Joining Angie is guest Katie Millar-Wierig, who delves into the complex world of parenting teenagers. They touch on why parents often get overly involved in their child’s sports or extracurricular activities and how to allow teens the space to become independent decision-makers. With compelling personal stories and insightful advice, this episode is perfect for listeners navigating the challenging but rewarding path of parenthood.
Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hey there, friend. Angie Austin with the good news along with Dr. Cheryl Lentz, the academic entrepreneur. We just caught up about her summer and we know what’s going on. She wants to talk a little bit about following direction. And then I’ve got an article about popular social habits that drain the life out of our relationships. And I think you’ll be shocked at how many of these that maybe you do or, you know, people around you that do them and they’re not really uplifting habits. Welcome back, Cheryl.
SPEAKER 03 :
Very nice to be here, Angie. Thank you so much. Oh, I want to know about these things. So I will be quick because I have seen a pattern. I really see this often in summer times around Easter and around Christmas. We all get so busy, busy, busy in our work that most of the time my students in particular – are lacking the ability to slow down and read directions. I don’t care if you’re reading a contract, if you’re reading an assignment, if you’re reading directions I gave you or your boss gave you or anyone gave you. The fact that most people, it’s very disrespectful, and this is the key, and I’m sure you’re going to tell us about the social stuff you’re about to tell us about relationships. It’s not that you didn’t follow directions that’s the problem. It’s the disrespect of somebody giving you information that that you did not read, then you go back and talk to them as if your time is more important than their time because you couldn’t take the time to read an email. That’s shocking and a little disturbing.
SPEAKER 01 :
You know, speaking of not following directions, my husband’s so good at fixing things and putting things together. So we had a faucet that, well, first of all, we’re building the brick walkway and we’re quite a ways on that. He is, I should say. And he learned how to do it on YouTube and that’s going really well. Then, secondly, he’ll take something out of a box like the new faucet we bought or the ceiling fan and light for my son’s room, and he’ll start putting it together. And he knows so much that he doesn’t think he needs the directions, so they’re all miffed at me because – Apparently, the ceiling is sloped and most ceiling fans are for a straight ceiling and you have to do something to modify them in order to do like a cathedral ceiling or a slope ceiling. And so they’re irritated with me saying like, you should have gotten a fan that was for a slope ceiling. So then I Google it and they don’t really sell specific fans for slope ceiling ceilings. You get this kit. that modifies it for the cathedral or the slope ceiling. And so then I realized I really didn’t do anything wrong, that they just were, you know, putting it up and they were already like, you know, on ladders and wiring things when they realized that, oh, wait, this won’t work. So I thought to myself, maybe it was them that they didn’t follow the directions and look and see that, oh, we would have to modify this thing. I don’t know much about ceiling fans. I just bought the one that I thought would look the coolest with a light, you know.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, I get it. I have the same problem because I have three of the same fans in this house and I have three different versions, blade size and guys, I do have that cathedral ceiling and that sloped and that down pole that is needed and how they do. So I’ve gone through all of that in there and with three different handyman trying to get the wiring and stuff correct. Because it didn’t work for three years until I found the right guy who understood all of that. Oh, yes. So I am your girl with that because I can just hear me going, oh. And I’m amazed every time I look at that fan and I’m looking at it now. It’s working. And it’s worked for the last year. And it’s fabulous. Yes.
SPEAKER 01 :
You know, and my son’s room is so hot that he definitely needs a fan up there. And he has very high ceilings in his bedroom. So when he’s on the top floor, so of course, you know, heat rises. So it’s been pretty hot up there. So we figured that out. We’ve gotten a device, you know, to fix it. And then with the faucet, I had to order two faucets. Because the first one didn’t work, and then the second one didn’t work, but the compilation, combining parts from each one, it worked. And we’re talking like, this wasn’t a cheap faucet. It was like $400. So it’s like, wait, wouldn’t this high-end brand of faucet, you would think that we wouldn’t have to be… piecing together two different, you know, boxes of pieces, you know, parts to put it anyway. So I don’t know if that was a direction thing or not, but that’s done and that’s not dripping anymore. But I want to talk to you as well, besides following directions about, I love this website. It’s called Mark and Angel, and they just have a lot of common sense information and advice on life. And this is regarding, I don’t know if I’ll get through all nine, but nine popular social habits that drain the life out of our relationships. And as I Looked at them, I thought, oh my goodness, the silent treatment. Don’t worry, my mother-in-law doesn’t live anywhere near here. She lives by you in Chicago, actually. She uses the silent treatment as punishment. I call it emotional blackmail. Like, if you don’t do as she wants you to do, if you don’t behave in the way she wants you to behave, or… you know, like, it’s like a kid doesn’t want to go to the store with her or a kid didn’t, you know, want to stay overnight with her at the hotel when they were little, she’d punish them the next day. And that then that would manipulate them into, you know, behaving the way she wanted them to in order to get her love back, per se. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER 03 :
And we call that ghosting into in the text world with dating. So same kind of thing is somebody that Instead of having an adult conversation, now sometimes they’re not easy, but instead of just disappearing and giving the silent treatment because you’ll have the infamous, well, you know why I’m mad at you. It’s like, no, I don’t. Can we have an adult conversation and clear the air and move on as opposed to both sides sticking in? And doing nothing or in the texting world and dating, they just disappear and you have no idea why. Right.
SPEAKER 01 :
And that’s happened to you a couple of times and it perplexes me. So it ends up removing the person emotionally from the relationship you have with them. So it ends up just being like kind of this void, this nothingness. And then it leaves the person who’s been ghosted, as you call it, feeling pretty empty and confused. So I don’t like that one. And then this one. Seeking attention by complaining. My mom is the queen of this. And I would say like, how do you find that one little sliver of in the perfect day, like the best day ever, as they say in the Barbie movie, the best day ever. How do you find that sliver of complaint? But I think she gets attention by complaining. And I do have a couple of friends like that, that just that’s how they get attention. And it’s to me one of the worst ways to get attention.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, nobody wants to be around a whiner. And unfortunately with their family, we seem to have this preconceived notion that we’re stuck with them and we have to put up with their bad behavior. And the answer is no, we can choose not to want to be around them at all or we limit our time around there. Because when you’ve got someone that sucks the energy out of you, and like you said, they can find 99 out of 100 things are perfect. What are they complaining about the one thing? It’s like, oh, come on. You know, they just got to lighten up, Francis, is what we’re doing like this.
SPEAKER 01 :
Come on. All right, here’s another one. Using subtle, and this is, okay, we right now have three teenagers in the house, and I was watching this sketch the other day, and the woman was saying that she thinks that teenage girls become kind of hateful because they… Um, God is trying to get you to let them go that, you know, God knows that you’re going to grieve them going off to college or leaving the home. So if he can make them kind of hateful, then you, you miss them less. And that made me laugh. And she said, but I don’t blame my daughter. You know, during that phase, she had a lot on her, like, like, you know, she had to like unload the dishwasher.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, tragic. So anyway, you had to take out the garbage, too.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, I mean, that was that was part of her joke. You know that she had a lot on or should unload the dishwasher. That’s why these teens are so. So anyway, here it says frequent. OK, these hateful gestures, frequent name calling. Eye rolling, my youngest daughter gives the side eye to her dad a lot. Belittling, mockery, childish threats, rude teasing. In whatever form, gestures like these are poisonous to a relationship because they convey hate. Or I would say they would convey disdain or dislike. And it’s really difficult to resolve a relationship issue when you use those types of communication.
SPEAKER 03 :
I would agree. And matter of fact, this is the one thing that I have enjoyed about not having Zoom calls in some of my faculty meetings that we can only be there to watch because they cannot see the eye rolling in my face when something is said and I’m trying to be professional and I’m eye rolling. Even though we say nothing in the meetings, no one ever sees us and we can have those facial expressions that, oh, I’ve done that. That’s a big one for me I got to be careful about. But I will like, oh, dear God, you know.
SPEAKER 1 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 01 :
You know, I have a feeling you and I might both be multitaskers and multitasking while engaging with people is super rude and really makes them feel diminished and not important. And my son was dating this girl or hanging out with her, I guess I would say. And she was on her phone all the time. And he’s like, why can’t she put her phone down? I mean, it’s really offensive. I don’t know why. Oh, she broke up with him via text message, too. So, you know, that she was she’s very into the phone.
SPEAKER 03 :
New normal. And I think that’s the coward way of dealing with emotions, by the way. Yeah. I received a my services are no longer needed. Pink slip is what we call it via text as opposed to somebody calling me on the phone for a long term employee going. I knew the outcome. It wasn’t going to change it, but they don’t want to have that ability of having emotionally laden conversations. And having to do it face to face because the text is easier. That’s why ghosting is so easy. I don’t have to bother with you. I’m not going to get involved with having to deal with the drama. I just don’t talk to you. And then problem over. But what they don’t realize is that the problem may be over in that moment. But that problem continues because you bring yourself to all the other future relationships. So you’re going to keep pissing people off unless you change your behavior.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, and I think, too, that, right, it’s that ripple effect. You treat someone like that, and those ripples go out into the world, and they end up coming back at you. And then you also will, because of your poor communication skills, will reap the not benefit of someone treating you the same or in a poor manner because you’re not a good communicator.
SPEAKER 03 :
We bring ourselves to work, don’t we? Yeah, it’s horrible when they realize going, well, it may not have been them. It may have been you. And if you’re doing the same techniques and wondering, well, you know, people just don’t like me really well. It’s like, huh? I wonder why that is. We might want to think about this.
SPEAKER 01 :
This is this is another one, Cheryl, that I get with the teenage girls. De-emphasizing compliments, you know, if you compliment them or fishing for more. And I don’t think they’re fishing per se with self-effacing remarks. Like teenage girls have this habit of saying so they don’t seem like they’re bragging or that they’re full of themselves. So they’re like, oh, I’m not good at that or always mess up at that or, oh, I don’t like this or my hair doesn’t look good or blah, blah, blah. and i don’t think with my older daughter i don’t think she’s fishing for compliments and i’ve even told her during lessons when she’s working with a private coach on like her volleyball that she can’t be so negative and like oh i’m terrible at that or i just can’t get that i’m like if you don’t believe in yourself why would the coach believe in you and why are you being this self-effacing of these remarks that i think that these teen girls get in the habit of doing this Oh, I look terrible today or I just threw this on at the last minute or I didn’t even do my makeup or I couldn’t I didn’t have time to dry my hair. No, it doesn’t look good. And it’s like they all do it. These teenage girls. It’s kind of weird to me that they I think they’re trying to prove they’re not full of themselves or they’re not conceded by putting themselves down. But with a coach, it does not work.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, and I think that’s the hard part we need to teach them is how do you be honest when you cannot sit there and have that, oh, my gosh, I just don’t look too good, other than say, you know what, I really struggled with my hair, and just have an observational, not a judgmental comment. That’s really the distinguishing we’re trying to make. And it’s not easy, but we don’t want to come off as the, you know, the, oh, my God, kind of a, you know, braggadocious, I guess is the word.
SPEAKER 01 :
Right.
SPEAKER 03 :
We don’t have those skills.
SPEAKER 01 :
And what’s wrong with just saying thank you?
SPEAKER 03 :
Exactly. You know, it’s a friend of mine actually go through class once and she had to learn how to take compliments. And I said, How hard is that? She goes, Let me try it. I’m like, Oh, point taken.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
So it is a skill that we have to learn how to be able to do that. So I think that’s definitely something worth exploring. Again, just another skill set. Let’s read the directions. Let’s practice the skills. Let’s not keep doing the same things over and over. and expecting different results because it’s not just teenage girls we create those habits as teenagers but we maintain them as adults and that’s the sad part
SPEAKER 01 :
That’s so true. All right, two quick ones. We only have a minute left. Holding the past against someone that has been allegedly forgiven. I think that’s big as a Christian. If you’ve forgiven someone, you’ve got to let it go. And then number nine is what I was talking about, about my mother-in-law. Emotional blackmail happens when you apply an emotional penalty against someone if they don’t exactly do what you want them to do. We have to we have to stop doing that because what they’re trying to do is they’re changing someone’s behavior against their will by removing their love from that person. So not good. All right, Dr. Cheryl Lentz. She helps you write books. She is a professor. She is a musician. She is an adventurer. How do people get in touch with you, Cheryl?
SPEAKER 03 :
Dr. Cheryl Lentz at gmail.com. Dr. Cheryl Lentz dot com. Easy peasy.
SPEAKER 01 :
Excellent. And you can find me at Angie Austin dot org. And that article is from that Web site that I use a lot that I really enjoy. Mark with a C. Mark and Angel dot com. Mark and Angel dot com. But thanks so much for listening to the good news. Thanks, Cheryl.
SPEAKER 03 :
You bet. Have a good one. Enjoy the eyes of summer.
SPEAKER 05 :
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SPEAKER 02 :
Burlington is listening to the mighty 670 KLT Denver.
SPEAKER 01 :
Angie Austin here with the good news, along with our friend, author Katie Millar-Wierig. Her book, Becoming a Mean Teen Parenting Machine, a step-by-step guide to transform your relationship with your teenager. And since I’ve got three of them and she’s got plenty of kids as well, we have a lot in common. Welcome back, Katie.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, thank you. I’m so happy to be back.
SPEAKER 01 :
All right, you and I were discussing in the break just being a good example to our kids that in sports we run into some poor examples for kids, even parents who get into repeated issues where they’re repeatedly kicked out of games, et cetera, in tournaments. Even my daughter’s basketball team in particular, we see this. But you also mentioned that there is this desire, and I think this is very timely for you to say to me and hopefully some of you listening about – Holding back on that urge to get involved and try to, quote unquote, I’m using air quotes here, solve our kids’ problems, because my experience is I’ve pretty much always made it worse. The two times that I distinctly remember trying to get involved.
SPEAKER 02 :
Absolutely. And here, as we were talking, it made me think of. of why we as parents over-involve ourselves anyway. So let’s talk specifically sports. So a parent who becomes very involved in the game, becomes emotional, and then gets in the car with the child and feels the need to berate the child or say, you’ve got to do it differently, you’ve got to do this, instead of simply asking the child, did you have a good time? What were your goals? Did you achieve your goals? Not my goals as mom, but did you achieve your goals as an individual? And where this stems from is our own insecurity as parents. And I don’t think we see it as a reflection on ourselves when that’s essentially what it is. What I’ve found is that the parents who have had experiences in their life that have made them, helped them to fulfill that aspect of their life. Let’s say, so for instance, I was, as we’ve talked about in prior ones, I was Miss Utah on a top 10 contestant at Miss America. And I found that when my daughters would do things that would kind of go within that realm, I was totally laid back. And I was like, it’s fine. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. I know what can be gained from it. I want you to have your own independent experience because it really doesn’t matter to me Whether you go all the way or you go, you know, you don’t choose to do it at all. Conversely, I always wanted to be a vocalist. And and I had this desire to be a really good singer. But I found myself when my daughter was taking voice lessons and really developing this talent. I was like frantic, like you cannot quit. You cannot stop. You have to do this. And I was pushing her and I was eventually projecting my goals that were unfulfilled onto her.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, wow.
SPEAKER 02 :
That it stressed her out. So when we look at these parents who are getting involved in sports, I bet if we asked ourselves or these parents say, did you have a fulfilling sports career? And the parent might say, no, I tore my ACL, you know, and I never got to go all the way that I wanted to, or I never, my parents couldn’t afford to put me in sports or something like that. And so the parent is projecting their own personal goals onto the game and onto their child. And so if you find that you are almost frantic towards your child’s extracurriculars and their development, their grades or this or that, it’s this feeling of, I didn’t get into Harvard, but you can. You can fulfill that for both of us. And that is very unhealthy for the child because it takes away their desire and the reasons why they’re doing it. They’re now doing it for mom. They’re doing it for dad. Instead of you looking at your child and saying, what’s your goal with basketball? What’s your goal with volleyball? What’s your goal with music? And they say, I just want to have fun. And you say, that’s okay. I can support fun. If they say, I want to go to a Division I school and want to do this, you can say, I can support that too because this is independently yours to own, and it is not ours. It is yours because in the end, your child will be the only one on the court. Your child will be the only one there experiencing these things, and us as parents will be on the sideline, and we need to recognize that that is our role now, and it’s okay to step back, and it’s okay to allow them to have that experience on their terms and not our terms.
SPEAKER 01 :
Why do we get so nutty? Like, I just realized as you’re talking, my husband, who’s 6’6″, is a very good basketball player, but he was shorter and like a lot of these dads were kind of buddies when he was trying out for, I think it was like maybe the ninth, eighth or ninth grade team. He was in a private like Catholic school. Anyway, to make a long story short, they didn’t pick him that year. They picked like some of their friends or the assistant coaches, kids or this, that and the other. So then the coach sees my husband like, you know, 10th, 11th, 12th grade senior year being, you know, well over six feet and says, why aren’t you on our team? And he said, well, you cut me. And, you know. a lot of people know the story. I believe it’s Michael Jordan who was cut off his team. And, you know, obviously, you know, he’s one of the greatest ever. And I think it was Michael. And so that’s a lesson in our family that we’ve talked about over and over again about not giving up. Like my son was cut from the baseball team and he tried out again. Like we don’t let like embarrassment or humiliation or our ego get in the way of continuing to try for something. And I know the coach really admired him and it gets pretty competitive. And when you’re in a school of three thousand kids the senior year, when there’s like 10 or 12 kids on a team and they’ve got some of the like really amazing freshmen and sophomores and juniors on the team, they might only have four seniors on the team, you know. So it really starts getting more and more competitive out of a school that big. It’s like a college, you know, like a. to get onto the team. So he tried again, and I know the coach admired him for going through all the winter training and months of training, and he didn’t make it again, but he didn’t care. Then he went off for volleyball, and he played all season on JV Volleyball. So we’ve just really taught them to not give up, but I do really think that what you’re saying does really… resonate with me in that my husband says to me when I’m not as upset at a game as he gets when he grades Faith in the car on her basketball performance, and it’s like an A through a whatever. And to get an A from him is very difficult. You have to have a really amazing game. So she gets a lot of B pluses and A minuses, and she’s completely irritated. And so he says to me when I’m like, why can’t we just cheer him on? Why can’t we just encourage him? Why can’t we just clap? you know and say wow you really put some effort in there and if you do want to criticize like her defense can you give her like five or six compliments on what she did do right before you give her that you know knife in the back about the defense or whatever it is you want to tell her about her shooting or whatever but he’s like well she already knows what she did right i just need to tell her what we should do wrong i’m like no that’s not the case because that’s really detrimental to her self-esteem which she said these parents that have been yelling things from the sidelines about who she should pass to and this, that, and the other, that that’s affecting her right now. She’s like, I just got my confidence back, Mom. And then these parents are yelling things at me. And I’m like, they’re irrelevant to your game, these parents that don’t, half of them have never even played, you know, that think that they’re experts from the sidelines. But, My husband then said to me, you’re not invested like I am. I’m the one that takes them to the gym. I’m the one that lifts with them. I’m the one that does the cardio and the stair stepper with them. And I’m the one that gets up at 6 a.m. and goes to the basketball court every weekend so we can get in before the crowd so that She can do, you know, 200 three pointer shots or whatever every Saturday and every Sunday. And I’m the one helping out with coaching. So you’re not invested like I am. And that’s why I’m more critical than you are. And I’m thinking he’s invested in yet another way that you just mentioned that he stopped playing when he probably could have gotten a college scholarship. He’s very athletic.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, and what we feel, and it’s hard because, you know, today we’re talking mostly about like the parents, not necessarily what we’re doing for our kids, but having to take a look in the mirror and saying, ooh, am I maybe handling this a little unhealthily? All of these things that we’re doing are coming from a place of love. And it’s coming from us wanting to protect our children from something that we might have experienced that we haven’t fully healed from. And so what we need to ask ourselves is, is there something that I haven’t come to grips with? So maybe we had a self-esteem issue with sports and rather than heal from that and look back and say, wow, look how good it made me for this and this and this and see the good in it. We still feel like we need to write that wrong. And so we’re writing it through our children. But in the process of doing that, sometimes we continue to create the problem. So with these like sports per se, We need to make sure that we look at it as what is the growth that’s happening for my child? Not necessarily the result, but what’s the growth and what do they need out of this? And often it is. us hindering that growth because we are trying to overprotect them from having these important life experiences that are going to make them better. I mean, could you imagine if, I mean, we have this wonderful story about Michael Jordan getting up and doing that again, but if his dad went in and, you know, offered some money or offered some stuff or did some things to get him back on the team or do whatever he needs to do, does Michael Jordan have that confidence that said, I earned this. I am here. I can do this on my own merit. Or is it, Daddy rescued me, and I still don’t know if I deserve to be here. And so when we allow our kids, and that’s one of the worries about parents even yelling on the sidelines, that takes away the confidence of the kid when they had a good decision that they made or a good play. The parent might say, see, I told you so. Do it my way. And in saying that, just to absolve ourselves, it also makes the child feel like I’m not capable of making these decisions. It still hurts their confidence in their own self. And they believe that, well, I’m only good because someone else has told me how to be good instead of feeling like I’ve earned this position. I am good. I can trust my intuition on the court. I can trust my intuition in school and in life because I’ve made these decisions. I’ve seen the consequences and this is what I want. And so especially as we talk about teenagers, it’s just so important that we recognize that this is the goal of the teenage years. And as a parent, what we want is our child to be well-adjusted. We want them to have confidence. We want them to go into their adult life feeling like a million bucks. But often we undermine that without realizing we’re doing it by becoming too involved in their success and their failures and wanting to fix every failure and wanting to take credit for every success. And in so doing, we take away that confidence in themselves that they are able to achieve their goals, and that’s an important word, their goals on their terms. And we are essentially there for support, cheerleading, funding if needed, and, you know, driving and all these things. But in the end, it is their goal and their life, and they get to dictate how that works. I mean, not as a 13-year-old, but that’s the goal is to get them to that point where they can be independent.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, and I think that we also were talking about parents’ interference in their issues and that part of what’s going on right now, the way you explained it to me, is that they’re not trying to be disrespectful. They’re trying to become independent because within the next few years, they will need to be. And so we need to allow them to solve their issues. And I did have a mom that wanted to get in the middle of an issue. And she got really upset with me because I said, you know, I’ve tried this in the past and it didn’t work. I know the girls will work it out. So then she and I became not friends. And guess what? The girls worked it out and they’re like really good friends. So then I’m, of course, running into the mom all over the place. And so I just had to do the olive branch because I thought, well, she must feel so uncomfortable because… She was upset that I didn’t want to get in the middle of all of this. And she thought I wasn’t being like helpful when really I knew they’d make up. They liked too many of the same things and have known each other way too long and are both so good at what they do that I knew they’d be friends again. And now they’re really good friends. So when I bumped into the mom, I thought… Well, I have to figure out how to make this right because she obviously feels extremely uncomfortable around me. She wouldn’t even look at me. And I always really liked her. So I thought, well, I got to fix this because these kids have four more years of school together and playing on teams together. So I did and we’re fine again. But I just it’s such a slippery slope. I know she meant well, but I have not had success in that arena. And my both of our kids are extremely smart, too. They’re like honor students. So I thought they could do a better job of fixing it than we could.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, and if the goal as a parent is to build confidence and independence in your teenager, then we have to allow them the space to be able to do that. And the confidence that your daughter built in repairing a relationship knows that when something else happens like that in the future, she has the skills and the confidence to know, I can manage this and I can navigate it. And one of the best things I’ve heard of parenting, I’ll have to bring up the person who said, I can’t remember, but he said, we want our children to actually want us and not need us. You don’t want your 30-year-old kid to need you. You want them to want to talk to you because they enjoy talking to mom because they need this, not because they need you and they can’t function without you. And if we’ve created a dependency on ourselves where our children need us for the rest of their lives, then we haven’t done our job.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, you’re right. That is such great advice. Katie, give us your website.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, it is. You can see me at Instagram at The Balanced Mind Project or visit us at anxietyhealingprogram.com.
SPEAKER 01 :
Always the best advice, my friend. Thank you. God bless.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you. See you guys soon.
SPEAKER 04 :
Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.
Joining Angie is guest Katie Millar-Wierig, who delves into the complex world of parenting teenagers. They touch on why parents often get overly involved in their child’s sports or extracurricular activities and how to allow teens the space to become independent decision-makers. With compelling personal stories and insightful advice, this episode is perfect for listeners navigating the challenging but rewarding path of parenthood.
