Getting mental health support for your child is a process with many steps, and it’s easy to assume that once you’ve made it through the therapist search and finally gotten your teen into the office, things will get a little easier, and sometimes they do.
But many of us find that our teens have second thoughts about going, or dig in hard on the idea that they don’t need help at all. That can show up as your teen refusing to talk to their therapist once they’re in the office, or refusing to go to therapy altogether. Both are more common than you might think, and after everything you did to get to this point, it can feel like a real kick in the gut.
If that’s where you are right now, this post is for you.
Why They Push Back (And It’s Not Always Defiance)
It is easy to read a teen’s refusal as defiance, and sometimes it is. But from my experience, what looks like resistance is often something closer to fear.
I am going to ask you to really think about what therapy asks of a young person, especially if they are not the one who has asked for it. It asks them to walk into a room with a stranger and talk about the things they are least comfortable talking about. It asks them to do this on a schedule they didn’t choose, squeezed between school, sports, and everything else that already fills their week. It asks them to be vulnerable in a culture that tells teenagers, especially certain teenagers, that vulnerability is weakness.
And underneath all of that is something parents don’t always think about: the fear of being judged. By peers who might find out. By the therapist who is asking the questions. By you, even, for whatever they might say in that room. I think that the stigma behind “going to therapy” is slowly diminishing, but it still exists and weighs heavily on many young people.
When my kids were navigating this, I had one who took to therapy almost immediately. And I had one who pushed back hard. Same household, same parents, same general approach, completely different experiences. What I learned from that is that a child’s relationship to therapy is its own thing, separate from your relationship to the idea of getting them help. You cannot will them into openness, as much as you would like.
When Your Teen Refuses to go to Therapy Entirely
Sometimes the resistance goes beyond eye rolls and silence. Some teens will flatly refuse to go; they won’t get in the car, they’ll argue until everyone is exhausted, and the appointment comes and goes without anyone leaving the house. It helps to think about where the refusal is coming from. If it’s a first appointment, what you’re often dealing with may be pure fear of the unknown, a stranger, an unfamiliar office, no idea what’s going to happen in there. It’s worth calling the therapist’s office and explaining the situation. Some therapists who work with teens are willing to get on the phone with your child before that first visit, just to introduce themselves and take some of the mystery out of it. That happened with one of my kids. The therapist called, talked to us on speaker, provided some reassurance, and we ended up going. It didn’t fix the resistance overnight, but it got us in the door.
If it’s a teen who has been going and suddenly digs in, that’s a different conversation. Resistance that shows up mid-course might mean something; they may be getting close to something hard, or working through something new that feels uncomfortable. Before you push, check in with the therapist. They will likely have some idea of what’s happening, and their guidance on how to handle it at home will be more useful than anything you can figure out on your own.
If the appointment comes and goes and nobody leaves the house, try not to let it become a bigger battle than it already was. Give it a little time and space, then come back to the conversation calmly, not to relitigate the argument, but to stay connected to why you started down this road in the first place. Some families find it helps to renegotiate the terms: a different therapist, a different day, telehealth instead of an in-person office. Meeting them where they are, even a little, can be the thing that gets the door open again.
What You Can Actually Do
Let me be honest with you: your leverage as a parent here is real but limited. You might be able to get them in the car. You might be able to get them to the appointment. I say might here because refusal to do both of those things happens a lot. But, what happens inside that room is largely not up to you, and that is actually okay.
Therapists who work with teens have seen all of this before. The one-word answers, the staring at the floor, the “I don’t know” to every question. A good therapist is not rattled by a resistant teenager. They know that trust is built slowly, and they have tools for slowly building it. Your job is not to make your child open up. Your job is to do the best you can to get them there and stay out of the way.
A few things that can help on the front end:
Give them some control where you can. If you had any flexibility in choosing a therapist, loop them in. If they have a preference about the gender of their therapist or want someone who specializes in a particular area, take that seriously. A teenager who has some say in the decision is more likely to engage with it, even if only slightly.
Don’t debrief them after every session. Resist the urge to ask what they talked about on the drive home. Let it be quiet if they need it to be quiet. The more they feel that therapy is a private space that belongs to them, the more likely they are to actually use it. And if you feel the urge to push them to talk about something on your way to a session, try to resist. They don’t need any more pressure than they are already feeling.
Normalize it without minimizing it. There is a difference between “lots of people go to therapy, it’s no big deal,” which can feel dismissive, and “I think it takes courage to talk to someone about hard things, and I’m proud of you for going.” The second one doesn’t pretend it’s easy. It acknowledges that it’s hard and says you see them doing it anyway. But please, don’t harp on it. Say it once, maybe, and be done. Give them space, because sometimes, they don’t want to hear any judgment (even if it is positive). They just want to go, do the work, and move on to their next thing.
Keep the pressure low between sessions. The more therapy becomes a source of conflict at home, the less likely they are to want to keep going.
Why Your Teen’s Behavior at Home Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story
Here is something that took me a while to understand, and I think it is one of the most useful things I can tell you.
The resistance you are seeing at home, the groaning, the “I don’t want to go,” the sullen silence on the way to the car may have very little to do with what is actually happening inside that office.
Teens are complicated. A kid who tells you therapy is pointless, and the therapist doesn’t get them, may be doing work in that room that they are not ready or don’t need to share with you. This is why it is worth checking in with the therapist directly, occasionally. Not to get a play-by-play of what your child is saying, that would undermine the confidentiality that makes therapy work, but to get a general read on engagement. Is your child talking? Are they showing up to do the work, even imperfectly? Does the therapist feel like some kind of connection is forming? A therapist who works with teens will usually be willing to give you that much, and it can make an enormous difference in whether you decide to keep going or quietly give up.
Do not make the mistake of judging the success of therapy entirely by what comes home with your kid, or how they behave on a day they know they are going.
When They’re Older, You Have to Let Them Take the Lead
As your child moves into young adulthood, the dynamic shifts in a way that can feel like losing ground you fought hard for. You cannot make a 19-year-old go to therapy. You can express concern, you can offer to help with logistics or cost, you can keep the door open, but the decision belongs to them now in a way it didn’t before.
One of my kids eventually decided to stop going. It wasn’t what I would have chosen, and sitting with that was and is genuinely hard. But what I have come to understand since is that it doesn’t have to be permanent. Young adults who step away from therapy sometimes come back to it on their own terms, when something in their life makes them ready in a way they weren’t before. My job became staying available and non-reactive, trying not to push it (which is incredibly hard some days), just making sure they knew the door was still open and that I would help when they are ready.
Rarely will a young adult re-engage with therapy because a parent told them they needed to. Much more often, they come back because something shifted internally, and they remember that it helped, or that help was there if they wanted it. Your role is now trusted supporter, and not a driver of their decisions and actions.
Don’t Forget About Yourself in All of This
Watching your child struggle while also battling their resistance to getting help is its own kind of hard. It can feel isolating, especially when it’s not something you can easily talk about with friends or family. You’re holding a lot.
I started individual therapy during this stretch, and I will tell you honestly, it helped more than I expected. Not because anything was dramatically wrong with me, but because I needed somewhere to put all of it. The worry. The frustration. The second-guessing. Having a space that was just mine, separate from the family dynamics we were navigating, gave me a way to stay steadier than I might have been otherwise.
It also did something I hadn’t anticipated: it made therapy feel like something our family did, not something we were making our kids do.
You don’t have to be in crisis to benefit from talking to someone. If your child is in therapy, or you’re trying to get them there, that season of parenting is hard enough to warrant some support of your own. If the financial burden of finding a therapist for yourself makes this unrealistic, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has family support groups across the country. Some of these groups are in person, and some are online, but they are free to all participants and designed to support adults who love someone who is struggling with their mental health. You can go to the NAMI Family Support Group page and search for a group in your area.
How Long Should You Give It Before Reassessing?
This is one of the questions parents wonder about when they are in this situation. The honest answer is that there is no universal timeline, but some therapists will tell you that six to eight sessions is a reasonable minimum before drawing any conclusions, and that number assumes your teen is actually showing up and making some attempt to engage, even a minimal one. Early sessions are often slow. The therapist is still building trust, your teen is still figuring out what this is, and you have very little visibility into what is happening inside those sessions. Calling it too early is a common mistake parents make, and I encourage you to pause and take a breath before you make a decision.
That said, if something feels genuinely off, not just slow, but wrong, you need to have a direct conversation with the therapist before you do anything else. You can ask them plainly: Do you feel like you’re making any progress with my child? Is there a connection forming, even a small one? A good therapist will be honest with you, and their read on the situation is going to be more informed than yours. They may tell you to give it more time. They may tell you they think a different approach or a different provider would be a better fit. Either way, you should have that conversation before you make any decisions.
If the therapist also feels like the fit isn’t there, it can feel like a failure, but try to remember that you are learning, and it can sometimes take time to find the right fit. It does not mean that therapy did not work or that your child can never benefit from therapy. It just means the next search needs to account for what didn’t work the first time. I’ll be covering how to evaluate fit and what to do when it isn’t there in my next post.
The Honest Truth About Progress
Therapy with a resistant teenager is rarely a straight line. It can feel like one step forward and two steps back. You may go months without knowing whether any of it is working, and some of what you see at home may actively suggest it isn’t.
But here is what I keep coming back to: you did the hard part to get them there. The fact that your child is sitting in that room, even grudgingly, even silently, is something. The therapist’s job is to work with that. Your job is to hold the other pieces, keep the appointments, lower the pressure, check in with the therapist when you need a reality check, and trust that the process can work even when it doesn’t look like it from where you are standing.
It is not a straight line. For most families, it is not even a clear line. But staying in it, even imperfectly, matters more than getting it exactly right.
You’re not alone in this.
Laurie
This post is part of an ongoing series on finding and navigating professional support for your child. If you’re still in the process of finding a therapist, you might find the earlier posts in this series a helpful place to start.
Child Therapist, Psychologist, or Psychiatrist. What’s the Difference and Who Does My Child Need?
Why is it So Hard to Find a Therapist for my Child (Even with Insurance)
How to Find and Pay for Therapy When Insurance Falls Short
How to Find a Therapist for Your Child: A Practical Starting Point
Questions to Ask a Therapist Before You Hire Them
Parent. Founder of Together We Navigate. I spent years navigating support systems for my kids and built TWN so other parents don’t have to figure it out alone. PhD in Community Psychology.