While it is necessary for the parents to establish some rules for behavior that apply to the teenager, it is best for parents and teens to negotiate these rules together. If rules are imposed on the teen without his input, he is more likely to rebel, making the teenage years miserable for the entire family.
Before making rules, parents should take into account the level of maturity of the teen. Teens run the gamut from extremely mature to extremely immature and everything in between. The Prudent Parent recognizes that teens with a great deal of maturity need fewer rules than teens with less mature judgment. For example, when my daughters, who are now in their twenties, reveal to their friends that they didn’t have a curfew and that they were rarely punished when they were teens, their friends are amazed. But it’s true. Both girls were very mature, and with gentle guidance from me and their father, they made mostly good decisions when they were in their teens.
Our general philosophy was that if there was no need for a rule, then we did not make the rule. Our lack of need for rules and consequences was due, in addition to the girls’ level of maturity, to parenting earlier in our daughters’ lives. It was already assumed, for example, that they would be responsible for doing their homework each day regardless of what else they had going on. This necessitated that they would get home at a reasonable hour during the week, so there was no need for a week-night curfew. Because they had sports practices on weekend mornings, they needed to get home at a reasonable hour on weekends, too, so I never had to impose a weekend curfew, either.
It was also assumed that they would not smoke, drink, or take drugs, because these things were unhealthy/illegal and that they would never get into a car with someone who had been drinking or taking drugs because that was potentially life-threatening. They knew that they could always count on me to come and pick them up, no matter what the time or the circumstances, no questions asked, so they were never tempted to get into a car with an impaired driver. And by the time they were in high school, we had already had many conversations about birth control, the consequences of early sexual experiences, and sexually-transmitted diseases, and we continued to have those discussions during high school.
My point here is that if your child is on the mature side, and if you have been proactive during your child’s tweens and early teens, the later teens will be less difficult to manage. If this is your situation, don’t make unnecessary rules just because you think that you have to. Always adjust your actions to match your circumstances. If you have been less proactive or if your child is not quite so mature, you can deal with the situation through lots of discussion, negotiation, and through a technique known as “contracting.”
It is very possible that you and your teen will have very different ideas about what is acceptable and what is not on a whole variety of issues. If so, then seriously consider which thing you can give in on, which ones are negotiable, and which ones are non-negotiable. While you may have different opinion about things like clothes and hairstyles, latitude should be granted on these rather unimportant issues. Teens need to be able to make decisions about their own lives to some degree, and these sorts of things have little real importance. Firm resolve should be reserved for non-negotiable, life-or-death matters such as not getting into a car with a driver who has been drinking or taking drugs.
There are many things that fall in between these two extremes and should be negotiated by parents and teens. These may include things such as rules about dating, curfew, homework, having friends over, chores, and myriad other matters. Each of these should be discussed, with both the parent’s and the teen’s wishes being taken into account and with an eye toward reaching a compromise that is tolerable to both parties. After a compromise has been reached, a consequence for failure to comply with the rule should be agreed upon, as well. If the teen agrees to both the rule and the consequence, he is more likely to see them as fair and reasonable than he is if they are simply imposed upon him, and he is more likely to comply with the rule or submit to the consequence. Of course, rules should be revisited as circumstances change and as the teen demonstrates increasing levels of maturity.
In addition to negotiation, a technique called “contracting” may be used with teens to good effect. If there is something that you want the teen to do on a regular basis such as mowing the lawn, you can get him to do it by agreeing to do something that you might not otherwise do for him in return. For example, he might have a 10:00 p.m. curfew on weeknights, but he might have a television show that he and his friends like to watch that doesn’t get over until 11:00 p.m. on Thursday nights. You could agree to pick him up at 11:00 p.m. on Thursday nights at his friend’s house if he agrees to mow the lawn on Saturday mornings. Once agreed upon, you write this up in the form of a contract, which you both sign, and you post it in a conspicuous place.
In addition to adopting positive parenting techniques such as discussion, negotiation, and contracting, it is important for parents of teens to avoid what has become known as “helicopter parenting.” This does not mean that parents should neglect their teens or stay out of their lives entirely. It simply means that they should strive to give the teen as much ownership of his own life as possible. If parents hold on too tightly (or hover too closely), the inevitable rejection will be greater and skirmishes will turn into battles because the process of separation must occur. And if parental over-involvement squashes healthy rebellion, then all that is left is unhealthy rebellion involving such things as early and multiple sexual partners, smoking, drinking, and taking drugs.
One of the parent’s jobs is to welcome the emotional distance that the teenager is putting between them while continuing to provide security and an emotionally safe place to which the teen can return when life gets too stressful. For example, when my daughters were in high school, they were both on the tennis team, and I never missed a “home” match and attended many “away” matches, as well. On the other hand, I never contacted one of their teachers, allowing them to negotiate, on their own, all of the issues that came up in school. I did, however, provide moral support by being there to talk things through with them when they sought me out or asked me for advice. By allowing them to “fight their own battles,” I gave them the clear message that I thought them capable of doing so, and they learned to manage their own lives with the emotional safety net of me and their father at home to support them.
Parents who intervene at every turn—when their teen gets less than an “A” on a test or a paper, for example—give their teen the idea that they do not think them capable of managing their own lives. And when this happens repeatedly, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the teen becomes incapable of dealing with issues that arise without the parent stepping in. Overly-involved parents often continue their over-involvement throughout high school and into college and beyond, effectively hampering the development of their teen/young adult child.
The Prudent Parent seeks to balance spending time with her teen and being involved in her teen’s life with encouraging the teen to become increasingly independent while he still lives at home where there is safety and security. If the parent can do this successfully, the teen will be prepared to manage his life in college (with the occasional phone call, email, or text message to the parent) independent of his parents. In other words, it is the parent’s job is, to a large degree, to work herself out of a job.
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