Eps 671: Is This Normal? Teenage Behavior and What’s Underneath It

Today joyful courage means trusting the process. Trusting the unfolding. Trusting my work with clients and their willingness to try new things.

Resources mentioned:

• Immersion Week — September 21–25, $69. Five days live with Casey. Monday workshop, Tuesday office hours, Wednesday hot seat coaching, Thursday soul care, Friday build your plan. First 20 to claim a spot get a private 30-minute 1:1. Register at besproutable.com/immersion
• Episode 668 — “Your 2026 Back To School Reset,” where the intentional ecosystem is laid out
• Episode 670 — “You Can’t Parent From a Flipped Lid,” the episode this one sits on top of
• Episode 672 — next week, the full story of Casey’s family’s hardest years
• The iceberg episodes — search “iceberg” at besproutable.com/teens
• Making agreements episodes — search “making agreements” at besproutable.com/teens
• Alfred Adler and Positive Discipline — belonging and significance, private logic

Transcription

[00:01:23] Casey O'Roarty: Hey, everybody. Hi. So I'm gonna talk about a question that I get a lot from parents. They come into my DMs, in the Facebook group, a lot in discovery calls that I do, and the question is, "Is this normal?" Parents tell me about what's going on with their kiddos, and they wanna know, is this normal?
[00:01:49] Sometimes it's around something specific. Is it normal that she's in her room for four hours a night and doesn't come out? Is it normal that he lies about things he doesn't even need to lie about? Is it normal that they're rolling their eyes at me when I am simply asking, "What do you want for dinner?"
[00:02:09] But underneath all those specifics, it's always that same question, and the real question is not actually about your kiddo. The real question that I hear underneath, "Is this normal?" is, "Should I be scared right now?" And nobody wants to say that part out loud because saying it makes it feel more true. So today we're gonna play with it.
[00:02:35] We're gonna answer it. We're gonna roll around in it. We're gonna talk about what's actually happening with your kiddo, what's happening to you, and how you tell the difference between the stuff that's just this season of parenting and the stuff that needs more attention. So we're gonna get into it.
[00:02:55] Welcome back to the podcast. I am so glad that you're here. Before we start, I wanna say something straight because I'd rather name it than have you notice and wonder about it. I am in a launch season right now. You're hearing the ads. You've probably gotten emails. Immersion Week is happening September 21st through the 25th, and I've been talking about it for a few weeks now.
[00:03:22] And I'm wondering, how are you feeling about that? Some of you have been listening to me for years, right? Years. I've been doing the podcast for over 10 years, you guys. And maybe you've never worked with me. Maybe we've never actually done anything together, and that's totally fine. You're welcome here, and I'm glad that you're finding value in the podcast.
[00:03:42] But I do wonder sometimes what's going on for you when you hear me talk about a program or coaching or even booking a discovery call, whether it's curious. Are you feeling curious? Are you feeling a little bit of like, "Hmm, maybe I'll check that out," or do you just kind of scroll past it? Here's what I wanna make sure you know about me.
[00:04:03] My mission, is to create experiences that are helpful. That's it. That's the whole thing. If a program of mine isn't gonna be useful to you, I don't want your money. I'm not gonna pretend otherwise for the sake of a launch. What I am going to do is keep giving you real stuff here on the show week after week, whether you buy anything or not.
[00:04:27] Today's episode is a great example of that. You're gonna walk away from this show with something that you can absolutely use tonight, okay? So where we are. A few weeks ago, in episode 668, I expanded on something I've been talking about, that I'm calling the intentional ecosystem. Some of you may have seen the graphic, but some of you are maybe driving right now or doing something else, so I'm gonna give it to you in a way that you
[00:04:58] can carry without needing to see a graphic.
[00:05:01] All right? There are four parts to your household, your life with your kiddo, and each one of these parts holds the next part, right? So the biggest piece is you. I know, it's annoying. But this is the biggest piece, right? How you're doing, what you're carrying, what you believe, whether you're regulated or running on fumes, right?
[00:05:30] That's the biggest piece of the ecosystem. Inside of that is the relationship, the current connection between you and your kiddo. And you might be like, "Yeah, yeah, I've heard you talk about this." I'm gonna keep talking about it, okay? I really want you to lock in on this The current connection between you and your kiddo, right?
[00:05:49] Inside of the relationship is the way your house actually runs, right? The routines, the agreements, who does what, what happens on a school night versus the weekend. These may have been created together, or handed down by you, or just running through default, right? How systems and routines inside your household are created really matters.
[00:06:15] And then in the very center of all of this is the moment that you're in, right? What comes out of your mouth at 9:00 at night when things feel like they're on fire, those in-the-moment moves that you're making. Each part, you, relationship, systems, in-the-moment, each part is held by the others, right? By what they're surrounded by.
[00:06:41] And when there's a breakdown, when you become dysregulated, or the relationship needs repair, or a system is missing, the things inside, the things that you're doing in the moment, falls apart, right? Does that make sense? That's the whole model, and it's the reason your tools keep evaporating on you, which is exactly what we played around with last week, right?
[00:07:06] Last week on the show, we spent the entire episode in that first space, in that first part, you, and talked about how we become dysregulated, about flipping our lids. We talked about what happens in your body when your teenager says the thing, and why every tool you own disappears right when you need it.
[00:07:30] If you missed last week's episode, I encourage you to go back and listen, because today sits directly on top of it. Today, we're moving to the second part, the relationship, and we start with the thing that gets in the way more than almost anything else, which is that low, constant hum of, "Is this normal? Is my kiddo okay?
[00:07:53] Are we okay?" Now, before we go on, I wanna give you the everyday version of this, because I know I've been saying intentional ecosystem a lot lately, and it can sound like a lot, right? Most of us have been collecting parenting tips for a decade or more. You've got a folder of screenshots, you've got the phrase somebody gave you for when they won't get off the phone, and none of it is holding, and you assume that it's a you problem.
[00:08:24] It isn't. A tip that tells you what to say, doesn't tell you why it didn't land. So here's the everyday version. There's four questions, that's it, that I want you to really hold onto from this episode. Four questions: Am I okay? Are we okay? Does our house actually work? And what do I do right now? Those are the four parts in order, in plain English, and they go in that order for a reason.
[00:08:54] Because again, the first one holds the second one, the second one holds the third, all the way down to what you do in the moment. So the next time something blows up in your house, instead of asking, "What am I doing wrong?" You get to ask which of those four questions is actually what's going on. Am I okay? Are they okay? How does our house work? , what do I do right now? Those questions are answerable. So you'll hear me do it three or four times today, and I want you to really listen for it, because by the end of this episode, I believe, I have faith that it's really gonna make sense. So first, what's actually going on underneath the behavior?
[00:09:39] Shout-out to all the iceberg work that we've done together over the years. And if you're like, "The iceberg? I've never heard you talk about the iceberg," I encourage you to go to my website, go to the search bar, plug in the word iceberg, and you'll see the episodes where I've talked about this So what's going on underneath behavior?
[00:09:57] And I'm gonna get into some of the Adlerian theory with you because this is the piece that really supported me in my parenting and what I saw and continue to see as being useful with clients. And then I'm gonna be honest with you about when it isn't just this season of parenting, because some of you are listening today and something very real and deep is happening, and I'm not gonna gloss over that.
[00:10:22] And then I'll give you a practice, three steps that you can start tonight.
[00:10:26] Chime
[00:10:26]
[00:10:35] Casey O'Roarty: let's get into it. I wanna start by naming some of what you may be actually living with, because I think a lot of you, maybe you have never heard someone list it out loud, and there's something that happens in your chest, in your body, when you hear your own life described by someone else.
[00:10:53] So the door and the one-word answers, right? You get, "I'm fine." You get nothing. You ask about your day, and you might get a sound, or you might get nothing. And you remember, this is the part that got to me, you remember when this same kid used to follow you around the house telling you all about the dream they just had or all about something that happened during the day.
[00:11:18] They used to talk to you while you really just wanted a private moment in the bathroom, and now you get that closed door, right, and very little feedback, maybe just one word The attitude, the eye roll, the sigh, the tone that shows up when you ask a completely neutral question, and that shift that happens when all of a sudden they're asking for something that they want, and they're being all friendly.
[00:11:43] And I wanna say something about this one specifically, because it really lands harder than most people admit. It usually lands hardest on the parent who's doing the most, the one that's willing to drive their teen everywhere, the one who knows their teacher's name, knows their schedule, the one that's holding the whole operation together.
[00:12:04] That's usually the parent that's getting a lot of contempt, and there's a reason for that. We're gonna get into that as well. There's also the screens. Ugh. All of us, every single one of us, deals with this, the hours, the fight about the hours that they're on their screen, that feeling of competing with that little rectangle for your own kids' time, right?
[00:12:27] I'm not gonna solve screens today for you. I'm not gonna pretend that it isn't sitting in the middle of your living room either. It's real, and it's annoying, beyond annoying. Here's the first place that those four questions earn their keep. So for example, with screens, screens are a does our house actually work problem, and almost every one of us tries to solve them with, what do I do right now?
[00:12:54] So we stand in the doorway at 10 o'clock at night, totally annoyed, exhausted, hunting for the perfect sentence that will make them put that screen down. There is no perfect sentence. There has never been a perfect sentence. That conversation actually belongs to an afternoon outside of the moment when nobody's upset.
[00:13:15] You're building an agreement together. It's a routine, expectations that, you get to return to. It's not about rules that you enforce, but really agreements that are helpful, right, and that we can follow through on. And instead , what we typically do is we fight about it at 10 o'clock with that smallest tool that we own, right?
[00:13:41] the might, you know, the power struggle. You're asking question four when the answer is in question three, ? That's all that's happening, and I want you to feel the difference between, "I'm bad at this" and, "I've been working the wrong question," because it matters. And then there's behaviors that are a little bit more concerning, more scary, right?
[00:14:03] Lying, sneaking, the story that didn't add up, a new friend group that made your stomach drop the first time you met them, if you've even met them at all. And I know exactly what that fourth challenge does to a parent, because I've been there, and that's the one where fear shows up and you wanna lock it down, right?
[00:14:23] You wanna take that phone, you wanna kill those plans, you wanna put a tracker on everything, pull that drawbridge up. That's a fear response, and it is completely understandable, okay? Just saying that I have compassion for every parent who's gone there. I've definitely gone there. and even as we go there, we know it's not actually going to be useful.
[00:14:47] Here's what happens after we've moved into one of those, lockdown responses. You come down hard, you bring the consequences, you bring the volume, you take the thing, and for about 48 hours, or less sometimes , it feels like, okay, good, it's working. And then it stops working, and something in the relationship has gotten colder.
[00:15:11] So you swing the other way. You throw your hands in the air. "Fine, okay, whatever. I'm done. I can't control this kid. They're gonna do whatever they're gonna do. I'll just try to keep the peace." And then in that moment, you feel like you've abandoned your post, right? Like, oh God, I'm... This isn't gonna work. So you swing back to coming down hard.
[00:15:32] So it's this back and forth, hard, laying down the law, swinging back into fine, whatever, all year long, and you're exhausted. And here's the cruel part: your kid is exhausted, too, because they can't figure out which version of you is gonna show up. Now, listen to what both ends of that swing have in common.
[00:15:54] Coming down hard is a what-do-I-do-right-now move. Throwing your hands up in the air is a what-do-I-do-right-now move. They're both in the moment, right? Both of them are you grabbing at the moment and then grabbing at the moment differently when the first grab didn't work. You're not swinging because you lack discipline or consistency, you're swinging because the moment is the only place where you're making any moves, right?
[00:16:22] And by the way, that's what Immersion Week is built to interrupt, right? The grounded middle isn't a personality type that some parents just were born with or just good at. that grounded middle shows up once there's something underneath you, right? I'm gonna come back to that. So back to the question of, is this normal?
[00:16:44] I wanna reframe it, and I'm gonna reframe it gently, because I think the question itself is doing something to you that isn't helping. Is this normal is a yes or no question about a verdict. It's asking, have we arrived somewhere permanent? Is this who my kid is now? Did I already blow it? So I want you to say this with me: This is a season, not a verdict.
[00:17:07] This is a season, not a verdict. You're standing in a season, and seasons have weather. The weather is real. You don't get to ignore it, you have to dress for it, right? Nobody looks out the window in February and concludes, "Well, I guess it's just gonna be February forever." Your teen in October of their sophomore year is not the final report on who they're gonna be at 28 years old, okay?
[00:17:35] Or 13 in eighth grade, or even 18 in their senior year. I know this from the inside, right? I'm gonna tell you the whole story next week. The better question, the one that actually moves something and is useful isn't, is this normal? It is, what is my kiddo trying to solve right now? Because they're solving for something, always, and that's where we're
[00:18:02] gonna go today This is where I'm gonna bring in Alfred Adler, because his work is the foundation of positive discipline, and it's the lens I've been looking through for 20-plus years since I've started doing this work. You've heard me talk about Alfred Adler here on the podcast.
[00:18:19] We're gonna talk about him today. Adler said that every human being from birth to death is working on two things: belonging, am I connected? Do I have a place here? Do these people want me? And significance, do I matter? Do I have influence? Does my existence make a difference to anyone? Belonging and significance, also known as, connection and responsibility.
[00:18:48] That's it. That's the engine underneath all of us. It doesn't turn off when you're 18 and moving into adulthood. You're still doing it. I'm still doing it. I felt it this morning. Now, hold that idea, that belonging and significance engine, and let me tell you what happens to a teenager. For the first 10 or 11 years in your kid's life, they got both of those things almost entirely from you.
[00:19:14] You were the source of their experience of belonging and significance. Your approval told them they belonged. Your attention told them that they mattered. You were the whole show, and then adolescence arrives, and their developmental job, the actual assignment that they have during this time of life, the thing their brain and body are organizing around, is to figure out who they are separate from you They can't answer the question, who am I apart from my parents, while still getting all of their belonging and significance from their parents, so they have to go find it somewhere else.
[00:19:56] This is not a betrayal of you. This is developmentally appropriate. This is teen brain development. So it relocates, that drive for belonging and, significance, it shifts, and it moves towards their peer relationships. It goes to the friend group, to the teams they're on, the group chats they participate in, the online communities, the sports, the thing they're suddenly obsessed with that you don't understand.
[00:20:24] And, ugh, this is where a lot of the pain lives for us parents, for sure, because it feels like a demotion, right? Your opinion used to be the most important one in their world, and now it ranks below a 15-year-old named Kayla, right? That's supposed to happen. It's uncomfortable, but it is supposed to happen.
[00:20:52] Here's the next piece, and this is the one I really want you to listen in on. Adler also talks about private logic. Your private logic is the set of beliefs that you've built about yourself, about other people, and about how you have to be in order to be okay, beliefs about the world and your place in it.
[00:21:15] You built it young, right? Mostly without choosing it, mostly just in response to the events and experiences and the relationships that you've had over your lifetime And you act out of it, right? You use this private logic. It is the lens you see through constantly, most of the time without ever examining it, right?
[00:21:40] Your teenager is building their private logic right now in real time this year, right? They're running experiments and drawing conclusions. They're noticing, "Hey, when I'm funny, people wanna hang out with me. When I'm honest about how I'm doing, it gets awkward, so I'm gonna stop doing that. When I need help from my parents, I get a lecture, so I guess I have to figure this out alone."
[00:22:07] Right? Every conclusion they draw and have drawn over the years, this year, and will continue to draw in the years ahead, gets built into the operating system that they carry with them into young adulthood, into adulthood, which means the way you respond to them right now is not just about today, tonight, this week.
[00:22:29] You're helping them write their private logic. And I wanna be careful, because I can imagine that this makes some of you feel kinda tense, and it's not meant as pressure. It's meant as leverage. It means the small moments count more than you think, and that's good news, because it's the small moments that you actually have influence over. Now, we're gonna put those two pieces together, and you get the sentence that I said in episode 668, and I'll keep saying it from now until forever, behavior is a strategy for belonging and significance.
[00:23:11] Behavior is a strategy for belonging and significance. Your kid is not being difficult for the sake of it. They're not lazy. They're not disrespectful as a personality trait. They're running a strategy, and the strategy is aimed at feeling like they belong somewhere and like they matter. And sometimes that strategy plays out beautifully, right?
[00:23:37] they pour themselves into a sport. They find a friend group that lights them up. They get obsessed with something and they go deep, right? And sometimes the strategy is terrible because when a kid can't get belonging and significance in a positive way or believe that they can't, which works the same, they go take a cheap version of it, And let me tell you what that looks like. Power looks like significance, so they fight you over everything because being able to move you proves that they have influence. A group that accepts them without any conditions looks like belonging, even if that group is doing things that terrify you. Checking out entirely, , can look like protection if trying and failing feels worse than never trying.
[00:24:28] So when I look at the four things we listed earlier, the closed door, the attitude, the screens, the sneaking, I don't see four problems. I see one kid solving for two things using whatever is available to them. And remember when I said that contempt lands on the parent who does the most? Here's why. You're the safest person in their world.
[00:24:53] You're the one relationship that they are most confident will survive. They will not risk it with a friend group because the friend group is where belonging currently lives, and it's fragile. They'll risk it with you, though. And I'm not telling you that to make you feel better about being treated badly.
[00:25:11] It still hurts. You're still allowed to say so, but it does mean that the eye roll is evidence of security, not evidence of failure. And before we move on, come back to the four questions with me, because this is where they stop being a framework and they start being really useful. If your teenager is hungry for belonging and significance, then those four questions tell you where to go to feed them.
[00:25:37] Are we okay is where belonging comes from. Time with you has no agenda attached. Them knowing there's a place for them in this family that they don't have to earn and can't lose, right? Does our house actually work is where a huge amount of significance comes from, and this is what everyone skips over. A kid who has real say in how things run is a kid with some influence over their own life.
[00:26:06] That's significance. That's the exact thing that the power struggle was trying to get, and really, there's so many ways that you can hand them this sense of power. That's why I keep saying, rules you enforce, agreements you return to. When you build an agreement with your kid instead of handing down a rule, you're not being soft, you're giving them a say, and that's the whole point.
[00:26:31] And again, if you're like, "Tell me more about these agreements," go to my website, besproutable.com/teens, go to the search bar, search for making agreements. You'll see some episodes where I've talked more about that. Am I okay is what makes either of these, the relationship or the systems, either of these possible, because you can't offer someone a place they can't lose when you're scared, when you're dysregulated.
[00:26:58] You can't share power when you're gripping it for dear life, right? So when a parent tells me that their kiddo fights them on everything, I don't reach for a technique, I ask a question: where in this kid's life do they get to have a say at all? And most of the time, the honest answer is nowhere, they don't experience having a say, and there you go. We found the issue, right? Bringing it back to Immersion Week real quick, that's what Monday is all about, the workshop call that we're gonna do during Immersion Week. We're gonna walk through these four questions, these four parts for your family, and you find your own thin spots, right?
[00:27:44] I'll come back to that at the end. So now, okay, I wanna stop and be really honest with you, because I know that we have a variety of,parents who are listening. Some of you are hearing me say, "This is a season, not a verdict," and something in you might be saying, "Well, she doesn't know what's happening at my house."
[00:28:06] And you're right, I don't. So I'm not gonna sit here and tell every one of you that everything's fine, ride it out, it's just the season, it's teen brain development, because that's not always true, and it would be irresponsible, and honestly, a little cowardly of me. Most of what we're talking about today is the season of adolescence.
[00:28:27] Some of it isn't, and you deserve to know how to tell the difference. So what the season actually looks like, right? It looks like moodiness that moves, right? They're awful at dinner, and then they wander out at 9:00 and eat some cereal next to you and tell you something about their day. It looks like pulling away from you while still being connected to something, right?
[00:28:49] Friends, a sport, an interest, an online world you don't understand. The connection went somewhere else, and that's, you know, part of the assignment of teen brain development. The season looks like them still functioning. They're getting to school, they're eating, grades maybe have slipped a little, but the floor is still there, right?
[00:29:09] It looks like them coming back. Not consistently, not on your schedule, but they come back to you. Here's what I want you to pay attention to, and I wanna say this really clearly, there are signals to get more support. Not necessarily diagnosises, but support. I'm a parent coach, I'm not a therapist. I'm not gonna play one on my own show.
[00:29:31] Here's what to pay attention to. When they withdraw from everything, not just you. Pulling away from the parent is developmental. Pulling away from friends, from the things they used to love, from every single source of belonging at once, that's different. That's something I'd watch more closely, and it's something that I'm familiar with in my own experience of parenting.
[00:29:53] A change in their way of being that doesn't shift, right? Sadness or flatness or irritability that's been sitting there for weeks with no lift. Not a tough night, but a tough month or a tough quarter, a tough semester, a tough year. Pay attention to that. Pay attention to big shifts in sleeping or eating in either direction.
[00:30:19] Pay attention to the floor feeling like it's,dropped, right? They stop getting to school. They stop showering. The basic functioning of a day stops happening. And of course, anything, if you hear them talk about anything that includes not wanting to be here, any comment, any joke, any post, anything you found, you take it seriously every time, and you say something out loud rather than hoping you misread it.
[00:30:47] And your own gut has wisdom. I want to give this real weight. You know your child. if something in you has been quietly saying something is wrong for a while, and you keep talking yourself out of it, please stop talking yourself out of it. Okay? If you just recognized your teen in any of what I just shared, here's what I want you to do, and it's not complicated.
[00:31:16] I want you to tell one person. Your pediatrician is a great first call and an easy one. You can talk to a school counselor, a therapist, your partner, out loud in actual words instead of, you know, kind of just having those half-noticed things that you're not talking about. You are not overreacting. I have never once met a parent who regretted asking about what is happening on a deeper level with their kiddo.
[00:31:45] I've met lots of parents who wish they'd asked sooner. And I wanna say one more thing to that parent specifically. Getting your kiddo more support and doing your own work are not two competing things. The parents I've watched come through the hardest stretches, including myself, did both. They got their kiddo help, and they also worked on staying regulated, staying connected, because someone had to be steady while the professionals did their part.
[00:32:18] And let me be honest about what this work does and doesn't do in a season like this. It will not fix your kid. A therapist might, time might, something you can't see yet might. What this work here that we talk about on the podcast, what this work does is keep you standing while all of that happens, and make sure that when your kid finally reaches for someone, you're still there, that you're still steady enough to hold them I've watched families come out the other side of genuinely frightening years, and the thing that was still there at the end was almost never a strategy anybody used.
[00:33:00] It was that the connection had been protected the whole way. And I will speak for myself and my own practice and my own experience. We had, as you know, some pretty dark years, pretty tough years in adolescence, and the relationship that was maintained is the thread that has kept me close to my kiddos.
[00:33:26] And again, this is a big part of why I built Immersion Week the way I did. Thursday of Immersion Week is a big soul care session, not because it's a nice bonus, but because parents in the hard season of adolescence are typically running on empty, and you cannot be the steady one if you're running on empty.
[00:33:57] All that being said, for most of you that are listening, and I do mean most of you, this is a season. So let's talk about what to do with it, right? I wanna tell you about a conversation I had recently with a mom that I worked with, okay? She's been in this work with me for a bit, and she said something that I haven't stopped thinking about, um, on a call that I was on with her recently.
[00:34:20] She told me, "You know, I've been learning the Positive Discipline material and the developmental stuff, and, you know, there has been a lot of resistance. You know, trusting the process hadn't really been landing for her until recently. She said, "You know, I'm starting to really see what you're talking about happening in my household," and that she had an experience a couple days ago where she went, "Oh, this is what Casey means."
[00:34:49] So she was talking about her daughter, who's 15, and what she noticed was, you know, for a long time, what she'd been reading about her daughter's behavior was, "This is defiance," right? And slowly, lately, she's been shifting into, "Maybe it's not defiance. Maybe this is my daughter wanting to be her own person."
[00:35:16] the mom said, "You know, I've been kinda slave driving, and I'm starting to see that my girl actually wants to do things on her own, and that I could let her fail if she needed to fail," right? She told me about an experience she had over the weekend. They were running errands, and the sisters, you know, two girls, were together, and I'm quoting my client here.
[00:35:39] She said the older one, the 15-year-old, was super agro and grouchy, and picking fights with her sister in the car, and then again in the store, and it just felt relentless. And here's what this mom did, and it was different than what she typically did. She stopped, and she said, "Oh, babe, what's the matter?
[00:35:59] What's going on with you?" And she put her arms around her kiddo, and she kissed her on the head, and this 15-year-old, mid-tirade at her sister in the store, she stopped. She softened, and that insanity of the moment softened. And the mom said, "I don't know if that's what I'm supposed to do, but this is what happened."
[00:36:25] And it was this magical moment. It was one of those moments that I have with my clients where I can see like, yes, something has clicked. Dots are being connected, because here's what happened. The 15-year-old was picking fights with her sister in the store, and in that moment, by every normal reading, the sister was the problem.
[00:36:51] She was ruining the errands for everyone, and Mom looked at that exact same scene, and instead of her typical, "This kid is creating a problem," she decided to look through the lens and see a kiddo who was having a problem, right? That's the shift, and I know you've heard me say it before. Having a problem is not the same as being a problem.
[00:37:16] Same kid, same behavior, same store, totally different response from the parent, and therefore, a really different outcome And I wanna be clear about what this is and what it isn't. That's not permissiveness. Mom didn't say, "Hey, you know, it's fine to be cruel to your sister," right? She just went underneath the behavior first before she dealt with the behavior at all.
[00:37:41] She connected before she corrected. And I bet money that if she'd led with correction, "Hey, knock it off, why are you acting like this?" Which, by the way, is something that she had been doing for a long time, that store trip would've ended very differently. So here's your practice this week, okay? Three steps, and step two is last week's episode, so you've already, got that one.
[00:38:06] And listen for the four questions I've been talking about as I go, because this practice is all four of them in about 90 seconds. One, notice the behavior. Notice what it's triggering in you. Both halves, the behavior is the easy part. You're already noticing it. The second half is the work. What is happening in your body?
[00:38:25] Where did you go? Are you embarrassed, 'cause you're in public? Are you pissed off? That specific despair where you think, "Oh my gosh, I am a terrible parent. Look at how my kids are treating each other." Whatever came up is yours, okay? It's real, and it matters, and it's not your child's to carry, okay? So number one, notice the behavior, notice what it's triggering in you.
[00:38:49] Number two, calm yourself down. That's where last week comes in. Remember we talked about longer exhales than inhales, feeling your feet on the floor, finding three real things in the room. You're okay. You're enough. You got this. You can handle this. You can be with this. And you can't skip this one, okay?
[00:39:10] Step three is not available to you from a flipped lid, from a dysregulated state. It isn't a willpower thing. It's just not there, so each part is held by the part before it. So if you skip step two, there's nothing to hold step three. Step three is meeting them underneath the behavior. Okay? Go under the behavior with real curiosity and zero agenda.
[00:39:36] With a teen, that's mostly words, so it can sound like, "Hey, you seem off. What's going on?" "Hey, seems like you're having a hard time. I'm here for you." That's it. That's the sentence. But everything else is in the delivery, so let me be precise about that. The question has to be asked with nothing riding behind it, no lecture in the chamber, not, "What's going on?"
[00:40:01] Which actually means, "Explain yourself," right? We're not creating a trap here. And you have to be genuinely willing to get nothing. They might say, "Ugh, nothing." They might say, "Leave me alone." That's completely acceptable, right? Because you weren't asking in order to get information. You were asking so they'd know that when they're at their worst, you'll come towards them instead of moving away from them.
[00:40:28] That's what this 15-year-old felt in the store from her mom. It wasn't, "She's solving my problem," it was, "My mom is here. She's with me." Some kids will take a hug, some absolutely will not. You know which one yours is today, and it might be different next week, so you get to read your kid. And I just wanna point out that sometimes this is delayed, right?
[00:40:55] Noticing, regulating, letting the moment pass, and then going to find them later is perfectly acceptable. Some teens can't receive it in the hot moment, and their parents need permission to come back later without calling it afailure. Okay? So your homework this week is to do this one time at least, or as many times as you want.
[00:41:17] Notice a moment where your teen is being really tricky, and instead of responding to the behavior, you run the three steps. You notice that something's being stirred in you, you take your breath, and you go underneath the behavior with one real question, and watch what happens. And, you know, watch what happens not only to them, but also to you.
[00:41:41] Watch what it does to you to see your kiddo as someone having a problem instead of someone being a problem So we're gonna go back through those steps with those four ecosystem questions. So step one and step two are the, am I okay? Right? Step three is, are we okay? And, you know, that thing that this mom got, her daughter stopping and softening, the store trip not falling apart, the moment turning, that was question number four, right?
[00:42:14] What do I do? And she didn't even go to that question directly. She leaned into being curious about what was going on underneath. That's what she did without having a name for it. She took care of herself, and then she went towards her kid, and the moment took care of itself, right? Each part is held by the part before it, and this mom got to watch it happen in real time in the grocery store.
[00:42:43] Okay? So here's what I want you to sit with this week. Of those four questions, which one do you tend to live inside of most? Am I okay? Are they okay? what is going on in our household? What should I do in this moment? Most of us have spent years in that last question, what do I do? What do I do?
[00:43:04] Hunting for the right thing to say, right, the script. I love you parents who are listening, who I have relationship with, who say, "Just tell me what to say, Casey," right? If that's you, it isn't a failure. It just means you've been working with one small piece of what's available, and there's just so much more here that you get to discover, right?
[00:43:28] I wanna close with something that I think about a lot. Here's the math that nobody tends to do out loud. If your child is 13 right now, you have somewhere in the neighborhood of, like, five years of them living in your house. If they're 15, maybe it's three. This isn't a scare tactic. It's just the calendar, right?
[00:43:47] And you can go check it, and I bring it up because of something that I notice in myself and in almost every parent I talk to. We can tend to treat this stretch of time, this season of parenting, especially if it's really difficult, like something we just get to survive, get through the teen years, hang on until they're 18 and out of the house.
[00:44:10] And I get it, because some days survival genuinely is the goal But these are the last years you get being in the same house typically. And I know that there's some variance to that, and that's okay. Whatever you build in here in these years is what you're standing on for the next 40 years, right? When the relationship that you have with your grown kids becomes voluntary.
[00:44:39] When they call you or they don't because they want to or they don't. And I don't say that to add pressure. I say that because I think it changes the math on what's worth putting into this season We're all really good at investing in our kids. We pay the club fees, the tutor fees, the braces, the camps, the instrument, the college prep people.
[00:45:04] We hand that money over gladly, and we should if we can, right? I'm just asking when the last time was that you put anything into the relationship itself, into your own capacity to be the parent this particular season is asking for. Not into their skills, but into the thing that's holding all of it. And listen, you don't have to put your money into me.
[00:45:27] It doesn't have to be me. It could be a therapist or book or a class, a friend that you're willing to talk honestly about your experience with. But, you know, I'd love for it to be me. So let me tell you what I've got, right? Because here's what you'd actually leave with, and it isn't more tips.
[00:45:46] Immersion Week, you guys. You'd leave knowing the answers to your own four questions, right? A better understanding of the current ecosystem and how to move it in the direction of being more intentional, where you're solid, where you're thin for your family in your house, which means that the next time something blows up, you're not scrambling for a technique or a script.
[00:46:10] You'll know better which of the four areas is really being poked at, and you'll know where to go and what to do to work on it. That's the thing you keep, right? It works on the fight that you're having this week and the one you'll have in March that you can't even picture yet. All right. So again, I'm just gonna
[00:46:29] reiterate Immersion Week, you guys. It's September 21st through the 25th. It's five days live with me. Monday is a two-hour workshop where we walk all four of those questions for your family. How are you doing? How is the relationship? What are the systems going on in your household, and where do you go in hard moments?
[00:46:51] Tools for hard moments. Tuesday, we come together for office hours, so you've had a chance to marinate on Monday. You got questions, you bring them to office hours. specific questions. Wednesday is hot seat coaching. Right? You get to watch one or two parents move through a process with me and really drill down into a current challenge.
[00:47:12] Thursday is that soul care call, right? We're gonna journal, we're gonna meditate, we're gonna really tend to our inner worlds, right? And Friday, we build a plan. So you leave the week with something to do instead of just something to think about, or, "Oh, that was cool," moving on, staying in the same patterns.
[00:47:33] So it's all about using five days to stop swinging between coming down hard or throwing your hands up in the air, and finding the grounded middle instead, and it's $69. $69. The first 20 people to register get a private 30-minute one-on-one with me, and those spots are going fast. Registration closes when we start on the 21st.
[00:47:55] Once we're in, we're in, and it's just us. So back to what I asked you at the top. If you've been listening to me for a long time and we've never actually done anything together, this is a really good one to come to. It's five days, it's low cost, and you'd be in the room with a bunch of other parents in the exact same season that you're in, which does something that listening to the pod alone in your car can't do.
[00:48:18] Humans change in relationship, right? Go to besproutable.com/immersion, besproutable.com/immersion. I'll put that in the show notes. So we're shifting from, "Is this normal?" to, "What's going on with my kiddo?" Right? "How do I navigate this?" And this is part two of three shows that are all kinda connected, right?
[00:48:47] So next week is the last of these three shows, and it's the one that I've been building towards. I'm gonna tell you that whole story with my daughter, the hard years that we had, dropping out of school, and what carried us through. I'm also gonna share about where she is now, and it's emotional. It's emotional.
[00:49:05] So, do your homework, right? Get under the behavior. Do those three steps. Notice what the behavior's triggering in you. Taking time to calm yourself down and then meeting your child underneath their behavior. That's what I want you to practice this week. I want you to breathe, breathe, 'cause I've got you, and you get to trust the process.
[00:49:31] This is a season, it's not a verdict. Your kid is in there. The relationship is there, right? And, we're gonna just keep moving forward, my friend. So I'd love to hear what you're taking out of this show. Feel free to email me at [email protected] with feedback or message me on social media. I will see you next week.
[00:49:53] Thanks for being here. Bye.