Parenting Post-Wilderness: Parenting a Struggling Teen Before, During and After Treatment

Before your teen can tell the truth, they need to feel safe enough to do it. When your child lies, it's easy to feel hurt, betrayed, or even disrespected. But what if their lying isn't about manipulating you at all? What if it's simply their brain's attempt to avoid pain, shame, or consequences? In this episode, Seth and I unpack one of the most frustrating challenges parents f...

You probably spend a lot of energy trying to prevent mistakes, avoid conflict, and get parenting “right.” But what if the real goal isn’t perfection at all? In this conversation, therapist and parent coach Emil Harker and I explore why conflict, misunderstandings, and even parenting mistakes are not signs that you’re failing. In fact, they may be some of the most important opportunities you have t...

FREE online workshop - June 24 from 5-630MT  Respond Like Yoda (When Your Kid Is Acting Like Vader) How to be grounded, avoid power struggles, and respond with clarity instead of reaction Register at https://bethhillmancoaching.com/yoda Bringing your teen home from treatment is something you've likely thought about for months. Maybe even longer. You miss them. You want them home. And yet, if...

You want to help your teen be resilient and feel more confident and capable of handling life's challenges. But when they're struggling, whether with mental health, motivation, school, substances, or simply growing up,  it's easy to slip into protection mode. You try to shield them from pain, solve their problems, and prevent mistakes before they happen. The problem? Confidence isn&a...

Why is it that the harder you push for change, the more your teen seems to dig in their heels? If you've ever found yourself repeating the same conversations, giving advice that goes nowhere, or feeling exhausted by your teen's resistance, you're not alone. Most parents assume that if their child would just understand the consequences of their choices, they'd make better decisi...

When you grow up inside fear, survival, instability, or emotional chaos, those experiences don’t just disappear when you become an adult. They quietly shape the stories you carry about safety, relationships, success, control, and even what it means to be a “good” parent. And without realizing it, you might begin to pass those same narratives on to your own children. In this deeply personal and tho...

Simple tasks that seem easy to you become overwhelming battles for your teen or young adult with ADHD. One small request turns into a massive blow-up. And when we don’t understand the ADHD brain, it can feel like they’re being disrespectful, lazy or even manipulative.  In today’s episode, I’m joined by therapist and ADHD expert Debbie Murad to unpack what’s really happening underneath ADHD and emo...

Summer can feel terrifying when you’re parenting a struggling teen or young adult. The routines disappear. Structure falls away. And suddenly you’re left wondering how to support your child without slipping into control, conflict, or constant anxiety. And if your teen is coming home from treatment? The pressure can feel even heavier. Today, I sit down with Hilary Moses to talk about what parents o...

You bring your child home from treatment and expect things to get better. But instead, everything feels off. They’re overwhelmed. Irritated. Withdrawn. Maybe even struggling more than you expected. You don’t understand. Why is this so hard? Did we do something wrong? This special episode will help you understand something most parents never fully see… until now. Because what your teen experiences...

Is your child pushing back, arguing over everything, ignoring rules, or seeming impossible to parent right now? It’s easy to wonder: Is this normal teen behavior… or something more serious like ODD? When conflict becomes the norm at home, many parents start fearing they’re losing their child. You might even feel like you’re failing as a parent. But not all defiance is ODD. Sometimes, what looks li...

When you find out your child is harming themselves, you’re thrown into a world you don’t understand. Fear hits first. Then confusion. Maybe even anger. Is this a cry for help? Is it manipulation? Is my child suicidal? And most of all… what am I supposed to do? If your teen is self-harming, you’re not alone in these questions. And you’re not failing as a parent. In this conversation, I sit down wit...

Your teen’s behavior might feel confusing, frustrating, or even manipulative… but when you understand the boy brain, it starts to make a lot more sense. In this episode, I sit down with Mark Spalding (LCSW) to unpack what’s really going on beneath behaviors like complaining, blaming, or playing the victim, and why so many parents feel emotionally pulled in when it happens. We start with a situatio...

You wait all week for that call… and then it comes. But your child sounds miserable. They’re complaining about everything. The food, the people, the program. They tell you it’s not working. That they shouldn’t be there. Maybe they even promise they’ll do better if you just bring them home. And suddenly, you’re right back in it: confused, overwhelmed, and questioning everything. Did I make the wron...

You’re lying awake at night, running through every possible scenario. Should I step in? Should I say something? Should I let this go? When your teen is struggling, it can feel nearly impossible to know what’s actually yours to handle and what isn’t. And without clarity, it’s so easy to slip into overthinking, overfunctioning, and trying to control things that were never yours to begin with. In thi...

Trust is one of the most fundamental parts of every relationship. If you don’t trust your teen, or you notice they don’t trust you, it will be hard to build the kind of parent-child relationship you want to have with your struggling teen or young adult. But sometimes it can feel like an impossible task to ‘just trust’ your teen again, especially if that trust has been broken before. So how does tr...

You check their location, just to make sure they’re okay. Then again. And again. And suddenly, your entire nervous system is tied to a blinking dot on a map. In this episode, Seth and I talk about something that so many parents are quietly struggling with right now: the urge to track, monitor, and stay one step ahead of your teen or adolescent… and how it slowly starts to take over. Because here’s...

Is your son glued to his screen and telling you, “you just don’t get it”? But as a parent nowadays, you are navigating a world that looks very different from the one you grew up in. Video games double as social spaces. Screens shape friendships and status. And many teen boys are quietly struggling with anxiety, uncertainty about the future, and pressure they don’t always know how to talk about. So...

You step in because you love your child. You pay for treatment again because you’re scared. You cover the rent because you don’t want them on the street. You call to check in because something feels “off.” You offer solutions because you can’t stand watching them struggle. Of course you do. But here’s the hard question: What if, sometimes, the helping is reinforcing learned helplessness? What if t...

You’ve heard me say it over and over again: You have to let go of what is out of your control. But does that mean you just stop parenting? Are you just supposed to sit back and watch your teen or young adult fail and make mistakes? When you start stepping back from micromanaging, rescuing, and constantly stepping in, it often doesn’t feel like relief. It feels like you’re doing something wrong. Yo...

The thought of wilderness therapy for your struggling kid can feel simultaneously hopeful and terrifying. Is it too extreme? Is it necessary? How do you even know? And how do you trust the people who would be caring for your child? In this episode, I sit down with Danny Frazer, one of the founding partners of Open Sky Wilderness Therapy, to talk honestly about what makes wilderness therapy work, a...

Every day, you’re watching your teen or young adult make choices you wouldn’t make, and feeling the constant pull to intervene. You see the risks. You imagine the consequences. And somewhere along the way, hope for progress turns into pressure for outcomes. Today, Seth and I talk about what happens when parents become attached to how growth is supposed to look: sobriety first, independence next, e...

When your teen is engaging in self-destructive behaviors, what you usually see is the tip of the iceberg. You see the cutting, the substance use, the school refusal, the shutdowns or blowups, and it’s scary, confusing, and exhausting.  But what’s happening underneath those behaviors is often invisible. Big emotions. Overwhelm. Shame. Anxiety. A nervous system that’s trying to survive. And when all...

Have you ever found yourself thinking, “This has to be rock bottom… surely it can’t get worse than this,” ? As painful as that thought is, it can also feel strangely comforting. Because if this is the worst of it… then maybe things will finally start to get better. When your teen or young adult is making painful, risky, or destructive choices, the idea of rock bottom can feel like a lifeline. A wa...

You’re doing everything you can, and yet you feel like you’re failing as a parent… Believe me, you’re not alone, and today, I’d even like to offer you a change of perspective: What if you’ve been giving the wrong job description as a parent? You might believe your role is to keep your kids happy, safe, and “on track.” And when it inevitably becomes clear that you don’t have any control over this d...

Recently, we lost a dear friend to suicide. One of my son’s best friends, who had become a part of our family. This is a tender and deeply personal conversation in which Seth and I talk about the loss of a young man who mattered deeply to our family, and what witnessing his death taught me about struggling teens, their ‘yellow’ or ‘red friends’, pain, and connection. This is not an easy conversati...