Ending the Parent-Teen Control Battle: Resolve the Power Struggle and Build Trust, Responsibility, and Respect

By: Neil D. Brown LCSW

Narrated by: Alan Taylor

Power struggles between parents and teens are nothing new, but chronic control battles are destructive to teen development as well as the entire family. According to psychotherapist Neil Brown, these battles occur as the result of self-perpetuating negative relationship patterns.

Chock-full of powerful and easy-to-use evidence-based tools, this book will help you understand and end the painful tug-of-war with your teen and foster a peaceful and loving home environment. In virtually all families, there are moments when teens are unhappy with parental limits, rules, and requests - as well as times when those kids are disobedient or noncompliant, or get caught up in the moment and make bad decisions. But the parent-teen control battle goes beyond this; it’s a chronic relationship pattern that uses up the family’s emotional resources and can seriously impact child identity, self-esteem, and development, resulting in destructive behavior and causing stress for everyone around. This book offers a thorough understanding of the control battle and a clear prescription to end it.

With Ending the Parent-Teen Control Battle, you’ll learn about the three elements that support this chronic conflict - reactivity, negative emotional tone, and being “other-person focused” - and discover the two key changes that can be made to address the underlying issues, allowing you to move toward a more positive way of seeing your teen while creating vital behavioral change. Using tools based in structural family therapy (SFT), which targets the core relationship pattern driving the control battle, you’ll be able to address specific issues and create a healthier pattern.

If you’re tired of the constant battle for control and you’re ready to cultivate a more loving, peaceful, and supportive environment for the whole family, this book has the skills and understanding you need to be successful, no matter what you and your teen face.

©2016 Neil D Brown, LCSW (P)2018 I'm Hearing Stories

Great approach for parents of teens or preteens

Neil Brown provides a great framework for those families with “difficult” youth. Probably a book that I’ll listen to again , to get all the information absorbed .

Helpful advice I wish I’d had when my children were teenagers

I liked the way the author explained the problem in a way that didn’t point fingers. The author gave parents a process to approach the problem in a healthy way. And develop solutions that involve your teen and establish accountability. I recommend this book to anyone in a power struggle with your teen. It was well narrated and easy to follow. Thanks Neil D. Brown

Tips you can really put into action

Neil does a fantastic job of explaining how to handle the struggles that come with raising a teenager. I love the way he includes real-life examples of families he has worked with. He supports his strategies with these examples and really helps draw a picture of what it can look like for my family. I'm definitily going to be keeping this on my bookshelf to reference whenever I need a bit of guidance on what to do with my teenager and soon-to-be teens.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Thank you!!

This is my son in a nutshell! Complain, the struggle in our family. Can’t wait to put these strategies to work!!

Pretty good

I’m dealing with a kid who is, according to this book, BPC. This is the first parenting book I’ve found that even acknowledges these kinds of issues exist so that’s nice. Every other book for “out of control teens” so far has been like “oh my kid talks back sometimes”. Please. I wish that was all we were dealing with.
I think most of what was in this book is pretty good but we’ll see how it works out as I try implementing it. However, the author is very supportive of the troubled teen industry send away programs and there has been all this information revealed in recent years about how abusive most of those programs are. Like, kids have died, and been horribly sexually abused. It’s wide spread, there’s no real regulations for these places, they’re often run by for profit prison companies and there are very few professionals of any kind working at them. Please think twice before sending your kids to these types of places. They are scams to steal your money at best, and straight up dangerous to your children at worst.

Very helpful

A good roadmap for helping a teen and parents progress positively through life together.

Great for Parents of Preteens & Teens

This is a new genre for me. It was a very insightful book into understanding the relationships between teens and their parents. The examples are really helpful for understanding the way things can go downhill fast and bad dynamics can make things go from bad to worse. This book gives parents real guidance to deal with the changes that come when kids are growing up and trying to spread their wings.

This book really gives great hope to parents struggling with parent-teen control battles. It gives information to understand the battle and prevent going down the negative path that often happens between parents and teens.

"I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review."

Awesome advice and tangible tips! PDF though?

Great book can’t say enough, however he mentions a chapter to print out and have your teen read and I can’t find it. Anyone else have luck?
I’m getting ready for “the talk”!

Very insightful!

I need to get to work asap. Dealing with this issue with my teenage daughter is mentally exhausting.

Neil Brown is god

Neil is a teenager whisperer and if he started a cult we would surely join. This should be required reading for all new parents of teens.