The Thing Your Kid Can’t Tell You When They’re Struggling, with Enzo Narciso

When my son Enzo was using fentanyl and Xanax and blowing up every structure I tried to build around him, I kept asking the wrong question. What I wasn’t asking was what was happening inside him that he couldn’t put words to. He was a teenager with an unmedicated ADHD brain, getting more reinforcement and belonging from the drug world than anywhere else in his life, and he had no way to tell me that.

Enzo is back on the podcast today with something specific: the things kids who are actively struggling can’t necessarily say but really wish their parents understood. When I asked what he would have wanted me to know back then, Enzo told me about a kid he recently mentored who, when asked the same question, said the only thing he wanted his parents to know was, “I’m trying.” And Enzo realized that was exactly it. Not that the drugs were working. Not that his choices were okay. Just that from inside his brain, he was doing something that felt like trying.

Enzo is now the founder of Life Strategies Mentors, a mentoring program for young men navigating recovery and reintegration. He’s in his late-twenties, expanding his team, building a life that not long ago did not seem survivable.

This conversation covers a lot of ground, from the fish love parable that reframed how I think about parental expectations, to what ADHD does to the brain’s relationship with substances, to why kids sometimes listen to a near-stranger before they will listen to their own parents. That last one is not a failure of the relationship. It is biology. Knowing that changes something.

If you have been watching your kid and thinking they are not even trying, this one is for you.

YOU’LL LEARN:

• The fish love parable, and the question it forces you to ask about your own parenting
• Why “I’m trying” is the one thing a struggling kid most wishes their parents could hear
• What ADHD actually does to the brain’s relationship with substances, and why warnings don’t land
• The biology behind why kids listen to mentors before they listen to parents
• The one skill Enzo says made the biggest difference when he was finally ready to change

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Life Strategies Mentors website
• Fish Love story on YouTube
• Enzo on Hopestream podcast episodes #251 and #185
• ADHD Resources:
  • Dr. Gabor Mate’s book, “Scattered Minds”
  • Dr. Russell Barkley on YouTube
  • Dr. Ned Hallowell on Hopestream episode 99 (ADHD as a Superpower)

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