122. Your Kid Shouldn’t Take Your Advice: Here’s Why - With Ciara Fanlo

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

It’s SO frustrating when your kid doesn’t take your advice, isn’t it?! As parents, we have more life experience and we can share our advice with our kids to give them an easier and smoother life experience, at least that’s how it feels to us, right?
That’s not how it works though. Together with Ciara Fanlo (a former “troubled teen” turned mentor for adolescents and their families), I explore why teens often don’t take advice, how to shift from frustration to understanding, and how to support teens as they build their library of life experiences.
Because here’s the thing: while as parents have decades of life experience, our teens are still gathering theirs. “There’s no substitute for life experience” Ciara explains. You want to save them from heartache and disappointment because you know how hard it is. But the problem is, that doesn’t actually teach them anything. Hardly anyone, whether kids, teens, or adults, learns from hearing. We learn by experiencing.

So even when your teen intellectually understands your advice, they don’t have their own memory bank yet of setbacks, disappointments, and triumphs, that they can connect it to to really integrate the lesson.

So what does that mean? In short, it means that we should let our kids make their own mistakes, no matter how difficult that may be. Let them build their own library of experiences.

“Parenting is not about saving your child from experience; it’s about helping them find themselves through the experience.” - Beth Hillman

So how can you best support your teen in doing this? Let’s discuss it in today’s episode.
In this episode on why your kid shouldn’t take your advice, we discuss:

• Why teens don’t always listen to advice, and why they shouldn’t;
• Understanding the gap between a parent’s lived experience and a teen’s need to build their own;
• How heartbreak, disappointment, and mistakes serve as the real teachers for teens;
• How parents can best support, encourage, and influence their teen (without enabling) to learn through their experience;
• Dealing with frustration, fear, and the urge to protect as a parent while allowing your kid space for growth;
• And more!

Looking for support?
🗺️Need help setting healthy boundaries with your teen AND following through? My free guide will help you do so by creating your own Parent Home Plan!
🤍Influence lasting change in yourself and your struggling teen with my private coaching or parent group program specifically created for parents of struggling teens.

Have a question or need support? You can email me at [e-mail]

More about Ciara Fanlo
Ciara Fanlo is a former “troubled teen” who now supports struggling adolescents and their families. After recovering from her own challenging years, she founded Homing Instinct to share what she learned from her experiences. Ciara now provides personalized mentorship and coaching for teens as they navigate the transformative and tumultuous journey of becoming a young adult in today’s world.
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