In this episode of The Teenage Guide Podcast, host Ashley Chandler explains why parents often lose connection with their teen within the first few seconds of trying to help, using a vivid kitchen‑table scenario. She argues that the breakdown stems from three interrelated factors: (1) the family’s underlying narrative that pits parent against teen, (2) unhelpful communication patterns where parents act as a "boss" rather than a guide, and (3) skill gaps on both sides, such as lack of active listening, co‑regulation, and collaborative planning. Chandler introduces the concept of seven categories of stress that trigger fight/flight/freeze/fawn responses, emphasizing that emotions are information, not problems to fix. She stresses the importance of validation as the gateway to any influence and outlines a step‑by‑step process for parents to shift from solving to guiding. The episode concludes with a promotion of her paid 3‑part micro‑class, "Confident and Connected: The Blueprint," which promises to teach parents the relationship‑and‑skill framework needed for lasting teen connection.
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The first thing I want to talk about is how I've made peace with my side part. I have not made peace with the haircut that I got back in May, but when I just tried to make my part go in the middle, it was like a few little gray hairs went bing, and I'm just at peace with it, guys. You know, trends are changing all the time. If this Screams, I'm a midlife mom. So be it. I own it. Welcome back to The Teenage Guide Podcast. That sounded so official. Let me try that again. Welcome back. I'm Ashley Chandler, your host and founder of The Teenage Guide. And today's episode is something that affects almost every single family that I work with. It happens in the kitchen. It happens in the car. It happens when you're trying to get out the door in the morning. It happens at 7:00 PM around the kitchen table. you're making dinner. It happens all day long as parents with our teenagers. And in the first 5 seconds of it going down, you've lost them completely. So in today's episode, I'm gonna explain why this happens and begin to give you insight into what to do instead. Let's get to it. Hey, I'm Ashley Chandler, The Teenage Guide, and for nearly 2 decades I've worked inside middle schools and high schools and with college-age students and family living rooms, helping hundreds of families go from daily conflict and closed doors to real connection with their teenager. I speak parent and I speak teen, and I create a bridge between you. that a lot of other methods can't and won't. If you're navigating adolescence in your home and a version of yourself you're still becoming, you're exactly where you need to be. Let's reimagine the teenage years with science and soul at the forefront. This is The Teenage Guide Podcast. So get this visual in your mind. Picture this. It's 7:00 PM. You're cooking dinner. Your teen comes barreling down the stairs. Their energy is tense. You've got a boiling pot of water on the stove. Your other child is watching a show in the living room right with you. You're sharing all the space together. Your teen plops down at the kitchen table and just starts dumping about their homework. They are super stressed and they're letting everyone know within a 30-mile radius that they're stressed. Their voice is raised, their energy is tense, and even in the midst of the boiling water and the managing this and making sure that Sam over there on the couch is okay, you can get a sense of the solution. They've got people in their class they could ask. You could probably sit down with them and solve it in, you know, 10 minutes or help them manage the project. So you start helping. Hey, why don't you go ask Sarah? I bet she knows what to do. Or here, let me show you what I would do. Let me show you how to do this. Then it happens. Ugh, you're not getting it. It's not like that. You don't understand. So they barge off, the door slams, the homework may or may not get done. Your partner comes in the room and is like, what the hell just happened? And you're standing there thinking, I tried. I genuinely tried. I'm managing a lot myself. They are so moody. I'm so annoyed. And the problem too is that the rest of the family, Sam and your partner, Also have that narrative. They're so dramatic. They're so emotional. It's their fault. I'm right. They're wrong. So this pattern or some version of it happens in nearly every single family that I support, whether it's about school or friendships or social life or a snarky teacher or, you know, the coach on the soccer team or their body. There's so many different elements. To where this exact dynamic shows up and you try to help and end up feeling depleted, resentful, and worried like, oh gosh, am I— what am I doing that's so wrong? And are they gonna be okay? So I'm gonna show you why this happens and what shifts it. You've heard me say this before. Every single challenge that you face boils down to 2 things: relationships and skills. When we can filter every challenge through relationships and skills, it helps us filter through all the noise and get really clear on where to focus. And in every relationship, including the one with ourselves, there's communication. And in this dynamic, there is a communication breakdown between parents and teens. We are all communicating from our own subconscious beliefs, meaning beliefs we don't even know that we're having, our perceptions of a situation or an experience or a person. And our own identity. This is where we communicate from, and so does your teen. You're both communicating from those operating systems, as I like to say. So from your own perception, from your own beliefs and your own identity, you can see the solution because you're a grown-ass adult who has life experience and wisdom and a fully formed brain. And somewhere along the way, whether you have healthy tools or not, you know how to somewhat manage the boiling water and the show in the background and the snarky teen, right? You can handle all of those different elements to a certain degree. Maybe it's not pretty. Maybe you're yelling more than you would like, and you're still doing it because that's what adults do. Your brain goes into problem-solving mode also because you still have the identity as a boss. I'll fix it. I'll take care of it. I'm in charge. Your teen cannot hear your solution and they don't care. Let me repeat that. They do not care about your solution because their operating system, their brain, their nervous system is in stress mode and it's triggered. Their brain and their perceptions and their beliefs at that point in time, they're not in a state Where they can receive logic. It's in survival. Must stay alive. Must have control. When you offer the solution, even with the best of intentions, what they perceive isn't that you're helping, it's that you're trying to control them. It's that you're not listening to them and that you're actually making it worse, even if that's not your intention. So you try to solve their challenge also to relieve your own discomfort. It's uncomfortable to manage the boiling water and all the different elements of dinner, as a metaphor, to have the show on in the background and the other human being over there that you're also in charge of and potentially the work projects that you're managing and, you know, the way that you feel in your body because you have low energy or your hormones are shifting. So all of this is underneath the surface for you and it is extremely stressful to To exist as a human being. It's uncomfortable. You are uncomfortable. So then they come down, it's like adding fuel to a fire with their energy and their stress. And it makes sense that you wanna solve the problem right away, make the stress go away immediately. That makes sense, but it doesn't work for a teenager. It's the wrong move. So there are 3 things at play to become aware of. The first is the narrative or the story that the whole family is telling. I alluded to it before, which is they're wrong and I'm right. This creates a dynamic sometimes even within siblings where the teen or the human who's having challenges and is emotional in that moment or stressed is somehow wrong and you're right. Or their response is the bad thing and your response is the good thing. We can have a narrative, especially for teenagers who have a lot of emotional breakdowns or they get emotionally dysregulated frequently, that somehow it's bad and that they're a problem that needs to be fixed versus a puzzle that can be solved. And understanding the nuances of Human development, what's happening for their identity, what they're believing in you. Even if that narrative is unspoken, it's running the show in how you guys are showing up in the house. So every family needs the toolkit to understand what stress actually is. It's oftentimes not what you think it is. This is part of the work that you do with me when you work with me. And there are 7 different categories. of stress that are running the show. 7. And stress is not necessarily good or bad. It's a trigger that prompts us to be out of balance in our own nervous system, to perceive threat, danger, and gets us into fight, flight, freeze, fawn. So there's 7 different categories. And when you work with me, I walk you through this where you understand on an intimate level What's triggering you and what your teen's triggers are, or what the other people in your house, what their triggers are. 'Cause emotions are not a problem to fix. They're just simply information, right? That communication is an expression of what we're believing or what we're perceiving. So by the time it's come out as an emotion, there's already stuff beneath the surface that we are believing or that we're perceiving. So without shared awareness, the family ends up more divided and then it pits the teen against the rest of you, which then creates more separation and more shame. The second thing to be aware of is the communication pattern inside the relationship. Why don't you try this? Here, let me do it. These are things that when you have the identity of being a boss, that's what you say. Let me do it. Try this, right? Versus a guide. A boss communicates— now, not a good boss, but a boss can often communicate, I don't I don't really trust you to handle this. That's what we communicate as parents when we take over for our teen. That's their perception. So the shift happens in meeting them where they are. There are some things you need to do within yourself to be able to do that. That's part of the work that you do with me. But the clincher is a teen will not listen to you until they feel listened to. And what that means is in real time is that you validate their experience. Validation is the door that opens and allows them to receive your input. The third thing to pay attention to is the skill gap for both of you. Remember, relationships and skills. Active listening is a skill. Co-regulation is a skill. Collaboration is a skill. Planning a project is a skill. And these skills do not develop through lectures or they develop through real practice, real structure, systems, as you get into just the flow and the habit of being able to show up as a guide, they start being built in those real-life moments. It's not as if you sit at the kitchen table and you're like, and now we are going to co-collaborate, or, and now I'm going to actively listen to you. No, you make the intention. I walk all of my clients through a step-by-step process that then gets woven into How you're showing up. I call it your being versus your doing. It's a layered process that just starts to be who you are and how they see you and how they experience you. So you don't solve, you don't fix it. And as a result, you don't turn up the heat where they're flying out and, you know, slamming doors once they're inside their room and crying and saying, everyone hates me and no one understands me and I'm doomed. That sounds really frustrating. You acknowledge, you validate, you stay regulated. And if you're asking, what does that even mean? I try, I try, I try, I still can't. You need to sign up for my Confident and Connected Blueprint. I'm putting the link in the show notes. A coach once said to me something that stays with me to this day, which is, your willingness to be uncomfortable is directly connected to your success. And not uncomfortable from a place of dysfunction, like allowing dysfunction in our lives, But oftentimes we react because we're trying to escape the discomfort of that moment versus becoming aware of it and moving through it. You trying to fix or solve your teen's challenge is also about you not being willing to be uncomfortable with their discomfort so you can move through it and then they will receive what you have to say. If we can be uncomfortable for 5, 10, 15 seconds with them, It will pay off in the long run. We don't absorb their emotion, but we can sit with it. So like I said, I go deep into all of this in my live 3-part class. I've got another one coming up. I run them every 2 weeks, Confident and Connected: The Blueprint, which is the foundation that all parents of teens need to be able to solve any challenge through the lens of relationships, And skill building. I take it to the next level. I take it deeper. Be sure to check out this 3-part microclass experience where you can get a taste of what it's like to work with me in real time. I give you the blueprint and how to have the best relationship with yourself and them and build skills that enable both of you to experience more confidence, more connection, more motivation, less yelling, less arguing, less breakdowns. You wanna get outta that cycle? You need to check out Confident Communication. Connected, The Blueprint. I'll link it in the show notes. Get all the details and grab your spot at theteenageguide.com/blueprint. Thank you so much for listening. And as always, never underestimate the power that you have as the parent. I'll see you next week. Bye.
