IMPACT: Parenting with Perspective
IMPACT: Parenting with Perspective
The Hidden Cost of Controlling Your Teen
Do you ever feel like the harder you push, the more your teen pulls away?
You’re trying to help—but it keeps turning into lectures, power struggles, or shutdowns.
In this episode of IMPACT! Parenting with Perspective, Ben speaks directly to dads who feel stuck between caring deeply and controlling too much. Using simple sports coaching examples, he explains why control creates short-term compliance—but long-term problems.
You’ll learn how to shift from fixing and forcing to coaching and supporting.
This isn’t about being passive. It’s about raising capable adults with confidence and connection.
If you want a calmer home and a stronger relationship, this episode is for you.
Are You Caught in the Parent Trap?
Discover the hidden patterns that are keeping you stuck—and how to break free.
Take this quick (and eye-opening) quiz to uncover which common parenting trap you’re falling into with your teen.
Get a personalized roadmap to help you parent with more clarity, confidence, and connection—starting today.
https://benpughcoaching.com/parenttrapquiz
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_01-06-2026_193739:Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today's episode is. Kind of a special episode. usually when I record these podcasts, I am thinking about all the moms out there dealing with knucklehead teenage sons, kinda like I was, and kinda like my mom who was having to deal with me recently, I met a long time listener via Zoom, and she pointed out that I. Don't do podcasts towards fathers or dads. And she was like, dads. Need to hear this, they need to stop trying to control their teens and they need to take up the role of kind of a coach to support their teens. So today I am going to take a request. This is someone who has listened to the podcast for a long time and just recently scheduled a free consultation with me. So. Here you go. This one is for you or maybe more for your husband. Anyways, this is a special episode for dads all about coaching versus controlling. And I'll be honest with you, this is something that I sometimes struggle with as well. So if you're a dad out there, if you're like me, listen up. This is for you. And if you're a mom, usually I record podcasts. For the moms out there, you can leave or you can learn all these secret special tips that I'm about to teach all the dads who are listening. So this what we're gonna talk about, coaching versus controlling. This is a lesson that I've had to learn as a football coach, and this is a powerful lesson and for some reason this makes a lot of sense. When it comes to football, but it's easy to forget when it comes to parenting. So here is the lesson as a coach, especially as a football coach, maybe basketball coach, probably any coach, unless you're like doing T-ball or something. As a coach, I can't run onto the field and make the play for my players. That makes sense. As a coach, we get it, we see it, but the same is true for a dad. I can't take over and just make the play for my teen. And we try and do this all the time. We just take over and we're like, oh, I'll make some phone calls. I'll get you a job. Or, here, let me fix this or let me do this for you. Or we get into controlling where we're like, here's what you need to do. Here's how we're gonna fix this. You're gonna do X, Y, and Z, and dad just gets into lecture Dad mode. I'm familiar with that. I get stuck in the lecture. Dad trap all the time. So you will know that this podcast applies to you. If you have ever found yourself justifying your behavior where you try and control your teen by saying something like, no, I'm just trying to help. I'm just trying to do what's best, or, I'm just trying to make sure they do it right, and you'll know that this is for you. If in response to you trying to take over, you notice that your teen shuts down. Or maybe they start pushing back and being a little bit more rebellious. I want to help you see the bigger picture and let's try and create a mental shift in how you think about this. When parents get stuck in the controlling trap, they typically focus on their teen's behavior, which spoiler alert, that's something outside of your control. You cannot control your teen's behavior. When it comes to coaching, which is different than controlling, the focus is generally on your teen's identity and their growth. Again, those are things that you cannot control, but I'll help you understand later how, when you understand your teen's identity and you can see how they want to grow or how. They might need to grow. You can start to position yourself in a way that supports your teen in their identity with the growth that they need. So here's a simple reframe. If you want to practice thinking about this differently. If you're stuck in the controlling parent trap, you probably have some subconscious bias. That leans towards the idea of how do I get my teen to do what I want? If you have developed more of the coaching bias, your question will be more like, what does my teen want to become and how do I support them now in football? I see coaches that are in in control mode all the time, and they're like, well, how do I get my players to do exactly what I want? What this would look like in football is, Hey, what are the skills that I have and how do I support my teens? Or like when I talk about like, what are the skills that my players have now? How do I support them in growing those and how do I build a team that fits them? As a parent now, rather than wondering how do I control my teen? How do I support my teen in being who they are and developing the skills that they need to accomplish their dreams? So there's a foundational belief that really helps guide me as a dad, as a football coach, and even as a life coach. And it's this belief that we don't need to raise compliant teenagers. Instead, we need to be raising capable adults. And if you just try and control your teen, and I get it, I'm a dad. I fall under this trap sometimes too. I'm bigger. I'm stronger than my teens. We could fight and I would probably win. All that does is raise compliant teenagers, and what we need is more capable adults. let's look at what does controlling look like and why is it the default for so many dads? Now, behaviors that you might recognize. I know some of these hit home with me. Lecturing. Early in my podcast journey, I would talk about falling into the trap of becoming lecture Dad. I don't do that as much, but from time to time I still fall into that trap threatening consequences really early. I still fall into this trap. I know lots of other dads who do, where. The very instant that homework isn't done or chores aren't done, the father's like, Hey, gimme your cell phone. I'm gonna take it right now. If you fall into that trap. You are falling into the controlling parent trap. Maybe you overexplain things, maybe you just jump in and fix problems for your teen and maybe rather than trusting your teen, you monitor their every move. These are attributes of controlling parents, and this isn't just dads moms do this too. So it's helpful to understand why you might do this. First of all, one of the most common ones is fear. A lot of dads fear that if they don't step in and control something or fix something, that either their teenager will fail or that that will mean that they are a failure themselves as a dad, sometimes it just comes down to ego. Look, I'm the dad. I'm the adult. I'm the one who knows best. Do it my way. Other times it is purely out of love and we just don't know a better way. And then oftentimes it's results driven. I see this in football all the time. We gotta get certain kids to play. We gotta score so many touchdowns. We gotta win by this much like whatever it is. These might be some of the reasons why you're falling into the controlling parent trap. And it's important to keep in mind, I if you are like most ads, you're not controlling your teen because you're a bad dad. You are trying to control your teen because you care, and because you don't know a better way yet. So welcome to the podcast. I'm gonna teach you a better way. Let's take a minute and let's explore. If that's what controlling looks like for a lot of dads, what might coaching look like? And I'll be honest with you, I'm gonna use a lot of sports parallels. I'm a football coach. My kids play sports. I love sports. Sorry. This is for dads anyways. All the moms that I talk to, they're usually pretty patient with my sports analogies. Hopefully you will too. A coach, they don't play the game for their athlete. That's a hard one. I can't tell you how many times I've stood on a sideline and I have to keep my whistle in my backpack'cause I've actually gotten a penalty in a football game for accidentally blowing a whistle because that's what you do in practice and it was embarrassing Anyways. Coaches, don't play the game for the athletes. They can't control things in the game. They just have to stand back, observe and support where possible coaches give feedback. Usually after something has gone wrong, sometimes you get lucky and you can give feedback. In the moment, like, Hey, this went really well. Good job. A lot of times as a coach, as a parent, you are helping your child fix a mistake or a struggle. That's okay. Coaching also looks like allowing struggles, allowing mistakes, allowing real life experience to be the teacher and coaches. Focus on reps, not perfection. And they build confidence through preparation. Now we can do all of this. As a parent, we can give our teens opportunity to prepare for life, to develop skills that will help them go on to the next chapter with confidence. We can help them get reps like, Hey, here's how you study. You come home, you do the important things first, and then you can go play with friends. We can help teach skills, we can help them learn from mistakes, we can allow them to slip up and learn from that. when you translate the coaching to parenting, I.
ben_2_01-06-2026_194927:You are asking more and you're telling less. You are letting these natural consequences either teach your teen or sometimes you let the natural consequences motivate your teen. Now, if you can get into more coaching rather than trying to control you will be empowering your teen and giving them back ownership of their life. And the best way to do this is to stay calm when it looks like they need you to step in. And when it looks like they've got it and they're doing great, cheer them on, point out what they're doing well. Coaches, like I said, we can't get on the field and play the game for our kids. Just like you can't force your teenager to have success, but you can create the environment where your teen can create success for themselves. So let's talk about the cost of controlling, and this is kind of the long term picture. A lot of times when it comes to
ben_1_01-06-2026_193739:controlling teens
ben_2_01-06-2026_194927:we can get'em to comply and follow all the rules, but they have zero confidence. They think someone else needs to tell'em what to do or how to behave. The other extreme is we get teens who just rebel. They flat out do the opposite of what we want'em to, just so they can feel. Confident and powerful. The problem is either way, they're not learning the skills that they need to be successful. We now have teens who lack confidence because dad isn't there to tell'em what to do or to fix it for'em, or we have teens who can't. Fit into a system because they didn't have someone teaching them that skill instead of forcing it upon them. And rebellious teens, I actually think they turned out to be pretty good teens because I was one. But there's a learning curve. You start to learn like, man, I can't just fight against all the rules just for the sake of fighting. I need to learn how to play by some of these rules and probably. The most important big picture that we need to talk about is the strained relationship that controlling can cause between you and your teen, and that can last a lifetime. So when it comes to coaching, coaching supports your teen's internal identity, their growth, and controlling really. Focuses on building compliance and seeing that external obedience, and there's a cost to that. So like I told you earlier, I'm gonna teach you a better way. Hopefully I'm gonna make this simple. I'm a dad. I understand that. Dad's like simple, quick, efficient, let's do this thing. There is a tool that I use and I call it. The T-chart of control. It's super simple. I teach this to teens. I teach it to parents. I teach it to pre-teens. Everyone can get it. Basically, you draw out this T-chart and on the left hand column you write things I can control. On the right hand column, you write things I can't control. So on the left hand, things I can control on the right hand, things I cannot control. And when you get in a sticky parenting situation, I want you to just pause and explore, what can I control here? What can I not control? If you're like a lot of dads, you're in a bad habit of trying to control a handful of things that are outside of your control. Maybe you're trying to control who your teenage daughter dates, what your son does when it comes to sports or lifting during the off season or whatever it might be. I want you to start noticing when do I focus on the things that I cannot control and how do I feel when I do that? And then start looking like, well, if I can't control what my teen does during the off season, what can I control? You know what I can control what I offer. Like, Hey, you want to go to the gym with me? Hey, do you want me to buy some protein and some creatine or whatever? And then explore how do I feel when I focus on the things that I can control? I already know the answer to that. I've been doing this for a long time. When you focus on things outside of your control, you'll feel overwhelmed. You'll feel an intensified need and desire to control things, and you will feel frustrated. But when you let go and you start focusing on the things that you can control, you will feel empowered and you will start to see areas where you can. Start coaching because you're not wasting your energy on controlling. So here's some examples. When you start exploring this, rather than lecturing your teen and saying something like, why on earth would you do that? What were you thinking you might explore? Like, here's the thing I've noticed in sports, and I've also noticed it in teens. I coach with a lot of really good men. I've coached for a long time. Right now, I feel like this is one of the best coaching staffs that I've ever been a part of. I've also been a part of some not so great coaching staffs, and one of the things that I've learned is that as frustrated as you are as the player for dropping the ball, they are just as frustrated with themselves as you are, if not more. And so when he comes on the sideline and I lecture him and I'm like, dude, why would you drop that? You know, we need that. It doesn't help. I'm just compounding whatever's already going on mentally and emotionally with that athlete on the other side. If I can be smart about it and be like, Hey, you'll get it next time. I'm not worried about one drop pass. You'll get it when it matters. I can start building'em up. That's coaching. I might ask, Hey, do you know what happened? Why you dropped it there? Like what do you think you could do next time differently? This is coaching. I'm planting seeds rather than believing that my teen needs to try harder and focusing on, Hey, you gotta work harder. I can help them celebrate. Where their effort really shines and what they're proud of this week. So when it comes to coaching versus controlling, first thing we want to do, we wanna identify the T chart of control. What can I control? What can I not control? We wanna start replacing how we talk and how we communicate, and we want to use more coaching. Verbiage and more positivity, and that will help us shift from outcome type language where, hey, I want you to get better grades to more identity type language. Hey, what type of student do you even want to be? I've got kids that are like, I don't wanna be a straight A student. That doesn't even intrigue me. I'd rather get Bs. Spend my extra time practicing sports. You know what? That's fine with me, but I'm shifting my language to more identity based rather than outcome based, and I can tie this into who my teen is, into their being rather than feeling like it's my job to fix them. So let me give you a little bit of reassurance, especially if you're a dad, and this is the first podcast that you've ever listened to of mine. Thanks for sticking with me. This one has kind of gotten a little bit longer than they usually do. Here's what I want you to understand. Coaching as a dad doesn't mean that you're just passive and you let your teen walk all over you. That's another parent trap. Coaching does not mean that you have no boundaries. Coaching doesn't mean that you just let everything slide and that your kid doesn't need you as a father or as a role model or as an accountability partner. That's not true. Here's the thing I want you to understand. You can be a strong father, you can be very supportive. You can be calm, you can be clear. You can be firm and still be connected to your teenager. And the truth is, if you can get out of the controlling trap that so many parents fall on into, not just dads, I coach a lot of moms that fall onto the same trap. If you can get out of the controlling parent trap and start coaching, developing some of these tools that football and basketball coaches and athletic coaches use all the time. You will become more strong and supportive. You will be more clear. You'll have a calmness that helps your teen be calm, and you'll still be firm and your teen will love you for it. So dad, if you're still listening, I want you to reflect on something this week and I want you to notice when do you try and control your teen? And I want you to ask yourself. What would it look like if I tried coaching my teen instead of controlling my teen? Now? I've talked about parent traps. I have a free parent trap quiz that you can go take and you can learn what parent trap you fall into the most. Typically, parents fall into the controlling parent trap, but there's also the doormat parent trap. We briefly talked about that, where I said, you don't have to let your teen walk all over you. And there's also the lost and confused. Parent trap. If you would like to find out what trap you get caught in, go to benpughcoaching.com/parenttrapquiz and that'll help you know where you are. Also, feel free to just share this with another dad that you know might be struggling with her teenager. There's a lot of us that are just doing our best and sometimes there's a better way that we don't know of. If you know of someone who could benefit from this podcast, please take a minute and share it with him. I'd appreciate it. And stay close. I've got some special offers coming up that I'd like to share with you guys for now, if you haven't yet, go do the parent trap quiz and to come back next week. Next where I'll help you build even more parenting skills. I'll see you soon.