Hi I'm Darlene! 

I’m excited that we’re crossing paths because my goal is to share with you skills and tools to help you create the home you want. And to quickly switch things around. 

Bless your heart. You are a concerned parent. That is beautiful. There’s so much pain when our family doesn’t turn out exactly like we thought it would.

You are so full of love and give service to your children so much that you may feel trapped, helpless and confused.

So I think I can help you best by letting you know. I have expertise in my academic journey of adolescent development and family systems, I have also worked in secure facilities and worked with parents and teens for 20 years.

In addition and most importantly I have five grown children now, and I had four step kids as they were growing up. If you do the math that’s an amazing nine kids. One was a five-year-old and the rest were teenagers. That’s eight teenagers at one time!!! It’s hard for anyone to have an experience in their family that I haven’t had myself through my family or my work experience

You may ask “why is my teenage son so angry, or say, my teenage daughter is so defiant. I have so many teen issues and they are so disrespectful. It’s difficult disciplining a defiant teen.” On and on.  In this post I’d like to make three points.

1. Let’s start with wondering what authority is and talk about understanding teenagers and understanding parents. 

Do you have the same authority with your child when they’re 1 years old verses two years old versus 10 versus 15 versus 20 versus 35 years old? Let’s talk about that. Also I love the metaphor of making bread. Teenagers are like bread. We take our flour and eggs and we mix all the ingredients to make a beautiful loaf and put it in the oven. But what does the uneducated person do now?

He keeps checking on the bread every five minutes. And gets all concerned when after 10 minutes the bread looks all lumpy and one side is bigger than the other. The more we open the oven the less the bread turns out the way it's supposed to be. Please humor me when I tell you that one of the most important things to do with bread and teenagers is “get out of their way“.  I talk about the difference between kids and teens and how to treat them differently.

2.Normal versus abnormally behavior: 

NORMAL behavior is lazy, sleeps all day if they can get away with it, don’t take responsibility for actions not helpful around the house, etc. etc. Yep defiant and angry. That’s normal. Is your teenager normal?  

An ABNORMAL child is helpful, a team player, wants to go to school and get themselves up, wants to go to church, consistently helps around the house, and asks mom and dad how they can help and tells them how much they love them.

At this point we may want to say LOL.  But this is all true based on research and data.      

Now what is a NORMAL PARENT? A normal parent is codependent, controlling, hovering, showbiz parent, overprotective, doesn’t trust their teenager, thinks they are just so very smart, knows everything, has low self-esteem, and doesn’t trust the process of the journey of their child.  

Now let’s talk about ABNORMAL PARENTS: they have  high self-esteem, realizes they are not their kids, knows their kids have their own personality and mind, understands their kid can barely be shaped, understands about journey and has faith in this process. 

3.HIGH RISK versus LOW RISK behavior. 

LOW risk behavior is just to watch and keep an eye on and interject only when necessary. For example low risk is being rude to authority every once a while, disrespectful, mildly disobedient and defiant, running away once, hanging around the wrong crowd just for a while, lying on small things every once in a while, low self-esteem here and there, a little bit of anger, stealing once, Outbursts sometimes, blaming toying with the idea of drugs, pushing the envelope with mild sexual behavior, masturbation, not wanting to be with family, saying that mom and dad never did anything for them.

Now HIGH-risk requires immediate forced action. Such as severe diagnosed eating disorders or mental disorders, drug abuse with mild or hard drugs-not use but abuse! There’s a difference. Activities that include anything illegal immoral or unethical and is more than a one time episode statutory rape, anything they could go to jail for. 

So our goal is to create an abnormal teen, abnormal parenting, and a beautiful abnormal family, to live out your goals of having the family and home you always wanted.

This is just a beginning, there’s so much more that I’d like to share about verbiage, rules, boundaries, codependency, parenting styles, identity development, family structure and order, rules and job descriptions, how to get your teenager to clean the room or the bathroom, discipline how and why, rapport, etc. etc.

I love this topic, let’s talk soon!