Rethinking Your Teenager: Shifting from Control and Conflict to Structure and Nurture to Raise Accountable Young Adults

Show Guest: Darby Fox

The teenage years … parents fear this stage, dreading it even while watching their adorable toddlers explore the world. When it arrives, they try to control their teenager, in turn causing their teenager to push back more intensely. It’s a natural instinct on both sides: teenagers are changing in every way while trying to assert their independence, and parents are faced with the challenge of coming up with rules, expectations, and standards for behavior without a genuine understanding of what is happening. But the result of this pattern is a parent-child relationship defined by conflict and reactivity–a breeding ground for stress, anger, and anxiety, all of which reinforce those same cultural stereotypes and worst fears.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. In this book, family therapist Darby Fox challenges parents to redefine the goals of adolescence by reorienting their focus from what they want their child to be to on who they want their child to be. Darby not only equips parents with the insight to understand the changes taking place in their child’s brain and body and support their adolescent’s bid for independence but also offers an approach that allows parents to engage their adolescent in a relationship instead of struggling in an endless battle for control.