Let's Make Parenting Teens Simple with Connection and Empowerment

Are you tired of complicated parenting advice that leaves you feeling overwhelmed? In this eye-opening episode, we explore how to simplify your approach to parenting teens by focusing on two essential elements: connection and empowerment.

Despite being more "connected" through social media than ever before, many teens feel deeply lonely and disconnected from their parents. Learn why trying to control everything in your teen's life might be pushing them away, and discover simple strategies to build authentic connections with your teen.

You'll learn:
 • Why complicated parenting strategies often fail
 • How to connect with your teen through their unique interests and values
 • The importance of accepting your teen as they are
 • Ways to empower your teen through meaningful conversations
 • Why letting your teen face consequences can be the best gift you give them

Whether you're struggling with a disconnected teen or just want to simplify your parenting approach, this episode offers practical insights to help you build a stronger relationship with your teenager.

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 237. 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. Thank you for being here today. We are going to talk about what today's teens need right now in today's world. And part of the reason that we're doing this lately, I've had a few clients that I heard this on a podcast or I read this in a parenting book, or my friends are talking about this or my teen needs to get certain grades to be successful in life. And the first thing that I would tell you, like this is probably like before we get into the, what teens need in today's world, the first thing that I would tell you that has nothing to do with your teen. Specifically is that first let's you and I let's make parenting simple for some reason as human beings. We love to complicate things and I think we do this because it makes us feel smart. We're like, man, look at this complex mess that I've made. I'm amazing. And the truth is humans. Thrive in simplicity. If you look at some of the most successful people, like Kobe Bryant, I remember he was being interviewed by someone. I can't remember who, and basically he's like, my life is simple. I get up, I go to basketball, I come home, I spend time with my family. I go to basketball, I come home. I spend time with my family and I go to basketball. Like that was it. Let's start making. Parenting simple, and this might just be the thing that makes your relationship with your teen better because you and your teen will both benefit from a simple life. So in a world that likes to overcomplicate things, I want to invite you. Make parenting simple. Recently, one of the parents that I'm working with, she told me that she's read all the parenting books, she's listened to all the parenting podcasts, and she's doing everything right, and that it's still not working in her home. Like some of the things that they are doing for their teens are amazing. They sound great. You could brag about those on social media all day and be like, man, look at the mom that I am. But as she told me about all the things that she was doing, it sounded so complicated and it sounded overwhelming. Like I was overwhelmed just listening and I know her teen is overwhelmed and I want to just. I give you the good news, like I'm gonna tell you two simple things that your teen needs that will actually make your life easier. If you provide these two simple things with for your teen, then for you trying to do all the things that you've heard about or that you've read about, and. I just, I want to help you trust that your teen doesn't need everything that the world says that your teen does. Just the other day, I saw an ad on Facebook that was like, Hey, help or no, protect your teen against. Addiction, and it was about locking down your phone, your teen's phone so that all they can do is send texts, which by the way, they could be monitored by you, the parent, and then they could make phone calls to phone numbers that you approved of. And I'm like, do we really need to lock down and control our teens phones? And social media. And there are tons of things that you could sign your teen up to do like football or basketball or the play or whatever it is. And just the other day on Facebook, and I'm guilty of this. I tell parents all the time, Hey, I think football is good for teens because it builds character. It helps your teen. I have a sense of responsibility. I don't ever want to go so far to be like, no, your teen needs to play football so that they can be successful. And when I hear parents saying my teen has to do this class, they have to be involved in this. They have to. Go feed the homeless so that they'll understand that they can be successful. And I'm here to tell you that that is not keeping parenting simple. That's actually making parenting really complex. And there are a lot of Things that parenting experts will tell you that you have to do. But ultimately I want you to understand this. You are the parenting expert, especially when it comes to your teens. I tell parents all the time, like, look, I don't know your teen as well as you do. I don't love your teen as much as you do. If you sent your teen to my house for a week, I would probably send them right back and be like, man, thank goodness. Because I don't love your teen like you do. I want you to understand you are the parenting expert when it comes to your teens. If someone at school is telling you, no, your daughter needs to take X, Y, and Z classes so that she can go on to this college and so that she can be successful. If your daughter doesn't want to take those classes, I would question, is that really that important? I had to go through this, this summer. My son didn't want to play football. The thing is, I had this belief, no, my son needs to play football so he can be successful in life. That's not my job. To dictate what my teen needs to do. He's a basketball player. He loves basketball. And when I look on the months that he spent playing football to make dad happy, like, man, that's just made our lives more complicated. We could have simplified it and let him follow his passion. So I'm just going to give you two things that I believe that teens need, and I want to do it with this little caveat. To make it. Simple. Don't make this some checklist that you're like, Oh, Ben Pugh. Said I need to do X, what? No, make it simple. Make it something that you can do easily and make it so that you can do it over the long haul. Not just something that you're going to try for a week. I'm just, And today I went to my son's, my youngest son, he had his Christmas program and they were singing and I saw one of the people there that I know and I'm like, man, last time I saw them, they had lost like 50 pounds and they were super proud. And this next time that I saw them, they had obviously gained it all back and some now I'm not judging them, but the thing that I can see is that, okay, they did something to lose weight, but it must not have been sustainable. Because they're right back where they were before. So I want to help you make these two things simple and. I, the reason I've spent so much time on this is because I feel like it's so important guys together. Let's simplify parenting. So, the two things that I feel like teens in today's world need are number one, Connection and number two empowerment. And I actually, I hesitate to number those because they're both equally important for today's podcast. We're going to start with number one, teens need connection. Now you probably. Wouldn't be surprised if I told you that teens today are more connected than ever before with social media and internet. But that doesn't mean that they are experiencing true connection. And one of the things that teens tell me all the time is that they feel lonely. Now, it's crazy that like my oldest plays video games with people from all over the world. He's playing like NCAA football. That's his favorite video game. He was just stoked when that came out. But those aren't real connections. Often the people that he's playing with rage quit, or if he happens to be losing, he might rage quit. So even though our kids. Are so well connected. They don't have true connection and they feel lonely. Another one of the things that teens tell me all the time is my mom and dad don't even like me. Now I would be lying to you if I told you that my kids have never or never would say that. You know what? They probably would because sometimes I don't show up as the parent that I want to be, but when teens tell me my mom and dad don't even like me, usually when I do some prying There's a lack of connection there. One of the things that I know that teens today need is connection. I think teens are hungry for healthy, positive connection with good adults. I, one of the reasons I feel like I do so well at coaching Football or coaching teens is that I'm a positive good adult that cares about their life and Teens are hungry for this and believe it or not. You can be one of those adults in your teens life now You can't always be that like, that's why I love my kids doing sports. Now, again, I'm not saying that teens need to do sports because of this. I'm just saying one of the benefits of having teens do sports is that it gives them other adults that they can build positive connections with that's powerful because sometimes as a parent, as much work as you put into your connection, and that's okay, there will be times that as a parent, you will feel. Inspired to parent in alignment with your values and your teen's going to disagree and sometimes the connection with your teen will take a hit and that's okay, especially when you have other people that are connected to your teen. One of the things that I like to talk about. I've read the book, seven habits of highly successful people. It's a good book. It's not as high on my list of recommendations as leadership and self deception, but it's still pretty high up there. One of the things that I liked that Stephen Covey talks about is the relationship bank account. And when you think about. Building connection with your teen. You could think about it a lot like a relationship bank account, like what Stephen Covey talks about, where you can make relationship deposits and you can make relationship withdrawals. But if you want to have a healthy bank account, you need to start making relationship deposits in advance. So when it comes time to make a relationship withdrawal, that you're not pulling out of an empty bank account. And when you think about building. Connection with your teen. I recommend identifying your teen's values so that you can start building values based connections with your teen. Values based connection. When it's built on something that your teen values will count. As double or triple, or maybe even 10 times more valuable than if you try and build a connection with your teen based on one of your personal values. So I invite you find ways to connect with your teen over the things that they value. That might be video games, it might be sports, it might be girls, it might be cars, whatever it is. Find ways to build values based connections so that when you have to make a withdrawal and you have to be like, no, no, you can't borrow the car tonight. I'm in charge of the car. And I say, no, that withdrawal won't come out of a. Negative bank account. Always find ways to connect with your teen over their values. Another thing that I would recommend is to find a way to connect with your teen over their uniqueness. One of the problems that I see a lot of parents making is that they try and get their teens to be more like everyone else to be nor more normal. I want to tell you, stop it. Find ways to embrace your teen as they are, where they are in their life. Um, in the church that I'm a part of, I see this a lot when a teenager will decide not to make the same choices that. Are kind of the norm in the church and parents will be like, well, what about your friend blank? Can't you be more like them? Or maybe you should hang out with them more so that you can make better decisions. I'm all about helping teens make better decisions, but if you want a healthy connection with your teen, find ways to appreciate them. In their uniqueness. Don't try and get them to fit in with everyone else. This will help you build strong connection. As much as today's world claims like, no, we are super accepting. Like it doesn't matter your gender, your sexual preference, your like, whatever will accept you. Yeah. I see some of that as being true, but man, I see teens in the world. No, I see the world in general and it's like, yeah, but if you vote for Trump, like you're out or man, if you voted for Kamala, I don't even know how we can be friends anymore. Let's start building connection and allowing our teens. To be unique, our teens need connection. That's one of the things that I feel like teens need the most in today's world. The second thing is that our teens need to be empowered. I feel like today's adults have an unhealthy habit of taking over life for their teens, parents. Stop fixing your teens problems. Stop protecting your teen from experiencing the consequences of their choices. I see parents that control their teens and guys, I'm guilty of this sometimes too, but I see parents who control their teens So that their teen can't make a mistake so that they can't pay the price, experience the consequence of that mistake. And I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you, but this actually disempowers your teen. It's time to take a step back and probably stop listening to the herd mentality. That we get from social media or parenting experts or like guys. And I understand I lumped myself in that or adults at your kid's school. Anyone who tells you, no, no, this is what your teen needs to do, or you need to do this for your teen to be successful. They are not. I'm not the parenting expert for your teen. You are. And I, one of the things I'm getting tired of is school saying, no, your teen has to do all this. They need to take AP classes. They need to be on all these committees. They need to guess what? Some of the most successful people that I know were some of the least successful teens. It's okay. They took control of their lives. They paid the consequences for the choices that they were making, and they made some powerful changes in their lives, and those unsuccessful teens became very successful people. Another thing that I recommend, if you want to start empowering your teen, start with having empowering conversations. Ask your teen questions about the things that they're struggling with. If your teen hates going to school, ask them. If you didn't have to go to school, what would you do with your life? Instead of spending all this time in school, they might give you some really good answers. I remember one of my clients, he's like, man, I would spend my day. Dirt biking, fixing dirt bikes, and doing more dirt biking, and then building a YouTube channel. Great! If you'll actually do that, let's get you moving in that direction rather than sitting in a classroom all day. Another thing you could ask is, what do you think your life would look like now? If you quit going to school or part two of that, what would your life look like in five years? If you quit going to school right now, a lot of times teens will kind of answer their own question. Why do I have to go to school? Well, I don't know, teen, what do you think your life would look like in five years? If you just quit going to school and never went back and they'll be like, man, I, maybe I'd be working at McDonald's. I don't want to work at McDonald's. I want to keep going to school, empowering questions. Help your teen process their life from a higher viewpoint, from a higher level of thinking, possibly in addition to like having empowering conversations that is empowering to teens, but possibly the most empowering thing you can do for your teen is to let your teen make choices, especially when you don't agree with the choices and let them get in a little bit of trouble and let them deal with the consequences. I have an experience, I'm not going to go into the details, but one of my teen sons, he made some choices when it came to schooling and he had to spend about two weeks, actually about a week, busting his butt, getting caught up. He wouldn't listen to me and my wife saying, Hey, you should do this. Hey, get to work. Hey, stay on top of this. He didn't want to listen. He's like, no, no, I got it. I'm not worried about it. I'll take care of it. Well, when reality set in and he had to pay the price, that's when he learned a valuable lesson. He actually told me and my wife, I wish I would have listened. I wish I would have done more work when you asked me to before. Yeah, but you wouldn't listen. So we're going to let you make your choice, even though we don't agree with it. We're going to let you get into a little bit of trouble and For the record, I'm okay. If you let your teen get into a lot of trouble, I would rather teens get in trouble now than never having gotten in trouble and then have to deal with figuring that out as an adult. But we let our teen make choices. We didn't agree with. We made him set up some consequences. It kind of sucked for him. And then we let him deal with those consequences because That's how you empower your teen and that's how you help them learn. And today's teens need to be empowered. If I could just simplify parenting, find ways to connect with your teen, just as they are, find ways to connect with your teen on their values, start building values based connections, and number two. Start empowering your teen, have empowering conversations, ask them powerful questions, and then let them deal with their own consequences. Now, here's something important I should tell you about teens. They are super resilient. You can do what I just talked to you about in this podcast, and I promise you it will hugely benefit you and your teen. It'll make your parenting easier and it will help your teen. But here's the other thing. You can not do what I talked about in this podcast and that's okay. Your teen is resilient. They'll figure it out. They'll be okay. The one thing that I would say about that is imagine how much easier your life would be if you had a better relationship with your teen. Imagine how much better your life would be if your teen was empowered to the point that they could figure out their problems and you didn't have to nag them and push them to do what you think is right. Find ways to build a connection. Find ways to empower your teen. I'll talk to you next week.