Parenting
Teens: Fostering Self-direction and Accountability
Adolescence
is a complicated, rewarding, and challenging time for both parents and teens. As a parent, you go about your day-to-day, and
at some point, suddenly recognize that your child is different – they are growing
up physically, they take on distinctive mannerisms, and they talk about the
world and their friends in a different, more adult-like way... and hopefully,
we begin to see some of the traits that we value and have tried to instill in
them as people.
As Director
of Westchester CAPS (Westchester Child and Adolescent Psychological Services,
PLLC), I see lots of teenagers and families.
If I step back and ask myself
‘what are the most important traits parents want to see develop in their
children?’ I would say that the ability to be ‘self-directed’ and ‘accountable’
– i.e. the ability to set goals, create a plan to achieve those goals, take
ownership of the process, and follow through – are at the top of the list.
Why is this important?
Initiative,
the ability to define a direction consistent with one’s goals, and the capacity
to organize oneself breeds success. Once
our children leave home and/or enter college, we are no longer there to provide
them with ongoing direction and immediate feedback. Unless they have internalized these skills
and abilities, there is a risk they will flounder, get lost, or make the wrong
decisions.
The challenge.
Some kids
are self-directed from an early age. But
many are not. If they are not, we need
to teach them these qualities. Teens
often have difficulty doing their homework, studying for tests ahead of time,
taking the initiative to get summer jobs, etc.
The college application process presents a series of hurdles. Our kids have to identify what college they
want to go to, study for entrance exams (the SAT or ACT), request application
materials, complete essays, file applications on time, set up interviews…the
list goes on an on. Once our kids are in
college, they have to decide on a major, keep up with assignments, do well in
their classes, meet the right people, identify job opportunities, apply to jobs
or graduate school, etc. This is a long
list and a tall order.
Where do we get stuck: A case in
point.
The day
before I sat down to write this article, I was talking with a mom in our
practice who has a 14-year old son. She relayed
the following: “I don’t know what to do with
my son anymore. I would like him to do
his homework when he comes home (from school), but he has never been
disciplined in that way. At some point
after dinner, I go upstairs and ask him how he is doing with his homework. His response is “I’m going to start it in a
minute”. Over time, I have learned that a minute could
mean anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours.
I return in 30 minutes to ask him how he is doing. His response is ‘Mom, stop nagging me, I’ll get
it done’. I know that if I go in again we’re going to get
into an argument, but if I don’t, he won’t start his homework until later when he
is too tired to learn anything. He gets
decent grades, but I know he is capable of more. So I’m stuck.”
In this
family, mom and teen are indeed stuck. Mom
has taken on the role of the enforcer - the policewomen. The minute you get yourself into this role,
it’s game over. Because children see you
as the enforcer and the driver of responsible behavior they abdicate
responsibility for things they should do and get angry at you for trying to
make them do what they should be doing. In
this type of situation, the very things parents are doing to fix the problem
make the problem worse.
The trick in parenting teens.
The trick in
parenting teens is that when children enter adolescence, you have to shift your
mindset about what your child needs from you.
Simply put: young children want
to be told what to do. They ask
questions like “when should I do my homework”; “how do I do this [math]
problem”; can you help me write my essay; I don’t know how to do it”.
Teens want
to figure out what to do on their own without
being told what to do. They want to
decide on their own when to do their homework, they want to pick their own
friends, and they want to decide how to spend their time on the weekend.
When a child
enters adolescence, a child’s needs change, and we, as parents, need to change
along with them. If we don’t, we get
stuck.
What causes this shift?
The primary
developmental tasks for younger children and teenagers are very different. Younger children need to learn rules and
facts. The simplest way for them to
learn this is to ask someone who knows the answers. Typically, that’s us. The focus in the teenage years shifts from
learning rules and facts about the external world to learning about oneself - how
we fit into groups, what we aspire to, what we want to do with our lives. This can’t be taught by parents - we can
advise, but we can’t tell our child who they are as people. They need to figure out the answers to this
on their own.
Another developmental
task for teens is to become more independent in preparation for moving out of
the house and living on their own. This requires
that we allow our teenage children to make more and more decisions on their
own. If we don’t allow them to make their
own decisions (when appropriate), power struggles develop.
What do we need to do
differently?
The developmental
shifts that occur in our children necessitate a fundamental shift in how we
operate as parents. We need to shift
from telling our children what to do, to asking them what they think they
should do. (Obviously there are times
when we need to tell our children what to do and say “no”, but the frequency
with which this occurs should decrease as they get older.)
As parents
of teens, one of our primary goals is to enable our children to make the right
decisions on their own. The best way to
do this is to learn to ask the right questions rather than to tell children
what to do. For example, our teen may ask if he can go out to the movies on a
school night. Option A is to say “no,
that’s ridiculous. How are you ever going
to get up tomorrow?” This makes the
child feel stupid and embarrassed for asking, and angry at the parent who said
‘NO’. Option B would be to say: “What do
you think? You have a test tomorrow and
need to get up early. Do you think it’s
a good idea to go to the movies? What
about going on the weekend instead?” If
the child continues to insist they should be allowed to go, we can then use our
parental authority and say no, but we want them to begin to use their own logic
to sift through problems.
By asking
the right questions we force our children to think for themselves. We force them to think about the pros and
cons of a situation and what the consequences will be if they make one decision
versus another. And this is exactly what
we want them to do on their own when they move out into the world.
Parents
mistakenly think that if they tell their kids what to do, their kids will adopt
these positions and use them when they’re out in the world – i.e. in
college. This is often not the case. At the most fundamental level, teens often do
not need answers to questions; they need to ask themselves what they think they
should do. They need to have a mental
process in place to sift through options and come up with the right
solutions. This takes practice. If we enable this, they can utilize this
skill for the rest of their lives.
What are we shooting for in our
relationship with our teenage kids?
Ideally, we
want to be seen as trusted advisers to our children. We have more experience than they do and we
can impart some of this to them. We want
them to learn to think through problems on their own, but we also want them to come
to us when they don’t know the answers and ask for our help. And more importantly, when we give them
advice, we want them to listen.
If we are
locked in a power struggle with our kids, if they feel like we are trying to
control them and make decisions for them, this won’t happen. At the end of the day, we become disabled in
terms of our ability to foster a sense of self-direction and accountability in
our children. They will not come to us
for advice and we will not be able to help them course correct when they are
headed down the wrong road. This is an
enormous loss for a child and it can be avoided.
Rand J.
Gruen Ph.D. is the Executive Director of Westchester CAPS, an interdisciplinary,
outpatient mental health center providing individual therapy to children,
adolescents, and adults; couple and family therapy; neuropsychological
assessment; medication management, and tutoring. Dr. Gruen received his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D.
in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. He was formerly a fellow at Yale University
School of Medicine and an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry at New York
University Medical Center.