Reflection Summary
Dr. Cameron Caswell
Dr. Caswell argues that every difficult moment with a teen carries a real choice between reacting with blame or responding with curiosity.
Dr. Caswell argues that expecting conflict can lead parents to notice the eye-rolls and snark that confirm their expectations while overlooking quieter signs of hurt, effort, or a desire for approval.
Dr. Caswell says many of the teens she works with can list things they dislike about themselves but struggle to name one thing they like, and she reports that they often trace this back to what parents repeat to them.
Behavior that looks like laziness or defiance may have something different underneath it, which is why Dr. Caswell encourages parents to question their first assumption.
Dr. Caswell argues that threatening consequences or taking things away can miss the underlying problem, while understanding what’s getting in the teen’s way can reveal a more useful strategy.
In one client example, breaking a hard task into small, manageable steps worked where nagging and taking things away hadn’t.
Dr. Caswell opens with a moment many parents will recognize, an email from a teacher about a missed assignment, and the surge of anger that followed, aimed at both the teacher and her daughter. She was ready to confront her daughter harshly, until she noticed tears welling up and remembered exactly how that kind of confrontation felt at that age herself. She took a breath and asked how can I help instead, turning what could have become a painful clash into a genuine moment of connection. Her core argument is that this choice, react with blame or respond with curiosity, exists in every difficult moment between a parent and teen, whether or not it feels that way in the moment.
She names the first obstacle as belief itself, the widespread assumption that the teen years are simply a hard, conflict-heavy period to survive. Using a quick attention demonstration, noticing red items in a room versus recalling yellow ones, she illustrates how what we expect can shape what we notice. She argues that expecting conflict can lead a parent to notice eye-rolls and snark while missing quieter signs like a flicker of hurt or a glance for approval. She adds a sobering observation from her work with teenagers directly, many can list several things they dislike about themselves but struggle to name even one thing they like, and she says they often trace that belief back to what parents repeat to them.
The second obstacle is assumption, illustrated through a client couple whose son’s heavy video game use they read as avoidance, defiance, or simple laziness. Once they actually listened rather than assumed, they learned their son was dealing with real depression, and gaming with friends was the one part of his day he genuinely looked forward to. Dr. Caswell draws a direct line back to her own daughter’s missed assignment, which turned out not to be laziness at all, but a tech support problem she hadn’t known how to solve on her own.
The third obstacle is approach, shown through another client whose daughter’s persistently messy room led to a familiar cycle of nagging and taking things away. Dr. Caswell argues that punitive approaches do more harm than good, and contrasts threats or taking things away with helping a teenager find a workable strategy. Once the parent learned her daughter felt overwhelmed rather than lazy, breaking the task down into one small step at a time, starting with just picking dirty clothes off the floor, actually worked. Dr. Caswell closes by returning to her own central idea: parents cannot control a teenager directly, but they can always choose how they show up, through belief, curiosity, and a workable strategy instead of blame and control.
Next time you’re frustrated with your teen, pause and ask this question instead of reacting right away.
Notice one small positive thing your teen did today, and say it out loud to them.
Before assuming your teen is being lazy or defiant, ask yourself what else could explain their behavior.
If a task feels overwhelming for your teen, help them identify just one small, doable first step.
Sometimes the story we tell ourselves about a teenager begins before they’ve said a word. We may see a missed assignment and hear “lazy,” notice a tone and hear “disrespectful,” or encounter resistance and feel that we’ve somehow failed as a parent.
Dr. Caswell’s opening story offers another possibility: notice what the moment is stirring in us before deciding what it means about our child. That pause doesn’t require abandoning expectations or boundaries. It simply gives us a chance to respond to the child in front of us rather than only to our fear, frustration, or assumptions.
There are no right or wrong answers here, just space to think about your own family.
What belief do you currently hold about the teen years, and how might that belief be shaping what you notice?
Can you think of a recent moment you assumed the worst about your teen’s motives? What else might explain it?
What’s your go-to response when your teen doesn’t do what you ask, threat, consequence, or curiosity?
What would change if you focused more on catching your teen doing something right?
Every family is different. If you’ve tried something that made a difference in your family, we’d love to hear about it.
More reflections that may help you think about this from another angle.
