Monkey See, Monkey Do - Parenting by Example

No parent is perfect. And largely due to that fact, no child is perfect either. Several years ago I had a family as clients. They initially sent their teenage son to me to be fixed. After only a few sessions it was apparent to me that the parents needed help as well. They agreed and we started couple counseling in addition to individual therapy for their son.

After about 3 months of intense counseling, the father dangled a metaphoric carrot in front of his son "to tempt him" and to "see if he had been cured by therapy."

After discovering that his son had indeed given in to temptation the father called me, and in a rage he rationalized his desire to disown his son because of his "deceptive behavior and his obvious willingness to disregard what he had been told in therapy." The father was not only sabotaging his son's grown and progress, but he was expecting more out of his son than he was expecting from himself.

This may sound like an extreme case but I see less obvious examples like this in most of the families that I counsel. Parents tell their children not to steal and then they taste the grapes at the grocery store, fudge on their taxes and bring home office supplies from work. They punish their teen for lying then turn around and lie about their age or falsify a resume. They ground their teen for getting a speeding ticket and yet they rarely stick to the speed limit themselves.

Our kids learn the majority of their life lessons at home. And through the example of the parent the child learns what the family values really are. If the parent gives little respect to the sanctity of marriage the child is likely to grow up believing that marriage is a burden or even unnecessary. If the parent gets physical when angry, the child is likely to internalize violence as a coping skill.

As parents we need to become acutely aware of how we live our life. Because like it or not, everything from the language we use to the behaviors we rationalize are being absorbed and internalized by our children. We need to live the life we want our children to emulate.

Teens and Consequences - How to Make Parenting Easier

My teen knows what the consequence will be for bad behavior...
	always
	rarely
	for most things
	never
pollcode.com

The effectiveness of your house rules can be greatly increased if both you and your teen know, without a doubt, what the consequences will be for every infraction.

The best way to make sure that everyone knows what the consequences will be is to routinely have family meetings to reiterate the rules and the consequences for breaking those rules. That way your teen understands that when they choose to break a rule they are also choosing a particular consequence.

Another way to ensure that the teen chooses not to break rules is to include them in deciding what the consequences will be. If they are the ones who suggested what the consequences should be they won’t be able to argue with you about not being “fair.”

Studies have shown that the consequences they choose are almost always stiffer than what the parent would have chosen. So when they suggest a consequence it may win you bonus points to point that out and to settle on something appropriate but not quite as punishing.

Also, help guide them to think of consequences that are related to the infraction so that they will understand that you aren’t just trying to “punish” them, but that you are attempting to help them learn a healthy life lesson. Why not take steps to make parenting less difficult? Try it, you’ll like it!

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Troubled Teens and How to Make Life Easier

It is difficult for parents to keep up with all of the changes our children are going through. By the time they reach puberty, teens are going through a vast array of changes at an accelerated rate. If parents are to be effective, they must attempt to keep up with the changes in several ways.

1. Be aware of the need to readjust old rules, to better fit maturing teens. Young teens are acutely aware of the inadequacies in their parent's rules. When your teen reaches puberty, it is a good time to sit down with them and discuss the changes they are going through. Together you can decide what their new rules (and the consequences to breaking those rules) should be. Enlisting the teen in making these decisions will ultimately lead to better cooperation by them in adhering to the rules and standards of the parent. Kids need to know exactly what the consequence for breaking the rule will be. This way when they choose to break a rule, they know that they also choose the consequence. This makes it much easier for the parent to enforce the consequence without argument. It is also extremely important that the parent enforce those consequences 100% of the time. If there is inconsistency, the rules become meaningless.

2. Reassess your expectations of the teen; old ones and new ones. Old expectations may be impractical and/or demeaning for the teen, while new expectations placed on growing teens may exceed their developmental level, and may result in frustration to both parent and teens. It may be too much to expect a 13 year old to be responsible for their younger siblings, the housework and homework everyday while the parent is at work. On the other hand, expecting that the young teens only responsibility around the house is to keep his/her room clean may not be realistic either. When the expectations are equal to the teens ability to achieve, the stage is set for developing self confidence and for taking pride in responsibility.

3. Begin allowing your teen to experience life according to his/her own dictates. This doesn't mean that you need to let them run around without boundaries or rules. It means that you begin to enable the teen to make decisions for themselves at a rate that is equal to his/her level of development. If we have taught our children how to govern themselves when they are small, they will be able to govern themselves as they grow to adulthood. That doesn't mean they will always choose to do things the way YOU hope they will. It does mean that they will be able to develop self confidence in their ability to choose their own path in life. For instance, upon entering high school I wanted my oldest son to take a typing class. I knew the class was no longer mandatory but I felt it was a very important skill for him to have. He did not want to take the class at all. After perusing his choices he decided to take a keyboarding class instead. He is now a computer engineer and typewriters are obsolete.

4. Sometimes teens will choose contrary to what we want them to do. Unless this involves something illegal, or something harmful to themselves or others, we need to allow them to make, and learn from, their own mistakes. Learning from mistakes provides opportunities they must have if they are to develop confidence in their ability to make right choices. If we set out to protect them from every mistake, we prevent them from learning how to depend on themselves. Each time they choose a path that ends in disaster, they have the opportunity to learn from their mistake, to learn how NOT to do things the next time. Perhaps they will even learn that you were right after all. Although they may not admit it until they are 30 or so.

5. Allow the child to separate from you, and begin to individuate. It is difficult for parents to accept that their child is no longer as affectionate or attentive as they once were. This separation is normal, and should be a respected phase in the teens development. Be there for them. Don't condemn them for pulling away. And let them know that you respect their need for privacy. When they were little, they needed us for everything. We diapered them, fed them and nurtured them when they were sad. Now they are on their way to independent living as adults and we need to help them on that journey. Every time a parent seeks to get emotional comfort from a child, the parent is hindering the separation process and preventing the child from continuing on his/her journey towards a healthy adulthood. So give them a pat on the back instead of a bear hug once in a while.

6. Teens need boundaries, especially young teens. This time of their life is emotionally, physically and environmentally unstable. Although they may tell us to "Back Off" and suspend the rules, they are actually in a state of mind that craves consistent and rational rules. They need to have something in their life that feels secure, that they can depend on while they go through the ups and downs of adolescence. After the two of you have decided on a set of boundaries and expectations, the parent's role is to be firm (but not roboticly stiff) with them. The child needs to be assured that the parent will keep the boundaries in tact, but is also willing to consider "special circumstances" for an occasional exception. These exceptions need to be discussed and decided upon together so that the teen realizes that it is not an impulsive reaction of the parent. The parent needs to be seen as someone who is firm with the rules but not unwilling to bend. However, consequences need to be firm and delivered without exception.

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Teens and Discipline

IN THE NEWS-->

DECEMBER 5--A South Carolina boy, 12, was arrested Sunday morning after his mother called police to report that he had unwrapped a Christmas present without her permission. The police charged the juvenile with petty larceny. The boy's mother, 27, said that she hoped his arrest would serve as a corrective to disorderly behavior at school and home.

EDMOND, Okla. - Tasha Henderson got tired of her 14-year-old daughter's poor grades, her chronic lateness to class and her talking back to her teachers, so she decided to teach the girl a lesson. She made Coretha stand at a busy Oklahoma City intersection Nov. 4 with a cardboard sign that read: "I don't do my homework and I act up in school, so my parents are preparing me for my future. Will work for food."

Each generation seems to have spawned a few new parenting styles that seem new, innovative or just plain different than previous generations. Sometimes these unusual parenting styles make the news because they create controversy and debate. Recently I read about a minority of parents who believe that children themselves should be allowed to make all of their own decisions including weather or not they go to school, what they eat, when they sleep. These parents believe that by raising their children with no punishment and no rules that they are raising "free thinkers." Twenty years from now the research done on the outcome of such parenting will be interesting to say the least.

Parents make decisions about how to raise their children everyday. Even refusing to make a decision is in fact making a decision, because either way the child is reared in a particular style that is created in the home. One thing that has been researched and reported on since the beginning of time is the fact that children, teens especially, learn more by their parent's examples than from their words.

For instance, in the 80's it was common to hear young adults claim that instead of raising children in a particular religion, they were going refrain from teaching any religious theme, and instead, let the child choose for themselves. It was nice sounding rhetoric for people who didn't want to commit themselves to religious beliefs, but it didn't do what they claimed it would. Instead, children who were raised with no religious training grew up to believe that they had no need for it. So instead of "choosing for themselves," they chose as they were shown - "nothing."

Our children learn how to live by what we show them, what we infer to them and what they sense from us. Taking no disciplinary stand at all will result in children who are undisciplined. Over reacting and over protecting our children will produce teens who are so eager to make their own way that they explode into the world unprepared and often, rebellious. Parenting through guilt techniques creates weak minded children who grow to become un-driven adults. Parenting through violent techniques will produce children/adults who are violent minded, who learn to turn off their feelings and who may become sociopathic, unable to feel empathy for others.

So the debate roles on. We can criticize others for the ways they discipline their teens, and sometimes criticism is deserved, but more likely it is our own parenting techniques that we need to focus on. None of us are perfect parents, but all of us have room for improvement. And most of all, our teens need us to be parents, not their friends. They need the structure they detest and the quality family time they roll their eyes at. They need positive reinforcement and consistent consequences. Parenting a teen can be difficult, but if you put your whole self into doing it the best you can, the rewards will make it all worth while.

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Discipline In Blended Families

Trying to make a blended family work in today's society is not impossible, but it can seem so. The divorce rate for first time marriages looms around the %50 mark and for second marriages it is much higher. Add in children from a previous relationship and the divorce rate skyrockets. It isn't a bias, it is the fact. But for those who have decided to beat those odds there are some things that can help you create the family you have always wanted.

One of the first critical rules for maintaing a blended family, especially if the children are over the age of eight or so, is to create a system that allows the biological parent to be the main disciplinarian for that child. You have to be able to get inside that child's mind and realize that they didn't choose the new adult in the home, and when things are emotionally charged, they will not accecpt being told what to do by the new "parent" in their life. In the child's mind this new adult is just an interloper and will soon leave - perhaps like the original parent did. It takes a great deal of time and work to create a relationship that fosters respect and a willingness to be led by a new "parent" in the childn's lfe.

When the step-parent is "the mom" this can be particularly difficult on several levels. Mom's generally don't carry as much power in the child's eyes as does the father. However it may be the mom that is there with the child all day long. So what does a new step-parent do?

Before moving the step parent in with the child it is imperative that the two of you discuss how discipline will be handled. Figure out a way that the home-based parent can keep sanity in the home without being the heavy handed demagogue. Decide on what the consequenses will be for different infarctions and then talk to the child as a united front. That way when the step-parent says "boo" the child knows that it has already been agreed upon by the other parent.

In blended families we have to put ourselves in the mind of the child who's family, and who's fantasy of family, has been ripped apart. They have little or no say in what happens in their family and they begin to feel helpless and can become depressed and or resentful and angry about the changes in their life. Expecting them to accept those changes without emotion is in itself a fantasy on the adult's part. And when emotions flare it is the adults that need to remain level headed and empathetic if the situation, and the family is to grow into something wonderful.

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