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Parenting
with Gary & Anne Marie: Adolescence / Teenagers
How Parents Discourage Their Teens
Parents must willfully work
on proactive encouragement. It is amazing to think that the ability to discourage
good behavior comes naturally to parents. Unfortunately, we tend to do this
all too often. Here are some discouraging behaviors that you must try to avoid
with your middle years children.
Don't Harp
Nothing can tune a kid out faster than when a parent constantly gripes about
the child. For example, take the endless complaining about the half-frozen cat
that was left out all night due to a teen's forgetfulness. The matter is brought
up at breakfast, dinner, and again on the way home after youth group. It is
revisited as the cat is tossed out the back door to take care of business before
the family retires for the night. The lecture about the poor cat drones on and
on. There is more to communicating with your children than lecturing on what
they did wrong-again. Certainly, mistakes and sinful acts must be confronted,
but if that is the only time you talk to your preteen, plan on being tuned out.
Over-talk is communication overkill. We need to communicate effectively in order
to teach the values governing personal responsibility. But harping is not an
effective training method.
Don't Use Sarcasm
In an effort to draw attention to their child's behavior, some parents use sarcasm
in their daily conversation as a tool of coercion. Listen for the verbal barbs
in these statements: "Well, with all the bread you're consuming, I guess
you're not worried about your weight." "So, what kind of trouble did
you get into at school today?" "When you act that way, I'm surprised
you have any friends at all." I know parents who, in the past, constantly
devalued their children by their lack of consideration and courtesy and their
use of sarcasm. The end result is always the same: Their kids become bitter
and resentful.
It's difficult to get preteens
(or anyone, for that matter) to listen when they are treated disrespectfully.
Older kids don't forget put-downs, and you can be sure the chickens will always
come home to roost for the parent dishing them out. Turnoff words and put-down
phrases force one of two reactions in teens. Either they verbally attack the
source of irritation with their own sarcasm, or they withdraw in silence. In
both cases the results are the same-our kids stop listening.
Some parents use sarcasm
because they think it will help motivate their kids. But preteens and teens
resist this type of "motivation" and become cynical of anything the
parent says. This has a downward-spiral effect in the future. Any new effort
the parent puts forth to make amends is perceived as just another twisted effort
to control the relationship, not build it.
Don't Rob Them of the
Joy of Serving You
When talking about encouragement and gift-giving I shared earlier that Anne
Marie and I have often rushed out to a meeting, leaving the kitchen in disarray.
Coming home to a spotless kitchen without having prompted the girls to clean
up was actually a normal occurrence. But sometimes we would say the wrong thing
before leaving. "Girls, could you clean up the table and do the dishes?"
Those few words robbed our kids of the joy of serving us. By our request, we
created personal expectations and removed the pleasant surprise that usually
awaited us.
Our kids could be expected
to clean up on our busy nights. They longed to hear our thankful appreciation
when we walked back into the house to see the kitchen spotless. That was their
joy. Those words, "Girls would you clean up the kitchen tonight?" instantly
removed any possibility of serving us for no other reason than to love us. When
your children are characterized by doing a special task, be careful not to rob
them of the joy of doing it by asking them in advance.
Don't be a Hypocrite
"You're nothing but a hypocrite!" This accusation is painful for any
parent to bear. It's painful because there is usually some truth in the statement.
If a parent lacks integrity, how can he or she be trusted? In fact, the cost
of hypocrisy is trust. Parents who don't live by the moral values they set up
for the rest of the family fall into this category-they're untrustworthy. In
the sentence above, the key word is moral. During the early years of childhood,
parental authority, although challenged, is not questioned in terms of parental
integrity.
For example, parents tell
their children not to cross the street, light a fire, let the dog run loose,
or climb Daddy's ladder. Yet parents do all these things without their actions
being perceived as hypocritical because these activities in and of themselves
are not intrinsically moral in nature. But when it comes to moral instruction
and moral behavior, no disparity should exist between what parents teach and
what they do. The moral rules the child is taught to live by are the same for
the parent. Adulthood does not come with a new set of values; moral truth does
not vary with our age. You can be sure that teens make moral judgments on the
behavior of friends, schoolmates, and teachers, using the standards taught them
by their parents. It should not surprise us, then, when our teens use those
same standards to judge us.
Article
by Gary Ezzo / Anne Marie Ezzo
