Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin and Ronda Evans where our destination is resilient and connected families. Today’s guest is Dr. Katherine Stavrianopoulos. Our conversations centers around the unique developmental stage of adolescence with brain changes and the seismic relational shift. All Aboard !

1:39  Dr. Stavros tells us where she starts with families who are launching a teen.

2:33  Dr. Stavros frames the parent's concerns as wanting to help their teen.

4:20  Dr. Stavros leans into psychoeducation about the developing teenage brain

6:55  Kathryn turns this psychoeducation into an entryway to empathizing with the parent's frustration, and their meaning-making that comes from these repeat interactions.

9:37  Kathryn then moves from meaning-making to the parent's fears about losing their impact and influence on their teens, and their fears of "am I doing a good enough job?" (indicative of parental shame).

11:55 Dr. Stavros explains her own experience of navigating the teen years and how that increased her empathy for parents going through this developmental stage with their teens. Dr. Stavos tells us a story of a time when she faced her own fears of losing control – of losing influence on her son.

17:10 Ronda and Dr. Stavros talk about the seismic shift in the agenda going from the parent's agenda to a co-created "our" agenda and relationship between parent and teen.

19:00 Dr. Stavros says that a "successful" teen launch centers around the teen knowing that they will be loved and understood with their mistakes and through their mistakes, and the security in knowing they can reach for their parents when a mistake has happened.

22:25 Dr. Stavros describes the importance of parent's having self-compassion for their efforts to prepare teens for launching.

23:43 Kathryn emphasizes the role of therapists in supporting parents and validating the challenges of parenting, and helping parents to emotionally regulate so that parents can have balanced responses to their teens.

25:43 To launch a teen well, Dr. Stavros describes a teen will have an internalized embodiment of "knowing’: that when the teen turns to their parent, the teen knows their parent will respond. 

27:00 Kathryn comments that family therapists can facilitate this process through explicit, intentional conversations in our offices. Kathryn and Dr. Stavros describe that EFFT therapists can facilitate these conversations between parents and children – feedback conversations.

27:30 Dr. Stavros reflects on her experience of this conversation when she and her sons participated in the "Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go" program.

34:10 Dr Stavros returns to the notion of the developmental scaffolding of “co-creating” a parent-child relationship.

Thank you for listening! 

Kathryn is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.

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