Get on Their Turf with Dr. Suzanne Simpson

Learn the 3-part email that helps your teenager ask a teacher for help, plus 4 steps to build their confidence to speak up. Your teenager is struggling at school but won’t ask the teacher for help. Maybe they assume the teacher already knows, or doesn’t care. Neither is usually true. In this Just Me Classic (Episode 62), Dr. Suzanne Simpson draws on 30 years as an educator, including teaching on a...

Teen mental health support for parents starts with a hard truth: a child's well-being begins at home. So why is saying that out loud so controversial? In this episode of Get On Their Turf, Dr. Suzanne Simpson sits down with Nicole Runyon, former child psychotherapist, parent coach, keynote speaker, and author of Free to Fly: The Secret to Fostering Independence in the Next Generation. After 2...

Is It ADHD, Autism, Anxiety, or Trauma? 2 Questions to Ask Before a Diagnosis Your teenager is struggling, and someone says it might be ADHD, autism, anxiety, or trauma. From the outside, they can look almost the same. In Episode 76, I share what I saw in five and a half years on a psychiatric unit: three realities about how mental health assessments actually work, the one piece of evidence that i...

Dr. Suzanne Simpson sits down with divorce recovery coach Leah Marie to break down how to protect your teenager's mental health during a divorce, the top three rules for dealing with a toxic co-parent, and why silencing your own inner critic is the first step to rebuilding connection with your kids. Divorce is consistently ranked as one of the hardest things a human being can experience, seco...

How to connect with your teenage child starts with three things teenagers told me they need: support, understanding, and care. This classic episode breaks down what that actually looks like, drawn from a year of research with 25 kids in a youth psychiatric unit. What's covered:  0:00 – Why Teenagers Lash Out  1:22 – What It Means to Support Your Child  2:12 – How to Understand Without Judgeme...

Why mental health labels can spread through a group like a contagion, and what actually protects your teenager instead of another diagnosis. Is your teenager suddenly using words like anxious, ADHD, or depressed to describe how they feel, not because a doctor said so, but because everyone around them is saying it too?  In this classic episode, I sit down with therapist Matt Hussey to talk about so...

Discover why asking a single question works significantly better than lecturing when your teenager pushes back, and learn how to stop the cycle of yelling.  Every parent has been in that moment: your teenager shuts down, pushes back, or says something that hits you like a wall. Every instinct tells you to react. In this episode, Dr. Suzanne Simpson breaks down why asking a question works significa...

If you're an exhausted working parent, this one's for you. Erika Rothenberger joins me to talk about why "work-life balance" is the wrong goal, and why integration works better. We get into a simple daily ritual that builds connection in minutes, how to talk to your kids about your own failures without oversharing, and how surviving a violent attack in 2022 changed the way she...

If your teenager has completely shut you out, reconnecting starts with getting on their turf, not with another lecture. I'm Dr. Suzanne Simpson, and after thirty years working with teenagers, including five and a half years inside a youth psychiatric unit, here is what I know for certain: you cannot influence a child you do not connect with. In this episode, I break down how to reconnect with...

Is your teenager is struggling, and are you done waiting for a broken system to catch up? In this episode, I sit down with Chris Coulter, a father who lost his 14-year-old daughter Maddie to suicide in 2015. Chris learned the hard way where the public mental health system failed his family, and turned that knowledge into action. He built MindGrade to hold schools accountable for student mental hea...

Has a failing grade ever made you want to step in and fix everything? That instinct comes from love, but it may be quietly taking a brick out of the foundation of your teenager's confidence. In this episode, I share three things parents do when a teenager is failing that actually make things worse, and the better response for each one. I start with a real story: a friend whose son was failing...

How to Stop Yelling at Your Teenager and Keep Your Cool - Ep. 71 If you've ever lost your temper with your teenager and hated yourself for it afterward, this episode is for you. Samantha Boss is a single mum, a parent coach, and someone who will be the first to tell you she didn't always have it together. She spent years yelling, reacting, and reaching for the wrong things to cope. Then...

When your teenager won't put the phone down, the fight that follows is rarely really about the phone. In this episode, I walk you through what is actually driving your teenager's resistance, why leading with rules alone makes it worse, and the shift that changes everything: moving from a control mindset to a connection mindset. I have spent 30 years working with teenagers, including five...

When your teenager says "I'm fine" but your gut tells you otherwise, you aren't imagining it. In this episode, Dr. Suzanne Simpson sits down with Cea Sunrise Person, bestselling author of North of Normal and Nearly Normal, to talk about the "mask" - the survival strategy many kids use to hide a chaotic or painful home life from the adults around them. Cea grew up off-...

If your child struggles with anxiety, you are not alone and you are not powerless. In this episode, I share six practical ways to support your teenager with anxiety from the home front. I draw on what I learned the hard way as a parent, and what I brought into my classroom inside a youth psychiatric unit. This is not about being perfect. It is about showing up with the tools that actually work. In...

Parents of high-achieving teens are seeing more anxiety, burnout, and pressure than ever before. If your child is doing well on the outside but struggling underneath, this episode will help you understand why. In this conversation, Dr. Suzanne Simpson sits down with her former student, now 23, to explore the hidden pressure behind achievement culture and what it actually feels like to grow up as a...

What do teens actually need when they misbehave? If you have been stuck between being too harsh and too soft, this episode will shift your thinking entirely. In this episode of Get on Their Turf, I share five discoveries from my research on teen behaviour and emotional regulation that completely changed how I think about guiding teenagers. What surprised me most: it wasn't the kids who strugg...

Does your teen feel disconnected, hopeless, or like they don't belong? What if we stopped waiting for crisis and started building the will to live early? In this episode, I sit down with Kerry Martin - Harvard MPP, attempt survivor, and founder of Foundation for Life - a nonprofit dedicated to going all the way upstream on teen mental wellness. Kerry and I dig into what it actually means to m...

Is your child calm on the outside but quietly struggling on the inside? What if the behaviours you're calling defiance are actually hidden anxiety? Anxiety doesn't always look the way we expect. Many children and teens appear capable and "fine" while silently battling overwhelming fear. When anxiety is misunderstood, adults often respond with frustration instead of empathy. In...

What if discipline isn't about punishment at all? Dr. Allie Donaldson, a 28-year-old surgeon, explains how her parents taught emotional regulation through connection, not control. Is your teen shutting down? Are you afraid to set boundaries because you don't want to damage them? But here's the truth: not teaching emotional regulation is teaching emotional dysregulation. In this epis...

Teaching kids self-advocacy may be the single most important skill they learn in school, and most students never get taught how to do it. When kids advocate for themselves with support, they gain confidence, feel seen, build resilience, and perform better at school and beyond. If your child is struggling in school and not getting what they need from teachers, this episode is for you. Dr. Suzanne S...

An Honest Talk About Domestic Violence and Boys with Eugene Z. Bertrand Domestic violence against males is real and often invisible. In this powerful conversation, best selling author Eugene Bertrand discusses the hidden epidemic of domestic and intimate partner violence against boys, teens, and men. Eugene shares his personal experience as a survivor, how childhood trauma shapes self-worth, and w...

Working Mom, Present Parent: Staying Connected When Life Is Full? How do working moms stay emotionally connected to their kids when life is full and the to-do list never ends? In this episode of Get On Their Turf , Dr Suzanne Simpson talks with business leader and mom Lisa Marie Garcia about the real struggles that working parents face. From long work hours to mom guilt and the fear of drifting ap...

Why do teenagers shut down, pull away, or get angry with the people who love them most? In this episode, Dr. Suzanne Simpson shares research from inside a youth psychiatric unit and the honest truths teens told her about what they need from the adults in their lives. Their answers were simple and powerful: support, understanding, and care. If your teen is struggling with anxiety, emotional overwhe...

This conversation first aired in September 2024, and I’m bringing it back because it still feels just as relevant now. Brock Johnson offered timeless insight into how social media shapes teen mental health, and so many parents have told me this episode changed how they see their child’s relationship with their phone. In this powerful conversation, Brock shares what it was like growing up in the fi...