Looking after you

Parenting teens can make you look at yourself and really think about your own teenage years. In this video, parenting educator Maggie Dent talks about how some of your own struggles as a teen can affect the way you parent your own teen. It helps to get some support so you can recognise what’s going on for you and see what you can change to make parenting your teen less of a struggle.

Learn how to connect with your teen and read about how you don’t need to have all the answers, all the time – there is help.

Transcript

[Music]

Maggie: Parenting teens has a tendency for us as parents to have a look at yourself very deeply.

If we’re struggling, and I mean struggling not just occasionally during the week but every single day and it’s becoming a major battleground; I am going to suggest to you that some of the stuff that’s causing that is actually hiding inside of you.

So whatever happened to you as a teen; whatever pushed your buttons. Whatever challenges you had somehow or other works its way out into your home while you are now parenting your own teen. So if you are struggling or you did have some challenging times as a teen, may I encourage you to go and find some help and some support. Because we know that when a parent makes a shift of a new understanding we change the story we tell ourselves in our head.

So again if you’re struggling a lot don’t always think we’ve just got to fix your teen.

Let’s look at it there’s two sides to the story and let’s go and see if we can work out what triggers I’m bringing to the table which are making things a little bit more difficult.

Narrator: You can discover more on the Spark Their Future website.