In the media

Where you may have heard me.

Mike Barsamian is a parent coach for parents of teenagers and the creator of the PACE Setter Method™. He has worked with teenagers and families since 2003.

If you produce a podcast, write for a publication, or programme a parent night, everything you need is on this page — press releases, appearances, topics, a bio you can lift, and how to reach me.

Latest press Press kit & bio Booking enquiries

Press releases

Commentary on new research.

When new research about teenagers and families comes out, I write about what it means for the parents living it. These releases are distributed by EIN Presswire and carried on AP News.

AP News Press release · via EIN Presswire 2026

A Third of Teens Who Use AI Companions Have Taken a Serious Conversation to the Machine Instead of a Person. A Parent Coach Says That Is Information, Not a Technology Problem

Pew Research Center found that 64% of teens use AI chatbots, while only 51% of parents think their teen does. Common Sense Media found that about one in three teens who use AI companions has chosen one over a real person for a serious conversation.

My argument is that the gap gets more attention than it deserves. The useful question is what made the machine feel like the safer place to take something hard — and why taking the phone away rarely fixes it.

Read on AP News → Related: My teenager won’t talk to me →

Reporters: I’m available to comment on teens and AI. Data cited is from Pew Research Center (published February 2026) and Common Sense Media (2025). Write to [email protected].

Guest appearances

Podcasts

Four shows, all still available to listen to.

Dad Up · Episode 298

Parenting Teens With Purpose

Why the tools that worked at nine stop working at fourteen, and what replaces them. With Bryan Ward.

Listen →

Faithful Fatherhood · Episode 88

Building Trust with Your Teen

How trust is rebuilt with a teenager who has stopped offering it — and why it starts with the parent rather than the teen.

Listen →

Audacious Faith

On parenting teenagers

A conversation about faith, family, and what changes when a parent stops managing behaviour and starts developing a person.

Listen on Apple → · Watch →

Been There Got Out

On parenting through the hard years

What it takes to stay steady as a parent when the relationship with your teenager is the thing that is hurting.

Watch →

Features & speaking

Written about. Invited to speak.

Bold Journey Magazine

Meet Mike Barsamian

An interview on where confidence actually comes from, the practices that keep a parent steady, and why a relationship — like anything that grows — has to be measured before it can be managed.

Read the interview →

Next Level Athletes Conference

Invited speaker

A session for the parents behind young athletes — what a teenager actually needs from the adult in the stands, and why the pressure a parent feels so rarely stays on the parent’s side of the car ride home.

No recording was made of this session.

My own

Where I publish.

Podcast

Present Solution Podcast

Teaching for parents of teenagers, built on the PACE Setter Method™.

Listen on Apple →

Video

YouTube

Short teaching for parents of teenagers, weekly.

Watch →

For producers

Topics I can carry an episode on.

Each one is a full conversation with a specific takeaway for your listener, not a list of tips.

Why consequences turn into bigger fights

Why the consequence a parent hands down so often becomes a worse fight than the thing it was for — and what to change about how it’s delivered.

How to stop being the bad guy

Holding a hard line without being cast as the villain for holding it. The answer is structural rather than a matter of staying calm, and most parents have never heard it.

What to say when they lie

Actual words for the moment you catch your teenager lying, instead of the two bad options of letting it go or blowing up.

Build your family operating system

Naming the five or six values a family actually runs on and turning them into behaviours everyone can point at — so nobody is improvising in the middle of a fight at ten at night.

Co-parenting against a different playbook

Receiving your teenager back from their other house without losing a day to the re-entry fight, and holding your own standards without bad-mouthing their other parent.

Press kit

Lift any of this, as written.

All of it is accurate and cleared. Please use the definition paragraph word for word rather than paraphrasing — it appears identically across every surface by design.

Short bio — for show notes

Mike Barsamian is a parent coach and former youth pastor who helps parents of teenagers rebuild trust and connection. He created the PACE Setter Method™.

Full bio — for introductions

Mike Barsamian — Founder, Present Solution for Parents

Mike Barsamian coaches parents of teenagers. He has worked with teens and families since 2003, holds an M.A. in theology from Fuller Theological Seminary, and is a licensed and commissioned pastor and a Maxwell Leadership Certified Coach.

The PACE Setter Method™ is Mike Barsamian’s four-part framework for parents of teenagers, built on the idea that a parent’s job in the teen years is not to run the race but to set the pace. P — Present-moment awareness. A — Appreciate their development. C — Connect strategically. E — Empower independence. Unlike behavior-management approaches, the PACE Setter Method™ starts with the parent, not the teen.

He hosts the Present Solution Podcast. PresentSolutionForParents.com

Scope of practice

“I’m a coach, not a therapist or a psychiatrist, and coaching is not therapy or medical care. My client is the parent. If a teenager needs clinical care, that’s a clinician’s job and I say so and I refer. Most of the families I take have already done therapy — I’m not replacing it, I’m changing the house they go home to between sessions.”

The facts

Everything on this page is checkable.

Founder, Present Solution for Parents
Creator of the PACE Setter Method™ and the Family OS™
M.A. Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, 2015 — youth, family and culture
Studied under Chap Clark, author of Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers
Licensed and commissioned pastor
Maxwell Leadership Certified Coach
Working with teenagers and families since 2003
70 parents coached since 2022
Host of the Present Solution Podcast

Booking

Get in touch.

Write to [email protected] with the show or publication and your timing. It comes to my inbox and I answer it.

For a fuller picture of how I work, the method is here and the background is here.

Contact About Mike