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Parenting Teens Wisely - a seven-week course

This class is for parents who want to respond wisely to their teens.

  • Understand why some teens are more challenging and how typical parenting strategies can inadvertently make things worse.

  • Identify a powerful response that enhances a teen’s emotional resilience.

  • Discover the best way to inspire positive change in your teen.

  • Explore strategies for cultivating connection.

     

Course Outline

Week 1: Introduction to Parenting Teens Wisely

Understanding why some teens are more challenging is the first step to wise parenting. Discover how parenting strategies that may work with one teen can exacerbate problems and contribute to negative behavior patterns in a more complicated teen. Explore how wise parenting can help and create a plan to begin this more effective approach to parenting.  

Week 2: Balance and Wise Parenting

Because parenting a complicated teen can fuel a parent’s emotions, parents find themselves responding to their teen emotionally. For instance, they do things that they ordinarily wouldn’t do, like avoiding setting limits, or engaging in arguments. It’s common for parents of complicated teens to swing from one extreme to the other – to experience great patience and then great impatience, to feel hopeful and then hopeless, to be too lenient and then too authoritarian. Some parents discover that because of the challenges with their teen, they struggle with negative thoughts of despair or resentment and find that they seek escape themselves.

This class is designed to promote more balance, a key ingredient to wise parenting. Skills for emotional balance and for more balanced parenting will be explored.

Week 3: Responding Wisely to Emotions

When we respond to emotions wisely, we have a better chance of living joyfully and effectively. This class explores the benefits of emotions and focuses on strategies for navigating emotions skillfully. We will also learn the importance of reducing emotional vulnerability since this can interfere with our ability to respond wisely to emotions and to our teens.

Week 4: Teens and Emotions

Many teens lack the ability to navigate their emotions, turning to behaviors that interfere with their ability to live their best life. This class focuses on skills to help teens learn to navigate emotions skillfully while also helping to cultivate parent and teen connection.

Week 5: Creating Positive Change

Teen’s problematic behaviors are frequently their unskillful way of dealing with distress. This class offers parents tools for responding in ways that help to increase a teen’s skillful behavior and reduce a teen’s unskillful behavior. Determine a plan for responding wisely to your teen’s behaviors.

Week 6: Cultivating Harmonious Relationships

Teens’ emotions and behaviors can impact others and interfere with their ability to cultivate meaningful relationships. This class is all about relationships. Skills for cultivating more positivity, improving communication, and ensuring healthy boundaries will be examined.

Week 7: Putting It All Together

Our final class reviews all the skills. Parents will review successes, identify challenges, and develop a plan to ensure lasting positive change.

What you can expect:

Once you’ve registered you will receive information about how to get the most out of our class.

  • We meet weekly for 7 weeks.

  • Class size is limited to ensure a robust experience.

  • Parents are encouraged to offer support and validation to one another which positively impacts the learning environment.

  • Each class offers opportunities for learning, discussion, and practice. Activity sheets are provided to help clarify the material.

  • The cost for the 7-week class is $700.

Between classes:

We make specific and simple recommendations that parents can practice throughout the course.

  • Practicing these skills helps to promote positive change.

  • Between classes we send helpful and encouraging emails to enhance learning and motivation.

This course is for you if you want to:

Understand why some teens are more challenging

  • Respond effectively to challenges rather than react emotionally

  • Know that you are not inadvertently contributing to patterns of problematic behavior

  • Experience compassion and joy

  • Have tools for improved communication and boundaries

  • Experience more confidence in your parenting

This course is not for you if:

You want to change your teen

  • You want a quick fix to the problems that you’re experiencing with your teen

Unsure if this class is for you?

 FAQs

  • Once you’ve registered you will receive information about how to get the most out of our class.

    We meet weekly for seven weeks.

    Class size is limited to ensure a robust experience.

    Parents are encouraged to offer support and validation to one another which positively impacts the learning environment.

    Each class offers opportunities for learning, discussion, and practice. Activity sheets are provided to help clarify the material.

  • We make specific and simple recommendations that parents can practice throughout the course.

    Practicing these skills helps to promote positive change.

    Between classes we send helpful and encouraging emails to enhance learning and motivation.

  • This course is for you if you want to:

    • Understand why some teens are more challenging

    • Respond effectively to challenges rather than react emotionally

    • Know that you are not inadvertently contributing to patterns of problematic behavior

    • Experience compassion and joy

    • Have tools for improved communication and boundaries

    • Experience more confidence in your parenting

  • Then this isn’t the course for you!

  • No, insurance does not cover this class.

  • Because we don’t provide a receipt that satisfies health savings plan requirements, such as including diagnosis code and other codes, health savings plans are not an option.

  • No. This is a class and not therapy.

  • Full payments are required prior to the class.

  • Sometimes unexpected things occur requiring a participant to miss. We will send you the handouts you missed, and we always will review the previous class material in the next class. We are always available after class to answer questions.

  • Yes, many parents have found it very helpful to take the course more than once.

  • We encourage spouses to attend. It should be noted that both are required to pay the full price.

  • Sorry, but we do not provide reimbursements.

  • Responding to questions, asking questions, and sharing your experience using the skills enhances learning. While we encourage voluntary participation, we also respect a participant’s wish not to share.

  • This is not a therapy group, so we keep our focus on the skills. Nonetheless, on the first day of every course, we urge participants to respect class members’ confidentiality.

Meet your facilitators!

Joe Caudill & Jan Carden

As experienced licensed therapists and parents, we are passionate about our work with parents. For over 25 years, we have treated adolescents and families. We are thrilled by participants' reports of profound improvements in their relationships with their adolescents and in their overall family dynamics.

Not only do we teach these skills to parents and see the difference it makes, we practice the skills in our own lives and as a result experience greater joy and effectiveness. Our passion for this work and our excitement about its outcomes have driven us to offer this curriculum more widely.

Our supportive, positive learning environment empowers you with the support and skills needed to reconnect with your tween or teen and more effectively help them develop strength, independence, and healthy coping skills.