The BIGGEST Mistake Parents of Teens Make

Do you want to know the biggest mistake parents of teens make? It might surprise you! Many parents think it's things like yelling at their teen, trying to control them, or being too friendly. But the biggest mistake is actually trying to change their teen instead of focusing on being the kind of parent they want to be.

In this podcast, we talk about how to be the parent of your dreams. First, you need to know what kind of parent you want to be. Then, you should do a daily check-in to see how you're doing. You can also practice being the parent you want to be using something called the "Wheel of Life." And remember, focus on what you can control, which is yourself, not your teen.

If you're tired of always yelling at your teen, figure out what kind of parent you want to be instead. Then start working on being that kind of parent. It won't be easy and it won't happen overnight, but with practice and awareness, you can be the parent of your dreams!

See the full show notes at: https://benpughcoaching.com/233

Want a Simple Step by Step Parenting Debrief Guide?

Go download the FREE Parenting Debrief Guide.

It’s simple and quick. It will help you uplevel your parenting. And, it’s completely FREE!

1. Go to benpughcoaching.com/debrief
2. Download the debrief
3. Start with your own internal debrief.

Transcript

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I'm Ben Pugh, and you're listening to Impact Parenting with Perspective, episode 233. This podcast is all about helping parents manage the mental and emotional drama that comes with parenting teens. So they can focus on what's most important, building rock solid relationships and having a powerful impact on their teen's life. Join me each week as I dive into real tools to help you and your teen turn struggles into strengths. Hello, welcome back to the podcast. I'm super excited for today's topic. We are going to be talking about how you can be the parent of your dreams. Now, this is kind of a part three. This and the two episodes before it kind of piggyback all together. So episode 231. It's called daily parenting debrief. And that is a powerful tool to help you increase awareness of what's going on in your life. Episode 232 is the wheel of life. And. That is one of the teachings that I teach to help parents practice being the parent of their dream and start getting some reps in so that they can be the parent of their dreams during the toughest parenting moments. Now, today, We're going to get a little bit of clarification on what it means to be the parent of your dreams. This is one of my favorite things to teach. And if you want help being the parent of your dreams, you should totally go download the free PDF that I offered a couple of weeks ago, where I'll give you a step by step guide to the parenting debrief. Like I said, this is completely free. Yeah. It's super simple and quick. And the best part is it will totally uplevel your parenting. And all you have to do is go to Ben pew coaching. com slash debrief, and that will get you access to that PDF for free, which will also give you access to my email list and. And that is the best way to know how to work with me when I'm offering for people to join my membership, when I have slots available in my one on one coaching. So go get that free guide and that gets you more connected to me so that I can better help you. So. With no further ado, let's dive in and let's talk about what it means to be the parent of your dreams. Now, before we dive directly into being the parent of your dreams, let me talk about the biggest mistake that I see parents of teens making. And I could let you guess, um, oftentimes, I'll start off by saying that But, like, say, hey, what do you think the biggest mistake that parents of teens make? And the truth is, this might actually surprise you. A lot of people, when I tell them what I see is the biggest mistake, they're surprised. And when I ask parents, well, what do you think is the biggest mistake that parents make when it comes to their teens? I usually get answers like, well, yelling at your teen. That's a big mistake or trying to control your teen or letting your teen walk all over you, not having a good relationship with your teen or the opposite of that, like having too good of a relationship with your teen and being friends with your teen. Those are all great guesses. If you ask me, the biggest mistake that parents of teens are making is trying to change their teen. And I see this all the time. A lot of people sign up for free coaching calls with me and they're like, well, I want you to work with my teen and fix them because they're being disrespectful. They're moody, they're failing math. And the worst is when. This teen doesn't even know that they've been signed up for a free coaching call. And then mom like unleashes all like this whole big list of things that need to be fixed about their teen guys. If that's you, you are putting your energy in the wrong place. You can't control your teen. You can't change your teen. And that is disempowering to both you and your teen. So trying to change your teen instead of being the change that you are looking for is in my opinion, the biggest mistake that I see parents of teens make. And if you're like most parents. And if you're like me, sometimes the biggest reason you might be trying to change your teen is because you don't have a vision for the type of parent that you want to be. But you do have a vision for who you want your teen to be. And since you don't have a vision for yourself and you do have a vision for who you want your teen to be, then subconsciously that's where you focus all of your energy. And the problem is. It's disempowering. It doesn't help your teen and it doesn't help you. And gosh, there was something else I was going to say, but it just slipped my mind. Let's see. Yeah, I lost it. Oh no. I got it back. You might be trying to change your teen. From a place of love, like you love your teen, you want what's best for them. And if they would just do things your way, darn it, then they would what's best for them. I understand that you're doing it from a place of love, but I also understand that you need to stop trying to change your teen because it won't work and it's. Disempowering to you, and it's disempowering to them. So what I'd like to help you with today is to start getting a vision for who you want to be as a parent, so that you can stop trying to transform your teen into who you want them to become. So, that's the biggest mistake, is trying to change your teen instead of trying to change yourself. Let's talk about what is keeping you from being the parent of your dreams. Now, in my parenting program, I teach a simple step by step process for you to identify the parent of your dreams. Or what the parent of your dreams even looks like. Usually we go through this process over a little bit of time, so we won't have time to go through the whole process today, but I do want to help you use the tools that we've talked about over the past couple of weeks, the past couple of podcast episodes so that you can start being the parent of your dreams. So first let's take a minute to talk about. A few things that might be keeping you from being the parent of your dreams. We've already talked about number one, which is a lack of personal parenting vision. It's hard to be the parent of your dreams if you don't know what that even looks like. And in my opinion, when parents get into the controlling parent trap, which Is like this whole thing that we're talking about, trying to change your teen. It boils down to a lack of parenting vision, because it's hard to be the parent of your dreams if you don't even know what being the parent of your dreams would look like. The second thing that might be keeping you from being the parent of your dreams is focusing on things outside of your control. If you're like me, it's easy to fall. If you're trying to fix, control, or change your teen, you are focused on things outside of your control, and this will keep you from being the parent of your dreams. The third thing is a lack of awareness. You and I went over this back in episode 231, the Daily Parenting Debrief. You can't change something if you're not first aware of it. Doing a daily parenting debrief will help you increase your awareness of your parenting programming and presets. It'll help you understand, Oh, my parenting thermostat is set to 85. That is way too hot. Let me reprogram this thing and get it down to 72. That's way more comfortable. Okay. The fourth thing that will keep you from being the parent of your dreams is a lack of practice. Last week on the podcast, you and I talked about the wheel of life and how to practice being the parent of your dreams. Being the parent of your dreams won't be easy and it won't happen overnight or all by itself. You'll have to practice and develop that skill. You have to develop the new parenting programming of that version of you. And most parents aren't willing to do that or they don't know how to do that. So let's discuss how can you be the parent of your dreams? Now, I want you to realize, now that you know what's keeping you from being the parent of your dreams, you have the power to be intentional and explore how you can start being the parent of your dreams. First though, notice the language that we're using here. Notice how I want you to be. Present tense, the parent of your dreams. We're not talking about becoming, or someday I can become the parent of my dreams. If you focus on becoming the parent of your dreams, all your subconscious mind understands is that you are not the parent of your dreams. So instead I want you to realize that you can be the parent of your dreams right now, right? This very instant, just make the decision and be the parent. The parent you've always wanted to be. Now that you understand why it's important to be intentional about the language that you use around this, let me give you some simple steps. Step one, define your parenting identity. I like to use a simple process of creating a 10 word vision statement. And this is super simple. Mine is parenting with love. Confidence and curiosity is easy and fun. That 10 word vision statement helps guide me in top of the wheel, parenting moments, and in bottom of the wheel, parenting moments. I teach this process of defining your parenting identity in my membership. I've also done free trainings on this, and I'm pretty sure I've taught it in the podcast a few times. You can go find it. If you don't have it. Email me and I'll make sure you get the training. It's super powerful. So step one, define your parenting identity. Step two, do a daily parenting debrief. This will help you see your old parenting programming at work and part of. This will help you see the parts of your parenting that are outdated, that are not working, that are out of integrity with the parent that you want to be. And step three is practice using the wheel of life. We talked about this in the last podcast episode. This is a super simple process. You practice the new ways of being, to practice the new programming. This will give you reps. That will help you develop new habits and the new programming that you need to be the parent of your dreams. And step four is control only the controllables. As you go through steps one, two, and three, you'll notice that this is all about you and what you can control. And being the parent of your dreams. Dreams. It's not about changing, fixing, or controlling your teen. Any focus on things outside of your control is a waste of energy that could be applied to you and being the parent of your dreams. So step number four, Control only the controllables be the change that you want to see to quickly recap those. We've got step one, define your parenting identity. Step two, do a daily parenting debrief. Step three, practice using the wheel of life and step four. Control only the controllables. Be the parent of your dreams. Don't focus on not being the parent of your dreams and don't focus on becoming the parent of your dreams. Simply commit to being the parent of your dreams. If you're not the parent of your dreams. In like one moment, you're like yelling at your teen, calling them names like you butthead stop course. Correct. Choose to be the parent of your dreams. For me, when I'm out of alignment, I realize it and I hit pause and I'm like, wait, wait, this is not who I want to be. I apologize. Let me try that again. If you want to be the parent of your dreams, you've got to. Make that decision right now. And you've got to start reprogramming your old programming and resetting your parenting thermostat. The wheel of life is a tool to help you reprogram your old parenting programming. It'll give you reps. The mother of all learning is repetition. Start getting reps with the new. Parenting programming using the wheel of life and the daily parenting debrief will help you reset your parenting thermostat super fast. And if you're tired of being the kind of parent who always yells and screams and I don't know, yells mean words at your kid, I want you to take some time, identify what kind of parent do I even want to be, and then start developing that programming. Now. I've told you, I've got your back. I've got a free step by step parenting debrief guide. You can go download that. It's super easy. You can go to Ben pew coaching. com slash debrief, and you can start with your own internal debrief. It'll walk you through step by step, which then leads you to start enjoying actually being the parent of your dreams. It's simple, it's quick, and it will help you uplevel your parenting, and like I said, it's completely free. So if you want to start being the parent of your dreams, go to benpwcoaching. com slash debrief and download your free guide today. I'll see you soon.