If you are reading this, you might be feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, or heartbroken watching your child struggle with their behavior. When a child acts out at school, fights at home, or gets labeled as “rebellious” or “difficult,” it is easy to feel like you are walking on eggshells in your own home. Before we talk about solutions, I want to offer you a perspective that might bring some immediate relief: your child isn’t trying to give you a hard time—they are having a hard time.

If you are reading this, chances are that your relationship with your teenager feels a bit like a tug-of-war right now. In our experience, parenting an adolescent through difficult times is one of the most exhausting and challenging tasks on earth—and standard “tough love” tactics often make the distance wider. Now perhaps, therapy was your idea, maybe it was recommended by a school or court, or maybe you are simply at your wit’s end trying to figure out what is really going on behind closed doors.