Raise the child. Protect the relationship.

Usually not with a conversation. Teenagers who have stopped talking have almost always concluded that talking costs them something — a lecture, a consequence, a repeat of an old argument. The first work is on lowering that cost, which is a change in you before it is a change in them.

Primarily the parent. That surprises people, but it is where the leverage is: you are the part of the system you can actually change. Where it helps and the young person is willing, I will see them too — never as a covert channel back to you.

By separating the rule from the relationship. Most screen-time fights are not really about screens; they are about autonomy and trust. We work on rules your child had a hand in shaping, which they break far less often than rules imposed on them.

Yes, and a good share of my parenting work is exactly this — parents of children in their twenties and thirties, renegotiating a relationship built for a fifteen-year-old. The patterns are older, which makes them clearer once you can see them.

No. Child and adolescent therapy is clinical work with the young person, delivered by a licensed clinician. I coach the parent on communication, boundaries and the relationship. Where a child needs clinical care, I say so and refer.

Often that is the actual presenting problem. Children rarely struggle because one parent is strict and one is soft; they struggle when the two of you contradict each other in front of them. That is couple work as much as parenting work, and I do both.