Complete Connection Parenting Community Blog

Have you ever noticed how movies portray the parent-teen relationship? Usually the kids are misunderstood disrespectful brats and the parents are obtuse self-occupied idiots. Well, believe it or not, it doesn’t have to be that way, unless you give up and let it happen.

Here are 5 Keys to having a great relationship with your teenager.

1- Listen first, then speak. There is a reason you have two ears and only one mouth. You are supposed to use your ears more. When you listen to your teenager you send a powerful message. You are telling your child that he is important and you want to know what he has to say.

There is another word for this. It’s called giving respect. People need respect; even people who are children.

2- Know who are you looking at. This is really important. Children mirror what they see. If you want an honest respectful child then you must be an honest respectful parent. There is no other way to do it. You are your child’s role model, even when your child is already a teenager.

3- Know who is the enemy. Teens can be obnoxious, self-centered, verbally abuse, and in every sense of the word- “impossible”. It is so easy to get into battles with them. And all that is when they aren’t even trying.

But some teenagers live to fight with you. If you have a difficult defiant teen at home you know exactly what I am talking about. They really have a good reason that they do this and it has nothing to do with hating you. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. I go into all of this in great detail in the Teen Behavior Program.

The important thing to remember is that your teenager is not the enemy. In fact, you really have the exact same goals; to get your child to grow up to be a healthy and productive member of society. The only thing you really disagree upon is the best way to do that.

4- What do you see? When you are in the middle of a drag out fight with your teenager, look carefully at your child. What do you see? Fear? Anger? Frustration? Why is your child responding to you that way? Are you being a warm, concerned, loving parent or an insensitive jerk?

This is not a condemnation. Most of us don’t spend eight hours a day sitting on the floor in the lotus position contemplating our navel. If we did we would be a lot calmer.

Instead, we live in the world and the world is full of stress, irritating people, no win situations and a lot of other factors. It is nearly impossible not to have some of this spill over into the relationships with those we cherish the most.

So the next time you are arguing with your child, be aware of how your child is looking at you. This may be your biggest clue as to where you are really coming from.

5- When you are wrong, admit it. Boy, this is tough! Admitting when you are wrong is probably the hardest thing you will ever do. And it is even harder admitting this to your child since you’re the parent. Parents are not supposed to be wrong.

Well, guess again. Parents are supposed to be wrong, at least once in a while. And if you think covering up a mistake you made is going to work… Richard Nixon taught us about that.

The truth is that it is okay to make a mistake even as a parent. And when you freely admit you made a mistake, it’s not only okay, it’s excellent. You let your teenager know that you’re a real person with flaws. It also makes you someone your child can respect, admire, and try to be like. And that is ultimate compliment your child can give you.

I am sure some parents are going to read this and complain that another parenting expert is blaming them again for the defiant teen behavior. That is not what this is all about.

I am not accusing you or any other parent of being at fault for your child’s defiant behavior. I am not saying you are the problem.

But I am saying that you are the solution.

Please leave your comments below:

I remember going out on Halloween as a child and being warned not to eat any apples or unpackaged goods on Halloween because bad people put in them broken glass, razor blades etc in order to hurt children. Those were the good old days when all we had to worry about was poisoned candy.

Today the big fear is sex offenders. How big is the fear?

Certainly people are worried. Many cities and in a number of states have passed laws requiring registered sex offenders to stay in doors on Halloween night. Some laws even require them to keep their lights off.

One parenting expert announced on the Today Show, that no child under the age of 13 should go out without and adult.

“People put on masks, they put on disguises, and there still are people who do bad things.”

Certainly, part of what this expert says is true. People to put on masks and wear disguises. Isn’t that the whole point of Halloween?

But how true is the rest of this statement? Are child molesters nation wide gearing up for a big night of perversion with our little innocent ones?

To answer this question, researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina examined the sex crime reports from 30 states over the years 1997 to 2005. Here is their report:

“There is zero evidence to support the idea that Halloween is a dangerous date for children in terms of child molestation.”

They concluded that Halloween seems to be one of the safest days of the year, since it was so rare to find anything happening that day. In spite of the wide spread fear, Halloween is not a dangerous sex crime night.

But Halloween is a dangerous night. While the police are going door to door making sure that all the former sex offenders are safely locked away under home arrest, our children are wandering around the streets in the dark in extreme danger. On Halloween there is a 400% increase in kids being hit by cars.

It seems to me that if on Halloween night we rallied our police force to patrol the streets keeping our kids safe, rather than to violate the civil rights of former criminals, everyone would be better off.

One last thing:

Remember the razor blades and poisoned candy that we were warned about when we were children?

Researchers at the University of Delaware studied the Halloween crime reports from 1958 until today. There findings? From 1958 until today no child was ever poisoned by a stranger on Halloween.

Not one.

Anywhere.

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When your child is young your primary role is to set limits about what is and what is not acceptable behavior. Your teens still need this type of direction, but your method of delivery needs to change.

It is quite okay to tell a child what to do and what not to do. However, most teens do not respond well to being ordered around. Teens have a natural desire to want to run their own lives. Therefore, when setting limits for your teens, just telling them will not be very effective. Instead, your focus should be on discussing and negotiating appropriate behavior. The more input you allow your teen to have in setting limits, the more likely he is to stay within them.

Here are 5 tips that will make setting limits for your teens more effective:

1- Choose the right time and place. The right time means when both of you are calm. If either one of you is upset or angry, the discussion will not go as well. The right place means in privacy away from other children.
2- Focus on what you want rather than what your child is doing wrong. The natural response to criticism is denial and rationalization. Neither of these promotes discussion. There are times when you will need to criticize your teen’s behavior, but you want to minimize this as much as possible.

3- Let your child experience the natural consequences of his behavior. This is hard to do. We want to save our children from pain, especially when we see so clearly what is coming. However, your child needs to learn to use good judgment. The best way the learn good judgment is to experience bad judgment. So as long as nothing dangerous is going to happen, let your child learn from his mistakes.
4- Come to an agreement about appropriate discipline. Children are more ready to keep to their limits and to accept the consequences when they violate those limits, if they have a say in establishing the rules.

5- Follow through. Rules are not suggestions; they are rules. Rules need to be enforced. Your child needs to know you are serious.

In order to follow through correctly, you need to use consequences effectively. However, most parents use consequences entirely wrong.

Find out the #1 reason why most parents use fail when they give consequences.


Go to:

Getting Consequences to Work

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Today I am going to discuss how you get your adolescent or teenager to participate with the family and be part of the family. This is a big problem.

The first thing you must understand is the stage your child is going through. At some point when your child hits adolescence he starts moving away from the family. He is growing up. It is normal for your child to try to become more independent of you and become much more attached to his friends. Growing away from the family is normal. In fact, if your teen is not doing this, it could be a sign of a problem.

More than that, many teens at this age find being with the family and particularly being with you, the parent, to be an embarrassment. They don’t want to be around you. They are embarrassed to be around you in public. Again, this is normal. It is a stage. It is not a reflection of how your child really feels about you.

Teens want to be cool. They want to seem big and being with mommy or daddy just doesn’t work with that image. So if you have a teen at home and he is shying away from being with the family, there is a very good reason for this. Your child really does not want to be with you. He is embarrassed to be with you in public.

However, you are still his parents and he is still part of the family. How do you get him to behave that way?

First of all, we are living in kind of a crazy world right now where there is a breakdown of the family life in general. Family members go in and out of the house at different times. All the kids have different schedules. No one seems to get together at all. This is a big problem and it erodes the closeness of the family. It is a society-wide problem.

What we recommend is to make a fixed family time on a consistent basis. It can be once a week, once a month or some time in between that. It is a time for all family members to spend together and everyone is expected to be there. You can have a family dinner once a week. You can schedule a family night to do something. Make it a requirement that everybody in your family to be there.

That means you have to be there and all the children have to be there. This will give you children the idea that they are part of a family, not just a bunch of individuals who live in the same house.

As you and your children get older these family times will become very pleasant memories. Your children will remember that they are part of a family. This will help your children to remain close as they grow older.

You should not expect these times to run smoothly always. However, like any other time, your children are expected to behave themselves. If your teen acts out because he doesn’t want to be there you give appropriate discipline. Your child may not like it, but he is expected to behave himself and to participate. You should expect some grumbling from time to time. Try to overlook as much as you can. You are building memories.

Our world is moving very, very fast. The family unit is being lost. It is important to have a regular family time. This will help your family stay a family.

Today I want to discuss a common child discipline mistake parents make when giving consequences. This is the mistake of negotiating limits with your child.

Let us take for example a curfew violation. Your child is supposed to be home at 9:00 p.m. on weekday nights. Your child comes in at 10:00 p.m. You start giving your consequence and your child says, “It’s not fair. All my friends come home at 10:00 and I have to come in at 9:00. It’s not fair. I am already 16.”

Then you start defending yourself and why your curfew is fair.

Well…is it true or not true? Are you being fair? Maybe your child should be able to stay out later. But here is the problem.

Consequences are limits. The limit was set at 9:00 p.m. When your child starts negotiating with you about the time, and you start defending your choice, you ignore the fact that your child went over the limit that was set.

There is a time to negotiate curfew or any other limit, but it is not when a violation of that limit has occurred. Also, you don’t change curfew time when your child is out and calls home for permission to stay out later. That is not the time to change limits.

You can and should negotiate limits. You do this when you can have a conversation with your child about that limit. But when a child has violated the limit, that is not the time to talk about it.

The only issue at hand is that a limit was in place, and fair or not fair, your child just violated that limit. You can discuss what is fair at a different time.

This is a common mistake that parents make. They get sidetracked with other issues. They get sucked into discussions of what is fair or not fair and the fact that a limit has been violated gets diluted.

Limits have to be enforced. When your child breaks a limit, your job is to enforce limits, not to negotiate.

This is only one of the mistakes parents make when giving limits and consequences to discipline their children or teens.

I have a video which will show you the #1 mistake parents make in child discipline and when giving consequences. This mistake is the main reason why consequences and discipline do not work.

If you are having trouble with child behavior, you should see this video right away, because it will show you quickly how to change that problem.

The free video is located at http://ccparenting.com/discipline