@drwilloughjenkins: These are the four patterns I see most often in my office. None of them come from bad parents. All of them can quietly close the door on a teen. One. Using anything they share as a teaching moment. When your teen tells you something small, almost every parent feels the urge to add a lesson, a warning, or a reminder. Teens experience that as a tax on their honesty. Over time they stop paying it. Two. Leading with your own stress. You are stressing me out feels like an honest reaction to the parent saying it. To the teen it lands as a signal that their problems are too much for you to hold. They start filtering what they share to protect you from that reaction. The things that actually need to be said stop coming out. Three. Solving instead of listening. When your teen vents about a friend, a teacher, or a grade, the instinct is to jump to solutions. What most teens need first is to feel heard. If you skip that step, they stop coming to you with the small stuff, which means they will not come to you with the big stuff either. Four. Bringing up old mistakes. Your teen does something wrong, owns it, moves through it, and starts to grow. Then it comes back up in the next argument, or at dinner, or in a worried text. To you it is context. To them it is evidence that growth does not count and that nothing ever fully gets to be over. Teens who feel that way stop trying to do better. There is no point if the record never clears. The fix is not complicated. It is just disciplined. When your teen shares, listen fully. Ask one curious question. Say thank you for telling me. Let it go. Do not circle back unless they bring it up. Teens do not need perfect parents. They need parents who make sharing feel safe. These four shifts change more than almost anything else I recommend. Follow for more from a child psychiatrist who has watched these small moves rebuild entire relationships.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ #ParentingTips #ParentingSupport #parenting #parentinghacks #parentingteens

Dr Willough Psychiatrist

Open In TikTok:

Region: CA

Saturday 27 June 2026 03:14:39 GMT