WORKING WITH PARENTS OF TEENS

Periodically I meet with parents and teens who are having a tough time getting along. I’m no expert parent and this process isn’t flawless or endorsed by some counsel of 4 out of 5 successful parents somewhere, but when we do meet, there are several things I always go over.

NO ONE THINKS THIS IS FUN.

First thing I do is remind them of the obvious. No one thinks this is fun. They inherently get that. No student loves being in my office with their parent who is upset with them. What they don’t always realize is that it’s not fun for anyone. No parent decided to have kids, then taught them to walk, bought them ice cream, created family photo albums of cute kid pics, and then just waited for the day when they would lack trust in one another and end up frustrated and in my office. This whole situation sucks for everyone and the sooner we can agree where we are is not where we want to be, the sooner we can start working towards an agreeable future.

NO ONE WANTS TO CONTROL YOUR LIFE.

Next, I remind parents and students that our goal is to work ourselves out of a job. All students in this situation think their parent wants to micromanage their life and is some kinda control freak. Even if the parents really are doing this, all parents in this situation feel like they have no other choice. The second agreement I try and reach is that our collective goal is to stop telling the student what to do. If they’re having their teen pee in the cup all the time for a drug test, I declare this as a waste of time and money and something everyone would love to no longer need to do. Everybody hates it. I remind parents and students that parents actually have enough problems of their own to worry about and would really love to focus on something other than trying to manage their teen’s decisions. Every parent begins the process at birth making every decision for their infant (minus when they crap their pants) and is now in an 18 year (plus or minus) baton pass of eventually making none of their child’s daily decisions. I remind students and parents that we are literally trying to give the student full control of their life. This is usually no where on a students radar.

I then draw this diagram explaining that with as a student gets older, responsibility for their own actions does and should increase:

which leads me to this third conclusion:

IF YOU WANT TO BE TREATED LIKE AN ADULT, THEN YOU HAVE TO ACT LIKE ONE.

With greater privileges come greater responsibility. If an adult crashes their car then an adult has to deal with the ramifications of that. If a “legal minor” does, then that affects not just them, but the “adults” responsible for them. In the same way, if student doesn’t want their life micro-managed by a parent (which we already agreed they do not), then we have to agree that they must also take on more responsibility. they have to do some growing up and kissing of adolescent behavior patterns and excuses goodbye. In that case, when they are given the privilege of say “extra freedom”, then the responsibility of owning the consequences of the choices they did with that freedom must also be embraced.

Here is where I usually work with a family and suggest that they come up with a top list… say 5 things or less, that can be agreed upon and are “big ticket” items at this stage of the parenting/growing up task. I ask them to look for things that the student and parent both want and that can have clearly agreed upon goals and consequences.

So, for example… If a student wants to be able to go over to a friends house after school, but the parent doesn’t trust the peer group they want to be with due to past failures, then we try and find another agreeable location they can meet and an agreed upon consequence should they revert to stupid behavior and say “get drunk together” again.

LASTLY, I OFFER TO MEET AGAIN.

I usually encourage families to do some “homework” and work on that list and how we can get out of the business of micromanaging of one another’s lives and then let’s talk again about how to implement it.

There ya have it. My 3 cents.

What about you? You got any tips?