Stop Trying to Control Your Teen. Start Leading Instead.

If you feel like you're always reminding, arguing, or trying to get your teen to make better choices, this episode is for you.

Many parents think they need to control their teen to help them succeed. But the harder you try to control them, the more they often push back.

In this episode, Ben shares five lessons he has learned from coaching football that can completely change the way you parent. You'll learn how to lead with confidence instead of reacting with frustration.

You'll discover how to:

• Stop carrying responsibilities that belong to your teen.
• Set clear expectations before problems happen.
• Lead with calm confidence instead of fear.
• Build trust without giving up healthy boundaries.
• Focus on what you can control and let go of what you can't.

Your teen doesn't need a parent who can control every choice they make. They need a parent who knows how to lead.

If you're ready to stop the constant power struggles and start parenting from the inside out, this episode will give you practical tools you can use today.

Take the free Parent Trap Quiz at benpughcoaching.com/quiz to discover the parenting pattern that may be keeping you stuck.

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/parent-trap-quiz

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.

Speaker 0:34

Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. Today, we are going to be talking about two of my very favorite things: coaching football and parenting teens. And we're gonna talk about how they overlap and some simple things that you can do to really up-level your parenting. And stay tuned, because the last little one that I'm gonna teach you is super important. That really helped change my role as a dad, and it's one of the ones that a lot of parents misunderstand. So let's start talking about football. A good football coach knows something that a lot of parents forget: you cannot run the play for your players. You can teach them, you can prepare them, you can set the expectations, you can hold them accountable. You can even make adjustments throughout the game. But once the ball is snapped, each player has to play his own position. And a lot of parents are exhausted because they're trying to play their teen's position for them. They're trying to make their teen care more about school, or trying to get him off the video game, or keep his room clean, or make better choices. And when he doesn't, they feel like they've failed. But what if good parenting isn't about controlling your teenager's choices? What if it's about becoming a better leader? The more I coach football, the more I see the qualities that make a good coach are actually the same qualities that make a strong parent. These are qualities like a clear identity, having a game plan, strong communication, the ability to manage your own emotions, and the ability to take responsibility for your leadership, for your parenting, without taking responsibility for every choice that your teen makes In this episode, I'm going to show you five ways good football coaching and strong parenting overlap. We'll talk about owning your authority, creating a game plan, communicating clearly, managing the fear behind parenting, and taking responsibility without taking over your teen's responsibilities. And like I said earlier, stay with me until the final lesson because it answers one of the hardest questions that parents face. If you're not responsible for controlling your teen, what are you responsible for? The answer can take a huge weight off your shoulders and help you lead with more confidence, purpose, and authority. Your job is not to play your teen's position. Your job is to lead from your position. So the reason we're talking about this, a lot of parents are struggling because they're reacting rather than leading. And you can know if this is you. Like, does missing homework start a fight? In your house, is there way too much gaming? Is a messy room a start to a big battle? Do you feel disrespected? The truth is, if there's no clear p- plan, oftentimes the parent gets frustrated, the teen gets frustrated, the parent pushes harder and threatens consequences, and then the teen pushes harder, and then sometimes the parent just backs off and gives up. Most parents are not failing because they don't care. They're struggling because they're parenting out of survival mode And when you react to every play or every choice that your teen makes, it makes it harder to lead in a football game or lead in parenting. So I want you to just consider this. Do you know how you want to respond before problems happen? Or do you decide what to do after you're already frustrated? Does your parenting change based on your teen's mood? I see this all the time. I see coaches who coach one way when they're winning and one way when they're losing, and they're, they just lose power because they're at the mercy of external circumstances. Does your teen decide whether you hold the boundary or not because you're afraid of their reaction? And this is where the first lesson really matters. Before a coach can lead a team, he really has to know who he is, and the same is true for you as a parent. But parenting authority is probably not what you think. A lot of people think that authority is about getting your teen to do what you want them to do and making them respect you. But authority is actually more about how you, as the parent, see yourself. It's way more about the internal game, the parenting from the inside, how you see yourself, than it is about how your teen responds to you. Your teen doesn't give you authority by obeying you. Your teen doesn't take away your authority by not obeying you. Your authority comes from you owning your role, and it's important that we remember authority is not about controlling your teen, forcing your teen, being right all the time, making your teen happy. Authority is actually about knowing who you are as a parent, knowing your values, standing your ground, setting boundaries, clearly communicating them, and enforcing them. And keep in mind, your teen can disagree with you as a parent. He can completely disrespect your authority, and it doesn't mean that your authority is taken away at all, because your authority is an inside job. Your teen may not respect your boundary, but that doesn't mean that you have to abandon it Y- your teen doesn't have to cooperate with you before you can feel like you can parent with authority. Parenting from the inside out means I decide who I want to be before my teen decides how he's going to act. This is where the foundation is. And as a football coach, you can't just stand on the sideline wondering, And do my players like me? Are they okay with the play that I called? Are their parents happy with me?" No. A good coach listens to the players. He seeks input, but he doesn't hand them the responsibility for his leadership. He is true to his identity and his authority as the coach, and the same is true for you as a parent. Your teen gets a voice, your teen has feelings, your teen can disagree, but you still have to own your position and your role as the parent. And Just keep in mind, most parents miss this because they're so worried about these things outside of their control, whether or not their teen obeys, whether or not they're home on time. But knowing who you are as a parent is a really good place to start owning that authority. But knowing who you are is not enough. A confident coach with no game plan still creates chaos, he's still gonna be lost. And the second lesson is where a lot of parents realize that they've been trying to lead without a playbook or without a game plan. So the first lesson that we talked about is authority and your identity as a parent. Number two is have a game plan. Good coaches, they don't walk into a game and just hope they figure it out along the way. They don't even walk into practice that way. They prepare. They know what they want to do for the week leading up to the game in preparation so that they can do those things in the game. They expect problems. They make adjustments. And as a parent, you need to be able to do the same thing. You don't need to be perfect in your parenting, and you don't need to have a perfect plan. You just need a plan that you can remember when things get hard. You need to decide while you're calm how you want to lead when things get hard. A game plan does not control every aspect of the game. It helps you respond to the game. The goal isn't perfect execution. The goal is to be prepared for whatever happens, and less panic and more intentional reaction. So here's a few questions to ask yourself to help you prepare your own parenting game plan before you get into a big blowup with your teen. I would ask myself before any drama happens What am I responsible for? What is my authority as a parent? What is my teen responsible for? What's their position? What's the expectation? What needs to happen here? What support am I willing to offer? What privileges are tied to this responsibility? These are some of the questions that will help you come up with a parenting game plan. Let's use video games as an example. Instead of waiting until midnight and exploding onto your teen, Turn that stupid game off right now," and just yelling and losing your mind, instead, create a plan ahead of time. Hey, gaming is available only after your homework and your chores are done, and on school nights, it ends at 10:00. How would you like to remind yourself? What do you think should happen if you stay on past the agreement?" The plan doesn't guarantee that your teen is gonna cooperate with you. It gives you, the parent, a clear space to lead from. Here is an important warning And don't create a rigid plan and call it leadership. Good coaches adjust in the game. It happens all the time. Sometimes you're turning the ball over when you didn't want to, and you're planning on playing offense, and now you're back on defense. A teenager may need a different plan due to anxiety, ADHD, depression. Sometimes teens just miss basic skills. That's okay. Adjusting the plan is not weakness. Abandoning the plan because your teen is struggling, that's different. Adjusting the plan is what will empower you as a parent, because even a good plan can turn into another power struggle. And if you have the ability, "Hey, let's make some adjustments," that will help you better execute this plan in a way that not only benefits you as a parent, but it also benefits your teenager. And this is where parents have to stop- stop shouting instructions from the couch and start leading the practice, leading the environment in the home. So let's move on to lesson three. We've talked about lesson one, your authority as a parent. Step into that, own that, know your identity. And lesson number two, you gotta be able to go into parenting with a plan. That's one of the things that I pride myself in as a football coach. I go into every practice with a plan. I go into every game with a plan. Lesson three is communication and leadership. In the football coaching world, a coach doesn't simply tell players, "Hey, go to practice. Go do this." He leads the practice. He teaches, he demonstrates, he watches, he gives feedback. He asks questions. He corrects mistakes. One of my favorite things to do is celebrate when my players finally do it. A good coach holds players accountable, and parenting requires a lot of the same thing. Parenting possibly requires more than football coaching. I only have to see those kids for a few hours a day But parenting, you can't just sit back and tell your teen, "Hey, you need to do this. You need to do this." One of the frustrations that I hear from teens all the time, they say, "I can't stand it when my parents tell me to get off my phone, and they're just sitting there glued to their phone." So when it comes to communication and leadership as a parent, very similar to how I'm the coach, I understand that how I communicate, how we do practice is very important. I can talk a good game, and I can talk about how we practice hard, how we come prepared, but it's far more effective if I communicate by modeling, by showing that example. Communication is not just what you say, it's what you see. And one of my favorite things to remind parents of, your teen is not listening to you, but they are watching what you're doing. And the better you can communicate through example, that is how leading is done. And if you can do this before things turn into a problem, like, "Hey, I know you really wanna play video games, but in this home, we don't play video games until the chores are done. So the expectation is when you get home from school, you do your chores, you do your homework, and then you can play video game." You just communicate this with your teen, and you lead by example like, "Look, I'm getting my work done before I play." Clear expectations Must come before consequences. And a lot of times your teens are frustrated because they don't feel like the expectation was ever set, and then they just ran into a brick wall of consequences. One of the things I like to do when it comes to communication, I like to get input from my teenagers. I like to do this in my home. I like to do this at football practice. One of my favorite questions is: What do you think would be fair if blank? Just the other day at football practice, we've been putting in this play, we've been practicing it. I'm like, "Guys, what do you think would be fair if you come to the line and you have no idea what you're doing?" And kids are like, "Man, that we go run." "Awesome. That was a good idea. Let's run with it." When it comes to communication, communication is going to greatly impact how well you can connect to your teen. But this is important. Connection does not replace responsibility, so don't try and have a good relationship and be buddy-buddy with your teen at the expense of teaching responsibility. Connection actually makes responsibility easier to teach, and so if you can communicate in a calm way, build connection with your teenager, it will make it easier for you to teach them, "Hey, you're responsible for this. This is what lies within your realm of responsibility. I can help you, but I'm not gonna do this for you." And that will empower you. You can start asking questions like, "Hey, what do you understand that I want you to do here? What support do you need from me? What happens if this isn't done?" You're just moving into that next step. You're communicating in a way that helps your teenager take responsibility. So just quickly to review, the first little lesson that we talked about is identity and authority, and really knowing your role as a parent and stepping into that authority. The second one is have a game plan. That's one of the biggest one. Most parents don't come into parenting with a strategy, and they really struggle. And then the third one is communication, and really being able to communicate By example, with calm, kindness, connection. The next lesson that we're going to talk about is managing your own energy or your own emotional state. And I'll be honest, one of the biggest problems I see in the football coaching world and in the parenting world is most parents and most coaches are operating from fear. So if you're a coach, you're likely coaching from fear. If you're a parent, you're likely parenting from a place of fear. In coaching, a lot of coaches coach from fear because they're afraid of losing. They're afraid like, "Oh, what if I lose this game and my buddy who's coaching the other team makes fun of me or thinks I don't know football?" Sometimes they're afraid of the parents and what they might say. They worry that they're not good enough. The truth is, parents do the exact same thing. They're afraid that their teen will fail school and become lazy and just live in their basement forever. They're worried that their teen will ruin their future, or that other parents will judge them, or that other family members will blame them, or that their teen's choices are gonna prove that they're just a lousy parent. Fear often creates controlling behavior. I see it when football coaches try and control their teen, and they just take all the responsibilities that should be on the teen. I see it in parenting when parents try and control their teenager. And fear makes everything feel like an emergency, and it makes everything way more scary. And if everything feels urgent or an emergency or scary, parents stop leading, and they start trying to control things. And you can't lead with confidence while you're asking your teen's behavior to prove that you're good enough or that you have authority as a parent. Your teen's struggles are not proof that you're a failure. It's just proof that your teenager is a teenager, and it's just an opportunity for you to step into, to that leadership role. So in this step four, manage your energy, manage your emotions. Just like a scared coach will abandon the game plan, and he might start yelling and disparaging players and blaming players, a scared parent does a similar thing. They start lecturing. They start threatening. Sometimes they rescue their teen, or they punish their teen, but they're doing it from a place of fear, hoping that that'll make the fear go away The outside thing that you're afraid of, you can't just avoid it and hope that the fear goes away. You need to step into your role as a parent and really manage your energy and how you're parenting. So let's dive into this last one. This last one can be a little bit tricky. This is one of the most important ones, but it's all about taking responsibility for what you are responsible for as the parent. And good coaches do this. Good coaches know, "Hey, I can't go run this play for my players, but I can give them the reps that they need. I can explain it in a different way. I can do this." They are really good at knowing, I cannot control this. I'm gonna put my attention here. I'm going to control only what I can control." And the truth is, as a football coach, you learn pretty quick there is a lot that you cannot control, so you might as well just get really good at the few things that you can control Parents are the same way. You can't control what your teen does when he leaves your house. I'm sorry about that. Like, you can track his location, but he could ditch a phone at a friend's. Like, there's so many ways to get around things that we wish we could control as parents. So keep in mind, you are not responsible for your teen and how they behave. You're responsible for how you react. You're responsible for how you preemptively talk about things. You can't guarantee your teen's behavior, but you can guarantee, "Hey, we're gonna talk about this before it even becomes an issue." Or, "Hey, now that this has happened, I can control how I react." This is similar in a game. Like, I can't control whether or not we win a game. And the hard part is, like, you can get to the game, and unless you have a time machine, you can't control how you prepared the week leading up to the game. There's just so much outside of your control. And so there's this one game in particular. We were down by about three touchdowns, I think, at halftime, and we came back and we tied the game. Actually, I don't think we tied it. I think we got within one, and then we stopped the other team, and we had the ball. We were driving with just a few seconds left, and I can't remember if we turned it over or if we just ran out of time, but we ended up losing the game. And that to me reminded me, like, I can't control whether or not we win or whether or not we lose, but I can control these other things. I can control how I call the game. I can control some of the decisions that I make. And honestly, for that team to be in a position to win at the end, even though we didn't quite finish and we didn't get the win, that in and of itself was a win. And as a coach, I'm responsible. Like, gosh darn, we didn't win. There are things that I can do to change, to improve, to better position my players to play better. I remember tackling being an issue that game. Guess what? For the next several weeks, we focused on tackling To be a strong parent is to understand what you are responsible for and managing that, and then letting your teen be responsible for what he can control. That's his job. And the truth is, things aren't always gonna turn out the way that you think they should. I thought we should have won that game. We didn't. We lost. But the better you can own your results and be responsible for who you are as a parent, for how you show up, that is what will help you be a strong parent. And most parents make the mistake that they're taking too much of their teen's responsibility. Their teen struggles in school, and they're like, "Oh my goodness, what am I doing wrong? I need to email the teacher. I need to do this. I need to buy them a tutor. I need like," whatever. And the truth is, you can't control whether or not your teen does their homework or whether or not they obey. You can't force them to do what you think is right, but you can decide who are you going to be as a parent. What are the controllables that you're going to better control? I get to decide what privileges make sense when my teen's responsibilities are being ignored. Look, dude, if you're gonna speed all over the place and drive recklessly, I'm going to decide that you don't get the privilege of driving my vehicle." That is how you show up and you take responsibility for what you are responsible for. Now, I would like to invite you to really step into one of these. There's five things: identity and authority. who are you as a parent? What's your role? What's your authority? There's the strategy and game plan side of things. There's the communication and the leadership role. There's the energy role. are you always showing up just grumpy and frustrated and mad, or are you calm and patient? And there's also owning your results. I want to invite you to just pick one of those. You don't have to do every single one of them. Just pick one and trust that as you intentionally show up in that area, it will improve things with your teen. I promise And in the meantime, I want you to just remember, your teen, they don't need you to come in and control their life. Your teen needs a parent who knows who they are, a parent who has a game plan and a strategy, a parent who can communicate clearly with confidence, a parent who can lead and manage their own emotional state, and a parent who can own their results without taking over all the responsibility from their teen's life. This is all about parenting from the inside out, and I want to invite you to go take my Parent Trap quiz. This will help you better parent from the inside out. It's super short. It'll take you less than 90 seconds, and I promise it will help you understand why some of your current parenting strategies are creating more conflict instead of creating more leadership. And all you have to do is go to benpughcoaching.com/quiz. Your teen doesn't have to change first. You can start leading right now by stepping into your role as a parent. I'll see you soon