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
191. The Boy Brain Explained: Why Your Teen Manipulates, Complains, and Plays the Victim
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Your teen’s behavior might feel confusing, frustrating, or even manipulative… but when you understand the boy brain, it starts to make a lot more sense.
In this episode, I sit down with Mark Spalding (LCSW) to unpack what’s really going on beneath behaviors like complaining, blaming, or playing the victim, and why so many parents feel emotionally pulled in when it happens.
We start with a situation many parents know all too well: your teen calls home (especially from treatment), and everything they share is negative. They sound convincing. Urgent. Sometimes even alarming. And you’re left feeling confused, guilty, and unsure what’s actually true.
But let’s also zoom out a bit.
Because these moments aren’t just about what your teen is saying. They’re about how the adolescent brain works.
We explain how the boy brain works: from the powerful drive for validation and belonging, to the imbalance between reward and consequence, to the speed at which emotions override logic.
When you understand this, you start to see why your teen might lean into certain behaviors, and why it’s so easy for you, as a parent, to get pulled in.
Most importantly, we talk about how to respond in a way that supports your teen without rescuing them and how to step out of patterns that may actually be holding them back.
In this episode on the boy brain explained, we discuss:
- Why teens often focus on the negative (also during calls from treatment)
- What the “proximity effect” is and how it impacts your teen’s reactions
- Why teens may take on a victim role and why it can feel rewarding
- The neuroscience behind teen behavior, incl. emotional reactivity and reward sensitivity
- Why belonging and validation can outweigh consequences in the boy brain
- How teens can hold parents emotionally hostage (often without realizing it)
- What’s happening in your teen’s brain when logic “doesn’t work”
- How to respond to your teenage boy without overreacting, rescuing, or escalating
- Why competence is what builds confidence
- How over-helping can unintentionally undermine your teen’s growth
- The role of parent guilt, fear, and past experiences in these dynamics
- How to stay grounded, set healthier boundaries, and increase your influence as a parent
More about Mark Spalding
Mark Spalding is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Certified Family Life Educator, trained Neurotherapist, and Field Instructor at the University of Utah. He is the co-founder of Live Strong House, Utah's premier therapeutic boarding school for boys, as well as the owner of Milestone, their young adult boys program.
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!
🧘Learn how to respond in hard moments, without losing your cool, the relationship, or yourself, inside my 6-week Boundaries Masterclass.
🤍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
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And remember parents, the change begins with us.
