-Buckle up for three-parent rescue strategies to wipe out frustration for the teenage years.
Hi, we're Dr. Paul and Vicky Jenkins. In addition to our professional experience. We've been through
the teenage years. We've got three strategies for you and there's a powerful realization
that most parents don't even understand in the third one.
-Rescue strategy number one fire yourself from the job of making sure your child is happy.
You know. -Oh boy. -To put yourself in the job title of making sure my teen is happy is just a little
bit crazy. So if you put yourself there let's fire that you cannot make your child happy. Especially,
did I say especially in the teenage years? -Oh yes, I'm sure. Some people struggle with
this so we're going to fire you instead. -It is not your job. -You're fired, does that help?
-Connect though with how that feels. -Connect with okay it's not my job to make sure my teen is happy
which I'm really not very good at. -A matter of fact have you ever seen your teenager as soon as they
see you starting to smile about one of the things they pull back? -Sometimes you know what this has
to do with some of the teenage psychology that's behind it and without getting into all of that today.
Consider how peaceful it feels to realize that's not your job to make sure that they're
happy. Your job is to love them no matter what and even if and when you get off of making sure that
they're happy it's a huge relief I just want you to connect with that for a minute see how it feels.
Rescue strategy number two fire your teen from the job of making sure that you're happy.
This is really too much of a burden for teenagers and we do this inadvertently sometimes by
thinking track your own thinking on this okay by thinking, "Oh, I would just be so much happier if
my teen would just..." -Clean their room, get an A, go to class. -Be respectful, do their chores, whatever it is.
You're putting the burden of your own happiness on your teen?
-It's just too much for them. So, we're firing them they're not in charge of our happiness
and be sure you're aware of that and be sure you broadcast that. Hey,
I'm in charge of making myself happy. -It's not your teen's job to make you happy that's your job
and then your job with your teen is to love them no matter what and even if. So, in
these first two rescue strategies we're getting really clear about whose responsibility it is
for who's happiness and you're in charge of your happiness not your team. Let's not put that burden
on them. I don't know a teenager who is emotionally mature enough to be responsible for your happiness.
Before we get to that third strategy click on that subscribe button and make sure you hit that
notification bell so that you'll get all of the videos as they come out. -Rescue strategy number
three is to find ways to enjoy your teenager exactly as they are. -This is the one I met when
I said most parents don't realize this particular ability that they have to actually choose to enjoy
their teenager. -They think that that's all driven by their teen's behavior. Well, I would
enjoy my teenager if they or when they or I can't enjoy them they're not enjoyable.
Alright, now maybe you're in that position. Back out of that long enough to see that maybe you
have something to say about this. In fact, I've given a challenge to some of my clients before.
I just did this the other day in one of my private parent coaching sessions where I invited this
particular father to consider enjoying his team and he gave me some of the traditional answers.
"Oh, he's doing this, just not very enjoyable. I love him I just don't like him",
and we hear this all the time. So I said what if I arranged for a prize, a bonus, a reward.
If you can truly enjoy him for five days in a row, you get one million dollars
and he knew you know I'm not gonna actually give him one million dollars. But just do the mental
experiment for a minute and see what changes. What would you do differently and you can't fake it
you can't lie and say, "Oh, I enjoy them when you didn't." -A lot of the times we're thinking
about this child as an extension of the toddler and the school-aged child that you loved kind of
think of them as coming into this child as a brand new person just like they are. They're coming into
life as a brand new person, right. It's a crazy time for them. They're trying to manage
this step into adulthood, right? But they're not really quite there yet. So just think
about it, if this were just a kid that you came across for 20 minutes you could probably find some
way to enjoy them. So just challenge yourself to do that find a way to enjoy them. -You start to think
differently. You start to ask different questions and that's exactly what this father told me is
I pressed him a little bit. I said, "Look, a million dollars on the line. Can you pull it off?", and he had
to dig deep a little bit and realize you know what I would have to think differently about my son.
Ding... yes that's exactly what we're talking about here.
-These are strategies to help wipe out frustration. Whose frustration? Mine, as
the parent, right? So it's me who gets to do some changing. -You get to change your view or you're due.
We just call this view do. That's what you control and when you focus on that everything else
changes. Notice that you've got something to do with it. It's not completely dependent on your teen
and this is going to wipe out some of that frustration as we indicated at the beginning.
You've got the rescue strategies. Now, there are five important things that every parent of a
teen needs to know and understand that video is up next. Click on that, we'll see you there.