5 Teen Challenges and How to Solve Them

In this episode, we talk about 5 common challenges teens face and how to help them overcome these struggles. From trying to fit in to dealing with distractions, we share simple tips and solutions that can make a big difference.

You’ll learn how to:

• Help teens focus on what matters most.
• Build discipline instead of chasing motivation.
• Overcome excuses and take action.

Parents, this episode will help you connect with your teen and support them in becoming their best selves. Teens, if you’re listening, these tips can help you stand out and achieve your goals.

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

Ben: 0:00

I'm Ben Pugh and you're listening to IMPACT! Parenting with Perspective. 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.

ben_1_03-25-2025_194025: 0:32

Hello, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for being here today. We are going to talk about traps that are holding your teen back, and we're also going to talk about a secret solution for how to help your teen. And I'll give you a spoiler. It's not going to be like the secret for how to change your teen because that is not. Possible. Now I have several teen clients who have told me, Ben, I hate it when my mom makes me listen to your podcast. So I get it. if you are a teen and your mom is making you listen to this podcast, you'll be okay. It's good for you to hear this. And if you're a parent, just wondering, what do I do to help my teen? This will also help you understand what. Might be going on with your teenager. Before I dive into these traps, and real quick, part of the reason I'm doing this is because I'm coaching a few. High level elite teen athletes that are either really good at their sport and want to be better, or they feel like maybe they've plateaued. And these are some of the things that we are talking about as I work with these teens. So, real quick though, before we dive into the content fully, I wanted to share a question. I wanna let you guys know. I am reading the fan mail that you guys are sending me. Thank you. I love it. Um, just the other day, someone said someone from. I believe it's Fredericksburg, Virginia. Anyways, appreciate your podcast today. I really need guidance and direction in this area. Thank you. I don't remember what that podcast was on, but thank you for taking the time to send me that. Um, there's another fan mail that someone sent me and I just want to let you know I am pr. I'm creating a podcast specifically for you. Um, if you are the one who messaged me, Hey, we're really struggling. My husband says that he hates being a parent. I want you to know I have a podcast that I'm creating specifically for you. You had asked at the end of your fan mail, you said, Hey, let me know what's the best way for me and my husband to work with you. Probably the easiest way. Email me at ben at Ben Pugh coaching, uh, tell me who you are, tell me a little bit more about this. Um, you're welcome to wait. I will have more details for you in weeks to come when I produce a podcast, specifically addressing that. So I wanna let you know. Thank you for reaching out to me. There's one. On its way specifically to help you, and I'll go ahead and read the whole question before we do that podcast, but thank you for sending that to me. I will get on that as soon as I can. Um, I'm preparing for spring break with my kids. It might be a couple of weeks, but please bear with me. I'll get that out soon. Okay. Let's dive into today's episode. We're talking about traps. That are holding your teen back, and I'm gonna give you a secret solution for how to support your teen through this. But first, let's dive into these traps so that you can understand where your teen is coming from. And if you are a teen and your mom or dad is making you listen to this, thank you for your patience. If you are like my teen, who wants to be. An elite athlete. Um, he's read some books. He's read about Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan. Um, I would imagine he would listen to this podcast if I made him so that he could be a more elite, high school athlete. So if you are willing to listen to this and your parents are making you, I want to tell you, hey, that is a pretty good start. It means that you're. You have a willingness to improve, a willingness to grow. So let's talk about these traps that, um, and by the way, I think I'll speak a little bit more to the teenagers, but parents, you can still listen. Um, the first trap, the first trap that I want to talk about is trying to fit in instead of standing out now fitting in. Is natural. It is very, very natural for teenagers to want to fit in. It's natural for all humans as part of being a human being. We are herd animals. We want to fit in, but what if fitting in is the very thing that's holding you back? Now, this doesn't only apply to sports sometimes in school, like you might be really good at math and you might love math. But in an effort to fit in with all the kids that hate math and do barely anything, you might hold yourself back when it comes to math. Now, there's this false sense of safety when it comes to blending in, but I wanna be honest with you, if you want to be an elite athlete, if you want to be uber successful in your future. Don't fit in. Stand out. Elite athletes don't fit in. They stand out. They rub people the wrong way. They get people to respect and look at them with admiration. Stop trying to fit in and start standing out. Before AI helped me rename that to, um, the mistake that teens are trying to fit in instead of standing out. I was talking about the biggest mistake being that teens just want to be average. They want to be normal, and I want to tell you normal is the last thing that you want to be. The average American is in debt. They're out of shape, and they're unhappy with either their job or their relationships or both. That's not who you wanna be. You don't want to be the average American. You want to be the American that's out of debt, that's in shape that loves their job and loves their family. If you dream of going pro, like my son, both my sons, my oldest, he's 18, he used to dream of going to the NFL, my second oldest. He wants to go to the NBA. If your dream is to go pro. You need to think, train, and live differently. People don't actually go into, or people don't accidentally go into professional sports anymore. That was like back in the sixties and seventies when you could just be freakishly huge or freakishly fast and someone's like, oh, hey, you should come try out for the team. And then you accidentally make your way onto a professional team. That's not happening anymore. You've got, you've got to live your life differently. And success isn't found in doing what's normal. It's found in pushing past average and really fixating on greatness, on creating what it is that you want to create. So be. Willing to be different. Be willing to do more. Go the extra mile. It's okay. I, I wanna make an example of like fitting in like chameleons. They are made to fit in. They avoid being noticed. No one's afraid of a chameleon. Look at lions on the other hand, they stand out. They're big, they're ferocious, they're loud, they're respected. If you want to be great, don't waste your time trying to blend in. You have to stand out, be the lion. Be the leader on your team. Be fearless in how you approach your school and your goals, whatever it is for you. Quit trying to fit in and instead start standing out. Okay. The second trap that I see teenagers in, and this is one of the ones that I see my own teen in, um, if you're one of my clients and you're listening to the pod, the podcast, this might be about you, but. I don't feel bad because I actually remember feeling this exact same thing when I was a teen, and it's the feeling that hard work will cost too much. Now, I want you to understand is human nature to want to do things as easily as possible and to avoid. Hard work, and I remember feeling as a teen that I didn't wanna overdo it. I didn't wanna do more than my share. When I was in my family, I'd always be like, oh, well why do I have to do all the work So and so isn't doing it. When I was on the football team, I was like, he's not coming in for extra practice. Don't be afraid that hard work is gonna cost too much. Now that I'm a coach, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a leader, I'm a boss. I see the massive value in going the extra mile. One of my favorite stories that I've ever heard was about Kobe Bryant, and he would show up. Before practice and he would work out for hours, and when his team would finally show up to do the team practice, Kobe Bryant had already been there for hours working on himself. Then he would do the team workout, and then when everyone left, he would go get another workout in. The greats don't fear hard work. In fact, they seek it out. Too many teens worry that doing too much will burn them out or it won't have a payoff. Listen guys, you never know if your hard work is gonna pay off or not. We're not doing the hard work for the payoff. We're doing the hard work because that is who we are. I am an elite teen athlete. Of course, I'm the hardest working dude in the gym. I am going to the NBA, of course. I come to practice early and leave late. It's who I am. Don't worry that the hard work isn't gonna pay off. If you worry about that, that tells me that you do not believe in your dream. So here's the solution. Stop holding back. If you catch yourself holding back, you're worrying about doing too much, stop it. Go all in. There's this metaphor of a rocket ship and being launched into outer space. I. And when rockets are launched, they burn through 90% of their fuel in the first few minutes just so that they can break free from earth's gravity and from our atmosphere. Now, if you are in sports, you gotta give everything that you can so that you can break free. If the rockets were holding back and saving fuel, they would never get past. Our gravity, they'd never make it. This space, the same is true for you. If you're holding back, you will never make it to your goals. You won't reach the greatness that you want to. Greatness requires an intense push upfront, but once you break through, you can just carry that same momentum, like I guarantee you, like one of my favorite basketball players right now is Steph Curry. Actually, they're just. Couple, I just forgot the guy's name. The big center for, um, the Jazz. I like him as well, but uh, Curry is a little bit more famous. We'll talk about him. He works on the basics over and over, and he isn't putting forth that massive effort that he used to have to do. He's just maintaining that moment momentum. He's continuing to work the basics. Okay, the third trap. That if you are like my teenagers right now and the teenagers that I'm working with, this one might be huge for you. I've fallen in in this trap just today. I was talking to my son about this very principle and I realized, oh my goodness, I fall into this trap sometimes, and this is letting your excuses run your life. Now if you follow me for a while, so. If you're a teen, your parents have probably heard me talk about this. You might not have, but I want you to understand this. I talk about the victim mentality all the time, and if you followed me for a while, you've probably heard me talk about the victim mentality versus the hero mentality. One of the indicators that I teach that will help you know that you are in the victim mindset is if you are making excuses. The tricky part is some excuses are legitimate. Some excuses sound really good, but no matter how valid the excuse might be, it's still keeping you from reaching your goals. Don't let your excuses determine how you show up in your life. Now, in addition to excuses, I teach that. The victim mentality, you'll know you're in it. If you're making excuses, if you're blaming, complaining, comparing, criticizing any of that, you're stuck in the same trap, having a victim mindset. And when you blame, when you make excuses, when you complain, you give your power away and you keep yourself stuck. So the answer is. When you, well, first you gotta have some awareness. You gotta catch yourself making an excuse, which that's kind of where I am right now. I catch myself making the excuse and I'm like, oh, great. When you catch yourself, take ownership, own it. Ditch the excuse, own your results. One of the clients that I'm working with, he. Made a big choice not to do something that is the norm in his culture, and he has some really good excuses and some really good reasons for not doing whatever. The thing is, I don't want to give away his story, but I asked him, do you even wanna do the thing that you got sent home from and that you have all these reasons not to do it? And he is like, no. Turns out I don't want to do that. I was like, then stop making excuses. Just own it. The next time someone asks, Hey, how come you're here? How come you're not doing X, Y, and Z? Explain. You know what? That's not for me. I didn't want to do that. You don't have to have the excuses of, oh, well this happened and this happened and this was going on, and no, just own it. I want you to think about like. Uh, making excuses are like anchors. They're heavy things that you drag around and when you cut ties with that anchor, you no longer have that holding you back. And if you're like most people, you have lots of anchors that are holding you back. You maybe complain about stuff. You blame stuff. You have these excuses. When you start cutting these anchors, you then have. The freedom and the power to move forward. Let go of excuses. Let go of these anchors and start moving towards your goal. Okay, number four, and this is another trap. I see my own teens falling into this. And guess what guys? I'm a dad. I'm a fully grown adult. I fall into this as well, and this is turning distractions into priorities. We live in a world full of distractions. Between phones, social media, video games, school jobs, worries, girlfriends and boyfriends, whatever fears you have in your life, those are all distractions. I. And distractions aren't just time wasters. They become dangerous when they start replacing what really matters. Even good distractions like school or a part-time job, or this girlfriend who's fantastic, even those good distractions can steal your focus from your bigger goals. Cell phones and video games get blamed a lot, but the real trap is in overvaluing something that doesn't move you forward. So yeah, I see. Cell phones, they're a problem. I see video games are a problem, but I could also see the safe job that's keeping you from doing what you want to do. As a distraction that's keeping you from reaching your dreams. So the solution is to identify your distractions, but also make the time to identify your dreams. One of the other problems, this isn't officially one of the traps, but it very well could have been, and parents, I'm talking to you right now, we are guilty of this way too much. Especially if you're a teacher or a principal in education. Don't kill your teens dreams. And one of the reasons that our teens are so quick to latch onto distractions is because the adults in the world have killed so many of their dreams. We're like, no, you can't play in the NFL. You're not big enough. You're not fast enough. Have a realistic dream like being an accountant. And then when our teens. Drop their dreams. It makes it easier to start prioritizing these distractions. So I want to share, here's the solution. Number one, identify the distractions and your dreams. And number two, set some priorities, determine. Is my cell phone one of my priorities? Do I want it to be a priority? If you don't identify, what do I want to be a priority? Early morning basketball practice. That's my priority. I'm going to prioritize that. Protect your focus. Don't. Turn your distractions into your priorities. I wanna give you an example of this. When you're driving the road and your safety and the vehicle, that is your priority. But if you look down at your phone to text someone or to answer a text. You've shifted your attention to this distraction, and if you are overp, prioritizing like, oh my goodness, I gotta find out what my girlfriend said and I gotta get back to her. If you are prioritizing that over driving, there's a chance that you're gonna crash. And the problem is the distraction of a cell phone while driving can be deadly. It might not be as extreme in your life, but the same principle is true. These distractions might not seem small, or they might seem small. Sorry, I misspoke. But they can completely derail you from reaching your goal. Keep your eyes on the road. Stay focused. Know what the real priorities are, and don't let your distractions become your priority. Okay, let's talk about the last one. This one is another one that I see far too often, and that is. Chasing motivation. Instead of building discipline, a lot of teens wait until they feel like doing the work, whether it's training, whether it's studying, whether it's making good choices, they're waiting until they feel motivated. One of the things that I always tell my teen clients, so if you're one of my teen clients, you've probably heard me say this, motivation is a fickle. Fickle friend. Most of my teens have no idea what fickle means. Fickle is like when you plan with your buddy. This actually just happened to my son this morning, or not this morning, this afternoon he's only nine, and he planned with his buddies that they were all gonna go to the park and he was messaging all of about them. And he's like, Hey, are you leaving? Are you going to the park? And they all are like, yeah, we're leaving right now. So I gave my son a ride to the park. None of his friends showed up. Those are fickle friends. They said that they do one thing and then a minute later they changed their mind. Motivation is a fickle, fickle friend. It's unreliable, it fades. You're gonna be, you're gonna have motivation until it gets hard. You're gonna have motivation while it's fun, but as soon as it's not fun, you're gonna lose all motivation instead of motivation, start building discipline. Discipline is what separates elite athletes from the rest. Successful people, they don't rely on motivation. They build habits. They build routines that keep them going no matter how they feel. That is called discipline. So stop waiting for motivation, build the discipline that it takes to win a while ago. I took my family to Hawaii and we went surfing. And I remember paddling out and then kind of waiting for a wave, and the guy's like, dude, you can't just wait for the perfect wave. It might come, but it's not gonna regularly come. You can't count on it, and it might be fleeting. You have to take action. You've gotta paddle, you gotta do some work. You gotta position yourself to take advantage of the waves. Success comes to those who put in the work, who show up that even when. The thing that they want to have happen isn't happening. They still have the discipline to continue working in their habits so quickly to review these five traps that a lot of teens are getting stuck in. Number one is trying to fit in instead of standing out, and that's. Where I talked about kind of being average number two is fearing that the hard work is gonna cost too much, that it won't be worth it, that's gonna hold you back. Number three is letting excuses run the show. Like, oh man, I'm not gonna go to early morning waits because you know what? I've got a long day tomorrow and I wanna save my energy and no, those are all excuses. Commit, be all in. Number four is turning distractions into priorities. This could be anything from a cell phone to a job, school, social media, video games, whatever. Don't let that become your priority. And then the last one that we talked about is chasing motivation. Instead of building discipline, motivation is a fickle, fickle friend. Don't rely on it. Start building discipline. Alright, so here's some bonus. Secret solutions, and mainly this is for parents because you can't change your teen. So now that you've made your teen listen to this podcast, tell them thank you, and maybe turn them loose. Or if your teen is like, no, no, I really want to be an elite athlete. I want to grow. I want to improve. Let'em stick around. Here's the first thing I would recommend. Understand that your teen is a mirror. The struggles you see in your teen, they likely exist in you too. And if your teen lacks discipline, you can start asking yourself, where in my life do I lack discipline? You can ask yourself, how can I be more disciplined to model discipline to my teenager? If they make excuses, chances are you are making excuses. So rather than seeing your teen as a problem that needs to be fixed, see them as a mirror that is nudging you into a direction that you can control. I can't change my teen. How can I be the change that I want to see? Number two, this goes hand in hand. You lead by example. Teens learn way more from what you do than what you say. Every parent knows this. We just don't like to admit it. Your teen is not listening to a darn thing you say, except for this podcast teen. Thank you for listening. You can't make your teen listen. You can't demand that your teen be more disciplined or that they focus or that they try harder. All you can do. Is be that example model. The behavior that you want to see once you see your teen is a mirror. So they're just helping you better understand areas that you have for growth. And then the last thing focus on being, not just fixing, and this is a problem that I face a lot of dads, actually, it's dads and moms. We're fixers. We want to fix problems, but instead of trying to fix your teen's behavior. Embody the qualities that you want them to develop. Get out of that. I've gotta fix it mentality. We don't need to fix it. Let's just be the very best version of ourselves. Show up. Be committed to that. Be accountable. Be resilient When you mess up, that's okay. And when you become the change. Your teen's gonna follow. I can't guarantee that they're going to do exactly what you want them to. It doesn't work that way. But your greatest power as a parent isn't in controlling your teen. It's in leading by example. It's in being the change and then watching your teen as they strive to follow your lead. Help them, support them. And if they're not trying to follow your lead, realize that that's okay. That's not your job, to make them follow your lead. Now, I love it when you guys send me fan mail, not that I need a bunch of fans. I love what I'm doing. I love helping people. I want. To have more direction in how to best help you. So please use the fan mail. You can tell me. Good job. I love that. That's fantastic. I also love it when you're like, Hey man, this is something specific that I'm struggling with, and to the best of my ability, I will create a podcast specifically for you guys. I'm going to be making a few changes in the business. I'm gonna. You have some more stuff to give you, that's gonna be incredibly awesome. For now, if you're wondering, like this mother who reached out to me and was like, Ben, how do we work with you and how can you help my husband? Here's the thing. Reach out to me. You can go. You can email me ben@benpughcoaching.com. Tell me, Hey, I'm the one that wrote you that fan mail. We need to work with you, ASAP. I will send you a link so that you can get on my calendar and I will give you a free coaching call. Anyone who wants to work with me, I have. Probably three, one-on-one coaching slots available. Reach out to me, Ben at Ben Pugh coaching. I will give you a free coaching call to see if we're a good fit. If we're not, no problem, no pressure. If we are, awesome, I'll help you reconnect with your teenagers and I'll help you start being the parent of your dreams and to the mom that sent me that fan mail looking for hope. I promise you, these are things that can be addressed. These are things that can be improved upon and it's easier than you might think. I'll talk to you soon.