As Easy as Pie

Last week we looked at some suggestions from the experts at the Mayo Clinic regarding raising our teens.  What follows is the second part of the discussion.  I think it is realistic and easy to follow.  Well, as easy as it gets raising a teenager! chrissie

Set limits

To encourage your teen to behave well, identify what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable behavior at home, at school and elsewhere. As you establish appropriate rules, explain to your teen the behavior you expect as well as the consequences for complying and disobeying. When setting limits:

• Avoid ultimatums. Your teen may view an ultimatum as condescending and interpret it as a challenge.
• Be specific. Rather than telling your teen not to stay out late, set a specific curfew.
• Be concise. Keep your rules short and to the point.
• Put rules in writing. Use this technique to counter a selective memory.
• Be flexible. As your teen demonstrates more responsibility, grant him or her more freedom. If your teen shows poor judgment, impose more restrictions.
• Be prepared to explain your decisions. Your teen may be more likely to comply with a rule when he or she understands its purpose.
• Be reasonable. Avoid setting rules your teen can't possibly follow. A chronically messy teen may not be able to maintain a spotless bedroom overnight.

Not sure if you're setting reasonable limits? Talk to your teen, other parents and your teen's doctor. Whenever possible, give your teen a say in establishing the rules he or she is expected to follow.

Prioritize rules

While it's important to consistently enforce your rules, you can occasionally make exceptions when it comes to matters such as homework habits, TV watching and bedtime. Prioritizing rules will give you and your teen a chance to practice negotiating and compromising. Before negotiating with your teen, however, consider how far you're willing to bend. Don't negotiate when it comes to restrictions imposed for your teen's safety, such as substance abuse, sexual activity and reckless driving. Make sure your teen knows early on that you won't tolerate tobacco, alcohol or other drug use.

Enforce consequences

Enforcing consequences can be tough — but your teen needs you to be his or her parent, not a pal. Being too lenient may send the message that you don't take your teen's behavior seriously, while being too harsh can cause resentment. Consider these methods:

• Active ignoring. Tell your teen that you'll talk to him or her when the whining, sulking or yelling stops. Ignore your teen in the meantime.
• Scolding and disapproval. Make sure you reprimand your teen's behavior, not your teen. Avoid using a sarcastic, demeaning or disrespectful tone. Also, avoid reprimanding your teen in front of his or her friends.
• Imposing additional responsibilities. Assign your teen additional household tasks.
• Imposing additional restrictions. Take away a privilege or possession that's meaningful to your teen, such as computer time or a cell phone.
• Asking your teen to suggest a consequence. Your teen may have an easier time accepting a consequence if he or she played a role in deciding it.

Be consistent when you enforce limits. Whatever disciplinary tactic you choose, relate the consequences to the broken rule and deliver them immediately. Limit punishments to a few hours or days to make them most effective. Also, avoid punishing your teen when you're angry. Likewise, don't impose penalties you're not prepared to carry out — and punish only the guilty party, not other family members. Never use physical harm to discipline your teen.

Set a positive example

Remember, teens learn how to behave by watching their parents. Your actions generally speak louder than your words. Set a positive example and your teen will likely follow your lead.

Make a List and Check it Twice

How do you breach the barriers of adolescence? Here are 10 parenting tips for raising teenagers
 by Jeanie Lerche Davis, WebMD Feature writer.  It is a short and easy How To that sums up all the most important aspects of parenting teens. If you have a teen or tween in your house, cut this out like a recipe and follow the directions!  Have a great holiday this weekend and I'll see you next week.  chrissie

 1. Give kids some leeway. Giving teens a chance to establish their own identity, giving them more independence, is essential to helping them establish their own place in the world. "But if it means he's going out with a bad crowd, that's another thing," says Elkind.

2. Choose your battles wisely. "Doing themselves harm or doing something that could be permanent (like a tattoo), those things matter," says Kaslow. "Purple hair, a messy room -- those don't matter." Don't nitpick.

3. Invite their friends for dinner. It helps to meet kids you have questions about. "You're not flat-out rejecting them, you're at least making an overture. When kids see them, see how their friends act with their parents, they can get a better sense of those friends," Elkind tells WebMD. "It's the old adage, you catch more bears with honey than vinegar. If you flatly say, you can't go out with those kids, it often can backfire -- it just increases the antagonism."

4. Decide rules and discipline in advance. "If it's a two-parent family, it's important for parents to have their own discussion, so they can come to some kind of agreement, so parents are on the same page," says Bobrow. Whether you ban them from driving for a week or a month, whether you ground them for a week, cut back on their allowance or Internet use -- whatever -- set it in advance. If the kid says it isn't fair, then you have to agree on what is fair punishment. Then, follow through with the consequences.

5. Discuss 'checking in.' "Give teens age-appropriate autonomy, especially if they behave appropriately," says Kaslow. "But you need to know where they are. That's part of responsible parenting. If it feels necessary, require them to call you during the evening, to check in. But that depends on the teen, how responsible they have been."

6. Talk to teens about risks. Whether it's drugs, driving, or premarital sex, your kids need to know the worst that could happen.

. Give teens a game plan. Tell them: "If the only option is getting into a car with a drunk driver, call me -- I don't care if it's 3 in the morning," says Bodrow. Or make sure they have cab fare. "Help them figure out how to handle a potentially unsafe situation, yet save face," she suggests. "Brainstorm with them. Come up with a solution that feels comfortable for that child."

8. Keep the door open. Don't interrogate, but act interested. Share a few tidbits about your own day; ask about theirs. How was the concert? How was the date? How was your day? Another good line: "You may not feel like talking about what happened right now. I know what that's like. But if you feel like talking about it later, you come to me," Elkind suggests.

9. Let kids feel guilty. "I think too much is made about self-esteem," says Elkind. "Feeling good about yourself is healthy. But people should feel bad if they have hurt someone or done something wrong. Kids need to feel bad sometimes. Guilt is a healthy emotion. When kids have done something wrong, we hope they feel bad, we hope they feel guilty."

10. Be a role model. Your actions -- even more than your words -- are critical in helping teens adopt good moral and ethical standards, says Elkind. If they have a good role model from early on, they will be less likely to make bad decisions in their rebellious teen years.

11 Rules for Raising Teens

Ran across this list in Reader's Digest.  It is compiled by Ellen Pober Pippberg, an attorney who represented teens in court for 13 years.   She has a new book called 35 Things Your Teen Won't Tell You, so I  Will. I have ordered it from Amazon and will give a full report in a later blog.  The list below will have you laughing, crying and shaking your head.  Her observations are all too familiar.  Enjoy.

Your teens don’t want you to be their friends. What they need is for you to be a reliable responsible role model worthy of their respect, and not some overgrown finger-snapping hipster who wears too tight jeans or T-shirts with slogans advocating the virtues of 100 proof liquor.

2. Don’t debate the teen ever. If she wants to debate, suggest she sign up for the Debate Club, thank you very much.  If you buy into their teen logic (which is basically illogic, the product of an immature brain and every extreme of emotion known to mankind) your mouth will go dry and your ears and nerves will surely fray. Teens need to know that no means no. Remember when your teen was two years old and he said “no” a lot? Well now it’s your turn, particularly when your teen want to engage in behaviors that are dangerous, or which might negatively affect their future academic, social or job prospects.

3. Don’t buy your teen a car. If you do, he will total it or wreck it in record time. Guaranteed. The teen should earn the car, or at least a portion of it (and by that I don’t mean one of the tires). You know how you take much better care of an item of clothing you spent a mint on compared to one you bought in a bargain basement? It’s the same thing, only a car can do serious damage.

4. Encourage sports participation even if your teen has two left feet. In some sports, two left feet won’t knock him out of the box, so to speak. Sports participation develops perserverence and cheerfully functioning as a team member. You also will know where your child is every day after school (on the field, that is, or at a rival school). Just make sure you root for the right team, okay? Been there, done that.

5. Let the school know you in a good way so that school personnel do not dive under the desk when you approach. If you are asked to speak at the school, your teen will feel mighty proud. If you make something for the bake sale, try to make it taste edible and if you can’t see it through, do yourself and your child a favor and buy something at the local bakery or supermarket.

6. Your teen needs some house rules, else he becomes a sloth and his room begins to seriously resemble a gerbil cage. Some good house rules: no eating outside the kitchen. No visitors to the house unless an adult is present. No name calling or suggesting the parent needs to spend time in a soft padded room.

7. Your teen needs to work unless her school and academic demands take up all available time. Why? As stated above, if allowed to vegetate, teens can and will become human sloths. Besides, these are hard times, and looking good and dressing good costs money. Anything that encourages a work ethic and sense of family duty is a good thing.

8. To know your teens’ friends is to know your  teens. Teens have a secret life, and a parent’s goal is to penetrate the veil of secrecy that is sometimes thicker than the CIA and the KGB combined. If you really want to know what your kid is up to, get to know their friends. How? By being warm and kind, and by asking questions that don’t sound like an interrogation, but which serve that purpose without their knowing it.

9. Look at your teen daily and it’s okay to stare. Notice any changes in appearance, hygiene, mood, etc. Interact meaningfully with your teen daily, and by that I don’t mean asking, “Did you take out the garbage?”

10. Know that if your teen gets into hot water, he may be too embarrassed or afraid of your wrath and disappointment to tell you, even if you have a great relationship with your teen or–think you do.

11. Just when you think your teen has learned from his mistake, he will make another doozy of a mistake. Be prepared for this. Remember: the human brain is not fully formed untill age 25. Yikes!

Advice from Harvard

When Harvard University speaks, the world usually listens. Their Latin motto is VERITAS, after all, testifying to the fact that Harvard generally tries to get at and speak the truth.

A report called Raising Teens from the Harvard School of Public Health can be downloaded in a pdf file for parent use. It is full of common sense charts and suggestions that any parent would come up with, if only he/she had the time, resources, and energy to do the same research.

But, one particular piece of the report caught my eye in a chart under a section titled "Provide and Advocate." Aye, there's the rub, as Hamlet says. We can't all provide at the same level, nor are many parents able to advocate effectively for their children. Many parents break out in a cold sweat when they walk into a school, still suffering the after-effects of their own public school experience.

In high poverty areas, schools would do well to find ways to make Harvard's suggestions available for all parents, not just affluent ones, namely:

1. Network within the community. Most poor parents do not have an effective social networking means within the community to move beyond where they are. They can maintain, but getting their children help seems so insurmountable that adversarial relationships are often formed, preventing the very thing they want for their children. Schools should help parents - all of them - form network connections.

2. Make informed decisions. Nothing could be harder when you don't have all the information. According to the report, parents should make informed decisions about everything that affects their teen, from the school social climate to community cohesion and the match between the child's learning style and the school that best fits it. If only everyone had that option. Schools can help parents get that information, however, by sponsoring parent universities and sending home informational pamphlets from time-to-time.

3. Make similarly informed decisions about neighborhoods, community involvement and youth programs. Schools could join city neighborhood coalitions, especially in high poverty areas, forming alliances between neigborhoods and youth programs. Parents don't always have control over the neighborhood in which they must rent, but they can be helped in finding the best property they can afford within the best school district.

4. Arrange for preventative health care. Teens need their eyes checked, teeth cleaned, cavities filled. All parents should see to it that their children's health is maintained, but we know that is not the case. Schools cannot solve this one alone, but many have established health clinics on site.

5. Identify people and programs to inform you. Unfortunately, parents are often reticent to ask for help or don't know how. Again, schools can develop some public relations campaigns to help inform parents about topics as diverse as parenting challenges and how to handle them or the prescribed reading list for 10th grade. Leveling the parental competencies can help promote high expectations for all students and build a school culture in which all the participants can thrive.

For fear of being labeled a socialist, I do assert that we should not allow the government or any political institution to take over the raising of our children (as we have obviously been doing, anyway, with No Child Left Behind). But, isn't the point of public education to equalize the playing field through the dissemination of knowledge to all? Rather than continue the dumbing down process, it's time to start raising up the standard. Read Harvard's free download, Raising Teens, for more information.
-----------------Melony