped to the age of 25, but you don’t really know what that means. That undeveloped prefrontal cortex is one reason the teenage years can be challenging. But there is so much more going on in that teenage brain. The teenage brain is having a tremendous growth spurt and there is a Window of Opportunity to “use it” or “lose it.” Simply said if the teenage brain is going to reach it’s full potential there are specific challenges the teen needs to pursue that will “use” it. Also, you need to be aware of how the teen can “lose” it and actually hinder the brain’s development.       The post #018 Why Your Teen is Hard-Wired for Drama appeared first on Colleen O'Grady.

How to Like Your Daughter Again comes from the sixth chapter in Dial Down the Drama: Reducing Conflict and Reconnecting with Your Teenage Daughter. “Is it possible to have a healthy relationship with your teen?” “And what does that even look like?” This is the million dollar question. You don’t want to be your teen’s best friend but you don’t want to be her enemy either. When you are in a daily battle with your daughter, it’s easy to not like her very much. This is why so many moms believe they have to wait until she is older and out of the house to “like” her. It doesn’t have to be that way! It is possible and crucial to have a healthy relationship with your teen. Even though your teen is depending on her friends more and developing her autonomy, a secure attachment with your teen matters significantly and can be her lifeline. There are three elements that make a secure connection with your teen that I dive into in my book. Being there for your teen. Being tuned in. Being responsive. In this episode we’ll focus on the first element. You’ll learn how to be there for your teen, and how to get your teen to open up to you. (You’ll also find out why your teenage daughter is like a cat:) The post #017 How to Like Your Daughter Again appeared first on Colleen O'Grady.