Gary Direnfeld

My wife's thing is if I get a donut and I don't bring one home for her, she refers to that as cheating on her.

Oh my goodness.

And I have spoken about this at literally hundreds of workshops and with hundreds if not thousands of parents along the way.

It is a tough transition for a son, particularly if the teen is somewhat out of control.

So the parent's usual thing is to move in with more control.

The reason that it doesn't work for two reasons.

Number one is the frontal lobes of those teens, they're not matured yet.

And so they don't have good judgment.

They're not going to listen to the guidance of the parent because of that.

The other process that's going on we call individuation separation.

The teen is growing up and they want to separate themselves from the parent.

It's a natural human development, stage of development.

So if the parent is trying to put the squeeze, more control, you're out of control, I will put on more control, parents in this situation have learned it leads to an escalation

Not a resolution.

So I'm forever trying to help parents make that transition from going from boss to consultant.

A consultant, by definition, is someone who provides their guidance, which may or may not be used.

That is hard for parents.

Sometimes the outcomes when the child doesn't heed the guidance of the parent is disastrous.

However, the kid isn't going to listen anyways.

And so if there is a disaster, rather than the I told you so response,