January 1st won’t fix this

Are you having the same conversations with your teen over and over?

“Where were you?”
”Are you lying to me?”
”Why won’t you talk to me anymore?”

And no matter how many times you ask, it feels like they hear you less, not more.

Instead of things improving, the resistance gets louder, and the distance grows.

You try to stay calm.

But after the third attempt to get through, something snaps.

You raise your voice, not because you want to,
but because you’re exhausted and nothing is landing.

And afterward, when the house is quiet,
you replay it all in your head,
wishing you’d handled it differently.

Here’s what’s really happening.

It’s a loop.

You see something that worries you, and you jump in to fix it.

Let’s say your teen shuts down when you ask about school or gives you half-answers that don’t quite add up.

Your instinct is to press harder because you’re worried about where this is heading.

But when you pause long enough to ground yourself, the conversation can shift.

Instead of “Why won’t you tell me the truth?”
you ask, “What’s going on? Help me understand.”

Now, will they always open up right away?
No.

Sometimes you’ll get “I don’t know,” silence, or an eye roll.

But when you keep showing up curious instead of controlling,
they start to trust that you actually want to understand, not interrogate or fix them.

And this isn’t just about one conversation.

Whether it’s incomplete assignments, lying, substance use, or a teen who’s pulled away completely, the pattern underneath is the same.

I see this play out with parents I work with every week.

When they stop trying to fix the behavior and start asking what’s really going on, everything shifts.

The arguments don’t disappear overnight, but the tension eases, and conversations stop blowing up.

And if you’ve tried “staying calm” before and it didn’t stick, that doesn’t mean you failed.
It means you didn’t have the right tools yet.

A Parenting Breakthrough Call can help. Click HERE to learn more.

We’ll look at what’s actually driving the tension in your home and what you can do differently, starting this week.

If this sounds familiar, you’ll leave the call with a plan and a sense of whether working together makes sense.

🧡 Jeanine