Provo, UT—March 2007—Are you sick of being told that everything that goes south with your child is your fault? They get into a fight and you are chastised for not monitoring the Nintendo game; they act up in class and you are told you weren’t firm enough; they ditch school and you are told you don’t eat three meals a week with them? At what point does accountability for behavior become the responsibility of the one acting out?

“Responsibility is a great word,” says Shelly Marshall, BS, CSAC, coauthor of a new workbook for parents, Sober Coaching Your Toxic Teen, the parental counter-part to Marshall’s first book Young, Sober, & Free,  “The word responsibility holds within it the key to answer the question: Who is responsible? Ask yourself, who is able to respond? Who is response-able? The one able to respond to a situation, is the one who has to be responsible.” Parents can’t study for their teen’s test, parents can’t hand cuff their kid’s swinging fists, and Mom or Dad don’t pour the beer down the throat of their son or daughter!

ToughLove’s co-founder, Phyllis York agrees in her book Toughlove Solutions, “The issue of responsibility for behavior is critical to behavior change. The therapists who assume that kids’ parents are responsible for their teenagers’ behavior are dramatically reducing the chances that the kids will change for the better.”

Ms. Marshall, a recovering drug addict who cleaned up at 21 along with her brother and co-author Michael J. Marshall, PhD, also a long-time recovered alcoholic, contend that parents are held way too accountable for influences that are often beyond their control. Parenting becomes a sort of retroactive blame game. Often adolescent tribulations are referred to some expert who probes into the family situation and eventually ends up with a “reason” why their young client went astray. Since no person is perfect, obviously no parent can parent perfectly, and with enough probing the “experts” inevitably find something in the family that they can pin the child’s behavior on. Parents are accused of being neglectful or smothering, too harsh or too lenient, not being understanding enough or being more of a friend to their child than a parent. In other words, whatever the expert can find, becomes the “reason” that the child is having trouble.

“One of the sad things about this,” Dr. Marshall notes, “is that it either forces the parents into undeserved guilt over what they should have done or it fosters denial so they don’t have to face what they supposedly caused.” Teen recovery is often a catch 22 for parents. First they are blamed for “causing” addiction and then when they try to help, they are called enablers. A parent just can’t win—until they learn how to sober coach. The essence of a sober coach hinges on consequences and choices. A young person’s chances of recovery are practically nil until the parental Blame Game is stopped.  “Why should they bother to change when the therapist has excused them and blamed their parents?” wrote Phyllis York.

| 3-5-07  | Download this Press Release for publication: .doc format |