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Why Knowing What to Do With Your Teen Isn't Enough · IMPACT: Parenting with Perspective

• 0:00
  Ben: I'm Ben Pugh and you're listening to IMPACT! Parenting with Perspective.
• 0:06
  Ben: This podcast is all about helping parents manage the mental and emotional drama that comes with parenting teens so they can focus on what's most important.
• 0:17
  Ben: Building rock solid relationships and having a powerful impact on their teen's life.
• 0:22
  Ben: Join me each week as I dive into real tools to help you and your teen turn struggles into strengths.
• 0:31
  Have you ever listened to a parenting podcast, read a book, watched a video, or even worked with a coach and thought,"That makes total sense.
• 0:41
  I now know exactly what I need to do." And then your teenager walks into the room, says something disrespectful, refuses to get off the game, tells you he forgot his homework again, or gives you that look that somehow makes you forget every parenting tool you've ever learned.
• 1:03
  And five minutes later, you're yelling, lecturing, threatening, or saying something you wish you could take back.
• 1:12
  Then afterwards you think,"What is wrong with me?
• 1:15
  I know better than this." I want to challenge that thought today because knowing better doesn't automatically mean that you can do better, especially if you're tired, or maybe you're worried or scared, and especially when you're angry.
• 1:36
  And when the pressure is on, it is hard to do things the way that you want to do them.
• 1:43
  I see this every week coaching freshman football.
• 1:46
  My players know the play.
• 1:48
  They know their assignment.
• 1:50
  We've practiced it.
• 1:51
  We've gone over it, and then the game starts, and suddenly someone is running the wrong direction, they're forgetting their gap, or doing the exact thing we spent all week telling him not to do.
• 2:06
  That doesn't necessarily mean he's lazy, and it doesn't mean our game plan is bad, and it definitely doesn't mean that we need to throw away our entire offense.
• 2:18
  It usually means something much more simple.
• 2:21
  He doesn't own the skill yet, and I think that's the exact same thing that happens to parents.
• 2:29
  In a minute, I want to tell you a little story about breaking my arm twice while pretending to be Superman because oddly enough, that story explains the difference between knowing something in your head and knowing it through experience better than almost anything I can think of.
• 2:50
  So real quick, let's talk about the real problem.
• 2:55
  A lot of parents assume,"If I could just find the right tool," and so they consume more stuff, another podcast, another Instagram reel, another book, another script, another consequence idea, but sometimes they already know plenty.
• 3:14
  The real gap is that knowledge hasn't led to practice, hasn't led to a new skill, and it hasn't led to discipline under pressure.
• 3:26
  And there's a huge difference between knowing what a calm parent would do and actually being able to be that parent when your teenager is melting down right in front of you.
• 3:40
  And this is where there's a really important question that I want to invite you to explore.
• 3:47
  Can you access what you know when your nervous system is screaming at you that you need to do something else?
• 3:56
  Can you be that calm parent even though your teen isn't calm, and maybe the other people around you aren't calm?
• 4:05
  That is the real test.
• 4:09
  So let's talk about freshman football for just a minute.
• 4:15
  This is one of the things that just is one of my pet peeves.
• 4:20
  My players, they know the offense.
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  We practice it over and over and over.
• 4:26
  We've explained it, we've reviewed it, we've walked through it.
• 4:30
  But then at game day, something goes wrong, the adrenaline kicks in, or maybe they're tired, and then someone forgets their job, or they miss a blocking assignment, or someone gets hit harder than they expected to, and suddenly the player just falls back on their old habits.
• 4:52
  And the truth is, a lot of times pressure situations expose what is really the habit that has the most practice.
• 5:04
  And it isn't what they do or don't understand.
• 5:08
  It's not whether or not they can explain the play or whether they can write it down on a whiteboard.
• 5:14
  Typically, it's do you have the reps under your belt so that you can actually execute the play in the heat of the moment?
• 5:24
  And that's the same way parenting works.
• 5:27
  A lot of times parents say,"No, look, in a tough parenting moment or in the heat of the moment, I want to get curious.
• 5:35
  I remember not to take it personally.
• 5:37
  I know to stay on my side of the line and to hold the boundary calmly." But knowing all of these little skills and tools isn't the same as having practiced that skill enough times that it shows up automatically when your teen says something like,"You are the worst mother ever." And this is an important reminder.
• 6:01
  This is where coaching comes in.
• 6:04
  This is why Boundaries with Buy-In, the mini course I'm going to be offering soon, is so important.
• 6:12
  My job with my football players isn't just to tell them Here's what the play I want you to run is." And it's not my job to get mad when they mess it up.
• 6:22
  My job is to help them see what happened or what didn't happen.
• 6:28
  It's my job to help them understand,"Oh, what did I miss?
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  What didn't I notice?
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  What did I do just automatically?
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  What could I do next time?" And then we practice it over and over and over, and eventually something changes.
• 6:45
  The players don't have to think as much anymore because that new behavior is a habit.
• 6:51
  And this is why coaching and this is why Boundaries with Buy-In is so important.
• 6:57
  We think that when it comes to parenting, that if we just knew enough or if I just learned the newest trick or whatever it is, that then I could handle these situations better.
• 7:10
  And I think that's actually where most parenting advice stop short.
• 7:14
  We don't do a good enough job of practicing the new skill.
• 7:20
  You get to the point where you understand the new skill conceptually, but you haven't practiced it.
• 7:27
  You don't have a coach to help you identify where you're missing opportunities, where you're falling into old habits.
• 7:37
  Now, I told you in a minute I would share a story of me breaking my arm a couple of times playing Superman, and this will help highlight this idea of understanding something conceptually versus experientially.
• 7:52
  So when I was four or five years old, I can't remember, but I broke my arm pretending to be Superman.
• 7:59
  I had a Superman cape, and I would run around the house with one arm stretched straight out in front of me, just like I had seen in the movies, and I felt like I was flying.
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  and apparently at some point, I became confident enough in my flying ability that I decided to try to fly through a wall.
• 8:19
  Unfortunately, the wall won, and I remember looking at my arm and realizing it didn't look quite right.
• 8:27
  It was bent, and I remember just realizing,"Ow, this really hurts." I remember being scared at the hospital, and the funny thing is, well, it wasn't funny back then or to my parents, but within a couple months of getting my cast off, I put the cape back on, and I was pretending to be Superman again, and I climbed onto a small table, stretched that arm out so I could fly again, and I tried to fly off the table, and I broke that same arm And like I said, it wasn't funny then, but it's funny now to think,"Man, I just didn't learn my lesson." The thing is, when I ask people, do you know what a broken arm is?" Everybody says,"Yes, I know exactly what a broken arm is." Now, the thing is, someone who has never broken their arm, they might say something like,"Well, yeah, it's when you break the bones in your arm." They understand the idea, almost like they're looking at an X-ray and they're like,"Yeah, there's bones there, they're broken." But someone who has actually broken an arm, they start to explain things like,"Man, I remember hearing a crunch, and when I looked at my arm and noticed it was bent, that's when I started to feel the pain." They might explain how scary the hospital is, how awkward a cast is.
• 9:52
  Like, it limits your movement.
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  You can't do stuff.
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  You miss out on swimming.
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  You have restricted movement.
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  Someone...
• 10:01
  Like, I remember when I broke my arm, I remember my arm itching under my cast, and you just can't scratch that itch.
• 10:10
  I remember towards the end, my cast started smelling terrible.
• 10:15
  These are things that when people have actually broken their arm, this is part of their understanding of what a broken arm is.
• 10:25
  And it doesn't mean that they're better than the people that haven't broken their arms because they have a different understanding.
• 10:31
  It's just the fact that some people understand a broken arm conceptually, and some of us understand it from experience, and that is a deeper knowing.
• 10:44
  They both know the same thing, but one knows it a little bit deeper.
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  They understand because they've experienced it.
• 10:53
  Now, let's connect that to parenting.
• 10:57
  You can understand calm parenting, kinda like looking at an X-ray.
• 11:01
  Like, yeah, my teenager is yelling at me, and I'm calm, and I'm curious, and I don't yell back, and I'm in charge of my own emotions.
• 11:11
  You can understand that concept, but until you have practiced that skill, you still have no idea what it feels like to actually do that in the heat of the moment.
• 11:25
  And if you struggle doing that, that doesn't mean that your parenting skills or tools have failed you.
• 11:34
  It means that you are still developing that skill.
• 11:38
  So the thing I want to hopefully hit home is that knowing and doing are not the same thing.
• 11:45
  It is really easy to know something and still not have the skill of doing that a lot of times as you go through knowing something and learning something, the first stage might be like,"You know what?
• 12:00
  That makes sense.
• 12:01
  I understand." And then the next stage might be something more like,"Oh, dang, here I am again.
• 12:10
  I-- It makes sense, but I don't catch myself in time, and I'm doing that thing again." And then maybe you practice it, and now you have the skill that you're like,"Okay, I can pause, but what do I actually want to do here?" And the truth is, until you repeat that over and over and over, it is not going to become natural.
• 12:31
  It is not going to feel easy.
• 12:33
  But once you start getting the reps, once you practice over and over, it will start becoming easier.
• 12:40
  And what's more is that you will build the discipline to do that under pressure, even when it's hard.
• 12:48
  And this is a lot like riding a bike, swimming, riding a horse, playing football, lifting weights.
• 12:56
  you can't only conceptually understand it and then be a master.
• 13:02
  you can't watch YouTube videos and become a master swimmer based on that.
• 13:09
  Or you can't read a few books on training a horse and being a master horse trainer.
• 13:14
  if you keep losing your cool as a parent, even though you know better, even though you just listened to a really good podcast, or you understood this really cool concept, I don't want you asking, why am I so bad at this?" Instead, I want you to ask a way more useful question And the question is, what do I need to be doing so that I can start implementing this skill that I know?
• 13:41
  I wanna just briefly talk to you about a concept.
• 13:45
  I'm not gonna go all the way into this.
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  This concept is called the wheel of life.
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  Basically, this is super easy.
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  I teach it to teenagers all the time.
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  They get it.
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  When you're on the top of the wheel, that's when life is going great.
• 13:59
  Life is easy, things are going your way.
• 14:01
  Most people don't really have the awareness to know that they're on the top of the wheel, they just enjoy it.
• 14:09
  The bottom of the wheel is usually when life is hard, things aren't going the way that you want them to, there's challenges, there's resistance.
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  It isn't fun.
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  It's uncomfortable.
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  Most of the time, we have enough awareness on the bottom of the wheel to think something like,"This sucks." So the idea is there are top of the wheel moments where life is easy, things are calm, things are going well, and there are bottom of the wheel moments where it's high pressure, you're in the heat of the moment, it's hard.
• 14:40
  Most parents try to address parenting in the bottom of the wheel moments.
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  They're already tired.
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  They're frustrated.
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  Things aren't going their way.
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  Their teen is breaking the rules.
• 14:53
  And most parents, they try and apply this skill or they try and learn the skill at the bottom of the wheel, and that is incredibly hard.
• 15:01
  The thing that I teach people to do, start identifying top of the wheel moments when life is easy, when your teen is actually pretty easy to be around, they're doing what you ask, life is going your way.
• 15:13
  Top of the wheel moments are an easier time to practice new parenting skills.
• 15:20
  That's the time to get some experiential knowledge so that the next time you're on the bottom of the wheel, you have the skill or you have the reps or the experience that you can show up as the way that you want to be in that moment.
• 15:36
  So as a parent, if you can start identifying top of the wheel moments, and you can start practicing being curious, and just keep in mind, the next time I'm on the bottom of the wheel, I want to use this skill that I am practicing right now.
• 15:53
  And the truth is, that will help you understand not only what the skill is, but the energy that it takes.
• 16:01
  It'll help you understand what it looks like.
• 16:03
  It'll help you understand how even sometimes at the top of the wheel it can be hard, so of course, it's hard at the bottom of the wheel.
• 16:11
  If you're like me, like one of my go-tos in the bottom of the wheel is that I just get into lecture mode.
• 16:17
  What I wanna do in the top of the wheel is I wanna practice curiosity.
• 16:21
  How can I ask my teen questions that will help me better understand?
• 16:26
  That is an understanding of why experiential knowledge, it comes through practice, and that is a deeper knowledge than simply conceptually understanding that.
• 16:38
  I wanna talk to you just briefly about Boundaries with Buy-In.
• 16:42
  This is a small group that I'm going to be offering towards the end of September, and actually, I have done one workshop on how to make boundaries better in your home and why these boundaries keep turning into fights.
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  I wanna help you understand why boundaries and this experiential knowledge come together.
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  A lot of parents understand the importance of boundaries.
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  That's easy.
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  it's important that kids do chores.
• 17:13
  It's important that we have expectations, that we have rules, all of that.
• 17:19
  But a lot of times, parents understand it conceptually, but they don't have the experience, or they haven't repped the skills enough so that they can create a system where they can set a boundary, where they can have a clear agreement ahead of time so that you and your teenager are on the same page, on the same team.
• 17:44
  And the thing is, you might know what you agreed upon, and your teen might know, but if you aren't good at practicing ahead of time, in the heat of the moment, even though you understand this, a boundary could devolve into a power struggle or a fight.
• 18:02
  And so the goal with Boundaries with Buy-In, it's kind of layered.
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  First, I wanna help you develop the skill, and I wanna help you practice it so that you can set boundaries when life is good.
• 18:16
  Like, this is where the layers come.
• 18:18
  I want you to start practicing in the top-of-the-wheel moments when life is easy, so that now you have the skill at bottom-of-the-wheel moments when life is hard.
• 18:28
  And now you don't have to invent the boundary at the bottom of the wheel when you're furious, when nothing is going as planned, because you've showed up ahead of time.
• 18:39
  you now have a game plan to follow because you created it earlier And one of the things that a lot of people don't understand is the importance of coaching.
• 18:51
  In football, my players don't need me because they're uncapable of learning football all by themselves.
• 18:57
  They need coaching because it's really hard to see your own mistakes in the middle of the game, in the middle of the play.
• 19:06
  And the same is true for parents.
• 19:08
  Sometimes you don't see where you gave away your authority to your teenager, or you don't see how your fear and worry just took over this parenting situation.
• 19:20
  And when you've tried to control your teenager, most parents don't see that because they're in the heat of the moment.
• 19:30
  And in the heat of the moment, it's really hard to see, was the boundary clear?
• 19:33
  Did me and my team work together on that?
• 19:35
  Do I keep rescuing my teenager?
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  And one of the things I do as your coach is I'll help slow that down.
• 19:43
  I'll help you see, what happened?
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  What were you thinking in this time?
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  What were you feeling?
• 19:48
  What was the experience like for you?
• 19:51
  What did you do?
• 19:52
  What was actually within your control?
• 19:54
  What wasn't?
• 19:56
  And then we practice, and that's where it helps turn the things that I teach you into real skills that you can apply to specific things that happen in your own home And that's why I've been thinking so much about the difference between this free boundaries workshop that I'm teaching right now, and the difference between that and boundaries with buy-in.
• 20:23
  They're both designed to help you with boundaries, but they're designed for different parts of the boundary problem.
• 20:32
  The webinar, so I'll be teaching the next webinar again on Tuesday at noon Mountain Time, but they're designed to help you see something differently.
• 20:43
  Maybe you'll start to realize,"Well, dang, my teenager isn't the entire problem." Or maybe you'll realize,"I'm trying to control something that I actually can't control." Maybe you'll realize,"Man, some of my boundaries aren't actually very clear, and I've been confusing my teen by letting them have a voice and then just taking over." Or maybe,"I've been so worried that I'm giving my teen too much power that I just don't let them have a voice at all." And those are powerful shifts, because you can't change a pattern if you can't first see it.
• 21:20
  And so the Free Boundaries Workshop, it's meant to help you see what's actually going on.
• 21:27
  And seeing is the first step, but it is definitely not the last step.
• 21:33
  So if this episode is clicking for you, and you want to take it to the next step, and you want to go from being able to see it to put things into practice, the next best step is to just, on Tuesday, September 15th, at noon Mountain Time, or 2:00 Eastern Time, or...
• 21:54
  I don't even know all my time zones.
• 21:56
  11:00 Pacific?
• 21:57
  Anyways, I'm teaching the next Free Boundaries Workshop.
• 22:02
  It's completely free.
• 22:03
  You can sign up right now at benpughcoaching.com/freeboundariesworkshop.
• 22:10
  That's all one word.
• 22:11
  It's just benpughcoaching.com/freeboundariesworkshop.
• 22:16
  I know it's three words, but don't put any spaces there.
• 22:19
  Free boundaries workshop.
• 22:21
  And you can go save your spot for this free webinar.
• 22:26
  And if you've been listening today and thinking,"I know all of this stuff already, I just don't know how to actually do it when everything is blowing up," I want you at that webinar, because we're going to keep moving from just consuming in- information towards the application of that information.
• 22:48
  And that's gonna lead you to September twenty-first.
• 22:52
  This is when I'm going to be opening Boundaries with Buy-In, and that program is intentionally not just another collection of videos or workbooks for you.
• 23:03
  Yeah, I'm going to teach you, but more importantly, we're going to practice.
• 23:09
  You're going to look at what's actually happening in your family, and we're going to build a game plan.
• 23:16
  And when needed, we're going to adjust that game plan, and I'm going to coach you through the moments where you know what to do, but you still find yourself falling back into these same old patterns.
• 23:30
  I do it too.
• 23:31
  I'm just as bad as my freshman football players.
• 23:34
  Sometimes in the heat of the moment, you need the coach to help you see, hey, this is how you do it differently this time.
• 23:43
  And sometimes doing it differently one time is all it takes to then do it differently every time.
• 23:50
  And I wanna be clear, this doesn't mean there's something wrong with you, just like there's nothing wrong with my football players.
• 23:57
  It just means you need more reps, more awareness, more structure, and sometimes more support.
• 24:05
  Because just like my freshman football team, knowing the play is not the same thing as being able to run the play when you got dudes on the other side that all wanna knock your head off.
• 24:17
  And knowing what kind of parent you want to be is not the same as having practiced that version of yourself enough that you can be that parent in the heat of the moment.
• 24:30
  So first step, go save your spot for the free workshop at benpughcoaching.com/freeboundariesworkshop.
• 24:41
  It's Tuesday, September fifteenth at noon.
• 24:44
  It's at noon Mountain Time.
• 24:47
  And this week, don't go looking for ten more parenting tools.
• 24:51
  Just pick one that you already believe in and ask yourself,"Where can I practice this before I need it?" Because that's how knowing starts becoming doing, and eventually it starts becoming who you are.
• 25:06
  I'll see you in the workshop