~122~Tips for Calm Teen Parenting: Turn Triggers into Growth and Choose Peace

In today’s solo‑ramp‑up, Cheryl peels back the curtain on the raw, real‑life struggles every parent of a teen knows too well—eye rolls, slammed doors, endless “why‑do‑you‑even‑listen?” moments, and the guilt that follows. She blends practical parenting tactics with a fresh, spiritual‑leaning perspective, showing how our own childhood triggers can hijack today’s interactions.

🔑 Key Takeaways

1. Triggers Are Gifts – Learn to pause, breathe, and ask “Why does this fire me up?” to turn a reaction into insight.
2. Heal the Inner Child – Discover how unresolved pain (e.g., never feeling heard) shows up in teen‑parent conflicts.
3. Choose, Don’t React – Simple daily habits (hourly alarms, “speak‑into‑existence” rituals) that re‑wire your response pattern.
4. Set Clear Values – Why consistency, not comparison, creates the safe, compassionate environment teens need.
5. Cleansing Within 40‑Day Program – A bite‑size, daily blend of video lessons, yoga, meditation, and expert wisdom to release what no longer serves you—perfect timing as the leaves fall.

Whether you’re battling screen‑time wars, secret‑keeping, or just the daily grind of teen life, this episode offers a gentle roadmap to more peace, presence, and power in your parenting journey.

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Speaker 1
00:02 - 00:45
Welcome to another episode of Parenting Teens Advice Redefined for Today's World. I am your host Cheryl Pinkhurst and I'm coming at you solo today. I'm coming at you solo because I've had so many interviews in a row and I feel like I get all these little Nuggets from the interviews and there's times. I just want to kind of put it all together and So this is the podcast where we are real and raw and honest including my conversations with you and conversations I have with my expert guests and There's so many conversations that we have where the expert guests are

Speaker 1
00:45 - 01:27
phenomenal and they have a focus and And a lot of it is like amazing, incredible strategies that we give to our teenagers when they are struggling with eating disorders or screen time or sex or drugs, addictions, vaping, all of those things. And so we get these incredible strategies from experts that help us to deal and support with these issues. But sometimes I've been doing a lot of spiritual work here, a lot of spiritual work. And I am by no means a religious person.

Speaker 1
01:29 - 01:49
I have no real connection with organized religion. There's beautiful things to all of it, but there are some things that just don't resonate with me. And yet this term spirituality does resonate with me. You know, I just want to run this by you.

Speaker 1
01:50 - 02:01
And you know, I tell you, bear with me. A year ago, I would be hearing this from somebody and go, ah, you're a little bit Looney Tunes. Be patient with me for a minute. I want to know how this makes you feel.

Speaker 1
02:03 - 02:20
You know, when we're parenting teens, It can be very, very hard. And the reason I have these conversations is not because I sailed through it. I certainly did not. But it's also hindsight is 20, 20.

Speaker 1
02:22 - 03:12
And there's a lot of things I would do very, very differently if I could go back, but I can't go back. but hopefully I can at least have you think in a different way that might make things feel better, might make things feel manageable and might hopefully allow you to feel like all the power to have the relationships you want with your teen is within you no matter what their reaction is. And what makes me say this is, you know, I would think when my kids were teens, and maybe you can relate to this, but it's almost like trigger after trigger after trigger, they roll their eyes or they throw the clothes on the floor, they don't respect you, or

Speaker 1
03:12 - 03:45
they ask, they ask, they ask, but then they don't do anything in return. And you can find yourself, maybe you're okay in the morning, but by the end of the day, trigger after trigger, after trigger, and you find yourself yelling and slamming doors and grounding them for months at a time, no food, no water, go to your room, no screen, all of these things. And then And then mom Gil, and I'm speaking from a mom's perspective, so I'm sure dads do this too, but from a mom's perspective, you have a whole day like this.

Speaker 1
03:47 - 04:00
And you feel the rage. You feel yourself yelling. And I always have this little voice in the back of my head saying, would you shut the frick up? Like stop yelling.

Speaker 1
04:00 - 04:31
And yet I just kept on yelling. Or I would just get quiet and just not engage at all, which is just as bad. And that's not the relationship that I wanted with my kids. And so of course you go to bed and I would just lay in bed beating myself up for every reaction I had that day and thinking, well, okay, did I really need to freak out about the socks?

Speaker 1
04:32 - 04:52
When should I leave that freak out for the car accident? Should I leave that freak out for sneaking out of the house instead of you left a dish in the sink and I need to pick my battles? And the mom guilt would just keep me awake at night. And then I would lay there and say, okay, okay, you're gonna do better.

Speaker 1
04:52 - 05:01
You're gonna make different decisions in the morning. You're gonna choose your battles. You got this. You can be the mom you wanna be.

Speaker 1
05:02 - 05:17
and then the very first eye roll or the very first door slam and that's it. I'm triggered for the day. And then I wait for it. Like I almost look for what's going to happen next, that kind of mindset.

Speaker 1
05:18 - 05:40
So I'm inviting you to think about a few things. You know, they always say that the universe, whatever you want to call it, brings you the relationships. And right now I'm talking about friendships or even intimate relationships. They bring you the relationships, not that you want, but the relationships that you need.

Speaker 1
05:42 - 06:40
In other words, they bring you who you need in order to learn something and then up-level yourself, evolve from there. And if you don't learn, You figure that out real quick with the second relationship or friendship and the third and the fourth that all seem to end or even go through the exact same issues. And until we sit down, and I'm here, that's me, until we sit down and figure out what it is that we're not learning from this, it is going to keep coming back and coming back and coming back. And so, personally, I've gone through, hopefully, the last lesson, and really did a ton, a ton of work on myself to figure out what that lesson was.

Speaker 1
06:41 - 06:54
And I think I've made that breakthrough. So would you call it a breakthrough, but a discovery that, okay, okay, I got, I got it. I don't need another lesson. I pass A plus move on.

Speaker 1
06:55 - 07:42
So if that happens with our relationships and with our friendships, Could we be curious about the kids we get? Could it be that the universe, upper, higher power, whatever you wanna call it, gives us the kids that we need to evolve because there's something we haven't healed or looked at or resolved from our childhood? So for example, if you have a kid who is constantly disrespecting you, doesn't listen to a thing you say, pick that up, no. Go over here, no.

Speaker 1
07:42 - 08:13
Do your homework, no. And you instantly get triggered, that trigger means that you are feeling as a human being, not just as a parent, as a human, you're feeling unseen and unheard and unworthy, unimportant. And so this is triggering you because now here it is all back again. So just using that example, can you go back to any point in time?

Speaker 1
08:14 - 08:28
And this is never a slam on any parent, any grandparent. It's never. We do the best we can with what we have. But if we don't look deep into, why am I getting triggered by this?

Speaker 1
08:28 - 08:45
Is it really that important? Is it because you didn't have a voice at home? Is it because you had 12 brothers and sisters and didn't have anything important to say that anybody wanted to hear? And grew up feeling like, I don't have a voice.

Speaker 1
08:45 - 08:52
Nobody cares what I have to say. It's not important. I don't matter. And then you become a parent.

Speaker 1
08:53 - 09:03
And as a parent, OK, I'm the ruler. I'm the mom. I'm in control. And people need to listen to me.

Speaker 1
09:03 - 09:13
What I say rules here. And then you have a kid who looks you in the eye and says, no, I don't think so. That's so lame. I'm not doing that.

Speaker 1
09:14 - 09:44
And I know not all kids talk like that, but I do when I'm making fun of them. Now you're thinking, what the heck? How do I lose control here? Now, how triggering would that be if you've spent 30 years of your life feeling like you have never been heard, you're not important, you are not worthy of any kind of conversation, and now you've got this kid who you're supposed to be able to control, using the word

Speaker 1
09:45 - 10:16
very loosely, Now triggering you, now making you feel like you were in your family when you were eight, 10, 12, and you didn't have a voice, you didn't have a say, nothing you wanted to engage in mattered. Doesn't it make sense that our kids are triggering us that way? Or you have a kid who lies to you. This would trigger you being betrayed in some way, shape, or form when you were younger.

Speaker 1
10:17 - 10:37
Maybe even in a teenage year, you had a boyfriend who cheated on you, or one of your parents just up and disappeared and never came back, and you felt completely betrayed. And you thought they were coming back. They said they were coming back, but they didn't come back. That's a huge betrayal.

Speaker 1
10:38 - 11:11
Now you're the parent in control, got these little kids running around and one of them is lying to you, sneaking out of the house, having underage sex and lying about it, lying about boyfriends, lying about girlfriends, whatever. And now you are instantly triggered when you know they're lying. And you might even be looking for the lies because you're so used to it. You're so trained for it without even knowing, like subconsciously you're trained to be lied to.

Speaker 1
11:14 - 11:42
So when your kid lies to you and you instantly feel your body just tense up, you get resistance and the yelling comes, the slamming comes, the grounding comes, you have a complete full body reaction to it. I invite you to think about when you are triggered by your kids. Can you say to yourself, pause. OK.

Speaker 1
11:43 - 11:50
I take this from David Guillaume. Pause. This is a gift. Don't feel like a gift.

Speaker 1
11:50 - 12:00
Definitely not one that you were hoping to get for Christmas. But this is the gift. This is the gift of thinking. Why is this triggering me?

Speaker 1
12:02 - 12:13
What the heck is it about what's happening here that's triggering me? Okay, what can I learn from this? What's it doing for me instead of to me? What's it doing for me?

Speaker 1
12:13 - 12:33
What am I gonna learn about this? And then, okay, take your pause, take your breath. And then back off. And can you go back to your own childhood, teenage years, whatever it is, and think, hmm, they're lying to me, who lied to me?

Speaker 1
12:33 - 13:14
Who lied to me so badly that I am not able to cut that cord or sever that feeling? And do that work. You know, and there's so many different triggers that, you know, indicate something else that's happened in your childhood or in your teenage years, but I invite you to really think about that instant body resistance, when we have those feelings, like anger, resistance, disempowered, it means your body's seeing something's wrong, not wrong with the kid, but wrong with what's happening with you.

Speaker 1
13:15 - 13:37
If you stop and say, okay, pause, somehow this is a gift, that instantly changes your brain, that instantly makes you feel like, Okay, I can take a breath. I have control over this. If we go with what I've been saying probably since I started the podcast, it's not them, it's you. But that's where the magic happens.

Speaker 1
13:38 - 14:05
That's where we have full control on doing our own work. We have the opportunity, we have the choice every night, every morning, every interaction to choose again. Choose again how you respond as opposed to react. Choose again what it is that's triggering you.

Speaker 1
14:05 - 14:14
Can you choose? Can you look back and choose? Oh, you know what? I was never allowed to speak out.

Speaker 1
14:14 - 14:24
And nobody wanted to hear what I had to say. And I shut down pretty quickly. And that's the way it stayed. Like those things, can really have an impact.

Speaker 1
14:24 - 14:53
And it doesn't take that long to do the work and cut those cords. But we also always have a choice. So when we go to bed at night and we're beating ourselves up, we have the opportunity to get up in the morning and choose again. And if we react, because we're not perfect, if we react, we have the opportunity to stop I'm sorry I reacted like that.

Speaker 1
14:54 - 15:16
That didn't warrant my reaction. Let me just take a breather and come back to you. First of all, it gives you space, but you also hold space for the people in your house. And we are inadvertently giving them the opportunity to learn that they can ask for space.

Speaker 1
15:17 - 15:49
which is so valuable for our kids. Giving space, holding boundaries is so valuable. Oh, can you get up in the morning and start your day with, okay, I'm gonna choose differently today. set an alarm on your phone every hour if you find this is hard to keep remembering and not being triggered and reactive every hour okay just for nothing go back close my eyes take a breath keep choosing differently keep choosing differently It sounds like a lot of work.

Speaker 1
15:49 - 15:59
It sounds like almost impossible. But when you do it enough times, it becomes a habit. You really quickly start checking yourself. Oh, oh, I felt that.

Speaker 1
15:59 - 16:07
Okay. Okay. I need to walk away for a second. Instead of having the big blowout and having to apologize, but you can choose differently.

Speaker 1
16:09 - 16:35
When you get up in the morning, before you even get out of bed, can you say, Okay, what would I love in this house today? What would I love to happen with the relationship with my kid today? Speaking into existence, I would love for us to have a quiet breakfast. Maybe we get up a little bit earlier.

Speaker 1
16:36 - 16:55
Maybe they like what I made them for lunch. Maybe speak all of this into existence instead of getting up in the morning and knowing you are gonna white knuckle your day, the whole day, waiting for something to happen because it always does. You always do that. You always say that.

Speaker 1
16:55 - 17:05
You always roll your eyes. If we speak into existence, this is what I would love. This is what I would love. And who do I want to be?

Speaker 1
17:06 - 17:20
as a parent, who do you want to be? And if you can't be that person laying in bed, can you transform? Okay, this is what that person would say. The mom I want to be would say this.

Speaker 1
17:20 - 17:32
The mom I want to be would do this. The mom I want to be would have this. and you can almost fake it till you make it. You know, this is who I choose to be.

Speaker 1
17:32 - 18:10
And if you're not being, then you can stop and choose again. So this is, if you wanna hear more about this stuff, I'm so happy to talk about it because it makes, when you think about it, doesn't it make you feel a little bit of ease, a little bit of peace? I find that When we're in the middle of something or we talk about something or somebody reacts to us and we instantly feel crappy, it means it's not right for you. How does that feel?

Speaker 1
18:10 - 18:35
If somebody says something and it brings you some joy and some ease and some peace and, oh, you feel like you can breathe, that means it's right. How does that feel? I think that feels amazing. And I feel like, okay, so I don't need nothing wrong with therapy, but I don't need a therapist to tell me what makes me feel good in my body and what doesn't make me feel good in my body.

Speaker 1
18:36 - 19:29
So that is our solo today. Now, I also want to talk to you about if you are feeling like you are carrying way too much on your plate or in your belly or on your mind. I am collaborating with some wonderful experts in a program called Cleansing Within I'm going to put the link in the show notes but it is a 40-day program starting at the end of September. It is a release and renewal and balance and it's in bite-sized very manageable program on a daily basis with just very short videos and some yoga movement, some meditation, some wisdom from some experts to help you just release what no longer serves you very timely for the fall

Speaker 1
19:29 - 19:46
as the trees are releasing their leaves in order to have some regrowth. And I would invite you to participate in this. I will leave a link in the show notes. If you need some more information, have some questions, you know where to find me on social media, DM me, email me.

Speaker 1
19:47 - 20:48
You'll find everything on my website, which is also in the show notes. And I just invite you to, I don't know, maybe shift things a little. Because when we shift things and we feel steady in ourselves, When we feel like we are parenting, not in comparison to the kid down the street or your best friend's mom, what they would do about screen time or sex or yelling or dirty dishes. When we can really check in with ourselves and parent how we truly want to parent our values, our morals, what we stand firm in, then when we have these conversations with our kids who don't always agree with our morals and values, but if we are steadfast in that,

Speaker 1
20:48 - 21:27
then it's so much easier to say no. that's not how this family works, or no, I don't feel like that is a good choice for me to make for you, or no, it doesn't feel aligned with how this family works. You can be steadfast, but if we're flip-flopping around and we're getting advice from other people that I don't know if this feels good, but they're doing it, and they say that works, and my mom said it worked 30 years ago, look at me now, then when our kids come up against us, we don't have a leg to stand on because we're like flip-flopping.

Speaker 1
21:27 - 21:38
Well, not really what I thought, but okay, she said that. And kids sense it. They sense when you are all over the place. They sense when you are not standing firm in your values.

Speaker 1
21:39 - 22:08
Don't have to have kids who like you. I'm sure you have enough friends. You just want to raise compassionate, kids who have empathy and who grow up to be these amazing human beings and it's possible. And it's possible to have that window of teenage years in between to go a little more smooth and give you a little more joy and a little more ease and just choose.

Speaker 1
22:09 - 22:25
You have the opportunity to choose and choose again. And every morning, who do I want to be? What would I love today to look like? Thank you for listening to your rant, your solo rant from me, your host, Cheryl Pankhurst.

Speaker 1
22:25 - 22:30
So grateful you're here and have a beautiful, beautiful day. We'll see you next time.