Mental health treatment can address many challenges teens and their families face. However, it’s common for teenagers to resist therapy. Some may feel threatened by the prospect of sharing their feelings or changing their behavior, while others may feel embarrassed or put down by the suggestion that they need help. Your understanding and support can significantly increase your teen’s acceptance of therapy.

Helpful Approaches 

• Ask your child if they are open to help and explore their concerns. Your teen will be more open to your ideas if they feel understood and their problems are taken seriously. This approach fosters empathy and connection, crucial in encouraging your teen to seek help.
• Use non-threatening language. Many teens perceive terms like ‘treatment’ and even ‘therapy’ as pejorative. Instead, try ‘counseling’ and ‘guidance,’ which usually feel more palatable. This can help reframe therapy in a more positive light.
• Avoid framing counseling as a way of ‘fixing’ your teen. Instead, describe it as a way of improving their lives. Assure them that you will work with them to find counseling that addresses their concerns. 
• Assure them that they will only attend as long as they benefit. If they are not progressing, you will work with them to find alternatives to address any remaining issues.
• Inform them that, while you hope counseling can offer a safe space to express themselves, they will not be “forced to talk.”
• Consider the full range of therapeutic modalities. Teens wary of being labeled as “the problem” might be open to family therapy that addresses family relationships. Teens concerned about confidentiality or daunted by the prospect of communicating with their families might feel comfortable with an individual therapist. Others may prefer group therapy.
• Involve your teen in the search. Be clear that it is essential that they feel comfortable with whoever works with them. Many therapists offer free consultations.

If you involve your teen in the decision to enter therapy and they view it as a way of addressing their needs, they are often more open to it and better positioned to benefit from it.

-Posted by Jonah Green, the owner and director of Jonah Green and Associates, LLC, which provides therapy for children, teens, families, and adults in North Bethesda, Maryland, as well as for clients in Chevy Chase, Montgomery County, Washington, DC, and the surrounding areas.

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Building on Strengths

While many symptoms of ADHD make it hard for kids to cope, kids with ADHD may also be more spontaneous, creative, and curious. They may think quickly, be capable of intense focus, or hold passionate interests. It is essential to emphasize these strengths when talking with your teen. Encourage them to understand ADHD not as a label but as a tool to help them understand their brain, strengths, and areas where they may need extra help. The goal is not to “fix” them but to build on their competencies and empower them with strategies to help them manage their unique challenges through offering tools, support, and opportunities. 

Key Assessment Tools

Assessments can clarify whether your teen has ADHD. Tools to evaluate your teen’s symptoms and behaviors include:

• Checklists and Rating Scales: These tools document behavior patterns over time.
• Interviews with parents, teachers, and your teen illustrate symptoms at home, in school, and socially.
• Psychological Testing can help when the diagnosis or co-existing conditions are unclear.

A good assessment will help you better understand your teen’s strengths and areas for growth and guide the next steps.

Support for You

A critical part of treatment for ADHD involves support for parents. ADHD often affects how parents and teens interact, so working with a therapist to set clear expectations, reinforce positive efforts, and manage challenging behaviors effectively can not only help your teen but also improve parent-child relationships. Through parent sessions, you may learn strategies like:

• Setting up consistent routines: Structure helps ADHD teens feel grounded.
• Using positive reinforcement: Catch them doing things right and reinforce good behavior.
• Breaking tasks into smaller steps: This helps reduce overwhelm and makes tasks feel more manageable.

These skills help create a more supportive home environment where parents and teens feel heard and respected.

Family Therapy: An Opportunity to Build Bonds

When ADHD affects family dynamics, family therapy can help everyone better understand each other. It fosters empathy, improves communication, and builds mutual support. Key aspects of family therapy when there is a child with ADHD, may include Collaborative Problem-Solving or discussions where kids are “not in trouble” that encourage kids to express their feelings and desires and to hear yours. Family therapy can also focus on improving sibling relationships or helping you and your partner to work together better. Family therapy aims not only to “manage ADHD” but to strengthen bonds.

Executive Functioning Treatment

Teens with ADHD often struggle with executive functions—skills like planning, organizing, or time management. Therapy can offer teens the following tools:

• Timers and reminders: These are to help with managing time.
• Checklists and visual aids: These help with organization.
• Breaking tasks into steps: To make overwhelming tasks feel achievable.

These strategies can help them feel more in control and capable, reducing frustration and promoting independence.

Finding Settings that Foster Success

Many teens with ADHD benefit from smaller classrooms, resource rooms, and extra help. Advocating for 504 accommodations, IEPs, or outside supports can also be beneficial. Finding activities where your child can thrive can be very helpful. For instance, many children with ADHD have challenges navigating team activities. “Individualized sports, such as swimming or martial arts, can build fitness and self-confidence.

Medication: The Options

Medication can be a tool for managing ADHD, especially when symptoms are severe. There are two primary types of medications for ADHD:

• Stimulants such as Ritalin or Adderall can improve focus, attention, and impulse control.
• Non-stimulants like Strattera or Intutiv may also be effective.

Medical professionals can help you find proper medication.

Anger Management and Social Skills Training

Teens with ADHD may have difficulty with impulse control, leading to outbursts of anger or frustration. ADHD can also make it harder for teens to recognize social cues, maintain conversations, and handle conflicts. Anger management therapy can help them manage emotions and respond effectively in difficult situations, and social skills training can help improve peer relationships.

Building Self-Esteem and Self-Acceptance

Children with ADHD may face criticism or failure. Therapy can improve self-esteem and self-acceptance by:

• Strengthening self-awareness, especially of strengths and abilities.
• Teaching self-compassion: Encouraging them to be kind to themselves despite setbacks.
• Fostering a growth mindset: Reinforcing that they can improve with effort and that mistakes are opportunities to learn.

ADHD can present many challenges for teens and their families. With accommodations and support, it can also offer opportunities to build on strengths and help your teen and family thrive.

-Posted by Jonah Green, the owner and director of Jonah Green and Associates, LLC, which provides therapy for children, teens, families, and adults in North Bethesda, Maryland, as well as for clients in Chevy Chase, Montgomery County, Washington, DC, and the surrounding areas.

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“We can imagine together, create a story that changes the view
For a brighter tomorrow with loved ones
who understand you.”

Jorgensen is right. Family therapy can create an environment for people to express and hear each others’ heartfelt feelings and serve as a reservoir of healing for families in pain and anguish. It holds the promise of transforming relationships in families grappling with conflict or frayed ties, addiction, trauma, grief, mental health concerns, and more. As trust and emotional safety develop in the therapy space through conversation, experiential exercises, and play, wounds can heal, and families can cohere and establish more meaningful connections. Positive effects can resonate for years.

For all its promise, family therapy can be challenging to access. The lack of available therapists and family members’ different schedules can complicate scheduling. Many insurance plans offer less coverage for family therapy, further limiting accessibility.

In addition to these barriers, family members may have concerns about the prospect of family therapy, which can lead to reluctance. Many fear others may expose their behavior in a shaming or unflattering way. Others may worry an environment where individuals “get their feelings out” may create interactions that lead to more hurt, conflict, or relationship deterioration. Some may feel that family problems have gone on for so long that they have little hope for improvement and see family therapy as a “waste of time.” Others may sincerely believe that the solution to disharmony lies solely in others (“He just needs to stop drinking!”) and see family therapy as adding little value.

Practical Steps to Overcome Barriers

If you’re considering family therapy, here are practical steps to take with your family that address these barriers:

1. Acknowledge concerns as valid. The truth is, family therapy can result in increased shame or embarrassment, it can result in more conflict or deterioration, there may be reasons for little hope, and sometimes problems indeed spring more from one individual than others. Ensure you clarify that others “have a point” even as you express your belief in the value of family treatment.
2.  Ensure a “good fit.” Read therapists’ bios and reviews and solicit referrals from those you trust. Ask prospective therapists if they have specific training or experience working with families like yours. Offer other family members the chance to speak with the therapist so you can come to a consensus on who may work.
3. Emphasize Goal-Focused Nature. Family therapy is inherently goal-focused and less likely to be “open-ended” than individual therapy. Remind people that they can raise concerns about the treatment with the therapist, alleviating pressure and anxiety about entering the work.
4. Encourage voluntary participation. Don’t make it mandatory. Encourage everyone’s participation, but start going with the family members that want to go. If others see that therapy is helpful, they may join in.

As Jorgensen’s piece eloquently conveys, family therapy can foster new “stories,” more understanding, and deeper ties. With these approaches, you can increase your family’s chances of accessing quality treatment, leading to “a brighter tomorrow with loved ones that understand you.”

-Posted by Jonah Green, LCSW-C, the owner and director of Jonah Green and Associates, LLC, which provides therapy for children, teens, families, and adults in North Bethesda, Maryland, as well as for clients in Chevy Chase, Montgomery County, Washington, DC, and the surrounding areas.

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So why are we so hard on our teens when they do the same thing?

The parents of teens whom I work with all have one thing in common.  That is that they want the very best for their adolescents.  They want their teens to be successful, happy, and well-adjusted in whatever form that takes.  So, when procrastination gets in the way of achievement, contentment, and self-esteem, adults want to help make it better.

If you know an adolescent struggling with procrastination, here are some tips that may be helpful.

Help teens set intelligent goals:

When I speak with teens about their homework management, the problem often lies in the lack of a concrete plan for getting their work done.  Instead of aiming to “work on an English essay,” help your teen give themselves specific goals like “Work for 30 minutes on introduction for essay on Monday at 5:00 pm”.  If task completion goals are specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic, and time-sensitive, they are more likely to get done.  The satisfaction that comes from completing small goals builds onto itself.

Help teens get an accountability partner:

We often think about the perils of peer pressure regarding teens and their behaviors, but what about how friends can positively influence our child’s behavior?  I ask adolescents to think of a friend they trust, who doesn’t shame or judge them, and who has mastered getting their homework done on time or wants help in this area.  Setting shared goals regarding assignments and checking in with each other can provide a social incentive to stick to plans.  Sometimes you may feel like you are a very unwilling and unappreciated accountability partner for your teen.  If you are managing their assignment timelines and stressing more than they are, it’s not sustainable.  Helping them develop skills to manage work themselves has the opportunity to create independence.

Help teens like one step at a time:

Frequently, when people are overwhelmed by big projects or assignments, they procrastinate because they become stuck due to the daunting nature of the work. Switching our mindset from “big picture” to “small picture” can make all the difference.  Breaking up a daunting task into small, more manageable to-do items and only focusing on one step at a time can help us get unstuck.  It’s a lot less intimidating to focus on writing one page of a report than it is to focus on writing the entire 20-page report.   Help your teen break projects into small steps by writing this down and checking off portions of a project as they complete it.

Create a studying and homework habit.

One of the topics I am most fascinated by is how humans develop habits and impact our well-being.  When we repeat certain behaviors over and over, they become automatic habits.  When a pattern is automatic is takes much less effort and willpower to maintain.  People who avoid procrastination create some work habit that becomes so natural they no longer think about it.  Setting a homework place or a weekly homework “date” with a friend can become a consistent part of your teen’s routine.  I’ve worked with many families who have found that they are more likely to get work done if they set a study hour together every night.  This phenomenon leads to the last thing you can do to help your teen avoid procrastination, and that is to

Be a role model:

You don’t have to be perfect at timeliness to be a good role model, either!  Talking to our teens about how we struggle to get work done can be a helpful learning exercise—talking through what has worked for us and what hasn’t can also be beneficial.  Frequently, teens seem to block out our lectures because we have repeatedly said the same thing to them. Also, make sure to reinforce what we want to see more positively.  Congratulate your teen when they take small steps, and congratulate yourself in front of your teen when you have success as well!

The post Five Tips to Help Your Teen to Stop Procrastinating appeared first on Jonah Green and Associates.

Make space for communication

Find a time to talk to your children without distractions. It could be a family discussion at the dinner table or going for a one-on-one walk with each child.  We often try to reassure children about what will make school fun or why they should feel excited. However, this can lead children to mask their concerns as they may not want to upset you with their worries. It tends to be more impactful if your children are the ones to articulate the positives of returning to in-person learning.

Here are examples of prompts:

• What have you missed about being in school?

• What might you remember about virtual learning?

• What parts of the school will be the same as before the pandemic, and what may be different?

These questions can pave the way for children to ask questions express their feelings.

Share information, encourage questions, follow their lead

By sharing with children how schools are taking steps to keep them safe, they may feel more confident going back. Even if they do not have questions, you can share with them what will look different. For example, students and staff will be wearing masks. There may be plastic barriers between the teacher and students. You may have classes outside if the weather permits. After you speak, you can encourage them to write out a list of any lingering questions: What happens if they see classmates not wearing their masks appropriately? What do you do if you cannot understand your teacher if she is wearing a mask?  You can roleplay scenarios if your child brings up specific questions. If they seem particularly stressed about the return, bring up instances where they have been brave or advocated for themselves with teachers or caregivers.

Some children may have worries about whether they can get their loved ones sick. Follow your child’s lead; talking about the precautions opens the door for them to articulate what may be beneath the surface.  There is also a chance that there are no big feelings about returning. You know your children best, so show that you are available and let them guide you.

Validate and name their feelings

Whatever your children may be feeling, communicate that it is OK and it is normal. If children have difficulty expressing an idea and can see they are struggling, wonder aloud what it could be and try to name it. For example, “I wonder if you are worried about going back to school, am I correct?” Questions such as these help children organize their emotions and feel understood, supported, and more regulated. These are uncharted waters for children and parents alike. Be patient and kind with yourselves as you navigate this alongside your kiddos.

Jonah Green and Associates | Family Therapy

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