Committed Family
Bringing parents
and teens closer.
A night like this breaks the pattern — phones down, a lot of laughing, and the two of you looking at each other for thirty uninterrupted minutes. Then we keep nudging, gently, toward more time face to face.
I come to every student, athlete and family with the same care I bring to my own kids. That's the whole method.
Who runs it
Hi — I'm Shawn
I spent twenty years in New Jersey schools. Middle school and high school teacher, sixteen seasons as a head wrestling coach, and a stretch as a grade-level leader and department chair. A lot of field days, award ceremonies and competitions along the way.
What it actually taught me is that teenagers want to be seen, heard and understood — and they want an adult to have the courage to do it first. They want to watch a grown-up commit completely: do the activity, give the direction, set the boundary, lead the thing. I've watched the most skeptical kid in the room drop his guard and join in, once he saw me and a group of kids do it first.
I built Family Face-Off because teens are hungry for excitement and joy and connection, as long as they get to feel accepted and cool while it's happening. Ultimate Musical Chairs and minute-to-win-it challenges, in a dance-club environment with a glow-in-the-dark theme, get their guard down — and their parents' guard down right along with it.
But parents are after something deeper. They want to connect with their kid again. They want to put the armor down and just spend some time together. That's what the portrait painting is for.
This evening doesn't transform a relationship. It puts a fun and exciting night on the calendar, gives the two of you something to laugh about later, and sends you home with a painting your kid made of your face. That's a start. The rest is doing it again next week, and the week after that.
You block off the time and we'll give you the activities: Sign up for the Family Face-Off Weekly Challenge — one simple thing to do together, in your inbox every Saturday. Free, always.
The short version, for anyone who needs to check before handing me a room.
Background
Where the twenty years went
Events I've run
- Grade-level award ceremonies — 105 students at a time in Ultimate Musical Chairs and minute-to-win-it challenges
- Field day — 105 students across multiple classrooms and outdoors
- The Global Solutions Competition across three middle schools, finishing on stage in front of a 300-person audience
- The Harlem Renaissance Fair
- The Rise Academy Fit Games
- Family Face-Off
Teaching & leadership
- Sixth Grade Level Leader & Social Studies Teacher — Frelinghuysen Middle School, Morristown NJ
- Social Studies District Department Chair & Social Studies Teacher — KIPP NJ
- 11th Grade Level Leader & Social Studies Teacher — Paterson Charter School for Science and Technology
- Social Studies Teacher — Vernon High School
Coaching
- Head Coach — Hanover Youth Wrestling
- Assistant Coach — Hanover Flag & Tackle Football
- Head Coach — Rise Academy Wrestling
- Head Coach — Newark Collegiate Academy
- Head Coach — Paterson Recreation Wrestling
- Assistant Coach — Kinnelon High School Wrestling
At home
Where this really comes from
My own kids keep me honest. We hike, we find something to do most weekends, and I coach their teams in town — flag football, wrestling, whatever season it happens to be. My wife is a teacher too, so this house runs on school calendars.
Every idea gets tested on them before it goes anywhere near your school. The question is always the same: would I bring my own kid to this, and afterward would he be glad he came?
If the answer is no, it doesn't leave the house.
Let's find your date.
I bring everything — you bring the room. Fifteen minutes on the phone and you'll know whether it's a fit. If it isn't, I'll tell you.
Shawn VanWingerden · (973) 903-9692 · shawn@thecommittedfamily.com
A glow-in-the-dark challenge night · 90 minutes
Family Face-Off
Every family leaves with something they made together — and a photo of the two of them holding it. Getting there takes ninety minutes of loud, slightly ridiculous, lights-down competition between parents and their 10–18 year olds.
The night
Three parts, in this order
They'll hear the bass from the hallway. By the time they've been scanned with a blacklight, interrogated about their lack of neon and handed a glow necklace to keep, they're laughing — and they haven't even made it through the door yet.
Before the first game we go over the rules, including rule number one: no biting. Then the real one — we're not that impressed if you win musical chairs. We're impressed if you cheer somebody else on.
What you provide
- A room with tables and chairs that seats 40
- The ability to dim the lights
- Two or three volunteers on the night
What I bring
- Music, lighting, a DJ and all game supplies
- Canvases, paint markers, scoring system
- Staff to run the room
- A photographer — every image is yours to keep and use
What it costs
Two ways to pay for it
$750 flat — the simple one.
DJ, music, games, canvases, paint, and a photographer whose pictures are yours to keep. Nobody has to sell a ticket. If you'd rather charge admission and keep every dollar of it, that's your call — the fee doesn't change.
Or run it as a fundraiser.
Families pay $25 per person at registration, through your own system. Materials come off the top — about $5 a head. We split what's left 50/50, which is roughly $10 back to you for every person who walks through the door.
| Turnout | Back to your PTA |
|---|---|
| 40 people | $400 |
| 60 people | $600 |
| 80 people | $800 |
We cap the night at 80 people, so the room still works. If more of your families want in than that, we run a second night for the other grade rather than crowd the first one.
See what's open and reserve a date.
Have a look at the calendar, take a date, and I'll hold it while you bring it to your next meeting. Nothing is committed until your group says yes — and if you'd rather just email me, do that.
Shawn VanWingerden · (973) 903-9692 · shawn@thecommittedfamily.com
Free, forever · Every Saturday
The Family Face-Off
Weekly Challenge
One simple thing to do together as a family, sent to you every Saturday for the week ahead. Simple supplies, about fifteen minutes, and a lot of laughing. You block off the time and we'll bring the activity.
What shows up
A challenge, and everything you need to run it
- One challenge for the week — rotating through physical, creative, intellectual and communication
- A short list of simple supplies
- A recommended age range, so a six-year-old and a fifteen-year-old can both play
- A link to the live stream on the weeks we run one — my family does it right along with you
No cost, no pitch, unsubscribe in one click. If you host a Family Face-Off event later, great. If you never do and you just run challenges in your kitchen for the next five years, that's the whole point.
For PTA and PTO leaders
Put it in your newsletter
Plenty of parent groups drop the challenge straight into their weekly newsletter. It costs you nothing, it gives your families something genuinely useful, and it takes about ten seconds to paste in.
If you'd like the signup link and a short blurb to copy, email me at shawn@thecommittedfamily.com and I'll send it over.
Get this Saturday's challenge.
Takes about ten seconds. First one arrives the next Saturday.
Shawn VanWingerden · (973) 903-9692 · shawn@thecommittedfamily.com
Ages 10–18 · A parent comes free
The Vision Board
Experience
Your kid wants something. Make the team, get good at something, have a bigger group of friends, build something of their own. What they don't have yet is the part underneath it — the week, the day, the next step. This is where they build it.
Fifteen days and three evenings, and then they stand up in your living room and tell you the whole thing.
The seven steps
How a vague idea becomes a board on the wall
Your teen doesn't have to be excited about this. Most of them show up to the first Tuesday with their arms crossed. By the third one they're talking over each other about what they want.
What's included
Everything they need, and nothing to figure out alone
- The Vision Board Experience workbook, laid out two days at a time — not a daily grind for a kid with a real schedule
- Twelve instructional videos walking through every step. Yours to keep, forever
- Three live group sessions with Coach Shawn — connect, get unstuck, ask anything
- A recording of every session, sent out afterward, in case you miss one
- A finished vision board to hang in your home
- The Presentation Guide, so they can show their work to the family and get real feedback
- The Unlimited Vision "Take Action" Playbook for what happens after
The VIP Waitlist
Enrollment opens for three days only, and the waitlist goes first. Two things come with being on it:
- Early booking access — you pick your month before enrollment opens to anyone else
- A bonus 30-minute small-group session with me, just for the waitlist crew
To join, email me at shawn@thecommittedfamily.com with your teen's first name and age and which month you'd like. I'll put you at the front of the line.
$99 for your teen. You come free.
Parents are welcome in every session and there's no charge — build your own vision alongside your kid, or just sit in. It's optional either way.
No-questions-asked money-back guarantee through your first two sessions. Try more than half of it. If it isn't what you hoped, tell me and I'll refund you.
Sessions run 60 minutes at 7pm. Miss one and you'll get the recording, plus the videos and workbook keep them moving anyway — nobody falls behind for having a busy Tuesday.
Get on the list for November.
Enrollment opens for three days only, and the VIP waitlist goes first — plus a bonus small-group session just for them.
To join the VIP waitlist, email shawn@thecommittedfamily.com with your teen's first name, their age, and which month you want.
Shawn VanWingerden · (973) 903-9692 · shawn@thecommittedfamily.com
One to one · 12 weeks · Ages 10–18
Unlimited
Parents call me about the same short list. Friends. Grades. The phone. No confidence. Won't speak up for himself. Won't talk to me anymore. And underneath all of it, the real question: how do I let them pull away and stay close at the same time?
The premise
One big dream, and no map
At twelve or thirteen, most kids do want something. Make the team. Have a better group of friends. Be good at something, visibly, in front of people. What they don't have is anything underneath it — no week, no day, no next step, and no sense that the big thing is built out of small ones.
And there's usually a quiet story in the way. I'm not a math person. I'm the shy one. I'm not the kid who gets picked. Nobody's ever said it out loud, which means nobody's ever questioned it.
Once that story gets named, it loses its grip fast — and the small steps start working almost immediately.
That's what Unlimited does. It isn't a productivity system and it isn't therapy. It's a repeatable process for building the map, finding what's in the way, and getting your kid moving on something they actually chose.
The arc
Six moves, then it runs again one layer deeper
The 12 Life Domains
Four pillars, twelve domains — the whole board
Here's the part that surprises parents: your thirteen-year-old rates themselves on all twelve. Including the ones that are still years off.
Most kids have never seen the whole board. They get asked about grades, and maybe sports. Nobody has ever laid out the parts a life is actually made of and asked which ones they want to be good at. Seeing it is half the work.
They score each one 1 to 10 at intake. That's the map — where they actually are before we choose what to work on — and we look at it again at week six and week twelve.
Self Work
Physical, intellectual, spiritual and emotional health. Character. The things they love doing that nobody is grading.
Relationships
Friends and social life. Family — the one they're in now, and the one they picture having later.
Service & Work
What they're drawn to and where it could lead. Showing up for a team, a club, a neighbor.
Stewardship
Money, handled as a resource to manage rather than a scoreboard.
If you're reading this as a parent and thinking half of those are really yours, not your kid's — you're right, and that's the point. The same twelve are what we use on the parent side, where they read as marriage, parenting, career and the mortgage. One map, two stages. It's why the two conversations end up connecting.
Who it's for
The arc never changes. What flexes is the conversation.
Middle and early high school
This is the sweet spot. Friends, grades, sports, clubs, the phone, and a first real attempt at being their own person. Usually stuck on an identity somebody handed them — "I'm the ___ one" — and on not knowing how to speak up for what they actually want. We start with a strengths-and-interests conversation, not a full life vision. Parents stay looped in on logistics, not on what their kid tells me.
Their parents
Usually caught between two things that feel like opposites: giving a thirteen-year-old room to pull away, and not losing the closeness on the way out. They aren't opposites — but nobody hands you the instructions, and most advice tells you to pick one. The vision work here includes the relationship you want with your kid at eighteen, not just how this week went.
The same twelve domains and the same arc run from ten all the way up. The method doesn't change with age; only the story being cleared does. Middle school and early high school is simply where I'm strongest, and where I think it matters most.
Most parents get one to three at-bats with a teenager
I've had about 2,500. Public schools and charter schools, city and suburb, kids who had everything and kids who had very little. Every observation in here has been tested on a lot of different kids in a lot of different rooms, and checked against the research underneath it.
You know your kid better than I ever will. I just have a much bigger sample of what usually happens next — and one more trusted adult in their corner is rarely the thing a kid has too many of.
What they leave with
After twelve weeks
- Three or four daily standards — proven on themselves, not handed to them out of a book
- One weekly review habit — the thing that keeps tuning the system after coaching ends
- At least one named and released limiting belief. Usually two
- Four or five goals they chose themselves — and at least three of them hit at 90% or better. Not my goals for them. Theirs
- A clear next-level vision, and an open door to keep going
Fit check
Is this right for your kid?
How I start
I start with what your child is already good at. Every kid has something — it just isn't always the thing school measures. We build on that first, and work on the rest from there.
Strengths they already have
Your child is a good fit if one or more of these is already true of them.
- Clarity
- Confidence
- Courage
- Communication
- Emotional regulation
- Self-reflection
- Curiosity
- Follow-through
- Focus & presence
- Handling pressure
- Friendship
- Family connection
Where they could use support
And a good fit if one or more of these is where they're stuck.
- Clarity
- Confidence
- Courage
- Communication
- Emotional regulation
- Self-reflection
- Curiosity
- Follow-through
- Focus & presence
- Handling pressure
- Friendship
- Family connection
You'll notice both lists are identical. That's on purpose. The same twelve things show up as a strength in one kid and a growth area in another, and most kids are somewhere in the middle on all of them. There's no version of this where your child gets ranked.
One more thing, since you're deciding whether I'll understand your kid
I have ADHD. My parents divorced. I've had family members work through substance abuse, and family members who struggled in school and didn't finish. If any of that sounds like your house, you won't have to explain it to me.
And they don't have to want to talk to me. Almost none of them do at first. That part's the job.
When I'm not the right fit
I'm not the right person for a teen working through a mental health condition, addiction, or significant trauma. That work belongs with a licensed professional, and a coach isn't one. If your teen already has a therapist, I'm glad to work alongside them once their clinician says the timing is right.
I'm also not much use to a kid who's been signed up against their will. They don't have to be excited — skeptical is fine, I can work with skeptical — but they do have to be willing to show up.
And if you're ever worried about your teen's safety, that isn't a coaching conversation. Call or text 988 in the US, any time, day or night.
Everything, and what it costs
Start anywhere on the staircase
Most families start at the top of this list and work down as they're ready. Nothing here requires anything above it.
| Program | Cost | What it's for |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly Challenge | Free | One simple thing to do together each week, in your email every Saturday. The biggest return for the least effort of anything I do. |
| Vision Board Experience | $99 | Clarity, confidence and direction. Your kid already wants something — this is where they build the map that gets them there. |
| Unlimited Group | $99/mo | A vision only works if somebody keeps checking in on it. Group coaching is what keeps it from ending up in a closet. Opening this winter — join the waitlist. |
| Unlimited 1:1 | $299/mo | For real transformation. The highest level of accountability and mentorship — weekly problem-solving, one to one. |
Start with a conversation.
No forms and no pitch. Fifteen minutes, and an honest answer about whether I'm the right person for what's going on. If I'm not, I'll say so and try to point you somewhere better.
Rather write than talk? Email me at shawn@thecommittedfamily.com.
Shawn VanWingerden · (973) 903-9692 · shawn@thecommittedfamily.com