Teenage Drama Alert!

What Comes First, Business or Family?

Derived from a coaching conversation, with the details changed to protect the founder’s privacy.

Dear FFF,

I am the founder and CEO of a luxury goods company. We have several big initiatives in the pipeline, including creating an international subsidiary, launching several new products, and creating a video series and digital media strategy. I love my work and have a vision for growing it worldwide.

A few days ago, my younger son (age 13) shared (confidentially) that his brother (age 15) has been smoking pot. (He came across a picture of him sucking on a bong on his Instagram feed.) I then found a vape pen in his bed. My husband and I have realized that this has been going on for a while. We’ve been in denial.

I know smoking pot isn’t the worst thing in the world, but I’m worried that he’s coping with anxiety and/or depression and that he’s on a downward slope. I’m upset with myself for missing the signs.

My husband is starting a new, high-pressure job. I’ve got these new initiatives to lead. But my priority has to be my son, right? I need to spend more time at home, be more present, get him and maybe our whole family into therapy, get him to talk, monitor his social media, and ban cell phones from the dinner table. How can I do all of this and still do what I need to do for my company?

-Worried Mama

Dear Worried Mama,

I offer you a giant hug from all teenager parents past and present. Think of this hug as an endless quilt woven of squares representing families like yours who have and are raising teenagers in a complex world. You are not alone!

So many stories come to mind, so many moments where my family took precedence over my business, like when I abruptly left an owner’s retreat to help my brother Bruce with an infected spider bite, or when I missed a critical investor meeting while coping with 20-month-old Levi’s broken femur. And yes, I have teenager stories as well.

Here’s one: in 2014, my business partners and I sold our bike share company after an incredibly stressful few years. Naturally, I wanted to celebrate and arranged a family weekend at the coast. Sixteen-year-old Skyler declined to join us, saying he’d stay at his Dad’s. So, the rest of us went: me, husband Glen, 12-year-old Sasha, and two-year-old Levi. For two golden days, we walked, built sandcastles, and collected shells. Then, we cleaned up and headed back to Portland, stopping at Dairy Queen for mint chocolate chip Blizzards.

At the drive-through window, my phone buzzed with a message from Skyler. It read, “Sorry about the party. I tried to clean up.”

“Huh?” I replied, then waited. Five seconds. Ten seconds. A pause that said everything. I showed my phone to Glen. He raised his eyebrow and shook his head. We drove the rest of the way in silence, dreading what was to come.

***

By the time we got home, Skyler had tried to clean up, collecting several trash bags worth of bottles and cans. He met us at the door, puffy-eyed, choking out, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know it’s bad.”

Sasha pushed past him and ran upstairs. “Mom!” she called out. “Someone was in my room!”

I followed her up. The bed had clearly been used. On the floor, beer bottles and joint roaches. Same with Levi’s and the guest room bed. Skyler’s bed was bare and the room stank like puke.

“You get up here RIGHT NOW,” I yelled at Skyler. “You let people in our rooms? You let people smoke up here? In your baby brother’s room?”

He looked down at his feet, and mumbled, “I fell asleep.”

“Where? When?”

He pointed to our bedroom door.

Glen went up first, silently furious, took in the disturbed bed and opened underwear drawers. Then, he called the Police.

For an hour or so, I stripped beds, scrubbed walls, and realigned furniture, ranting all the while. Sasha took over Levi's care, and they huddled in her bedroom as far from my fury as they could get.

The Police officer arrived, a tall, thick guy in full blue paramilitary gear. I yelled to Skyler, who was mopping the basement stairs, “Get up here!”

The officer gave Skyler a stern look and asked what happened.

“Skyler here,” I butted in, “who was supposed to be staying with his dad, took it upon himself to throw a party that got out of hand. And then Mr. Genius got wasted, passed out, and people slept and vomited and had sex in our beds and dumped beer on our floors and broke bottles, and some little shits went upstairs into our bedroom and rummaged through our drawers and stole some of Glen’s stuff.”

Skyler hung his head and started crying again, choking out, “I tried… I didn’t know… I…”

Glen quietly listed the stolen items: Tiffany cufflinks engraved with GC, a college graduation present. A Bulova Marine Star watch, valued at around $300 and gold Kevin Durrant limited edition 2012 Olympic shoes, a gift from his time at Nike, priceless.

The officer cocked an eyebrow, “You folks probably know this, but there’s not much chance you’ll recover anything, other than the shoes, maybe.”

“I’m checking eBay,” Skyler mumbled.

“You seem like a nice kid,” the officer said to him. “Let me guess. You texted a few friends to come over, and they texted more people, and suddenly things blew up.”

Skyler nodded glumly.

“Well,” the officer said, “Seems like you opened your door to trouble. How’s that feel?”

“Like shit,” Skyler cried loudly. “I feel like SHIT, ok?” He ran up the stairs and slammed his bedroom door closed.

“GOOD!” I yelled after him. “I hope you DO feel like shit!” Glen shhhed me and thanked the officer, who left.

***

Worried Mama, this wasn’t the first nor would be the last time Skyler made poor choices and suffered the consequences, but the blow-out party served as a turning point for our family.

I started paying closer attention, being more present, showing stronger support for all the good choices he made, and seeing the pattern of poor choices as experiential learning opportunities. I probed for signs of deeper dysfunction and forced him to go to counseling for a while. We began to talk things through in more depth. I showered him with love and attention. Through it all, I found a smart, restless, and sometimes idiotic teenage boy.

***

That evening, we sat down for a dinner of angry silence. Then, Glen’s brother Ross called. He’d been experiencing unusual headaches. Just a few days earlier, he’d been playing basketball when he noticed that one leg wasn’t doing what it was supposed to be doing. Several appointments and MRIs later, he got his answer: brain cancer. Surgery was scheduled that week. Chemo would begin soon after. Suddenly, the party seemed less important. Fancy basketball shoes and a watch: what did they matter, in comparison to Ross’s life?

In the months to come, I decided to step out of my consulting firm completely, giving myself focused time with Skyler in his senior year of high school and giving Glen time with Ross and his family. I thought a lot about the timing of the party, coming as it did just after a long period of me being spread as thin as late spring pond ice. Pure coincidence: the sale, the party, the news about Ross? Maybe we all need these jolting parental moments to remind us of our priorities.

***

Skyler grew into an amazing young man: accomplished, driven, curious, enthusiastic, adaptable, self-sufficient, happy. He says the party taught him that actions can have extreme ripple effects even if you didn’t intend them to, and that peer pressure is way more powerful than people realize. He asked me to share the following:

The fact that your teenager smokes weed does not mean you failed as a parent, not at all, and it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s depressed or running from something… it likely means a group of people he surrounds himself with does it and he became a part of it and guess what? He probably likes it if he keeps doing it. So now the best thing you can do is have an open and honest dialogue. Don’t pretend it doesn’t exist, don’t try to force him to quit cold turkey. Keep an open dialogue, set boundaries and enable him to still be able to be a teenager, live his life, have fun, let loose occasionally in a controlled and safe environment. Transparent and open communication is the key to a healthy relationship with drugs and alcohol in my opinion. Now go give him a hug and tell him you love him!

As to your business, I invite you to see this as an opportunity to examine your commitments. Perhaps you do need to make more time for your family, perhaps not. I suggest you look carefully at all your responsibilities and organize them as follows:

• Do: the things that you and only you can or should do to keep things moving, meet your goals, keep your staff employed, etc…

• Delegate: everything you can, especially anything that is not the highest and best use of your time and can be done as well or better by someone else. Perhaps now is the time to hire more support staff or services.

• Delay: one or more initiatives until you have the emotional space and you feel your family is back on solid ground. Think of each as a seed or seedling that isn’t ready to be planted; it’s not the right season and the soil hasn’t been prepped. When the time is right to come back to them, you’ll know.

• Drop: anything that will allow you time and space to give to your family.

This is a good practice to use whether you are in crisis or not.

From all the parents woven into the quilt of compassion: We believe in you. We are with you. You are not alone. You will get through this.

-FFF