Tosha Schore: Aggressive Kids, Loving Limits, and Connection

Aggression from your own child carries a specific kind of shame. Parents hide it, decide it is proof they failed, and stop telling anyone. Tosha Schore's answer, when Lisa asks how common it is, is that she runs an entire business helping families with it.

Tosha is the founder of Parenting Boys Peacefully and the creator of a course called Out With Aggression. Her background is in women's studies and feminism, and she frames supporting struggling boys as a feminist act, though she works with parents of kids all along the gender spectrum, teenagers included. Her four-part frame is care deeply for yourself, connect deeply with your child, set limits lovingly, and play wildly, and she is firm that the order matters.

This conversation is aimed squarely at post-separation households. A child comes home from the other parent hitting, name-calling, or repeating an accusation, and the other parent is on the phone explaining that this is what you get for how you parent. Tosha stays out of the blame argument entirely. Her question is what the child needs in order to release the hurt somewhere it is safe to release it, and what shape the parent has to be in to hold that.

Tosha and Lisa also talk through a phone a teenager was told nobody can take away, and why that is a house rule between parent and child rather than a fight with an ex. She compares parenting a teen to dating, in that it is mostly rejection, and says the parent's job is to keep showing up regardless of how the teen shows up. She describes how a preschooler parrots language they do not understand, and why getting playful with it works better than holding a four-year-old accountable for a phrase they inherited. The through-line is a shift from parenting by control, which stops working the moment a child is bigger than you, to parenting by connection, which does not.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why setting a limit first, before connection, is what makes the limit collapse
• Tosha's four moves in order: care for yourself, connect, set limits lovingly, play
• What to do when your ex tells your child that your parenting caused their aggression
• Why the reason behind the behavior matters less than what you do next
• The phone your ex gave your teenager: whose boundary that actually is
• Why parenting a teen means being rejected repeatedly, and showing up anyway
• How to respond when a preschooler comes home parroting language about you
• Moving from a control model to a connection model before your child outgrows you

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 How common child aggression is, and the shame around it
3:00 Parenting Boys Peacefully: care, connect, set limits, play
5:00 Teens, and why parents who feel they started late are not out of time
6:00 When your ex uses your child's aggression against you
9:00 Why the "why" matters less than what you do next
10:00 Getting into good enough parenting shape first
13:00 The phone the other parent gave, and whose boundary it is
16:00 Teenagers, rejection, and showing up anyway
19:00 The preschooler who comes back parroting, and getting playful with it
22:00 Disrespect, and moving from control to connection
26:00 Why doing this alongside other parents changes the outcome

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Tosha Schore: https://www.toshaschore.com/
🔗 Parenting Boys Peacefully: https://parentingboyspeacefully.com/

🎧 More with Tosha Schore on this podcast
Ep 167: Aggression in Boys, and What Actually Helps
Ep 352: When Your Child Comes Home From Your Ex's Enraged

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.