Antelope Recovery

Four ways parents sabotage their teen’s treatment (and how to avoid these traps)

The last thing a parent wants to do is sabotage their child’s treatment – so why do we see it happen so often? Parenting a teen undergoing treatment for behavioral or mental health issues is incredibly challenging. You want the best for your child, but sometimes, well-meaning actions or reactions can inadvertently undermine their progress. Here are four common ways we, at Antelope, see parents unintentionally sabotage their teens’ treatment and strategies to avoid these pitfalls.

1. Parent Burnout

The Trap: When you’re exhausted, providing the support and care your child needs is challenging, if not impossible. We frequently see parents who are so burnt out that they are unable to show up for treatment, help their child log in to sessions and stay accountable to care, or participate in family therapy and essential healthcare conversations.

As people in the service industry, we are experts on burnout. We manage our burnout regularly and believe that it is our personal responsibility to ensure that we set appropriate boundaries so that we minimize the effect of burnout on our lives. We must set boundaries with ourselves and others and work to show up for what matters. Our team has a similar principle for parents – it is your responsibility to manage your burnout so you can show up for your child! We are here to support you with that.

Ways to combat burnout:

  • Get connected. Find a support group, coach, or community to serve as a lifeline.
  • Contact us for our latest list of parent coaches, groups, and resources! We’ll happily send you our favorite partners.
  • Learning: The more you learn, the faster you can begin to make small changes at home that go a long way. One parent podcast we recently listened to and loved was this episode from the Huberman podcast or the Calm Parenting Podcast.
  • Involve trusted adults in your life. Don’t hesitate to involve other trusted adults in your teen’s life, such as extended family members, teachers, or coaches. These individuals can provide your teen additional support, guidance, and supervision while offering you much-needed respite and reassurance.
  • Establish Routines and Structure. Establishing clear routines and structures at home can provide stability and predictability for you and your teen, even during periods of exhaustion or crisis. Getting mornings and evenings back in check can provide needed restful bookends that allow relief from your day for you and your teenagers.

Read more about parent burnout here.

2. Rescuing and overprotecting  

The Trap: Parents might intervene too much in their teen’s life, trying to solve all their problems or protect them from challenges. This can prevent the teen from learning how to manage their issues or uncomfortable emotions independently. This can look like:

  • Not allowing the teen to experience the negative consequences of their actions
  • Not respecting boundaries around attendance or asking the team to make exceptions for their teen
  • When a teen says they don’t like or need treatment, once it gets hard, asking if we can change therapists or bouncing between treatment programs
  • When a teen is experiencing emotional distress, coming to the rescue rather than allowing the teen to practice their coping or emotional regulation skills.

This trap is especially challenging. We cannot treat adolescents if parents refuse to allow them to learn. If parents block our ability to set boundaries or hold a teen accountable to treatment, we have to discharge the family from our care. We believe the challenge here is being okay with the fact that the teen will have to feel uncomfortable; this is GOOD and a part of building resilience. We believe that being uncomfortable is different from being “triggered” or “unsafe” and that by practicing being uncomfortable in therapy, we can build strength and resilience for the teen in life, ultimately allowing for more freedom and joy.

How to break the rescuing pattern:

  • Work closely with all of our parent services: For parents who struggle with rescuing, we usually encourage engagement with all of our parent services (parent group, parent coaching, and family therapy) so that we can support you in holding boundaries and creating a new standard of health at home! This is a challenging pattern to break through, and it is difficult without support.
  • Turn your attention back on your goals and life: When you want to rescue, see if you can begin creating your own goals or intentions for your life outside of what is happening with your teen. This will help you model independence and healthy adventure to your child. You can join a dance class, begin an exercise routine, travel or focus on something you’ve been wanting to do that brings you joy.
  • Support, Don’t Solve: Support your teen, but resist the urge to step in and fix everything. Let them experience natural consequences.

Read more here: Teen self-concept, Raising Responsible Teens, and A Parents Guide to Teen Entitlement.

3. Frequent re-scheduling or missing appointments 

The Trap: When life gets busy, it’s tempting to re-schedule appointments or deprioritize your teen’s treatment sessions. Whether due to work obligations, other children’s activities, or simple oversight, missing or rescheduling appointments sends the message that the treatment isn’t a top priority.

How to stay on time and engaged:

  • Commitment to Consistency: Treat your teen’s appointments as non-negotiable. Schedule them in advance and arrange your commitments around them rather than trying to fit treatment into your life.
  • Refrain from overscheduling your teen: We see many teens who are overscheduled and have no free time. They never experience boredom and have no free moment to decompress throughout their day. They are under a lot of pressure to perform, and this overscheduling is causing burnout, anxiety, and disconnection from their parents. Teens need to have some free time! This free time also allows the work we do in therapy to integrate and “sink in.”
  • Underscheduled teens: On the flip side, we also see many teens who have no activities or communities that they are engaged in or hardly ever leave the house. Having activities on their calendars outside of treatment is essential for them to build self-esteem and work through their mental health challenges, even if it’s just going on a walk once a day.
  • Communicate: Communicate openly with your teen and their treatment team about missing appointments, give advance notice, and keep the team informed about potential conflicts.

Digital resources that help with calendar management: (our internal team LOVES these tools)

4. Downplaying your teen’s challenges 

The Trap: We typically really trust parents—we know that you know your child better than anyone else. And we certainly see this very common pattern of parents downplaying the extent of their child’s challenges. This can be for a lot of reasons – we often find it is because it’s painful to face the extent of the child pain or because the child effectively hides the extent of the pain from the parent.

It’s natural to want to believe the best about your child. However, downplaying their behaviors or being in denial about the severity of their issues can prevent us from doing what we need to make progress. It can be tempting to engage in the minimum amount of treatment despite clinical recommendations for increased care; however, the risk is that we end up treading water rather than making steps forward. We don’t want to keep your child at a “maintenance” level of care. We want to make meaningful progress with your family.

How to negotiate with the clinical team:

  • Do your research. Before dismissing or downplaying something, ask for a book on the topic, listen to a trusted podcaster, or dive into the topic to be sure.
  • Ask questions! If you’re going against clinical advice, fully understand both sides. Ask questions, and don’t hold back.
  • Have open, honest, and upfront conversations with the clinical team. Be willing to “go there” with the clinicians. We LOVE it when parents ask questions and push back against our recommendations – this allows us to collaborate more meaningfully. We would prefer you push back rather than go silent or disappear.

Parent involvement is key to successful treatment.

Parents, we are on your team and have your back. Your involvement in your child’s life is essential to their recovery. Our goal is to keep families united, together, and connected. Your feedback, input, and cooperation are essential for helping your teen. It is nearly impossible for us to go there without everyone on the same page. Thank you for taking the next steps toward getting your teen help, and we hope these recommendations support you in moving forward with recovery.