Ashley ChandlerFounder + CEO, The Teenage Guide · Founder and CEO, The Teenage Guide | Parent and Teen Coach

Reel #5 “Why Don’t You Care ”—A Parent’s Breaking #podcast #parenting #motivation #parentingteens

2 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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In this short podcast excerpt, the host narrates a mother’s experience with her disengaged teenage son. Over the past week the mother has repeatedly asked, “Why don’t you care?” and feels angry, defeated, and unrecognizable to herself. The teen’s behavior includes putting on headphones, giving one‑word answers, turning in half‑finished or late assignments, and a steady decline in grades visible through an online grade portal. The mother is not actively hovering over him; she discovers the problem when she checks the portal, which now shows plummeting grades. The monologue suggests that the visible symptoms are not the root cause and hints that something deeper is happening, though it does not elaborate further.

Chapters

I've repeated the same sentence 14 times this week. Why don't you care? And I don't even recognize myself. I feel angry all the time. I feel so defeated. Her son wasn't failing school and he wasn't in trouble at school, but every single afternoon and early evening turned into a battle. He'd put his headphones on, one-word answers, half-finished assignments, a lot of late work, a lot of missing work. And as the mom, she wasn't hovering over him, but she would come to find this out because she would see the grade portal, as we're all used to right now, right? The internet tracks our kids' performance and grades, and the grades were plummeting in the portal. And what scared her and hurt her most was he used to care. Here's what was really going on. Nothing had gone wrong.