When what worked before, stops working

Mar 03, 2021

Hey Mama,

"I used to know what to do about this kid's behavior, now...nothing works!"

I hear this kind of thing all the time from parents of older kids. For many of us, the parenting skills we used successfully for years seem like they stop working when our kids become tweens or teens.

The good news is that we don't have to go back to the drawing board. The principles of effective parenting never change: neutral natural consequences and an emphasis on connection over control - this is a constant no matter how old the child.

But, we do need to apply those principles a little differently with older kids. Teens and tweens are ready for more agency and responsibility in their choices AND in their relationships. This means we need to up-level our parenting in two ways: in our discipline and in our connection with them.

It might sound tricky, but I like to make these kinds of things SIMPLE so parents can see big change quickly. I boil the transition into parenting big kids down to two things: adding one or two new skills to your repertoire and some minor tweaks to the ones you already have.

This is what I'm going to be teaching in my Parenting Teens and Tweens Workshop on March 16th.

You're going to learn how to apply the stuff you already know to this new parenting frontier. I'm going to teach you a few new tricks. And we'll have plenty of time for Q&A, so bring me all your tweeny/teeny drama!

Ann