Coaching practices for Oblique Strategies for My Teenager
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Oblique Strategies for My Teenager, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- Every conversation with my kid about their behavior turns into me laying down the law and them digging in, and I want a way to actually talk it through together
- There are a few situations that go badly every single time
- Every time I put my foot down and insist, my kid blows up worse
- I’ve quietly decided there’s only one acceptable version of my life and I’m white-knuckling toward it
- My kid and I agree on a fix and it sounds great in the moment, but a few days later it’s fallen apart again
Practices that may help
- Oblique Strategies, Made Practical
Oblique Strategies is a deck of constraint-based prompts created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt to interrupt habitual thinking during creative blocks. The prompts work by forcing an indirect, unexpected approach to a problem rather than attacking it head-on. Evidence for constraint-based creativity is solid in cognitive research; the specific deck is widely used in music, design, and writing with strong anecdotal support. - Use Plan B: the three-step collaborative conversation
Empathize with the child’s concern, share yours, and invite them to solve it together.
Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene) - Plan behavior management strategies in advance
Decide how you will respond to predictable problems before they happen.
Triple P Parenting (Matthew Sanders) - Recognize when Plan A (unilateral imposition) makes things worse
Adult-imposed solutions can win the battle and lose the war — notice when enforcement is escalating rather than solving.
Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene) - Draft three genuinely different five-year plans
Sketch three distinct five-year lives — not variations on the same theme, but genuinely different directions.
Odyssey Plans: Designing Three Alternative Futures - Evaluate solutions for durability: realistic, mutually satisfying, safe
A collaborative solution that fails one of three tests — realistic, mutually satisfying, safe — will not hold.
Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene) - Cultivate a "yes brain": curiosity, courage, and resilience over reactivity
Respond to the child’s world with curiosity and openness rather than threat and control.
The Whole-Brain Child (Siegel & Bryson) - Ask what a specific other person would do
Step into a named other’s perspective to access approaches you would not generate as yourself.
Oblique Strategies, Made Practical - Give clear, calm, single instructions
One specific direction at a time, calmly stated once, is more effective than repeated commands.
Triple P Parenting (Matthew Sanders) - Identify the lagging skill behind the behavior
Name the cognitive skill the child is missing, not the behavior you want to stop.
Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)
Related concerns
- Oblique Strategies As A Parent
Oblique Strategies is a deck of constraint-based prompts created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt to interrupt habitual thinking during creative blocks. The prompts work by forcing an indirect, unexpected approach to a problem rather than attacking it head-on. Evidence for constraint-based creativity is solid in cognitive research; the specific deck is widely used in music, design, and writing with strong anecdotal support.
- Choice Architecture For My Teenager
Choice architecture — the arrangement of options in a decision environment — powerfully biases outcomes through default effects, ordering, salience, and framing. Thaler and Sunstein showed this is true whether or not anyone designed it deliberately, which means you can redesign your environment to bias yourself toward better choices.
- How To Deal With A Stubborn But Brilliant Child
Adult-imposed solutions can win the battle and lose the war — notice when enforcement is escalating rather than solving.
Recognize when Plan A (unilateral imposition) makes things worse
- How To Make 11 Years Old Kid Do Homework
Empathize with the child’s concern, share yours, and invite them to solve it together.
Use Plan B: the three-step collaborative conversation
- My Kid Slops Through Her Chores Or Takes Forever To Do It Ive Tried Everything
When children help solve the problem, they own the solution — and solutions they own, they actually follow.
Use family meetings to solve problems together
- The Ackerman Method For My Teenager
The Ackerman method, popularized by Chris Voss in Never Split the Difference, is a structured offer-and-counteroffer system. You set a target price, then make a sequence of calculated bids that converge on that target with decreasing increments — signaling that you are near your limit even as you create the appearance of flexibility. The method uses psychology to make your counterpart feel they have won a hard bargain.
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