Parenting is a Moving Target in the Teen Years

Trying to understand how to help your teen in a world that is constantly changing is like trying to hit a target that constantly moves. Just when your aim is right on target -- your kids change. Knowing how to set the right standards and enforce the right discipline can be overwhelming, and may seem impossible.

The key to success in this arena lies in learning to adapt your parenting style to be more fluid, more accessible.

As your child develops into a teen, you no longer have the luxury of making demands and expecting everything to remain the same. Whether you like it or not, things change, and you must be able to understand and move with the culture, and set appropriate boundaries. I'm not saying you should stop caring about your family rules and beliefs. What I am saying is that how you enforce the rules must change. Otherwise, your child will be unprepared to cope with adulthood. They won't develop healthy relationships. They will remain immature and irresponsible, because all of the decisions have always been made for them.

Change The Boundaries

Adapting your style must include learning how to set appropriate boundaries for their newly acquired behaviors, and giving them the choice for the direction they need to go.

A good example of how this works comes from the time I spend training horses. When I put a fence around a horse, I am setting up boundaries. The horse can go anywhere it likes like within those fences. If a problem develops, I move the fences in a bit, and reinforce the boundaries. The same can be true with your teen. Set boundaries, and allow your teen to choose his direction within those boundaries. If a problem develops, or things change, move the boundaries in. Examine their world, and put some thought into what needs to be done.

Kids today often engage with one another without really interacting or developing any kind of real relationships. The lack of interaction doesn’t help them hone their maturity or grow in their social skills. It's your job to help them grow. So set the boundaries that help them do more than just engage with others - they need to learn how to interact.

Change Your Aim

Changing your parenting style for the teen years means you change your focus from punishment and discipline to training and character building.

The focus of the boundaries you set should become more about obedience, respect, and honesty, which are the top three qualities necessary to build relationships. Respect, more than anything else, allows all others to fall into their proper place.

Conversely, disobedience, disrespect, and dishonesty destroy relationships, and need to be addressed when they appear also. Dishonesty, more than anything else, destroys trust in relationships.

Hold your teen responsible for the direction they choose, and cause them to own it. They will make some mistakes, but that's alright. If they lay the blame on you, however, remember to put the responsibility clearly back on them. Tell them, "this is not about me, or my mistakes, this is about you. I will never be a perfect parent, but if you don't change things, this will hurt you in your relationships in the future.

Change Your Attitudes

Changing your style of parenting teens in order to meet the demands of today’s world also means that you refocus your own attitudes and behavior as well:

• Move from lecturing to discussing
• Move from entertaining to experiencing something together
• Move from demanding everything, to asking them their ideas about everything
• Move from seeking justice to giving grace
• Move from seeing everything that’s wrong and finding more of what’s right
• Move from spending time always telling them to more time listening
• Move from giving your opinion to waiting until you are asked.

It is difficult for teens today to grow up and move on. They tend to like their immaturity, and don’t feel the need to grow in their responsibilities. Teaching them to grow and own their attitudes and choices is one of the most important character qualities we can help them develop.

So, don’t just tell them they need to be responsible, or that they need to be mature. Instead, carefully identify what is going on in their world, and begin to set out boundaries that give them responsibility and cause them to act upon them. And when the next new thing comes along, learn to adjust the boundaries in ways that help them continue to recognize their need to be mature, responsible, and own up to the consequences of their choices.