505. When You Catch Your Kid Hiding Something

I want you to imagine it’s just a regular school morning and you push open your son’s bedroom door, stepping over the pile of laundry that he swore he was going to pick up, and you gently nudge him awake. And as he groggily rolls over, something slips from under his pillow. 

It’s a phone, but it’s not his phone and your stomach drops and your mind races. Because just last week, the two of you had an amazing conversation, heartfelt, face to face about honesty and truth. And you even had talked about his new girlfriend, the one that you’re not so sure about, and you both agreed to be really open and honest with each other.

And now this, a secret phone, a secret life? What else is he hiding? If you’ve ever worried about your own child keeping things from you, today’s episode is one you won’t want to miss. You’re about to hear a real coaching session with a mom in this exact moment, panicked, heartbroken and unsure of what to do next. Let’s dive in.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

Sometimes, listening to a podcast is enough. But sometimes, you’ll feel inspired to go deeper. If you hear things that speak to you in today’s episode, consider it your invitation to a complimentary coaching workshop.

On this live, interactive Zoom call with me, you’ll get a taste of the power of this work when applied in real life. You can participate, or be a silent observer. But you have to take a step if you want to truly see change in your life… two steps, actually. Head to JodyMoore.com/freecoaching and register. Then you just have to show up. Your best life is waiting for you. Will you show up for it? JodyMoore.com/freecoaching. I’ll see you there.

Okay, everybody, I am putting some real coaching here on the podcast. I’ve done this a little bit in the past, but not very much. And I feel like it’s the most powerful way at this point to show you what I’m trying to show you. We’re over 500 episodes into the podcast. I have been teaching and talking until I’m blue in the face.

And I quite frankly think that’s kind of boring. I’m glad that you don’t. A lot of you listen to this, so I don’t think you find it as boring as I do listening to myself teach. But there’s over 500 episodes you can go back and listen to. But here’s the thing.

I’m trying this out. I’m going to put some coaching on here and I want your feedback. If you like it, if you find it to be powerful, like I think you’re going to, please let me know that. And if on the other hand, you’re like, I kind of like it better when you teach concepts, Jody, let me know that because I want this podcast to be useful to you, not something that is here for my own benefit or my own pleasure, my own satisfaction. 

So best way to let me know is just to call into our hotline 1-888-HI-JODY-M. And just leave me a quick message and just let me know, Hey, I really liked the coaching, do more of that. Or I really prefer when you teach, do more of that. Or maybe you want to let me know that you like a combination of the two. I’m totally open to making this our podcast.

So I would greatly appreciate your feedback, but I do think that you’re gonna love this episode, especially if you have children, especially if you have teenagers, if you ever worry about your teenagers. Maybe you have teenagers that are lying to you, or maybe you just know that there’s a possibility that they might at some point. 

Now I’m going to play the coaching session here for you, and then make sure you listen afterwards because I’m going to dissect for you a little bit some of what we hear happening on this call so that you can apply it to yourself, whether you can relate to this situation or you have something just somewhat similar. Maybe it’s not a kid lying. Maybe it’s somebody else that has “betrayed” you in some certain way.

I want to make this really relevant and applicable and tell you why I coached this client the way I did. So make sure you stick around for that part. I’ll see you after the coaching session.

—

Jody Moore: How are you? You doing all right?

Client: I’m all right. So the other day I went in to wake my son up and found that he had a second phone that we didn’t know about that he’s been hiding from us for about a month and a half that his maybe ex-girlfriend’s mom had bought for him. I don’t know who paid for it actually, but she’s got a plan. 

And so he’s been, we had like a phone, like he wrote out like this whole phone contract that we had signed and everything. And he’s been completely pretending and faking with the phone that we knew that he had, that he pays for every month and he paid for that phone. 

And so we’ve been working with him for a few months to really work through and build connection. And like we were in a really, really good place. And then I find this phone and I just, I feel like, okay, I just wasted all this time.

Jody Moore: Wait, wait, wait, wait. What are you making this mean? Your phone, your son has a second phone that you didn’t know about. He’s been lying to you, right. And hiding things from you, deceiving you. 

Client: Yep. Okay. 

Jody Moore: What are you making all that mean? 

Client: That he is not trustworthy. That as much as we’ve worked with him and tried to build that connection, he’s completely disrespected all of that. And I guess I felt like I was trying to keep it because I’ve run through models and I’ve really talked through this a lot, but at the same time, I guess I didn’t realize I still have all this emotion around it. And so you said, hey, it’s your turn.

Jody Moore: Yeah. It’s okay to have emotion around it. It really is. I don’t want you to think this is about like, Oh, it shouldn’t be emotional, I should just be neutral about everything that happens in the world. No. 

Client: Sure.

Jody Moore: You’re going to want to have emotion around it. So what is the main emotion that you feel right now? 

Client: I’m just sad. I really am just sad. 

Jody Moore: Sad?

Client: Yeah, for sure.

Jody Moore: Okay. So you have some sadness going on. And sadness, this is really important. I do want to empower you with this piece of knowledge. I’m not telling you not to be sad, Bbut part of your brain thinks you’re sad because your son had a second phone and didn’t tell you about it. Didn’t honor your contract. That’s not the reason you’re sad. 

You’re sad because you’re making this mean something about your relationship or about your child or about you in relation to your child or whatever. You’re making it mean something. That’s the part that’s just made up. That’s what’s making you sad.

Client: Right.

Jody Moore: Right? And you’re making it mean a lot of things, but one of the things you told me is that he’s not trustworthy. We’ve been doing all this work and it’s been for nothing. He’s disrespected us.

Client: Right.

Jody Moore: And when you think that, then you feel sad.

Client: Right.

Jody Moore: Now tell me how you show up around your son from this sadness.

Client: I’ve kind of shut down and pulled away. I’ve started to close down a little bit because I’m not sure where to go from here.

Jody Moore: Yeah. Okay. Shut down, pull away, close down. What result does that get you in relation to your son?

Client: Distance, you know, it puts distance between us.

Jody Moore: Yeah. Okay. All right. So let’s just take a look at this. Let’s take a guess at your son’s model. Let’s just play with it a little bit, because what we want to show your brain is not that you shouldn’t be sad, but that there are a lot of things going on here that we’re not taking into consideration. With this story is my guess. Okay? 

So what do you think is going on for your son? If we put in his action line that he gets somehow a second phone. He doesn’t tell mom and dad about what do you think is fueling that? What is the feeling thought fueling that for him

Client: That he wants more control in his life that he wants to be able to be more independent, have more freedoms.

Jody Moore: I want more control, more freedom, more independence. I want to be able to do what I want with this phone. Mom doesn’t let me do all the things I want to do on this phone. So I’ll just get a phone and not tell her about it. That way I can do what I want. But mom will still feel good about – she thinks I should be doing with phones. Is that what we want to call not trustworthy?

Client: I don’t know, because it still seems sneaky, right?

Jody Moore: I mean, we can, but it’s just that it’s making you sad to think about it this way. Disconnecting you and putting distance between you and your son. What is it that he wants to do on the phone that you don’t want to let him do?

Client: I don’t know exactly what he does on this phone because so he had a girlfriend that we had, there’s some issues there that have been very destructive in his life and we’ve kind of let that go and said, okay, you can still like talk to this girl, but he does that now all hours of the night.

Jody Moore: Okay. And so you’re like, hey, you need to get off the phone by a certain time?

Client: Yeah.

Jody Moore: Is that it? Okay. So that’s one thing. So you want him to be off the phone at a certain time. We’re not talking to this girl all night anyway. He wants to be able to talk to her whenever he wants all night long if necessary. So he’s like, I guess I’ll get another phone. I just won’t tell my mom about it.

Client: Right.

Jody Moore: Okay. Now I’m not saying that we should think that’s lovely and that we love that kind of behavior. But can we, but like, before we just go into like, he’s disrespecting us, we’ve done all this work for nothing. He’s not trustworthy. Can we just at least try to acknowledge, like, I can see why he would want to do that?

Client: Sure. 

Jody Moore: And not even because he’s a terrible person, like, just like, right. He’s a boy who likes a girl and he likes talking to that girl. And we don’t let him talk to her all night like he would like to, and he wants to. And so he found a way around that. I mean, it makes sense, right? That part of it.

Client: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Jody Moore: Now, what would happen if he would have come to you and said, Mom, I really want to be able to talk to her all night long. Can we just discuss that?

Client: I would talk him through it. Like I would sit down with him. I would have a conversation about that. We’ve really tried to allow him to come to us and at least our conversation has been like, just talk to us and let’s work it out. And we’ve given him a lot of freedom in that way.

Jody Moore: But he doesn’t feel that way for some reason. Right? Let’s just try and let’s try and see the part where he doesn’t feel like that would have been a good solution. That would have worked.

Client: Okay.

Jody Moore: I mean, I don’t know. Does he think it may be that you’re going to worry because you said you don’t really love that this girl’s in his life anyway.

Client: Yeah, I think there’s definitely some worry there. I think he’s told us that he doesn’t want to disappoint us, you know, I mean…

Jody Moore: So what I’m wondering is I want you to just let yourself be sad as long as necessary. But I think a more useful place to go that’s probably available to you even sooner than later would be curiosity and even confusion. 

Client: Like why the heck did this mom get a phone with him and put him on a plan like we didn’t know about? Anyway, it’s a whole other thing, I guess.

Jody Moore: Yeah, that’s going to be some more work you’re going to have to do. But to begin with, we want to work on your relationship with your son, right? You don’t want to be distance and disconnected and ignoring him and pulling away and closing down for him. Right?

Client: Right. For sure.

Jody Moore: We want the opposite actually.

Client: Yep. 

Jody Moore: We want to be up and be available. And so curiosity and even that what I like about confusion is that for me, anyway, I can be confused and it removes the judgment. Otherwise I’m mad and frustrated. Like, why would you do this? We talked about this. Don’t you understand? Why would you let that, why would that woman do this? We’re going to judge everybody. But if we’re just, I’m just so confused. Help me understand.

Client: That’s true. Yeah.

Jody Moore: Right? Then we open up to having useful discussions. But we have to be more open and less judgmental, less defiant about what we think it should look like to have any chance at all of our son feeling like it’s safe to do that. 

Client: Right.

Jody Moore: Right?

Client: Yeah. 

Jody Moore: So listen, all the work you’ve done with him hasn’t been for nothing. It’s perfect. You’re right on track. You’re right where you’re supposed to be.

Client: Thank you.

Jody Moore: You had to lay that groundwork in order to end up where you are now and where we are now is perfect because now we get to have a really open, honest dialogue. But I think this is so important. I think we have to go into these conversations respecting our kids. It’s hard to do because what we want to do is go into it judging the kid.

Client: Right. For sure. 

Jody Moore: But if we respected him, it would sound entirely different. It would sound like, “I just want to understand what it’s like for you right now.” How old is he?

Client: 17.

Jody Moore: I want to know what it’s like to be a 17-year-old boy in the world right now. Tell me. I want to know what it’s like to be a 17 year old boy who really likes a girl who has a cell phone who has like, tell me what it’s like to be you. And I want to know what you would do if you were me. If you were your mom and you suddenly discovered that your child had another phone you didn’t know about, what would you do? How would you handle it? Do you see what I mean? How respect will open up a more honest conversation between both of you? Hopefully?

Client: Sure.

Jody Moore: At least gives him an opportunity to because there’s so much that we don’t even know might be going on with that child.

Client: For sure, I mean, obviously, obviously I didn’t know he had the phone, so there’s so much more.

Jody Moore: But this is the other thing I’m gonna offer to you, is that I know in your brain, this is a really big deal. And I just want to give you permission to believe that this is not a big deal. Okay, so he has a phone, all right. Now we get to have a really candid conversation and I wanna know, I wanna understand, help me understand, I’m confused. And I love you and I’m just trying to do my job as your mom to protect you from the world and at the same time navigate letting you make your own choices. Not an easy thing to do help me understand where you’re coming from?

But you see what I mean? Like your brain is like this is a big deal And you can keep thinking that if you want, but if I were you, I would try on, listen, this is not a big deal.

Client: Yeah. I think what I’m making it mean makes it feel heavier.

Jody Moore: Yeah.

Client: What you were saying, it just makes it feel more than it really is.

Jody Moore: Exactly. And so be sad as long as you wanna be sad, but you also don’t have to any longer than you want to. Okay? All right, mom, You got this.

Client: Thank you so much.

Jody Moore: Okay, you’re welcome.

Client: Appreciate it. Bye.

—

Okay, everybody. Let’s dissect a little bit what we just heard from this beautiful, loving mother who’s in a situation I’m sure many of us can relate to. So I want you to notice that in the beginning when she tells me what’s going on, the first thing I ask her is, what are you making it mean? 

And the reason I’m pointing that out to all of you is because when you have something going on that feels very dramatic, you’re very emotional about it, maybe you’re scared, maybe you’re sad like this sweet mom was, whatever it is, when you have strong emotions, one of the things that will help to calm you down right away is to stop and separate out facts from what you’re making it mean.

So in this situation, I just kind of summed up for her the facts. You know, I was like, okay, so you found a phone. Your son had a phone and he was hiding it from you. What are you making it mean? Because I don’t know about you, but as I listen to somebody tell me something like this, I have thoughts about maybe why she’s upset. I have guesses about how I would feel in that situation or why if I was upset about it, why I might be upset. And the truth is, we’re all unique in this way.

Some people, it wouldn’t phase them at all. They’d be like, oh yeah, you know, kids do that. And there’s some that would be upset because of, I don’t know, financial reasons. They’re worried about the money side or there are others who would just make it mean something more about themselves. As a parent, I must not be a good mom or, or he doesn’t trust me or what have you. Right?

And so that’s why I asked this woman this, I want to know what is she thinking? What is she making it mean that is creating all this emotion for her? Now she has many thoughts probably as usually we do in a situation that feels emotionally charged for us, but the first one that comes to her mind is about her son, right? When she says he’s not trustworthy. And that’s the reason why I start talking to her about what might be going on for her son.

Because she’s immediately going to judgment of her son, which doesn’t feel good to her because she loves this kid, clearly, right? And so for her to judge him and kind of make him the bad guy, if you will, in the story is partly why she’s emotionally charged. And what I want to show her is I know that her son is not a bad guy. I know he’s not. He’s just a teenage boy who likes a girl and wants to be able to talk to her or whatever else might be going on for him.

But from just the little bit that she gave us, I have some guesses about why he’s doing this that make perfect sense. Not because he’s evil and not trustworthy, but because he’s a teenage boy, right, who likes a girl and has a mom that doesn’t want him talking to her all night on the phone. And again, maybe there are many other factors we’re not even aware of. But this is certainly a completely lovable kid in an understandable situation.

And I’m not saying that as parents, we don’t want to have expectations and boundaries and guidelines and things, not that we wouldn’t monitor our children’s behavior as much as possible. All I’m trying to show this mom is that her son is not a bad kid, because when she gives herself permission to stop judging him, it doesn’t feel safe to her brain right now to not judge him. But as a coach, my job is to give her permission to stop judging him. And it’s not even that hard to do when we back it up and look at what’s going on.

Okay, so I want you to, in your own life, consider this situation. Are you judging somebody that you actually love and you don’t want to be in judgment, but your brain is telling you it’s dangerous not to judge them. I’m telling you, it is not useful to go to judgment.

And there’s another thing going on here that we didn’t exactly dive into in this coaching session, because this is just a quick call. But if and when I talked to this client again, I would have asked her, are you making it mean anything about yourself as a mom? Because often when we are in blame, which is her judgment of her son, right, we are also in shame at the same time. We tend to go back and forth between shame and blame. I call it the shame-blame trap.

And so if there is any part of her that’s judging herself in some way, then we want to clean that part up as well. Because the way out of the shame-blame trap is to realize that this isn’t anybody’s fault. This isn’t his fault. This isn’t my fault. 

She’s also wanting to maybe blame the girlfriend’s mom, right? We heard a little hint of that where she was like, did this girl’s mom give him the phone and why would you do that? So her brain is trying to stay in blame because shame feels terrible, but often we bounce back and forth between the two. 

None of those things are gonna be useful because they’re gonna keep my client stuck in the space of something has gone wrong, right? So you’ll notice at the end, I offered to her, hey, this is not a big deal. This isn’t a big deal. 

Now, some of you listening might be like, that’s terrible advice, Jody. This is a big deal. If he’s hiding things, that might mean A, B, or C, and we can’t let kids do that and on and on. I get it. Okay. I’m not naive to that stuff. I’m just saying for this woman, it is not useful for her to think this is a big deal. I should panic. I should figure out who’s to blame. It’s not serving her to do that. 

And this might be true in your own life too, that you’re making something a big deal and maybe everyone around you agrees it’s a big deal. And I want to tell you right now that you have my full permission to decide this is not a big deal because that is the way out of the shame-blame trap, my friend. 

If this isn’t a big deal, if nothing’s really gone wrong, if what we have here is just a bunch of human beings trying to navigate life and the world and doing the best they can, and sometimes not doing a good job at all, but it’s all understandable. There’s a reason for it and we’re going to get through it, and we’re going to figure it out, and it’s okay, then we can calm down and stop pointing fingers or feeling bad. And we could just start having logical, really open, connecting conversations. Okay?

So that’s the other thing I want to show you that we saw in this coaching session is that this mom, by worrying about her son hiding this phone, let’s think about why she’s worried about that. She’s afraid that he’s disconnecting from her, that maybe there are problems or troubles going on that she doesn’t know about, or that he’s not going to tell her about, that maybe he’s involved in things that aren’t “appropriate,” that she doesn’t like for him, that she doesn’t think will serve him in his life. That’s the reason why, right?

And so what she’s doing is disconnecting from her son. We didn’t flesh that out in a lot of detail in this coaching call, but she did say, I disconnect, right? And I want you to put yourself in her shoes. What do we do? We don’t quite know what to say. So we try to say something, but we have to pretend because we don’t want him to know the level of upset that we are. And we’re also afraid of pushing them further away.

So we’re doing this weird like walking on eggshells thing, or we often sometimes even avoid the conversations because we know we can’t show up how we want. We do all kinds of things that contribute to the exact thing that we’re afraid of. Like, I don’t want my son disconnecting from me and not being totally honest with me. So I’m going to disconnect from him and not be totally honest with him. Do you see how this doesn’t make any sense?

And it’s understandable that this woman’s doing it. We all would be doing the same thing if we were thinking about this situation in the way that she is. And that’s why I’m offering to her a bunch of alternative thoughts like, this is not a big deal. It’s totally understandable that your kid is doing what he’s doing. It makes perfect sense. Right? And it doesn’t mean you’re not doing an amazing job as his mom. And it doesn’t mean that you are wrong for kind of panicking right now. That’s okay too.

Notice there’s lots of me saying to her in the beginning, especially, it’s okay that you’re sad. It’s not that she shouldn’t be thinking about it this way. She’s got to process the emotion that she’s already created with her thoughts. It’s just that it’s only her thoughts creating the emotion and she doesn’t have to stay there. It’s not important or responsible or good parenting in some way for her to stay in this story.

Now the last thing I want to point out that you might take away from this coaching, I hope you’re taking a bunch of nuggets that will apply to your life in different ways, but the last thing I want to point out is that the work I’m offering you here of examining what you make things mean, examining your stories, choosing them more intentionally, is not about binary thinking.

I did offer her a pretty opposite thought of like her brain is going from, he’s not trustworthy, and I offered her the thought at the end, this is not a big deal. But it doesn’t have to be a completely opposite thought from the one that you’re thinking or a completely, we don’t have to go from a story like, I can’t believe my kid is lying to me. He’s not trustworthy. I thought we were beyond this. What’s going on? To, this is lovely. I love that he has a second phone. Or even, it’s not a big deal.

I sensed that she would get there. A part of her could believe that and that’s why I offered it to her. And as I’m coaching, I’m always keeping an eye on people. And if she would have really rejected that, I would have offered her something different. But it doesn’t have to be just black or white, all or nothing. There could be many other thoughts.

So for example, if that thought, this isn’t a big deal, was one that I could see she didn’t believe at all, and her brain just completely rejected it, she wasn’t ready for it, I would have offered her this other thought that she gave me in the middle of the coaching session. She said, he doesn’t want to disappoint us. Right?

As we kind of dove in and started exploring why might your child do this if it’s not just because he’s a terrible kid. She said, he doesn’t want to disappoint us. Now I want you to imagine if this woman just shifted from thinking, he’s not trustworthy to my son doesn’t want to disappoint me. Doesn’t that thought feel different? Doesn’t it feel a little bit better?

Doesn’t it help you feel more like the parent that you want to be to think, my sweet son just doesn’t want to disappoint, I added the sweet part, but stay with me. My son just doesn’t want to disappoint me. That says to me that he’s thoughtful, that he’s considerate instead of he’s a not trustworthy villain.

So notice you can just shift a little bit to a thought that you already believe. I know this woman already believes that because she told it to me. She offered me that. So I wanted to take her as far towards feeling some relief and being the kind of mom she wants to be as I possibly could. And that’s why I offered her the thought, this is not a big deal, But we could have equally gone with, my son just doesn’t want to disappoint me. And she still would have made major progress.

Because what happens when you do this work is you notice, first of all, that it’s all a story. You notice that that story is creating your current experience. And then if you can find a new place that you’re headed to in your mind, and you hold space for it, and you give yourself time and patience to get there, your brain keeps working on it.

After a coaching session like this, you can’t not see what a good coach shows you. Yeah, I just called myself the good coach in this situation. All my coaching is not always brilliant, but I’m just saying, when someone coaches you and shows you yourself, and you see it, even just for a second, even if you go back to the old story, you’ve now seen something that you cannot unsee. And your amazing brain will go to work doing the rest if you want to get to a better place, to a more peaceful place, to a place that helps you be more who you want to be.

I promise you, because I’ve seen it happen time and time again, where sometimes at the end of the coaching, I wonder if my client really got it. I wonder if they saw what I was trying to show them. And then they’ll come back to me later and tell me what’s changed for them. And I realize, oh, they got it enough that their brain kept working on it. And they make most of that progress on their own. I just barely tipped them in the right direction.

All right, you guys, thanks for joining me for this real coaching session. And again, call into 888-HI-JODY-M and let me know if you want more like this or if you want me to go back to teaching or you want a combination. I’m totally open for it.

All right, have a beautiful rest of your day.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: JodyMoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s JodyMoore.com/freecoaching.