Overview

We know that parenting a teen or young adult can be hard. Sometimes, it seems like everything you say is wrong. These seven short lessons illustrate strategies you can use in any situation to have calmer, more productive interactions. It’s a great resource for parents who want to support their almost grown-up kids in making healthy decisions.

Parents created this interactive online course for parents. It will teach you about a communication style called “motivational interviewing” that you can use to have better conversations with teens and young adults.

Each lesson is roughly ten minutes long, though you can take as much time as you need and replay the lessons as often as you like. These lessons include narration and animated sequences. Please adjust the volume and set the closed captions to your preference within each lesson. You may also use the panels shown in each lesson to start, stop, or replay the narration, as well as find the “Next” and “Previous” buttons to advance the slides or return to a previous one. You may also use the final links below for handouts to accompany this series and a complete transcript.

The “School of Hard Talks” was created by Dr. Emily Kline and the “Motivational Interviewing for Loved Ones” (MILO) lab at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Boston Medical Center in collaboration with the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health (DMH) Children’s Behavioral Health Knowledge Center. MILO lab contributors include Heather Thibeau, Aliyah Simone Sanders, and Dr. Beshaun Davis. DMH contributors include Dr. Kelly English and Theresa McIntyre.

We acknowledge and thank Angela Cooper of Insight on Demand, LLC and Dana Remian of the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute for their work and expertise.

We created this course as a resource for busy parents looking to improve their relationships with their teen and young adult children. Please share this content with proper acknowledgment of its authors. Commercial distribution is prohibited. Copyright 2021, MA Dept of Mental Health.

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To learn about the research supporting these tools, visit www.milostudy.com.

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