Child experts, Ellen R. Delap, CPO of Professional-Organizer.com, Ashley Merryman, co –author of NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children, and Deborah Peers, mom blogger and mother of 16 children have all contributed their thoughts to these 10 valuable tips.
Here are the 10 valuable tips that you should always remember when you set the rules for your teens.
1. Clean bedrooms. “Is the messy room affecting her success in school or a value-based issue like timeliness? Choose what value is most important to communicate about, and then choose a communication tool.”
2. Regular chores. If your teen isn’t completing his chores, the issue is responsibility. Host a family meeting to foster a team effort.
3. Curfews. As you define what’s too late for your household — perhaps certain hours for school nights and other hours for weekends — the key is enforcing your standards. Some parents withhold privileges such as driving the car or using a computer if their kids break their curfews.
4. Driving. What could be more important than establishing a zero-tolerance policy for drinking and driving?
5. Create consistent enforcements. “Inconsistent punishment just leads to uncertainty, and that defeats the point of having rules in the first place. However, reasonableness is still the key. If there’s a legitimate reason to occasionally look past a transgression or set aside a rule, doing so doesn’t diminish a parent’s authority. It increases it because then, parents seem wise and fair.”
6. Keep your cool. “It’s when a parent goes ballistic over something like an unmade bed that parents’ rules begin to seem arbitrary and pointless.”
7. Be open to discussion. “So if a teen wants to argue about the rules, consider that an opportunity to help develop her reasoning skills. Parents should make a real effort to listen to the teen’s point of view, encouraging her to think through the relevant issues. If she can do that and her argument is good enough, let her win occasionally.”
8. Listen to them. “That doesn’t mean to cave in to their requests, but to truly listen to why they want what they are asking for. Listen to how your teen feels about it.”
9. Brainstorm with them. “Discuss scenarios that have been problematic so far. Together, come up with some ways to aid your teen to remember why the rule is important.”
10. Love them. “When you love your teen, you care about how you present your case in trying to solve problems. Love is gracious and kind in presentation and always thoughtful of how the other person feels. This is absolutely number one!”
Setting the rules for you teen is not easy at all. There’s no short cut to doing it as well. You just have to start at some point. The earlier you implement the rules to your teen, the easier it will be for your teen.
You just can’t let your teen go without any set of rules to follow. You have to set the rules and make sure that your teen follows each and every one of them. This way, you won’t go berserk when your teen tries to test your patience. The most you’ll do is to go back to the drawing table to revisit the rules. If you have to revise some rules, then do so. However, you just cannot do without the rules most especially during the teen years.
There is always a possibility for your teen to resist the rules. However, if you had been implementing simple rules when your child was still a toddler, it wouldn’t be so hard for you and your teen.
Just the same, you still need a lot of patience since your teen is a completely different person now. Remember, all the rules you implement now will have an impact on your teen’s emotional maturity.
The 10 valuable tips will surely help you set the rules. If you want to know more about them, you can read the full article here.
Do you think these tips can really help you establish clear-cut rules for your teen to follow?
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