Parenting Post-Wilderness: Parenting a Struggling Teen Before, During and After Treatment
Your guide to parenting a struggling teen or young-adult, whether they’re home, transitioning home, or presently in treatment.
Parents, say goodbye to exhausting confusion, overwhelm, panic and the unhelpful patterns that keep you and your family stuck. Learn how to develop healthy responses and set healthy boundaries with your teen instead of acting out of fear and anxiety.
Experience the relationship-changing power of focusing on your own behavior instead of futile attempts to control your teen.
Your guides to Parenting Post-wilderness are Beth Hillman, a life coach for parents of struggling teens and mom to a post-wilderness teen, and part-time co-host Seth Gottlieb, a wilderness therapy guide turned teen and young-adult recovery coach. Their unique combination of experience and training yields candid conversations chock full of practical, actionable tips and tools to smooth the challenges both parents and teens experience surrounding treatment.
Every week, you can expect conversations around:
- Parenting a struggling teen or young-adult;
- Setting healthy boundaries with your teen;
- Treatment options for your struggling teen or young adult;
- Bringing your kid home from treatment;
- Parenting skills to support your struggling child;
- Teen substance abuse, drug addiction, gaming addiction, suicidal ideation, or other teen mental health concerns;
- How to end power struggles and instead foster healthy communication with your teen or young-adult;
- And much more.
Listen in to discover how parents like you have learned to influence equanimity in the home and rebuild connections with the teens they love.
Connect with Beth on Instagram (@bethhillmancoaching) or find more information about working with Beth at www.bethhillmancoaching.com.
Parenting Post-Wilderness: Parenting a Struggling Teen Before, During and After Treatment
136. Finding Balance While Shifting Parenting Patterns
When you're doing the work to grow as a parent, it's common to overcorrect. You recognize a pattern (maybe you tend to be explosive in conflict) so you swing to the opposite end and become overly passive. It feels like progress, but suddenly you're stuck in a new extreme. In this episode, Seth and I explore what we call the "pendulum swing" of behavior and how both parents and teens experience this while trying to make real, lasting change.
Whether it’s yelling one day and withdrawing the next, or setting no boundaries after years of being too rigid, shifting your parenting patterns can feel messy and inconsistent at first. But this swing between extremes isn’t failure, it’s part of the learning curve. Your brain is trying to find the middle ground, and sometimes it needs to experience both ends of the spectrum to settle into balance.
And our struggling children go through this, too. After treatment, they often come home with the intention of doing everything perfectly, only to crash when the reality of being human sets in. Helping them, and yourself, navigate that swing with compassion is key.
If you’re working to shift your parenting patterns and feel stuck between extremes, join us in this conversation as we help you find your footing in the middle.
In this episode on finding balance while shifting parenting patterns, we cover:
- What the “pendulum swing” looks like in parenting and teen behavior;
- Why we often shift from one extreme to the other when trying to change;
- The emotional discomfort that fuels reactive patterns;
- How to find a middle ground that supports growth and connection in parenting;
- Why unrealistic expectations (for you or your teen) can lead to disappointment;
- And more!
Looking for support?
🗺️Need help setting healthy boundaries with your teen AND following through? My free guide will help you do so by creating your own Parent Home Plan!
🤍Influence lasting change in yourself and your struggling teen with my private coaching or parent group program specifically created for parents of struggling teens.
Have a question or need support? You can email me at beth@bethhillmancoaching.com
You can support the show by:
Leaving a review
Subscribing to the show
And remember parents, the change begins with us.
