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Parents Place
Preparing for Adolescence Tips
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- Share your values with your teens. Let them know what's really important to you and help them clarify their own values.
- Don't fight the small stuff. Minimize the number of household rules, but stick to the ones you do set. Save major power plays for issues that compromise health and safety or important values, like drinking, drugs and sex.
- Keep communications honest and open, listening to what's really going on before jumping to conclusions. Be ready for those unexpected in-between times when your teen wants to talk - in the car, doing the dishes or at bedtime. That's when real closeness develops.
- Avoid the "20-questions" approach to conversation, which teens find intrusive and rude. At this stage, privacy is very important to them.
- As teens try to separate from their childish selves, they sometimes feel that your very existence is an embarrassment. Don't take it personally? and do drop them off a block from school or the mall and save your hugs and kisses for private times.
- Teens sometimes try on behaviors and roles the way we try on clothes at Macy's. Although it can be scary to watch, these new personas usually don't last long.
- Even though it's tempting to be your teen's friend, it's much more important to remain the parent, setting reasonable limits and being a force of stability in their lives.
- Tell teens they can use you as the "bad-guy" excuse for declining to participate in activities that make them feel uncomfortable. That way, they know you're cool but they can pretend you're not.
- When offering advice, don't expect a positive response; you're more likely to see irritation or disgust. It's important to know, however, that much of what you say is absorbed anyway, waiting to emerge later.
- Encourage teens to exercise and develop their problem-solving and decision-making muscles by helping them evaluate potential choices and responses to situations.
- Maintain perspective, being careful not to over-parent and over-manage on the one hand or to under-parent and under-support on the other.
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