I’m sharing a simple but powerful shift that can completely change your relationship with your teenager: learning what’s actually in your control and what isn’t.

When your teen is shutting down, acting out, bringing attitude home, or struggling with motivation, it’s so easy to fall into the trap of trying to control their behavior in the heat of the moment. But the truth is, the more we try to control what we can’t, the more disconnected and overwhelmed we feel.

In this conversation, I break down how focusing on your own response instead of your teen’s emotions is where your real influence and leadership live.

This episode is for parents navigating:

1. Teen attitude and disrespect
2. Emotional meltdowns and big feelings
3. Power struggles and constant conflict
4. Motivation and follow-through challenges
5. Setting boundaries without yelling or nagging

We’ll discuss the Circle of Control (inspired by Stephen Covey), the power of co-regulation, and what it truly means to “Let Them” (from Mel Robbins) without letting everything slide.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, reactive, or exhausted, this episode will remind you that the most powerful thing you can do is return to what you can control: your own nervous system, your boundaries, and your next move.

Want Support Beyond the Podcast?

You don’t have to do this alone.

If you're looking for more tools, guidance, and a supportive community of parents raising teens with connection and calm boundaries, join me in my Parents of Teens Rising Circle

And if this episode resonated with you, I’d love to hear your takeaway.

Send me a DM on Instagram or share this episode with a parent friend who needs the reminder.

In this episode, I’m breaking down school avoidance and school refusal in teens, including why it’s on the rise, what’s happening underneath the behavior, and practical, compassionate ways parents can support their teen without escalating conflict.

If your teen is melting down in the mornings, complaining of feeling sick, shutting down, or outright refusing to go to school, this episode will help you understand what’s driving the behavior and how to move forward without shame or fear.

In this episode, I cover:

• What school avoidance and school refusal really mean (and why it’s not laziness)
• The main drivers: anxiety, social stress, academic overwhelm, and burnout
• Why morning power struggles make avoidance worse
• A clear 3-step plan: calm, clarify, and coordinate
• How to support your teen without reinforcing avoidance
• Dr. Lisa Damour’s shame-free “compulsory buffet” reframe
• Practical ways to make school more manageable without lowering expectations

If your teen is struggling with anxiety or school avoidance, get support through my Rise Up and Ignite coaching programs to help them build confidence, take action, and thrive.

✅ Book a free discovery call to learn more and see if Rise or Ignite is a fit.

Sources Referenced in This Episode

1. Stony Brook Medicine – “What is School Avoidance and School Refusal? A Parent’s Guide” (Aug 1, 2025)
2. Kids Mental Health Foundation – “New Survey Reveals Top Reasons Why Kids Avoid Going to School” (Press Release)
3. Children’s Hospital Colorado – “Treating School Refusal in Youth” (Primary Care Article)
4. Children’s Hospital Colorado – “How to Handle School Refusal” (Just Ask Children’s)
5. TIME Magazine – Lisa Damour, “How to Help Teenagers Stay Motivated at School” (Mar 8, 2023)
6. Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) – “4 Strategies When Your Child Refuses to Go to School” (Sep 19, 2024)

In this episode, I’m sharing one of the biggest truths of my life: our children are some of our greatest teachers. I walk you through five lessons my kids have taught me so far, and how these lessons have shaped the way I show up in motherhood, especially in the teen years.

In this episode, I cover:

• Regulate: learning how to stay grounded when I’m triggered or overwhelmed
• Surrender: practicing trust and letting go, one layer at a time
• Service: showing up with devotion while remembering I matter too
• Humility: owning my mistakes, repairing, and learning in real time
• Capacity: expanding what I can hold and handle without collapsing into overwhelm

If this episode resonated, I’d love for you to share it with a friend raising teens, and leave a review on Apple or Spotify. It helps more parents find this support.

Connect with me

Instagram: @jasmyne.guidedpassages

Teen confidence isn’t something your kid either “has” or doesn’t have; it’s something we can build. In today’s episode, I’m sharing 5 core skills I teach teens and young adults to help them move from anxiety and avoidance into real self-trust and forward motion.

I also share a story about a young adult I worked with who felt stuck after Covid, isolated, anxious, and disconnected from her life, until she found a pathway back to herself through creativity, new friendships, and small steps that created real momentum (including college planning and financial aid).

In this episode, I cover:

• Why confidence starts with identity and values (not approval, grades, or social pressure)
• How to help teens build believable positive self-talk (no fake affirmations)
• The simple language shift that helps teens stop identifying with negative labels like “I’m anxious” or “I’m a procrastinator”
• Why doing hard, uncomfortable things regularly is one of the fastest ways to build self-belief
• How friendships, media, and environment shape confidence, and how to help teens choose better inputs

Want support for your teen?

If your teen is struggling with anxiety, self-doubt, low motivation, procrastination, or feeling stuck, 1:1 coaching can be one of the fastest ways to create real change. My coaching programs Ignite and Rise Up support teens and young adults (ages 12–24) with tools, accountability, and mentorship.

✅ Book a free discovery call to learn more and see if Rise Up or Ignite is a fit.

🌿 Learn more about Guided Passages: https://guided-passages.com

Today I’m sharing some thoughts I’ve been sitting with as I look at what’s happening in the world, and in everyday life. I keep coming back to the same idea: we’re missing clear pathways into adulthood. This episode is about what initiation is, what changes when young people are actually guided through it, and why rites of passage is at the heart of what we do at Guided Passages.

Key takeaways:

• New freedoms come with new responsibilities: adulthood isn’t a free-for-all—it’s a role with impact, power, and accountability
• Initiated vs. uninitiated adulthood: what maturity looks like in real life (regulation, repair, boundaries, integrity, contribution)
• Why rites of passage matter: without healthy thresholds, people often create their own—sometimes in risky or destructive ways
• A simple framework: severance → threshold → incorporation (and why being witnessed matters)
• Why nature + mentorship are essential teachers: the land as mirror, truth-teller, and reconnecting force—and mentors who “light the path”

Guided Passages Summer 2026 Rites of Passage Trips

Middle School Trip (incoming 7th–incoming 9th): 5-day Marble Mountain Wilderness backpacking trek + 6-hour solo
High School Girls (ages 15–18): 7-day trek + 24-hour solo

Learn More: Wilderness Trips - Guided Passages

Free Workshop: The Teen Confidence Breakthrough

Thursday, January 22 at 10:00am Pacific
How to help your teen or young adult move from anxiety and avoidance to confidence and action.

RSVP Here: https://youth.guided-passages.com/teen-confidence-breakthrough-live-workshop-january

If you want your teen to actually come to you, especially when things get messy, these 10 communication pitfalls are the patterns to notice, interrupt, and replace with more connected communication. In this short episode, we’re talking about the subtle habits that can create disconnection and erode trust with your teen, often without us realizing it.

The 10 Communication Pitfalls:

• Fixing / advising in the meltdown moment
• Minimizing
• Guilt trips
• Boundary policing + micromanaging
• Needing to be right
• Labels + “always/never” statements
• Not apologizing / not repairing
• Silent treatment / passive-aggressive energy
• Losing your cool
• Critiquing + lecturing

Join Me Inside Skool

Want support practicing these shifts in real time—plus tools, coaching, and a community that gets it? Come join Parents of Teens Rising Circle inside the Skool app. A few $7/month founder spots are still available (once they’re gone, that price is gone).

👉 Join here: https://www.skool.com/rooted-in-connection-1711/about?ref=4ed96d121fb84aaf97b6f1db9dcf534a

In Part 4 of The Up-Level Reset, I'm closing out the mini-series with a powerful identity shift for 2026 because real change doesn’t stick when it’s built on pressure, willpower, or all-or-nothing resolutions. This episode helps you shift from outcome-based goals (“I need to fix this”) to identity-based change (“I’m the kind of person who…”), so your habits actually have somewhere to live. We’ll also uncover the feeling beneath your goals, explore how tiny, repeated wins rewire your brain over time, and end with a guided visualization to help you step into the version of you you’re becoming.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Why most New Year’s resolutions fail (outcome-based, all-or-nothing, willpower-driven)
• The real root of lasting change: identity-based change
• How your identity shapes what you notice, choose, and repeat (especially in parenting)
• The “feeling beneath the goal” (calm, connection, confidence, freedom, peace, etc.)
• Becoming an “energetic match” for that feeling now through small daily rituals
• The neuroscience of change: tiny repeated wins + repetition = rewired pathways
• “New year, truer me” (instead of “new year, new me”)
• Guided visualization: your future self, your home energy, and how you show up as a parent

Journal prompts (from the episode):

1. Old identity to release: What identity are you ready to retire—and how has it limited you or your family?
2. Who you’re becoming: Write 3 statements that begin with “I am…” (as a human + as a parent).
3. Feeling you’re calling in: What core feeling do you want more of in 2026—and one practical way to practice it this week?
4. Smallest next step: What does your future self do regularly—and what’s the smallest version you can start this week?

Join the Parents of Teens Rising Circle Community (Inside Skool)

If you're feeling ready for some ongoing parenting support, real tools, and a community that's navigating the same things you are, come join us inside the Parents of Teens Rising Circle Community hosted in the Skool app.

Inside, you’ll get the full Rooted in Connection course dripped out over the next few months, monthly, live Zoom workshops with Q&A, and hot seat coaching, and a growing resource library of scripts + nervous system tools, so you don’t have to do this alone.

👉 Join here: Parents of Teens Rising Circle

We’re in Week 3 of my 4-part mini series, The Up Level Reset: Four Simple Shifts for a Stronger 2026, created to help you (and me) head into the new year with more clarity, alignment, and self-trust.

Part 1 – The Focus Shift: How where you place your attention shapes your emotional world and relationships.
Part 2 – Upgrade Your Beliefs: Questioning the stories that limit you and choosing thoughts that expand what’s possible.
In this Christmas Eve episode, Part 3 – Courage & Trust, we’re talking about listening to your inner voice, laying down what you were never meant to carry alone, and taking aligned action toward the life that’s calling you in 2026.

In this episode, I talk about:

• The difference between all the noise of stress, obligation, expectations, and mental load, and the quiet inner voice of intuition that keeps nudging you toward what’s true for you
• The mental, emotional, and logistical load parents carry (especially moms), and the beliefs underneath it that keep you holding more than you were meant to hold
• What it looks like to choose courage over comfort in small, everyday ways: telling the truth, simplifying, asking for help, and taking steps toward what you really want
• How to take aligned action and treat your next steps as a partnership between you, your inner wisdom, and something bigger (life/the Universe/God) as you step into 2026

Journal Prompts for Part 3: Courage & Trust

1. Where have I been hearing a quiet inner nudge lately — about rest, change, creativity, boundaries, or next steps?
   What has that voice been trying to tell me?
2. What mental, emotional, or logistical loads am I carrying right now that feel especially heavy?
   What beliefs sit underneath those loads (for example, “If I don’t hold it all, everything will fall apart”)?
3. Where in my life am I choosing comfort over growth, even though a part of me knows I’m meant for something more?
   What is one small, courageous step I’m willing to take this week — even if I still feel nervous?
4. If I trusted that I was supported — by life, by the Universe, by something bigger, and by my own future self — what is one aligned action I would take as I move into 2026?
   What would it look like to say yes to that?

Guided Meditations & Affirmations

Want support with staying consistent on the 5-minute daily affirmation/meditation challenge?

👉 YouTube Playlist (Guided Meditations & Affirmations)

Let’s Stay Connected

I’d love to hear your biggest takeaway or how your belief reset is going as we close out 2025.

👉 Come say Hi on Instagram:
@jasmyne.guidedpassages

Send me a DM and let me know what story you’re choosing to release and what new story you’re stepping into for 2026.

Want to Learn How We Can Work Together?

If you’re feeling called to go deeper — for yourself, your teen, or your whole family — here are a few ways we can connect beyond the podcast:

• Coaching for Teens & Young Adults (Rise Up / Ignite)
• Parent Coaching & Support (Rooted in Connection)
• Wilderness Rites of Passage Trips
• Youth Connect (In Person Teen Circles, Ashland, OR)