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Divorce is one of the biggest life changes a child can experience, and boys often process the emotions of loss, uncertainty, and change in ways parents don’t always recognize. In this episode, counselor Jarrod Hoffman explains how trauma affects boys, the warning signs that may indicate your son needs additional support, and why divorce can create feelings of isolation. He shares a practical framework—intensity, frequency, and recency—to help parents recognize when behaviors may be more than a normal reaction to stress, along with guidance on introducing counseling, strengthening communication, and supporting boys through one of life’s most challenging transitions.
Jarrod Hoffman is a Licensed Professional Counselor–Mental Health Service Provider (LPC-MHSP) who provides therapy for teens and adults in Memphis, Tennessee, and virtually across the state. He specializes in helping individuals navigate anxiety, depression, trauma, addiction, divorce, and other challenging life circumstances, with a passion for supporting children, teens, and families through difficult transitions.
Before becoming a therapist, Jarrod worked in youth ministry after graduating from Covenant College. His own experiences with childhood trauma, including his parents’ divorce and finding healing through counseling as a young adult, inspired his calling to help others. Learn more about Jarrod, access his resources, and take his “Does My Child Need Therapy?” quiz at jarredhoffman.com.
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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Today we’re talking about a life change that affects over 1 million children a year. Divorce. While every child responds differently, boys often process their emotions in ways that parents don’t always recognize. So how can you tell if your son is simply adjusting or if he’s struggling and needs extra support?
My guest today is Jarrod Hoffman, a counselor from Memphis, Tennessee, who specializes in helping boys navigate divorce, trauma, and other major life challenges. He’ll help us recognize the signs, understand what boys are really experiencing, and share practical ways moms can help.
So Jarrod, welcome to the Mothers of Boys podcast.
Jarrod Hoffman: Thanks for having me, Suzy.
Suzy Shaw: So can you tell me just a little bit about what drew you to being a counselor and a therapist and this area of trauma, of working with boys?
Jarrod Hoffman: Sure, yes. My parents were divorced when I was 10 years old, and I saw porn for the first time at 11, and it wasn’t until 25 years old that I finally made it to a counselor, which sometimes I use the word embarrassed. Maybe it’s a mix of embarrassed and unaware that I actually was living in my college dorm, and three literal doors down the hall was the counseling office. And I always thought, why would anyone need to go to counseling? Here I am struggling with all these unwanted behaviors and loneliness, and so I am passionate about making the gap smaller between the time that someone enters counseling for the first time to talk about those things and being a teenage boy.
So the short answer is I was a former adolescent boy who struggled with a lot of things.
Suzy Shaw: I am quite certain that makes you very empathetic to the boys and the young men that you are advising and counseling.
So what age do you think is the most concerning when a trauma like this happens? And I will share that after 9-11, my kids were little, but I heard a child psychologist in a presentation tell us that our little kids were not a concern, per se, because they just don’t really comprehend what’s going on. And that the older kids, high school, older, had the mental maturity to kind of begin to process it and make sense of that traumatic event. But the ones that were of real concern were the fourth, fifth, middle school kind of grade where the child was old enough to comprehend but didn’t have the emotional maturity to really process it. So I’m just sort of curious, what age do you think can be the most traumatic for the people that you talk with?
Jarrod Hoffman: My first response was 12 years old or something like that. I actually think about maybe some of the factors of the trauma that make it the most difficult.
So age, certainly, like in developmentally important moments, right? We talk about attachment issues from 0 to 3 or 0 to 5 can have a profound and lasting impact on kids. At the same time, when I do see adults, and myself included, in therapy, we’re talking about memories and impactful moments from 10 to 14. The times when you’re detaching from your parents, and you’re establishing your own identity.
So the things I would call out as an answer to your question, like, “What are the most impactful ages if trauma happens?” I’d probably shift from age to circumstances, right? The young child or the old teen has that emotional capacity, or that they don’t have a real memory necessarily. It’s just not conscious. And so one of the definitions of trauma is actually the issues that arise from trauma are the aloneness of the trauma. And so I’d be more concerned about do they have anybody with them or do they have anyone to connect to?
And so if you’re 5 and you have someone who’s with you in a healthy parent attachment during a trauma, I’d say the outlook is pretty good. If you’re 15 and you can verbalize it, but you were alone in the trauma, right? Sexual abuse that you could tell no one about, that is going to be substantially more impactful in a negative way.
Suzy Shaw: Well, that makes sense. And you said that one of your reactions, I guess, when you went through that trauma was porn, right? So what ways do young males exhibit signs?
Jarrod Hoffman: Signs of the trauma that they might’ve experienced. Two words come to mind when I think about boys and how they respond to trauma. Internalizing and externalizing behaviors.
So externalizing are the things that get kids kicked out of school most of the time, right? Anger, irritability, shouting, curse words at a teacher, maybe not even going to school because you can’t get them to physically get out of bed. Those are those externalizing behaviors.
Internalizing, those are tricky because they might actually look like everything is good and healthy and they’re getting the good grades. That’s something I see a lot. I see as many D grades as I do A grades, A+. They’re perfect. Why would they need any help? And here they are silently wondering if I’m enough. Am I really good enough? How do I prove myself? And that might take the form of anxiety about doing well in school. It might take the form of depression, and they keep this great mask, and then they go home, and they lie in bed all day.
Suzy Shaw: And do you also see girls in your practice? Do you think it affects girls and boys differently?
Jarrod Hoffman: That’s interesting. I see some girls in a contract that I work with at a school, and I’ve worked with girls over the years. I think most people and experts kind of talk about how the externalizing is historically something that the boys struggle with while the internalizing is something that girls struggle more with. But there’s a spectrum. There might be guys like myself who naturally tend toward those behaviors that are not as noticeable.
Porn is a great example: you can do that a lot of times, and no one has any idea. And so girls tend to be in that category on average, whereas the boys on average are showing the aggression and the anger and the frustration.
Suzy Shaw: I do want to mention to our listeners that we did a podcast with a porn counselor and that podcast is called Middle School Boys and Risky Behavior: Warning Signs and How to Respond. So this conversation really dovetails into that one.
So when should a parent consider counseling, and really how do you bring up the idea with your son that this is something you want to do so that he feels like there’s nothing- it’s not that there’s something wrong with him; it’s doing something positive.
Jarrod Hoffman: We’ll get to the positive part after I’ll answer kind of the first part, and then we can revisit the second. If we’re going down the lens of internal and external behavior and we’re asking the question, how do we know that this is worthy of counseling?
The external, I think of three words, and it’s a framework to understand behavior. And so the three words are intensity, frequency, and recency. So if I’m asking, I’m seeing this anger, this irritability, let’s say I’m blowing up in relationships or I’m punching holes in walls. I wonder the number of teen boys who have punched a hole in a wall, but are they doing it frequently? Is this like a patch in these walls every week? What’s going on? So that would be frequency.
Recency: was it three years ago, and it hasn’t happened since?
Or intensity: was it like I kind of slammed the door and I kind of punctured the drywall? Or is it like I took a baseball bat and I was beating up against it; I had to replace the whole wall. I was worried about the foundation because it was so intense.
Suzy Shaw: And I can say as the mother of boys, sometimes that’s sort of a gray line of play and all my, the baseball just went through the wall, oops, and that aggression. And you’re showing up afterwards, you know?
Jarrod Hoffman: Yeah, that would be like intensity. Is this an intense, was it an accident? Was it planned? I actually had a plan to punch a hole in the wall. I was ready to do it. That’s different than I was playing around with a friend and we accidentally put, one example would be like controllers. Like, are they throwing controllers around the room? And so frequency, recency, intensity, those are things when you’re thinking about your boy’s behavior: is it, you know, how high on those scales does it land?
If we go to the internalizing, that is, it’s trickier because internalizing is the behavior and the shame and the guilt that’s going to come with that is easier to hide. It’s easier to hide that than a hole in the wall. So, you know, I would wonder, is there hiding that your teen or your boy is doing?
One of the signs for porn, right, is are they hiding their phone? Like, if you touch it, they’re very nervous. As someone who has looked, I felt that and all that stuff, you don’t see that. So is there a change in their behavior? Did they use to like activities they no longer like? And even that one’s tricky because interest level is going to change from 10 years old to 16 years old. They’re not going to want to play with Legos anymore.
But is it like they used to like to hang out with that group and now they don’t? These are all like really tricky ways or difficult to navigate with, like an anxiety or depression in a boy. Hmm. And then you talked about the positive parts.
Suzy Shaw: Correct. And how to pitch that, hey, this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to get you somebody to talk with.
Jarrod Hoffman: Yeah. The illustration I give a lot because I’ll see quite a spectrum of people who are either on the external side and they’re putting holes in walls, or they’re the internal side where, like, their parents actually, they’re in the room for something different than what their parents brought them there for. And it’s as soon as it’s kind of opened up their parents have been hiding it.
So I see this spectrum, but what I say, especially if it’s like there’s not quite as obvious a reason, your parents are just a little bit concerned, is our kind of say like, physical therapy, right? I see people whose backs are completely broken. Like, I think we can walk again. I’m pretty confident that we can get you to walk again, but it’s going to be a long road. It’s a pretty intense recovery. It doesn’t mean that if I kind of tweaked my back and it’s, oh man, what happened, that that’s not worthy of going to counseling for and getting guidance for. It just means that you’re not in a wheelchair right now.
But untreated, some of those, like tweaked back pain moments, can turn into long chronic pain where I’m really struggling. And so if you’re presenting in my room and there aren’t these obvious big things, that’s okay. We’re just going to kind of like give you some ways to walk a little bit better, get your posture up that are going to prevent future injury.
Suzy Shaw: I like that analogy. And I had two boys; they’re both in their late twenties now. And we did take them to a counselor. We called him the “boy whisperer,” and he was incredible. And we weren’t going through a divorce, but there were just life communication tips I think that was very helpful for the counselor to communicate with our sons and to let them have an opportunity with a trusted source to build a rapport and get advice that wasn’t coming from mom and dad, because they just sometimes can’t hear us and you need them to be able to hear somebody.
Jarrod Hoffman: How did you pose that to them when you initiated the conversation?
Suzy Shaw: You know, we probably didn’t give them a whole lot of choice. Just like if they had a fever and you took them to the doctor, we made an appointment with the counselor, and we referred to all of the lots of different people, but also counselors as “coaches.” That was just the receptive term that our boys embraced. So this was your “life coach.” You have an executive functioning coach, an organizational coach, or you might have a science coach, whatever it is. The word coach really sort of helped them feel okay about it, I think.
Jarrod Hoffman: The thing that you mentioned that I would sort of build on as well, when you talked about the divorce piece, you know, that divorce is very complex because it really is like that perfect example of a systemic issue. And so if we talk about trauma and we talk about aloneness, divorce for kids and children of the divorce is extremely lonely. They might be able to confide with their sibling, not always.
I know when my parents experienced divorce, I’m pretty sure at the school, maybe there were 60 kids who went to my school; there were like 3 that had parents who were divorced. I’m sure there were other parts of that, but it didn’t feel like the friends that I had had experienced that. And so the aloneness comes as well. So you got your peer aloneness.
You also have parent aloneness, right? Now this relationship that maybe used to be comforting is very challenging. And even as a kid, you’re picking up on, like, is my parent kind of using this conversation or what I say as evidence for whether I should live with them or the other parent? The triangulation that can happen between these multiple relationships is very scary, very dangerous.
When you ask the question like, does my kid need therapy during a divorce, I would say they have a lot more aloneness, potential for aloneness and divorce and life changes. I have this quiz that I’ll refer people to that is 15 domains of whether or not a child needs therapy. And one of those domains is like any major life changes in the last year, because PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, is going to measure after, I think it’s 6 months. But before that, there is actually a designation for acute stress disorder. So your kid, during a divorce of aloneness and intense stress and all the things that come with that, can already be in the pathway to developing a post-traumatic stress disorder. And that early intervention, like while it’s happening versus years later, can actually steer them in a direction to where they actually navigate that trauma in a very healthy way.
9-11 is a great example. It’s like most people experienced some level of trauma around witnessing such a violent and open act and yet didn’t develop PTSD. And it’s because a lot of people had communities to be able to rally around. Divorce, not the case. You’re not often going to be able to find a group of like young boys who are like, “Bro, I was right there with you. Let me walk alongside you and help you think through that.”
Suzy Shaw: I find your explanation with the alone part of it to be really valuable as a sign, maybe too, that for a parent, this is a traumatic event and you need to do something about it. What other signs, warning signs can you identify?
Jarrod Hoffman: We’ve kind of been touching on this one. This is a great one: do you have peers? Especially in the 12-year-old and older, you’re starting to try to find your place.
If you were to ask your boy if they have good friends, are they texting people that they consider their friends? Do they have any social events that they’re interested in going to? Especially if there’s a change- there used to be, and now there’s not. That’s a sign for sure that maybe they need someone else to talk to or they haven’t quite figured out how to navigate that social change to find those friends.
The super obvious one that we talk about all the time is screen time. The easy number to remember is: are they spending 2 hours, more than 2 hours a day on screens? I’m pretty sure that includes school. So a lot of people are in this category, and it’s that, “Oh man, they’re spending 5 and they’re going to die.” It’s more like if it’s more than 2, the chances of depression go up significantly with each additional hour. So they’re not potentially going to die, but if they’re spending 5 or 6 hours, then the chances are just higher that they have depression.
Suzy Shaw: You talk about that screen time, and I remember a moment when one of my sons- I always had the philosophy that all the tech in the house was mine. I was going to pick it up and look at it. Anytime I wanted to, I paid for it; it was mine. And I remember one of my sons being very possessive of his iPad, and I grabbed it and looked at it and saw a photo that had been sent to him by a friend that was cutting themself. And he was a sensitive kid. I think any kid that got that would be concerned for their friend. And I felt like that was a trauma for him that wasn’t necessarily going on in our house, but was going on out in the world. And so that was a moment where we got counseling for him so that he could understand how to support the friend, but not get in the hole with them.
And so what traumas, I mean, when you talk about traumas, that might be another example, but what other traumas do you see in your practice?
Jarrod Hoffman: Oh, wow. I see trauma; that one’s like kind of a physical manifestation of what’s going on in your life. I would actually view that as like a positive moment. This child felt freedom enough in that friendship to reach out for help. That’s what it was. When you talk about those internalizing teens or boys who internalize, they are going to be saying those statements that might kind of perk up your ears of like, “Hi, I wonder if something is going on.” And those statements are cries for help, right? It’s like, “What would you do if I wasn’t here?” They’re wondering if they are kind of discovering that they need help, and they’re wondering if this is a safe place to share some of those things. I wonder if you would still love me if I did this thing. Be curious about that.
Traumas in my work: there’s a lot of attachment issues, a lot of dads or moms who aren’t in the picture or who left, divorce, those physical manifestations that could be unwanted sexual behavior, that could be gambling. That’s super prevalent these days. Obviously, scrolling on social media is the obvious addiction that they’re wrestling with.
Peer issues are a big one. I have probably been surprised by the amount of bullying that has occurred, even to the extent that some of the symptoms that you might see for ADHD or depression or anxiety are rooted in the people they don’t consider friends, but attend their school and treat them very poorly.
Suzy Shaw: I just want to go back one second to that moment with my son, because what I was remembering is that I told him, in addition to getting him counseling about that, I told him “this was an adult problem and that I was going to talk to the mom and that there’s levels of problems and some problems a child, teenager, young adult can manage, and then there’s others that need help.” I think it was a relief to him to take that responsibility for that event off him and say, “I will respectfully, quietly let the other parent know because that’s the right thing to do.”
Jarrod Hoffman: If we’re going back to that physical therapy analogy, it’s not his responsibility to be stitching up his friend’s lower back after an accident. That’s for people who are equipped, trained, probably paid, not just even a volunteer. You see that the communities are very valuable in mentorship, but the level of intensity and recency of the picture that was shown put that in a new category. But if your friend is struggling with back pain, of course. Most of the time, people don’t just see me for small pains because that’s being taken care of in those healthy peer relationships, healthy parent relationships, healthy relationships with mentors in the community. It’s usually when things escalate into more intense problems. I think taking that responsibility off your son was very valuable.
Suzy Shaw: What advice, if a mom is listening today and is worried about her son, what do you think is the first step?
Jarrod Hoffman: I have that quiz. That’s a really easy way. You can go to my website.
Suzy Shaw: We will share that in the podcast on the MothersOfBoys.life webpage.
Jarrod Hoffman: That one’s just helpful to get thinking about the domains, what to think about. Screen time is very, very high. Okay, cool. But what about peer relationships? What about academics? What about somatic symptoms? Are they struggling with stomach aches all the time or headaches? At least as a parent myself, it’s so obvious to me, of course. I’m like, “Oh, yeah, duh, your kid has depression.” But it’s so easy for me to forget that I haven’t played with my daughter in 2 days, and maybe that’s what’s leading to this acting out behavior. It’s like, “Oh, we haven’t been on the swing set yet in a couple of days.”
Maybe the first thing I would say is, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent that you didn’t catch this. Generally, if they’re hiding behavior, they’re really good at it. They’re creative. If it’s hiding screen behavior, oh my goodness, they will get around everything that you’ve created because, like, an example of those devices is your devices unless they’ve acquired a device that isn’t your device. That’s very easy.
Suzy Shaw: They’re tricky.
Jarrod Hoffman: Take the weight off of that and now the responsibility to look; there’s tons of resources. Your website has plenty of resources to wonder, are they in need of checking up on some of those back pains? Those little things that might turn into something if it’s not totally obvious.
I put in the quiz; I didn’t put things like self-harm or hallucinations because those just tend to be very obvious. You’re probably not going to miss them. The moment that you find out about them, you go right to counseling. I’m obviously a proponent of counseling; it helps a lot of people, and I feel like it probably helps more people than it hurts. Why not if you have the resources? I usually recommend that to parents.
The thing I usually leave parents with and want to remind them of is their importance. Parents are the two most important relationships on the entire planet. There are no two humans that are more valuable in the health of their child than their parents. I’m going to say it in another way because it’s just so important to hear. Of seven or eight billion people on the planet, they come to me, and they talk about their relationship with their parents. You are valuable, and your relationship with them is going to span far longer than any other relationship that exists, and it’s going to be of the most importance.
When you think, “What should I do?” you should do something, and you should know that you’re going to be in it for the long haul even if you don’t see the benefits, the verbal thank yous. You probably didn’t get a thank you until late 20s, maybe.
Suzy Shaw: You know, I’m still waiting. I’m waiting. Still waiting.
Jarrod Hoffman: You might wait your whole life.
Suzy Shaw: Yeah, well, one’s married, and one’s engaged, and their spouses now are very thankful.
So if there’s one thing that a mom should take away from the conversation today, it sounds to me like her worth in this relationship is monumental. Is that what you would say?
Jarrod Hoffman: Monumental is an excellent word. Imperative. Imperative is a good word.
Suzy Shaw: I would say for a mom who’s going through divorce, it’s a traumatic experience for themself, right? And so sometimes it’s hard to recognize that not only your child but also you are going through a trauma. And we have recorded a podcast called Surviving Divorce and Protecting Kids: What Moms Need to Know, which is more of that side of the equation.
I just want to encourage moms to step in, to figure it out and get the help for their sons, because these moments are fleeting and they’re not going to need it forever. It’s these humps. You want them to have the ability to come to you and say, “Okay, I could use a little help right now.” And they’re not going to be able to look within themselves and make that determination without the experience of how helpful it was to begin with. And the first time both sons went to a therapist, we sort of took them like we were taking them to a doctor with a fever. But after that, they would raise their hand and say, “Hey, I’d really love to talk with the person I was talking with.”
Jarrod Hoffman: And the number I tell parents a lot of times is like, “How long is this going to take?” That’s a big question of like, “Are we going to be in weekly therapy for 3 years?” I don’t know. It depends. Divorce is one of those particular things that is complex on how long it will take because it’s an ongoing, it’s actually an ongoing and active, traumatic experience. So usually divorce isn’t like a one-time issue. It’s like, maybe this is going to take us 6 months to get the divorce finalized, and then we’re going to have to do this other stuff.
Suzy Shaw: If they’re lucky.
Jarrod Hoffman: And so what I say is generally anxiety and depression with CBT, or I think particularly anxiety in the research is 10 to 12 sessions. That’s not too much. That’s like a semester of weekly therapy. If you’re with someone who’s super expensive, it’s $2,000. It costs more to go to Disney World, I promise you. And they’re going to have a better impact on their wellbeing than going to Universal Studios, I promise you.
Suzy Shaw: At the end of every podcast, I ask our guests to leave a mom with a guiding phrase, a motto that they can say to themselves as they’re going through this traumatic experience with their son. Do you have one you could share?
Jarrod Hoffman: Yeah, this would be a tool. Like something if you’re going to remind yourself, you’re stuck with them grunting in response to you. You’re trying as hard as you can, and it’s change. They don’t want to talk about some things with you, which is reality. That’s why my job exists.
At the same time, you’re in it for the long haul. And so the tool that I give parents and particularly moms the most is if you want them to talk to you, connect with you… Whatever your question was, if they give you an answer, it’s tell me more. Tell me more.
Suzy Shaw: We’ve done a lot of podcasts on communication and that leaning in and listening is so valuable. Where can listeners go to learn more about you, and is teletherapy something that you do?
Jarrod Hoffman: Yes. So jarredhoffman.com is my website. It has quiz. It has some blog posts. One of them is how to find a therapist. That’s not always easy from the moment you discover that we need therapy. How do we get it? Where do we go to find someone who’s reputable? So jarredhoffman.com, I’m on LinkedIn as my social media and they can find me there, Jarred Hoffman.
And the therapy, the virtual therapy, I recommend it. There’s actually research on, the difference between how efficient therapy is and whether it works in a virtual or an in-person space, which is incredible. So take advantage of it. And then I’m licensed right now in the state of Tennessee. There’s a chance that could increase in other states pretty soon with some of the things that are rolling out. But right now, in Tennessee virtual, I can take clients there.
Suzy Shaw: Well, Jarrod, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your expertise and knowledge.
Jarrod Hoffman: Absolutely. Thank you, Suzy.
