3LFPOD Episode 76:Teenagers: A User's Guide (Sort of)

It started with headphones in his ears while we were trying to have a convesation with him. 

Actually, it started earlier in the week, a string of small skirmishes that snowballed into one of those stretches where Nancy wondered if she was raising a human being or a storm system. There was the missed curfew (“I was charging my phone”), the eye-roll during dinner (“Yeah, I guess I'm just a bad student”), and the silence that followed when she tried to talk it out. By Thursday night, she was sitting on the couch, staring into space, thinking, I have two more years of this. How am I possibly going to survive? Every parent of a teenager hits that wall eventually, that moment when love and exasperation are running neck and neck. You tell yourself you were once a teenager too, but somehow your memory has gone soft around the edges. You forget how hard it was to feel everything all the time. You forget what it’s like to crave independence while secretly hoping someone still tells you what to do. And you forget how impossible you must’ve been at 16. On this week’s episode, the sisters unpacked all of it: the hormones, the boundary-pushing, the emotional whiplash, and the slow, reluctant art of letting go. Communication, Interrupted

Nancy admitted that lately she feels like she’s speaking another language entirely. One minute her son wants her opinion, the next he’s furious that she has one. Lynne pointed out something that hit home for all three of them: respect is a two-way street. If you want to raise kids who communicate openly, you have to model how to do it without losing your cool every time they test the limits. But that doesn’t mean being a pushover. When Dax Shepard recently said he and Kristen Bell let their daughters talk to them “however they want,” the sisters collectively cringed. Lynne put it bluntly: “Being respected also means being respectful.” You can teach confidence without teaching contempt. You can raise strong kids who still understand that tone matters. The Manager Becomes the Assistant

Kathy said she’s learning slowly to step back and let her son handle things like schoolwork and sports on his own. “It’s like I went from being his manager to his personal assistant,” she laughed. “And I don’t like demotions.” But that’s exactly what the teenage years require, a gradual surrender of control. As Lynne put it, “You can’t build independent adults if you never let them struggle.” Sometimes that means watching your kid screw up an assignment or miss a deadline and resisting the urge to fix it. Sometimes it means letting them sit in silence and not rushing in to smooth things over. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s necessary. The Teen Sets the Weather

Every household with teenagers knows this truth: when your teen’s in a mood, everyone feels it. Nancy joked that her son is “the barometer of the house.” If he’s happy, everyone’s relaxed. If he’s surly, everyone’s walking on eggshells. Lynne remembered when her girls were in high school and the whole family would whisper, “Don’t look at her,” when one of them was mid-meltdown. It’s funny in hindsight, less so in real time. The sisters agreed that mood swings, stress, and exhaustion are a toxic cocktail for teens and their parents. Between social pressure, grades, and constant phone notifications, today’s kids are living under a microscope. Kathy shared a stat she found: over 80% of high schoolers say school is their biggest source of stress. Add in sleep deprivation, since most teens get far less than the 8 to 10 hours they need, and it’s no wonder they’re short-fused. Lynne’s advice? Help them build a “toolbox.” Teach them how to decompress through exercise, sleep, communication, or downtime so they can take those habits into adulthood. “We can’t control their stress,” she said, “but we can help them learn to manage it.” The Hardest Part: Letting Go

Parenting teens is basically a decade-long exercise in learning to let go. You go from tying their shoes to watching them drive off alone, from knowing every detail of their day to hearing only fragments. And that’s the point. Lynne’s perspective, now that her kids are grown, was both comforting and sobering: “If you want this complete adult human, you have to deal with your own anxiety and let them go. You can be a safety net, but it’s not your show anymore.” Nancy sighed at that one. It’s easy to say, harder to live. But as she looked back on her rough week, she realized something: every blowup, every door slam, every eye-roll was also a tiny test, not just of her patience, but of her ability to evolve as a parent. She’ll survive the next two years. Maybe even laugh about them one day. And for now, there’s always squash for dinner. What’s for Dinner: Stuffed Squash

Nancy and Lynne are ON their gourds this week. Stuffing acorn and spaghetti squash and getting mixed reviews from husbands and teenagers. But trust us, it's actually delicious (and they still ate it, even if they didn't admit it was good)The Pioneer Woman has the recipe we riff from this week:

Stuffed Acorn Squash Fishes Out...

In the end, this episode is a reminder that parenting teenagers isn’t about mastering control, it’s about learning to release it without losing connection. The sisters talk honestly about the push and pull of these years—the eye-rolls, the curfew excuses, the quiet pride that sneaks in when your kid actually figures something out on their own. It’s messy, hilarious, and often humbling, but as Lynne says, “You can be a safety net, just remember it’s not your show anymore.” And just when you think you’ve heard it all, we find out which two sisters got hauled home by the police when they were teenagers. Listen in, laugh along, and maybe feel a little less alone in the chaos of raising humans who are almost grown.