From Power Struggles to Partnership - A Parenting Mindset Shift

In this powerful episode of the Turning Winds Podcast, host Kevin sits down with Carl for a conversation that every parent needs to hear. Drawing from real-life experiences and therapeutic insights, they explore how to transform daily challenges—like late-night gaming and academic tension—into opportunities for growth, emotional intelligence, and connection.

Learn why failure is not just acceptable but essential for adolescent development, and how parents can balance structure with empathy. From managing power struggles to fostering self-agency, this episode is full of practical strategies for creating meaningful relationships and raising resilient teens.

If you've ever struggled with where to draw the line—or how to loosen it without losing your role—this episode will help reframe the parenting journey.

To learn more about Turning Winds, visit turningwinds.com or call 800-845-1380.

Transcript

 Parents, if you are curious to better deeply understand the dynamics between you and your child, we've got something big for you, and this is what it sounds like when you spend decades committed to that understanding. And that's part of why we emotionally respond so big to our children when they make significant mistakes.

Welcome to the Turning Winds Podcast. My name is Kevin Zundl. Turning Winds has a full continuum of care for teens who could benefit from real support clinically and academically. Today I sit down with Carl to have an important discussion where we dive into common situations. And learn ways we can turn them into opportunities of growth towards your teen's self agency.

As parents, we are human, but the best thing we can do for our kids is intentionally go into situations with a mindset of their development. Carl, let me start with a personal story. My older son is 14 and my wife goes into his room. 10 30 at night and she catches him on his computer playing something, so she lets him know to get off and go to bed.

He's like, I just started gaming. She's like, it, what do you mean? You've been home forever. You've been on screens. He's like, I was at school for seven hours. I did three hours of homework. I, I did watch some YouTube and stuff like that, apple before, but I'm just sitting here to game the first time. Power struggle as.

I was in the next room. She goes upstairs to where our bedroom is and my channeling all my good turning winds knowledge. Yeah. Again, was like, all right, I understand what he is talking about. When I come back, if I come back from an airport and it's midnight, I know I should go to bed. But when that Uber drops me off, I still have to sit on the couch for a little bit.

It's part of a mental routine that happens for me, especially with what he's challenged with. That's something for him, if he already set it up in his brain. I said, okay, takes late. What do, maybe you can play for a little. I'm like, what do you think is is a good amount? And he is like, at least 10 or 15 minutes.

I'm like, Hey, I don't like the least word. What about 10 or 15 minutes? Okay, great. I go in the next room, I'm watching the clock, watching clock. Next thing, he stops on his own. So he didn't get completely entrenched in the video game. He knew this was his moment to just show that he can do it. That he, is he better at maturity level.

That that was a, a long way of saying where do you find the failure to happen? Or do you turn it around and say, what is that learning? Teachable moment? Yeah. Yeah. That I, just considering your specific example, I think about, all right, if I, if that was my kid and I go into the room and they're playing video games and they want a minute.

A good strategy may be to do exactly what you did, which is instead of saying, no, that's not what we do. Like saying, Hey, I understand what you're bringing to the table. I you just laid out your whole day. I understand this is something that you value and appreciate. Yeah, go ahead and take 10 or 15, 10 or 15 minutes.

One of the things that I love that Dr. Klein has been saying more and more in our workshops, the parenting teams with Love and Logic Guy, he says. You gotta find reasons to say yes to your kids. It's really important and that's a perfect reason to say yes, right? It's common sense, it's logical, it makes sense, and it's just bigger than, Hey, we had a conversation this one time that you wouldn't play video games past 10 o'clock.

I get that. And then we get greater context and then we have experiences and, and that was a great opportunity to say yes. To your kid and allow them to have that and then maybe follow up communication the next day where we're not battling, we're just having conversation about it. Like, Hey, in hindsight thinking back, is there, is there a different way we could have done that yesterday?

Like could you have started at at nine 30 and for now on, are you cool with just saying, Hey, if we're not starting gaming by nine 30, that's just off the table. That feels fairly healthy and common sense to me. And in the moment when kids are trying to get that 15 minutes, they're ready to, they're ready to advocate for it, they wanna go to bed for it.

And so that's the worst time to really try to die on that hill. And so to give them that, let them have that time following up the next day and addressing it and, and aligning with the, the child to make them realize that like, man, this is. This is your world. I'm just trying to support you with what works and what doesn't work.

As I've considered what we did yesterday, I'm glad it all worked out, but that's not something that I think we should make a habit of. Can we talk about why and having some openness around that? It's interesting. I've been having conversations with my own son who's, uh, 14, going on 15. He is the, uh, local star basketball player on his team.

He's passionate. He's actually a really good basketball player. He's the go-to guy on the team and like every 14-year-old hasn't mastered emotions yet. And still it gets super competitive and still will get frustrated and angry and, and so talking to my kid about basketball, there are times that he's so invested in this thing that he loves that it's like, I love it so much, I just wanna give up.

And it's always the failure that he feels. The experience of the things that he loves that makes him wanna run away from it. And 14 year olds don't have 15-year-old, 60 hell, 18 year olds. We lack the ability to really see big picture and understand that failure isn't just not bad. It's absolutely necessary.

And sometimes what we do as parents. As we prevent our kids from failing, we intervene too frequently and we don't allow them to have their own experiences. I had this, uh, I heard this quote the other day, and it was something like, parents often feed their self-esteem by robbing their children of theirs.

I. So we get overly invested in the outcomes with our kids, and we want to dictate and direct that's directly attached to our self-worth and our self-esteem. But as we do that, we take it from our kids. And so in a very real way, they lack a sense of self because we rob them of it. And so failure is something that's super scary to people.

Throughout history, you look at every great human. The reason they got there was because of failure. My kid and I had been talking a lot about Michael Jordan because he's a big proponent of this, and my kid can really relate to that 'cause he is a basketball guy, like Michael Jordan missed more shots than he made throughout his career, and he directly attributes every one of those misses to why he was so successful.

And yeah, I think that failure is. An underrated awesomeness tool in our world, we need it. We need to fail. Failure is the data, but when we intervene, when we perceive, our kids fail and we intervene and we clean it up for them, and we just hold them accountable and we give them consequences, our ultimate goal is to have them learn.

Then it's not failure. Then it's just the process. Like Michael Jordan doesn't look back at his career in basketball with any degree of failure. And of course, why should he look at what he did? Look what he accomplished. No one ever talks about his miss shots. No one ever talks about, uh, the fact that he had 26.

Game losing shots to go right alongside his 28 game winning shots, like the, the losses are an important part of it, and Michael Jordan and anyone else who has implemented this into their lives understands that failure is crucial. The failure is what gives us the data to execute on and change. Yeah, I think it's a shift in mindset for a parent going, for someone who's got a, in someone in very early childhood, they're going, okay, we have four years now.

They're 14. Figure out you can start doing this on their own. And as you take the training wheels off and some, they sometimes fall off the bike. You can't just yell at them for that. You have to go, okay, this is absolutely natural. If they're doing it for the first time themselves, I, I might be doing it for 40 years already for them.

This is brand new. So how do you do it where they don't look back on their child, especially their teens, which they're probably gonna remember the the most and go like, all I remember my parents doing was just. Yelling at me all the time. I was trying to figure stuff out. Yeah, I didn't do it. I wasn't perfect.

So how do we, it's a tough thing because you don't know exactly where that line is and you add in your own frustrations and your own stress, anxiety, and there's always uncertainty. So for my wife, she is very closely connected to his grades, the school system. Now you can see what's going on every single day, what he's turned in, he's not turned in all that.

I'll get text messages every day. How do we work on this together to fix it? But you can do it. There's a partner, do it. Let's figure out how we're gonna do this together. Like turning, stir that the failures into learning experiences here. Yeah. We, how do we turn it into a more positive situation so that way they're more apt to do it the right way again.

And I also consider how are they going to react later on in life? Where if we respond to every situation in conflict and anger, anger, what are we teaching them? Yeah. No, I, I love that train of thought. I, I feel like with our kids, the, the, one of the greatest gifts that parents could give themselves is accept the concept that our kids don't really consider us when they make choices.

And sometimes we react to our children as though they considered us and we internalized and personalized. Like, we, we raised you better, like you knew better. I can't believe you didn't think about how this was gonna impact your family. Uh, I believe it. I've worked with kids for 22 years and very seldom do they contemplate how is this gonna to impact mom and dad when I make this choice.

They never do. And, and a lot of parents are responses and reactions to their behaviors are as if they did it on purpose that they considered us and they still did it. I think that's a flaw in the parenting process, and that's where the emotional attachment sometimes gets in the way, is that we have a, a, a flawed view that our kids are considering us and that's part of why we emotionally respond so big to our children when they make significant mistakes.

If we can train ourselves to, instead of that accepting in advance, my kids now consider me. That's not a strength of a 14, 15, 16-year-old. They're impulsive. They consider their friends, they consider their girlfriends, they consider their video games, they their pets, all of those oftentimes before they consider us as parents.

And so if we could instead employ an approach of just being curious with our kids when they make mistakes, when they struggle. I have had conversations with my kid where I've been able to ask them, did you consider how this was gonna affect. Mom and dad when you did this, and they're pretty open like, no, I don't think so.

I was like, all right. I just tend to believe that, and that's a gift for me that I tend to believe that my kids are not as savvy as I give them credit for. They're underdeveloped, they're still trying to figure things out. My kid at 15 really has two years. Practice trying to be autonomous and have a degree of independence.

Prior to that, he had none. Anyone with kids knows that like our kids are just an extension of us for a long time of their life. And then when they hit teen years and start rebelling. It's just when they've said, Hey, I'm done being an extension of you, I'm, I'm gonna be my own human at this point. And so for us as parents in, in that period of time, we need to align with our kids, get curious with them, not super judgmental towards them, not super angry, not even super punitive, but if we could develop a process where our kids become.

Comfortable being curious with us, just looking at things, understanding data. I had a situation with Mike Kiddo and his, his art teacher in school, and he just did not get along with this teacher. And I've met this teacher and this teacher is incredibly gruff and very black and white and rough around the edges.

My son likely is not the only person that struggles connecting with this teacher. And so instead of going to the school and talking to the school about this teacher, I thought it was really important to work with my son, hand in hand, align with my kid, and try to see if he and I could challenge ourselves to salvage this relationship.

And, and so now my kid goes into her class and bats his eyelashes at her and does all these sweet things. Out of great intention. It's a plan. He's trying to do it. Uh, two weeks ago I had a, a teacher conference meeting with that teacher and my son and at some point about five minutes into the conversation, I was like, whoa, this feeling risky.

If we're not careful, it's gonna start sounding like you two really like each other. And the teacher's like I do. I like your son. And my son is like, I actually like her too. And I just like my kid fixed that. It was my help. I helped him. I aligned with him. I set things up. I remember him bringing her. We went and I made him spend his money.

He brought, bought her a big bouquet of pencils as a teacher, as like a, a peace offering. And gosh, her eyes got big and her heart lit up and she was excited and that was the beginning of that relationship, completely changing. He used to get weekly refocused and that that classroom. A refocus in my class and, and, and our school district is like a detention.

That's when you're in, you're in trouble and you have to have some corrective action. He doesn't get those in her class anymore. What did I learn about that? It was not my kid, and he was not intentionally trying to be bad. He wasn't intentionally trying to get these refocus. He didn't know not how not to, he didn't have a lot of experience dealing with an an elderly lady who's angry and takes it out on kids.

I. Just likely what was going on and what feels like what's going on with this person. And yet there was far more value in me aligning with my kid, helping him get curious and helping him be courageous enough to try some different things to where now he's got uber confidence in that class. He doesn't get re uh, redirected, he doesn't get refocus, and he is got a great relationship with his teacher.

And it, and all of that was being interpreted early on as my kid was behaviorally unruly. He wouldn't follow the rules. He wouldn't listen. He was disrespectful and all of those things I couldn't really relate to with my son. I didn't quite understand what she was talking about until I met her. And then I realized this is not as simple as my kid being a good kid or a bad kid.

This is, the circumstances in his world are uniquely challenging him, and he and I. Needed to align and create a plan together to address those challenges. And then of course, I had to secure his, my end, like he has to be bought in to the idea that this is his, that he can actually address this. That is a way that I feed my kids self-confidence.

If I go in and I talk to the principal and go in and write angry emails to the teacher and the principal, I am feeding my self confidence at the expense of my kid. Taking away his opportunities to manage his life and to manage his circumstances. I'm uniquely qualified to help align with him and support him, but I should never do it for him.

And I think that's what we do as parents. Often when you look at the spectrum of, of kids with challenges, the the ones that come to Turning Winds are gonna clearly be, um, on towards one end of it than the other. I think a lot of the parents that are listening to this aren't gonna be in fairly acute situations, and there.

Maybe this comes up in the workshops with parents directly, or maybe it's just advice you can give to someone who's thinking this way. 'cause I know a lot of parents, and if all parents have felt this at one point Yeah. Where they say, you know what? But at some point they need to know I'm the parent and then And they're the kid.

How do you help them meet them where they're at in those band and get them to think a little bit differently? The reality is there's some truth to it, right? At workshops, I always, I always, uh, say this to families and I get chuckled. I, I remind families that my home is not a democracy. I, I, at what I would describe my governorship of my home would be like a benevolent dictatorship.

Like what I say goes in my house. It is, it's my home that my kids why they're lucky. Is that their king, the king of their kingdom, the most important thing to their king is the, the lives of their subjects like that as me. As a parent, I'm a benevolent dictator. I rule out of love. I make decisions on behalf of my home that my kids are not capable or to make.

And so there's always this balance between home rules and expectations within a house is not negotiable. Those are things that parents set. We create expectations within our homes that is different for the rules that should govern my child and their moral decisions and their life. We should stop at being moral authorities in the lives of our kids.

Um, we are the kings of our kingdoms, but we are genuinely just concerned of my kingdom. I'm not trying to rule this subject and force this subject to become what I want him to become in my kingdom, my job is to take care of the kingdom. And so where parents struggle is. Separating the home rules and expectations that I would have if you're my kid, Joe, or if you're my neighbor Sally.

The rules would be the same. This is how people need to live in my house, and these are the rules that I expect them to abide by. Where it gets more tricky is most parents make those decisions about their children's lives, what they do with friends, what kind of things they're allowed to do, where they're allowed to go, all of those things.

And so we end up being too overly controlling of the things that are supposed to belong to our kids. We blur the line between what's supposed to belong to us and what's supposed to belong to them. Does that make sense? It does. Yeah. And if you're just power struggling with your subject, they're gonna look at you and say, you're not even a king.

I've got control of, of, of this. That's what power struggles. By design, they create a, a delusional democracy like. Whoa. My kids, I've actually taught them that they can argue, that they can negotiate, that they can fight, and that is actually not what a benevolent dictatorship is, but like, no, I set the rules.

I am going to enforce them. I'm even gonna make life uncomfortable at times, but I'm never going to make that about me a hundred percent of the time. As your king, I promise I'm gonna make choices on your behalf. Even the uncomfortable ones that I think are gonna result in you growing, you becoming better.

This was, I think, really helpful and I hope really helpful to, to there. So thank you. Yeah, you bet. I hope this inspires you to truly consider your situation at home. And if things aren't where they need to be, you have the choice to act. Spend a moment you won't regret and pick up the phone. Call 800.845.1380.

And also consider checking out the wealth of resources available to you at Turningwinds.com