If your teenager is learning DBT skills, the single biggest variable in whether those skills stick is you.
Not their motivation. Not the quality of the group. You.
This is not a guilt statement, it is a mechanism statement. Skills get reinforced by the environment a person returns to. A teenager who practices a communication skill for ninety minutes a week and then goes home to a household that does not use it has learned a vocabulary nobody else speaks.
There are three common ways families handle this, and they differ in how much of that reinforcement the household actually supplies.
Option one: learn alongside them
The strongest version is a multifamily skills group, where parents and teenagers learn the same material at the same time. Everyone in the room is a learner, which quietly removes the premise that the teenager is the one being fixed.
If you can participate in a multifamily skills group where you are learning the skills alongside your teen, that is the best. The reason for that is very simply that you and the teen are both learning new models to communicate effectively, to regulate your emotions, and to achieve your goals.
Two things happen in that format that do not happen otherwise. First, the household gets a shared language. When a parent and a teenager both know what a skill is called, a hard moment can be named instead of escalated. Second, and more important, the parent models the skill.
The way that you use the skills will then be reinforced and modeled for your teen, who will then also use those skills.
Teenagers are unusually good at detecting the gap between what adults recommend and what adults do. A parent using a skill badly but visibly teaches more than a parent recommending it perfectly.
Option two: separate parent and teen groups
Same time slot is not always possible. Many parents have schedules that will not bend to a teenager's availability, and a program that requires both to be in the same room at the same hour is a program many families cannot use.
The workaround is a standalone parent group running in parallel with a standalone teen group. The content overlaps, the timing does not have to.
This is to help make these groups more available for parents that have demanding schedules and cannot necessarily find the same time as their teen to meet.
Parent courses in this format tend to be shorter and denser, often around eight weeks against a longer teen curriculum, on the reasonable theory that parents will not complete something that takes a year.
What is lost is the shared room. What is kept is the shared vocabulary, which is most of the benefit, and it is a considerably better outcome than the version where only one person in the house knows what a skill is.
Option three: the teenager goes alone
Sometimes the teenager enrolls and the parents do not. This is a legitimate option and it is worth saying so plainly, because parents who cannot commit to a group sometimes conclude that the whole thing is pointless.
It is not pointless. It is less supported, and there are things parents can do that close most of the gap.
- Read the course material. Most programs give parents access whether or not they attend.
- Ask about the skills without quizzing. Curious, not evaluative.
- Do not use the skills as leverage. A skill quoted back at a teenager to win an argument is a skill you have just poisoned.
- Practice one yourself and say so out loud.
The third item causes the most damage when it goes wrong. A parent who says you are not being very effective right now has converted a shared tool into a weapon, and the teenager will stop using the vocabulary within a week.
We still ask that parents review the course material, and we ask them to remain curious, open, and in conversation with their teen around the skills that they are learning.
The thread running through all three
Every option lands in the same place. The teenager's practice is necessary. It is not sufficient.
It is great that your teenager is practicing these skills, and in order for it to really stick and be reinforced, we highly encourage parents to learn and practice the skills too, so that they can model that effectiveness.
Put differently: a skill is not really in a household until an adult has used it on a bad day in front of a child who was watching.
What this asks of parents
It asks something genuinely uncomfortable, which is that parents accept a share of the change. Many families arrive with a clear premise that the teenager is the one with the problem and the parents are the support staff. DBT does not take that framing, not out of blame, but because conflict is transactional. It happens between people.
Accepting a share is not the same as accepting fault. It is closer to a practical observation: in a loop with two participants, either one can interrupt it, and the adult usually has more capacity to do so on any given evening.
In practice, the parent skills that do the most work are the ones about holding warmth and a limit at the same time. Walking the middle path covers that directly, and preparing your child for difficulty covers the related question of when to step in and when not to.
Getting started in New York
Axis Psychological Services offers DBT informed individual therapy and a DBT skills group in New York City. If you want to work out which format fits your family's schedule, book a free consultation.
If your family wants to learn these skills together, read about DBT therapy in NYC, or learn about the DBT skills group in NYC.
Common questions
Do parents have to attend a DBT skills group with their teenager?
Not necessarily, and there are three common formats. The strongest is a multifamily skills group where parents and teenagers learn the same material at the same time. The second is separate parent and teen groups running in parallel, which suits parents whose schedules will not bend. The third is the teenager attending alone. All three work, and they differ mainly in how much reinforcement the household supplies afterwards.
Why does it matter whether parents learn DBT skills too?
Because skills get reinforced by the environment a person returns to. A teenager who practices a communication skill for ninety minutes a week and then goes home to a household that does not use it has learned a vocabulary nobody else speaks. When a parent and a teenager both know what a skill is called, a hard moment can be named instead of escalated.
What can a parent do if they cannot join a group at all?
Read the course material, which most programs make available whether or not you attend. Ask about the skills with curiosity rather than quizzing. Practice one yourself and say so out loud. And do not quote a skill back at your teenager to win an argument, because a shared tool used as a weapon stops being shared within about a week.
How long is a parent DBT skills course?
Parent courses in the parallel format tend to be shorter and denser than the teen curriculum, often around eight weeks, on the reasonable theory that parents will not complete something that takes a year. Specific length varies by programme, so it is worth asking before you enrol.
