Power Your Parenting: Moms With Teens

Power Your Parenting: Moms With Teens is Colleen O'Grady's show for mothers of preteens, teens and young adults. Her introduction, repeated across these episodes, sets out three aims in a fixed order. First comes the mother herself, supported and encouraged so she can live well and reclaim her life. Then come the relationships, with the goal of communicating with, motivating and guiding kids, and actually enjoying them. Third are guests who bring current adolescent research and trends. That first priority gives the show its shape. A run of recent titles, including 'Handling Big Mom Emotions', 'Maintaining Your Calm' and 'Can Moms Live Their Best Life?', keeps the focus on the parent. In one excerpt a speaker names a familiar trap: the feeling that a mom's anger is justified because of what the teen did, and the pull to meet the teen at their level. The alternative offered is mentoring, and for moms who regret what they have said, there is always a way back. The same conversation turns personal, as a speaker recalls a mother who struggled badly until the speaker was nine, then checked herself into a hospital and became the cycle breaker. Another exchange is lighter but no less pointed. It compares finding your preferences to a test where you are shown two images and must keep picking the better one, and it lands on the mom who says 'I don't mind' about dinner because she is people pleasing or simply worn out. Knowing what you want is described there as the second 'spark' in a book under discussion. Teens get equally practical attention. One speaker advises listening past a kid's words, since what comes out may be a friend's words, and a teen who does not really want to go to a party may need to be able to say 'my mom won't let me'. The same speaker's story of cheerfully agreeing to a 14-year-old's belly ring, with one catch, is a small lesson in reading what a kid actually wants. The conversations also reach younger than the title suggests. An author walks through misguided expectations that feed disappointment and then discipline, and pushes back on the naughty chair because dysregulated children are wired to seek a parent's closeness. Another parent describes an eight-year-old son who downloads his whole day at bedtime, worries included. A discussion of teens and weight covers how to talk with kids about a parent's weight loss medication or bariatric surgery, screen-free family meals and two food groups at snack time, along with a confessed fondness for salt and vinegar potato chips. The sign-offs point to O'Grady's books, Dial Down the Drama and Dial Up the Dream, and to her website. The mix is the point: tactics for handling the teen, and room for the mother's own feelings.