Hopestream: Parenting Kids Through Addiction & Mental Health

ABOUT THE EPISODE:
Maybe you found it in the laundry, or at the bottom of a backpack. It looked like a highlighter, or a USB stick, or a cute little accessory that matched their phone case. And now you’re standing there holding it, wondering how worried you should actually be.
Vaping comes up in our community constantly, so I tracked down the most qualified physician I could find to help us sort through it. Dr. Deepa Camenga is an associate professor of emergency medicine at Yale, board certified in pediatrics and addiction medicine, and the associate director for pediatric programs at the Yale Program in Addiction Medicine. She’s also parenting teenagers of her own, so she gets this from both sides of the kitchen table.
Dr. Camenga explains why vapes are a completely different animal from the cigarettes many of us grew up around. They’re tiny, odorless, loaded with far more than nicotine, and the ones our kids are buying aren’t regulated, which means nobody can tell you for sure what’s inside any single device. She’s seeing kids as young as eleven and twelve in her practice, and many of them will look her in the eye and say, “Yeah, I’m definitely addicted.”
We also dig into the situation so many of you have written to me about. Your child comes home from treatment, stays away from the pills and the alcohol, and then starts vaping, along with a very convincing speech about why you can’t take that away from them. Dr. Camenga’s answer is compassionate and honest, and it will help you hold your ground with love.
And I love what she said about quitting. When a young person stops vaping, the anxiety or depression underneath can get louder before it gets better, and that doesn’t mean something is going wrong. It means the thing that was masking those feelings is finally gone. If you’ve been expecting everything to get better the moment they stop, this reframe could save you a lot of heartache.
If you’ve found a vape, suspect there’s one, or you’re trying to get ahead of this before middle school, this one is for you. And grab the download in the show notes with photos of what these devices actually look like, because some of them are very good at hiding in plain sight.
YOU’LL LEARN
Why so many kids openly say they’re addicted to vaping, and why that isn’t the same as wanting to stop
What’s actually inside the vapes kids are buying, and why no one can tell you for certain
How to respond when your child says vaping is the only thing keeping them from harder drugs
Why mental health symptoms can flare when a young person quits, and why that isn’t a sign of failure
The talking points that actually make teens pause (hint: it isn’t lung cancer at seventy)
The first thing Dr. Camenga wants you to do if you find a vape in your child’s backpack today
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Dr. Deepa Camenga profile
Book an appt. (for CT residents) 203-777-7411 - in person or telehealth
Click to download our vape detection guide
This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:
You did it the way we practice it. You listened, you validated, you said the compassionate and true thing, and then named your boundary. Your kid looked at you like you had never understood them a day in their life. “You’re selfish. You just want to control me.” And there you are, feeling that familiar pull to explain it one more time, in different words, until they finally get it.
Seven years into the podcast and The Stream, how to set and hold a boundary is still the question I hear more than any other. So this week it is just you and me, talking about the part that so often goes missing, which is the moment right after you say it.
I share a few tools you can tuck into your back pocket, including one with a name that might make you laugh, a visualization that keeps you from playing verbal pickleball with your kid, and a line from a trial lawyer that has become one of my all time favorites. There are scripts too, including one for the holiday plans that are probably already humming in the back of your mind.
We also talk honestly about safety, because confidence looks very different when your child is escalating. And I tell you about the day I went to an ATM to help my son pay back a dealer, knowing in my gut it was not the true story.
If you have caved before, you have not erased your progress. Confidence tends to show up after the practice, not before it, and the first change you notice will most likely be in you.
If you are tired of defending a decision you already know is right, this one is for you.
YOU’LL LEARN:
The small word in the middle of your sentence that quietly cancels out your empathy
A three step way to name a boundary without opening a negotiation
What to do with your kid’s words while they are still talking
The one sentence I want you to get comfortable saying when your child is upset
What to say when you gave in last time and want to go back to your original answer
EPISODE RESOURCES:
The Surprising Power of Non-Reactivity When Your Child Is Struggling, with Cathy Cioth 
Brook McKenzie on Hopestream episode 342
You’re Waiting On You by Brook McKenzie
The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More by Jefferson Fisher
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: https://988lifeline.org
The Stream, free two-week trial: https://hopestreamcommunity.org/try
Worried Sick free ebook: https://hopestreamcommunity.org/worried
This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:
You know the mantra, even if you have never said it out loud: I can only be as happy as my unhappiest child. I held that one fiercely for years, and so did Tara Norbeck, until a therapist at her son’s rehab said something to her that rearranged the whole equation.
Tara spent her career as a level one trauma ICU nurse, the steady presence families leaned on in the worst hours of their lives. She knew how to assess, intervene, and fix. Then the script flipped, and she was the mom at the bedside holding her own son’s hand, with nothing in all that training that could fix what was happening to him.
Tara and I are two moms with plenty of scar tissue, and we talk about the things so many of us carry quietly. Grieving the future you pictured the first time they placed that baby in your arms. The shame that metastasizes when everything stays a secret. The way your child’s addiction can become your own, until it governs your mornings, your marriage, and every thought in between. She also shares a story about her youngest daughter, told years after the worst had passed, that gave me chills and may change how you see your other kids.
Tara is a woman of deep faith, and she offers a line about where to place your hope when nothing around your child looks hopeful that I will be holding onto for a long time. Her book, “Dear Mom of an Addict” was written because she needed it when her son was struggling, when she was lying awake at 2 AM, waiting for the phone to ring and dreading it at the same time.
If your own peace has been moored to your child’s worst day, this one is for you.
YOU’LL LEARN
What a rehab therapist told Tara about her tears that changed how she showed up for her son
The difference between anonymity and secrecy, and why only one of them protects your family
Why joy and happiness are not the same thing when your child is struggling
How the neuroscience of addiction can soften the “we didn’t raise you like this” reaction
What Tara wishes she had done differently with her other children
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Tara’s book: Dear Mom of an Addict: Ten Truths You Need to Know to Parent Your Addicted Child and Reclaim Hope
Tara Norbeck’s website
Tara Norbeck’s website: https://taranorbeck.com
God Loves You Most (Tara’s children’s book)
Free resources from Tara: https://taranorbeck.com/freebies
Tara on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taranorbeck
This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:
You have probably been scanning for it for a while. The one consequence that will finally get your 25-year-old out of their room and into a life that looks like forward motion. You can't ground them. You can't take the phone. And you've already decided you will not make them homeless, so what's left?
Kim Muench knows that question from both sides of the kitchen table. She's a Jai Institute for Parenting certified coach, the founder of Real Life Parent Guide, and a mom of five whose oldest son's drinking in his early twenties sent her back to college and into coaching parents of young adults who are stuck. Hundreds of thousands of parents follow her on Instagram and TikTok, and her new book, Lost in Place: How to Support, Motivate, and Launch an Adult Child, comes out November 24.
Kim doesn't hand out the perfect consequence, because she doesn't believe there is one. What she offers instead is a shorter list of what is actually yours to control, and a way of sorting helping from enabling that I kept turning over long after we hung up. She also tells a dog-sitting story that is so ordinary and so telling that every one of us will see ourselves in it.
We talk about the fear that keeps so many of us frozen, especially when self-harm has been part of the picture, and Kim asks a question I had never heard framed this way: why is it only our kids who get to hit rock bottom?
She also explains why she refuses to use the phrase "failure to launch," and her reason made me exhale a little.
If you have a 20-something at home who seems to be standing still while you do all the running, this one is for you.
YOU'LL LEARN:
The three things Kim says are truly yours to control once your child is an adult, and what's missing from that list
One simple question that helps you tell whether you're helping or enabling
What a family dog revealed about how one mom was over-functioning for her son
The four C's Kim teaches parents who have lost their footing
Why Kim believes parents are allowed to hit their own rock bottom

EPISODE RESOURCES:
Real Life Parent Guide: https://www.reallifeparentguide.com
Work with Kim, coaching and parent support group: https://www.reallifeparentguide.com/services
Kim's free downloads, including Setting Boundaries That Stick: https://www.reallifeparentguide.com/free-downloads
Lost in Place: How to Support, Motivate, and Launch an Adult Child: https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Place-Support-Motivate-Launch/dp/1394422407
Kim on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kimmuenchparentcoach
Kim on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kimmuenchparentcoach
The Stream, free two-week trial: https://hopestreamcommunity.org/try
Worried Sick free ebook: https://hopestreamcommunity.org/worried
This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:
It's the green powder in the shaker bottle, the little blue shot by the register, the "herbal supplement" your kid bought for focus. If you've been quietly wondering whether kratom is something to worry about, drop everything and tune in.
Dean Francis's son Cameron was an elite college runner, closing in on a sub four-minute mile, when he found kratom online, sold as a plant-based boost for energy and focus. For a few months it did exactly what the marketing promised. Then his running slid, the anxiety showed up, and nobody in the family connected any of it to the powder he was shaking into his water bottle every day. It took an ER doctor in 2021 to say it plainly: this is an opioid, he’s addicted, and it's serious.
Dean got mad, and then he got busy. He founded End Kratom Addiction, and he showed up to this conversation with a mountain of knowledge (and a few products to hold up on camera, so the YouTube version is worth a watch). We talk about what kratom actually does in the body, the forms kids are buying it in, why the "safe natural leaf" story isn’t all it’s been touted as, and the Billion-dollar business keeping it on gas station shelves. He also gets honest about what treatment looked like for Cameron, and the gap in care that cost him more than anyone expected.
This is an educational episode, and it's also the wake-up call I think every parent needs, whether or not your child is struggling right now. What's sold at the corner store down the street may not be what you or your child thinks it is.
YOU'LL LEARN
What kratom turns into once it reaches the liver, and why that changes everything
The popular "energy shot" Dean held up that most parents would never look at twice
Why the "used safely for centuries in Southeast Asia" story should be taken with a grain of salt
The treatment mistake Dean wishes someone had warned his family about
How you can add your voice to the push to make kratom a controlled substance
EPISODE RESOURCES:
End Kratom Addiction website
Stop the Magicians campaign, petition, and End Kratom Addiction film
Dopesick series on Apple TV or Disney Plus
Kratomquitters.com 
Free parent PDF: What Kratom Products Look Like 
This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.