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In Part 2 of this conversation on parenting teen boys, we dig into the moments that feel hardest—when emotions run high and power struggles take over. Parenting coach Casey O’Rourke, host of the Joyful Courage podcast, joins me to talk about screens, privacy, vaping, and how parents can stay grounded when fear and stress creep in. We explore practical ways to set boundaries, create digital wellness at home, and shift from control to curiosity when navigating risky teen behavior.
If you’re raising a teen son and trying to stay connected without making things worse, this episode is for you.
Casey O’Roarty
is a longtime parenting coach and speaker who helps parents navigate the emotional intensity, uncertainty, and high-stakes moments of raising teenagers. As the host of the Joyful Courage podcast, she has spent over a decade creating space for honest conversations about connection, boundaries, and resilience during adolescence.
With experience as a former educator and the parent of two grown children, Casey brings both perspective and practicality to her work—guiding parents to respond thoughtfully rather than reactively, especially when fear, power struggles, and risk-taking behaviors enter the picture. She is also the author of Joyful Courage: Calming the Drama and Taking Control of Your Parenting Journey, which offers parents grounded strategies for navigating the teen years with steadiness and trust.
The information provided in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice. Consult with a qualified professional for specific guidance.
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Parenting Teen Boys: How to Stay Connected and Manage Power Struggles – Part 2.
Suzy Shaw: Welcome back to the Mothers of Boys Survival Guide podcast. This is Part 2 of my conversation with Casey O’Roarty of the Joyful Courage podcast.
Our conversation with Casey was so impactful that we chose not to shorten it, and instead split it into two episodes. In Part 1, we talked about staying connected, reducing power struggles, and building influence during the teen years. Today, we dive into screens, privacy, vaping, and how to stay grounded when emotions run high. Let’s jump in.
My boys reacted very differently to stress. Ernest would just sort of spin inside and get super, super quiet. Exuberance would spin out and get energetic and very vocal. So what do you recommend for parents when they’re in the middle of that chaos? And I will say, when my husband would suddenly interject himself, that that was a whole other male dynamic. When you have three men in your house, there’s definitely some chest pounding that goes on. What do you suggest when all those emotions get high?
Casey O’Roarty: I think that first and foremost, you take care of yourself and you check in on your nervous system. When we are in fight or flight, which can look like that internal withdrawal or that external “Ahh,” we do not have access to our prefrontal cortex. We’re in the emotional part of the brain, the limbic system.
Suzy Shaw: And the boys don’t have all that much access to the prefrontal cortex anyway.
Casey O’Roarty: Right. Teenagers don’t. Yeah. Boys or… I mean, it’s still in development. That’s not developed in humans until late 20s. So first and foremost, I think something that’s really useful for parents to remember is everybody’s heightened emotion is not the time for problem solving or reflecting. It’s a time to tend to the nervous system. Tending to the nervous system, slowing your breath, will trigger your heart rate to go down. Pulling your shoulders back opens your heart center. You just like the work of releasing the tension in your body, right, is first and foremost.
And then you get to be very clear and say, “hey, we got some stuff to work out. Let’s all do what we need to do so that we can come back together and figure this out.” Or if they’re like, ah, screw you, you know, okay, great. “I’m going to take care of myself. Let me know when you’re ready.” But I would also say if this is a pattern that happens regularly, then outside of those moments, you get to circle up with your family and say, here’s what I notice. I notice that we all get really worked up and we’re screaming at each other and nothing gets solved and people get hurt and we feel bad about it later, right? So how about we start to practice pausing when we’re feeling that way, taking care of ourselves and then coming back to solve problems.
You can also have a conversation around, hey, child number one, what helps you when you’re feeling all overly, you know, emotional, what helps you calm down? What about you, child number two? What about you, partner? Here’s what helps me. Like, so you get to just normalize. I think this is so important, and God, doesn’t the world need more of this right now? The most powerful thing that humans can learn to do is to recognize when they’re dysregulated and take the time to regulate.
Otherwise, we’re spewing all sorts of hurtful things all across the land. We’re in fear and it’s just not useful. It’s just not useful. So yeah, that’s how I would answer that question. I hope it was helpful. Self-regulation is helpful.
Suzy SHaw: I know. It’s very helpful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s tricky. Yeah. It’s all kind of tricky. And, you know, I would fight for that calmness the most when things were the scariest. You know, when they’re climbing out the window, they’re experimenting with drugs and alcohol and sex.
Casey O’Roarty: Sure. Sure. Because everybody, every scenario ends dead in the ditch, right? So that catastrophizing is really real and it is scary. They are making scary choices. They’re driving too fast. They’re hanging out with people that seem sketchy, like, you know, that’s the terrain, unfortunately.
Suzy Shaw: Yeah. So we, and I told, you know, talk about some of those stories. I mean, there was a story when exuberance, I got a phone call from the Pennsylvania State Police because he’s just been pulled over doing a 100 on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, they’re nicely called 98, and he was on his way to visit his brother. And you know, I mean, my reaction to the police officer was “scare him, just scare him.” You know, I couldn’t say, no, he couldn’t possibly do that or what are you doing? So like, just scare him because that’s not acceptable.
Casey O’Roarty: I have a story. I was driving to see a colleague of mine, and we had just at the dinner table been talking about vaping, nicotine. And I knew it was something that there was some dabbling going on and we had great conversations about it. And again, you know, both my husband and I have our own stories about nicotine addiction. And you know, so anyway, we had this whole conversation as we do. And I was on this drive and I get a call from the high school principal saying, “well, we’ve heard that one of your, you know, that your child has been vaping in the bathroom.” And I said, “oh, great. Did you call her in? Because we were already talking about it at home. It’d be great for them to get some feedback from the school.”
And it was so interesting because I think that the principal or the assistant principal, whoever it was, was really taken aback because I wasn’t, like you said, it wasn’t like not my kid or it was really like, oh, you know, we’re a team and we’re all looking out for my kid and thank you for letting me know. And please be sure to, you know, echo the things that we talk about. But I also, with that same kiddo, realized after multiple experiences with the vape, I said to him, “so listen, your relationship with nicotine is really up to you. I’m going to intervene and interfere and interrupt when I find out or I see it or I suspect it, but I have no control over whether or not you have a lifelong relationship with this thing that is a pain in the ass to quit. I said, if you talk to any grown person, you know, over 30 who uses nicotine, they’re going to tell you, I wish I never started. So I am handing over this responsibility to you, you know, with the caveat of I’m going to take it when I see it.”
And that was a big shift, relationally, for me and that child. But also a month later, they came to me, they were sitting at the kitchen counter and there was a vape on the counter and they said, “I need you to take this. I forgot that I had it and I found it a couple days ago and I started using it and I can’t stop. I need it to just go away.” And it was one of those moments where it was like, this is the power of recognizing, like, this is up to you. This isn’t a cat and mouse game. I think a lot of parents set up this like, don’t do it. If I catch you, you’re in trouble. And it’s like, okay, I got to sneak around. I got to avoid being caught versus think about what you’re doing to yourself. Think about, you know, the potential consequences. Think about, you know, what you ultimately want in, you know, the most versus what you want in the moment. So yeah, that’s one of my, I tell that story a lot, actually.
Suzy Shaw: So, you know, along with that is, you know, some parents would, and I remember having conversations about this at the time, you know, that they would consider it a violation of their kid’s privacy to go looking through their room while they were at school to see if there was anything harmful in the room. And I, you know, found drugs a couple of times. And when they would get home, I would have conversations with them, and I would pull it out and show them what I found.
I called that period that I became a Submarine Parent. So instead of being a Helicopter Parent, which I just really wasn’t capable of, I floated beneath the surface, I collected intelligence, I pinged locations. And on occasion, I had a full breach, right? And when they would come home, I didn’t have that full breach. You know, it was, what is this? Why are you doing this? Do you understand what the risks are? How do you feel about that privacy thing?
Casey O’Roarty: Yeah, I think it’s really nuanced. And I think it can become really slippery. I would, you know, and one of the things, you know, that I talked about with my kiddos was like, I’m, you know, until you give me some, I didn’t, there was never any, like, everything looked good. And so I’ll just search around and see if there’s really anything going on. I would never, I personally don’t do that.
Suzy Shaw: Well, I didn’t, I didn’t do it very often, but I did.
Casey O’Roarty: Yeah, I wasn’t, I’m not one that, I didn’t like search their phones or, I mean, we had phone limits, absolutely, and we very much normalized conversations around screen use and misuse and being used by screens and, I mean, we talked about that. And it’s the same thing with substances and relationships. I mean, it just, the conversations were what became really normalized.
And you know, there were times, more with my son, my daughter was very cagey. You know, for a long time, like, I would walk in, and it’s funny, because I would walk in her room to say something, but I wouldn’t look at her. It was so inside of me, I would just kind of, and listeners, I’m like looking all over, I would just kind of look around, and it was so annoying to her. And you know, and I remember we were on a road trip recently, and I was like, she said, oh, you pick the, she was driving, she’s like, here, here’s my phone, pick the music or whatever. And I said, oh my gosh, it is just, it’s so interesting to me to think about how easy-going you are with me even touching your phone, because there were so many years where, you know, I couldn’t get near it. It was just, and I was like, what were you doing? She goes, mom, I wasn’t doing anything. There was nothing shifty going on on my phone, but the idea of you going through it was too much, which is funny.
But I think, you know, if you’re getting, I think if there are things coming up that are indicators that, you know, something more is going on, and your little spidey senses are happening, then I do think it can be appropriate to poke around. I also think it’s important to say, “hey, here’s what I’m noticing, and I have some, I’m wondering about that. Like, tell me about what’s going on in your life, right? Tell me about how you’re handling the stress of high school. I know that you’re having a fallout with your friend group. Talk to me about that.” So it’s more important to me that we have those kinds of conversations than it is to kind of catch them.
And that being said, I’ve absolutely, it’s funny, I found a whole shoebox in my college-age son’s room last semester, and I opened it up, and it was full of all sorts of contraband. And I took a picture of it, and I was like, what is this? This is in college. And he was like, oh, Mom, that is so old. I haven’t even looked in that box, and we had this great conversation. And it opened the door for me to ask him, like, so at college, like, how is your relationship with partying? What is that looking like right now? Are you noticing that it’s hard to not go out some nights? Like, I want him to be in reflection of like, yeah, even when I have a test, but if my buddies are going out, it is hard. You know, I want him to kind of be in that, recognize that tension, and then ask him like, so what do you do? What helps you? So that he, again, is developing that critical thinking for him to be like, yeah, what does help me? Right? So it’s more at the forefront, more explicit than it is implicit. So that’s really, that’s my biggest focus.
Suzy Shaw: And how do you advise teen parents about all the technology that they’re confronted with today? And you know, last year, we did a podcast on Minecraft, and Roblox, you know, especially with teen boys, they can really get attached to the gaming platforms, and it can become a big part of their social for, you know, people like Ernest, you know, he didn’t have that aggressively friendly social side to him. So you know, it was important for him to be able to play and make a community online. But you know, how do you manage that balance without letting it run right over you?
Casey O’Roarty: Well, I think it’s so interesting. I mean, when I think about for us as teenagers, you know, I remember I wasn’t, like, my parents were pretty strict about school, like weekdays. So maybe, you know, usually I had practice of some sort, and maybe I’d get to like stop by a friend’s house for an hour to hang out. And then I was home. And the phone was not allowed to ring after 9 o’clock. And we didn’t have two lines. We had call waiting, but we didn’t. So it was, like, there was this expectation, you know, there was containment, right?
And then with video games, it’s like we can’t, like, all that containment goes out the window. And I think, so one of the things that we talked about with my kids when we talked about phones and video games and anything really is, like, you get to have a, there’s a curfew. Just like if you were out in the world, you know, there would be a time where you’re expected to come home. Video games, you know, I will be being honest, we didn’t have a big video game. There was, like, ebbs and flows with video games. But my son really craved out in the world, in-person play and interaction. Well, I mean, he still is that way.
Suzy Shaw: Right. So… Yeah, that’s my second. Yeah. Exuberance is like that, you know?
Casey O’Roarty: So really, what I want to focus on with parents is how do we create digital wellness in our family? Yeah, I like that. And, you know, yeah. And really, like, reflecting on how does it make you feel? Like, first of all, I think it’s absolutely okay, parents, to say, you get three hours on a Saturday or whatever, right? You get to create limits. Co-creating limits is even better. You know, talking about what do they want, what do you want, counteroffer, offer, find a win-win, find that place where you’re both stretching a little bit with what you’re comfortable with.
But really, especially now that my kids are on their own, what I want most for them is to be reflective around how they’re using technology. I want them to feel like, oh, God, look at my screen time today. Geez. That doesn’t feel good. I’m going to do something about it, right? I want them to have those skills.
So again, and I remember one of the stories that I talk about with technology is, so when my son was just a little guy, I remember we had a box of cookies on the counter. And we had many cookies, he and I. And then I said, “you know what? I’m going to put these on top of the refrigerator.” And he said, “Mom, I can climb up and get those cookies.” And I said, “oh, babe, I know you can climb up and get those cookies. That’s not why I put them up there. I put them up there so that we’re not looking at them, because then it’s going to be easier for us not to eat them.”
So this, again, I think well-intentioned, loving parents set up this cat and mouse game, especially around technology, with their kids, which is putting kids in the space of, I got to sneak, right? The workarounds, because there’s endless workarounds. Nobody’s perfected. How do we, other than delay, delay, delay, which I highly recommend, delay, delay, delay, for sure, other than-
Suzy Shaw: You mean delay them getting the technology?
Casey O’Roarty: Yes, absolutely. There’s no reason that our, I mean, and I feel like the more parents I talk to of elementary age kids, I feel like what happened for, like they watched us and they’re like, oh, geez, this is a runaway train. I feel like more and more parents today are getting on the bus around screen-free childhood, which is great and very important.
Another resource I would also offer, I had Jean Twenge on my show. She wrote a book called 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World. I think that’s the name of the book. It is the resource because it is practical, right? I loved The Anxious Generation and Jon Haidt’s work, but it left me feeling like, okay, great, we’re screwed. Then the question of, okay, great, I have all this information. I know it’s bad, so what am I supposed to do?
Jean’s book actually says, here’s 10 rules. On the show, she was like, listen, if you can’t do all the rules, pick the ones that work for your family. Start somewhere. There’s got to be containment around technology. They do not have the capacity, nor do we, nor do the adults. We do not have the capacity to manage ourselves with these things that have been designed to keep us busy with them. We got to have limits. We got to have routines. I think number one is just normalizing that we talk about technology, right? Not from a place of you’re doing bad and here’s what I’m going to impose on you, but instead from a really reflective place so that we’re raising up kids who are reflective about their technology use. Am I using technology, or is technology using me?
Suzy Shaw: Yeah, and I will say, because of my career, I started my career in broadcast television. So I have been part of this technology journey. It’s one of the better things I did, I think, with the kids. I realized when they were really young, the movie Dinosaur came out and it was the first animation where feathers moved and it looked so real. And I thought, my gosh, I mean, I grew up with the Flintstones. Nobody thought the animation was real, but now it looks so good. How is a little child going to know the difference between imagination or not? And so I taught the kids, right? We talked about it all the time, media literacy, but I taught them that anything that comes out of that box, that television, is somebody’s opinion. And it’s not reality. Reality is what you see with your eyes when you’re outside and you do something.
But when they were in that teen phase, when they wanted to get cell phones, I told them I would buy them the chip and put the chip on my plan, but they had to buy their own phone. So that limited how tech the phone was. And then as more parental controls would come out… I had our Wi-Fi on a timer. And I was really happy to see today that YouTube just came out with new parental controls.
Casey O’Roarty: Great. Because that’s a gateway.
Suzy Shaw: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And coming from media, that’s our goal is to try to get everybody more eyeballs, more connections. Yeah. Sure, sure, sure.
Casey O’Roarty: Yeah, I love limits. And again, especially with my son, it was the phone shut off at a certain time and it came back on at another time. And we both knew that he could work around. And actually, I had him on a show with me a couple of years ago, he was probably a junior in high school, and we were talking about screens and he told me, he’s like, “Mom, I had a burner phone.” I said, what? I was like, you’re kidding. It is all on air. This is all part of the recording. I had no idea. He was like, “yeah, I had this phone, but I was so stressed out that you were going to find out that I had to get rid of it.” And that’s what we want. That’s what we want.
Suzy Shaw: Right. A conscious. Yes. Yes. Ownership of the actions.
Casey O’Roarty: Yes. But also not without that normalization of we’re talking about digital wellness and health.
Suzy Shaw: So is there any sort of last tips as we start to wrap this up that you don’t think we’ve covered that you left on the table, you want to say?
Casey O’Roarty: I mean, I just think that I just want to reiterate, like, if you’re in a power struggle with your teen, one, it’s so easy to go there, and I see you wanting what’s best for them, and I understand that you come into parenting with a lot of wisdom to share, but power struggles require two people. And if you want to get out of a power struggle, drop the rope, right? And instead, get curious about your kid’s experience. And it can sound like I’m noticing we really are in a power struggle around curfew. I’m noticing we really get into a lot of power struggles around your phone, around driving, around school. Tell me about how that is for you.
So I just think that the more that we can be curious about our teen’s experience instead of assuming that we know, I think there’s so much ground we can cover with them, and it’s so much more helpful and useful to them when we’re willing to be curious and to validate that they are having, you know, their own separate reality and their own separate experience, and it’s valid. It matters. Right. So be curious about that.
Suzy Shaw: So we ask, I ask all guests of the show to give us a little mantra for the mom to hold on to as they’re navigating this teen experience. What would you say to them?
Casey O’Roarty: So I have a one-liner that I love, and it came from a good friend of mine, saying, okay, Cas, I know you have this podcast. He doesn’t listen to the podcast. He’s my good friend. And he has a teenager. He’s like, I know you got the pod and everything, but can you just tell me in a nutshell? You know, what should I do? So shout out to my friend Cam, and I said, Cam, don’t make it worse. Don’t make it worse. Like, if you need a one-liner in any given moment, like, don’t make it worse.
And I think that, you know, fits with what you shared around don’t bite. Just, like, there’s so much that we add to. The angst is there. The terrain is rough. Don’t make it worse.
Suzy Shaw: Yeah. I like it. Thank you. Like it. So thank you, you know, really for jumping into this conversation.
Casey O’Roarty: Thank you for inviting me. This was a lot of fun. Thank you, listeners, for tuning in. And if anyone has any questions or feedback, my email is KC at joyfulcourage.com, and I’m in charge of my email. I don’t have a team that’s reading my email. So I will respond. So let me know what you need.
Suzy Shaw: I want our listeners to know that we’ll link to KC’s podcast, Joyful Courage, and her book, Joyful Courage, Calming the Drama and Taking Control of Your Parenting Journey, in our show notes and at the mothersofboys.life website.
So if this podcast resonated and this episode resonated, please come find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn. And be kind to yourself, moms, and you have got this. Promise.
