PARENT'S WORD

Discipline is a Four Letter Word . . . L - O - V - E: Pre-teens (Part 4)

by Carolyn C. Waterbury -Tieman

You are just getting home after being held over at the office in a two-hour meeting that should have taken 15 minutes. You're intellectually drained, emotionally exhausted, and starving. As the garage door opens you long for a calm, quiet evening at home. But, before you get the engine turned off the door to the house flies open and your eleven year old comes racing toward you with the cordless attached to his ear. He greets you with, 

"Jimmy wants to know if I can come to his sleep over tomorrow night for his birthday and everybody will be there so can I go? Huh? Can I"?

Scenes such as this are not unfamiliar to parents of pre-teens. During the ages between 10 and 13, the peer group becomes a powerful force. Perhaps the greatest challenge to pre-teens is learning to strike a balance between belonging and standing alone. Thus parents are faced with the task of finding ways to discipline that respect their pre-teen's individuality, recognize his/her need for peer approval, and yet reinforce their own values and definition of appropriate, acceptable behavior.

Some reminders and suggestions:

Just because the peer group has become more important doesn't mean you have become less so. Never underestimate the power of your influence. Oftentimes peers take over when parents assume that their pre-teens no longer need them to be actively involved. What changes at this age is not whether they need you to be involved, but how. You want to be involved without being intrusive. For example, your pre-teen wants to go to the mall with her friends unattended. You can respect her desire for some private time with friends as well as your own need to assure her safety by agreeing to accompany them to the mall but waiting out in the walkway while they shop. Find a comfortable spot where you can keep an eye on the store entrances where they will be and enjoy some time people watching or reading a book. The point is to be accessible. Be sure to set a limit on the time spent there and have a plan for meeting at a specific time and location if you get separated. Remind your pre-teen that the more they cooperate with your wishes the more inclined you are to cooperate with theirs.

Rules, and the consequences for breaking them, are much easier to enforce if they have been clearly stated ahead of time when possible. Whereas rules for homework and chores should already exist from previous years, (with some modification), rules about telephone use, participation in extracurricular activities, and involvement in social events may need to be established. Invite your pre-teen to be involved in the rule setting process. They are less likely to break rules they have helped set themselves. You may be surprised at how strict they are. Perhaps you want to limit phone use to a certain period of the evening for a specific length of time. Calls during homework, practice time, or chores may be prohibited. Extracurricular activities may be limited to two per semester. (If you have several children, one per semester per child may be more reasonable.) If your pre-teen fails to exhibit responsibility for practicing and fulfilling the requirements of the activity, the activity will not be continued the following semester. Should he decide that he does not want to discontinue and is ready to be responsible then he can pay for the activity using his own money for that semester. In response to the scenario described at the beginning of this column the rule might be that any request made within the first 15 minutes of mom or dad arriving home will automatically be denied. For the parent who is caught in this situation before the rule has been made, they might respond, "If you want me to consider letting you go, you will tell Jimmy you'll call back later, you will give me 15 minutes to collect myself, and then you, your father, and I will discuss this request". At the time of the discussion you establish the new rule about making requests within the first 15 minutes of your arrival home. You may want to add that any request made in front of a friend will also be denied. I am sure there will be exceptions to these rules as there are to any.

I recently saw a billboard displaying the message, "A big part of loving is listening". Listening is an essential parenting tool that becomes more and more important as kids become more sophisticated in their ability to communicate. Effective listening is a total body experience requiring the use of our eyes, our mind, our feelings, our gut, as well as our ears. The effective listener pays attention to eye contact, facial expression, tone of voice, and body posture, as well as words. Our children's behavior, the choices they make in friends, music, activities, how they spend their time, can reveal a great deal to us about what they need from us if we are "listening". The fact is, if we are not effective listeners we will not know when or how to best intervene on their behalf.

Remember that listening does not mean that you approve of or condone what you are listening to. Nor does it mean that you are giving permission. You are listening in order to acquire the information necessary to respond appropriately. For example, your twelve year old daughter is irate because her nine year old sister has been in her room again uninvited. She storms out to the yard where you are mowing for the second time in a week and demands that you do something about "the dreadful little brat". Because you are the adult and have learned self control you do not scream at her to grow up and stop calling her little sister names and ask what's the big deal about somebody being in her room anyway. Instead, you calmly turn off the mower, gently guide her to the porch, have her count to ten, and then ask her what the problem is. You are not interested in hearing all the loathsome qualities of her little sister, you simply want to know the problem. Once she has defined the problem, help her brainstorm solutions (any solution is acceptable at this stage of problem solving), then help her choose a solution (this is when you suggest that stuffing her little sister in the closet for a week is not an option), and support her in implementing it. You might role play the situation with her so she can practice explaining the solution to her sister. You might even want to be there for the big event to show your support of her decision.

Our children are faced with more difficult decisions each year. During the pre-teen years we want some assurance that our values are the one's that guide them in making those decisions. There's a much better chance that they have heard the messages and will continue to listen if they believe we are.

 

[PARENT'S WORD 1] [PARENT'S WORD 2] [PARENT'S WORD 3]
[PARENT'S WORD 4] [PARENT'S WORD 5] [PARENT'S WORD 6]