Tips on Living With Teenergers
When children grow up as teenagers, it would be the most difficult years for any parent. Over at WebMD Jeanie Lerche Davis summarized 10 tips from three national experts to help parents with teenagers. The following two are my golden rules as well:
Choose your battles wisely. “Doing themselves harm or doing something that could be permanent (like a tattoo), those things matter,” says Kaslow. “Purple hair, a messy room — those don’t matter.” Don’t nitpick.
Let kids feel guilty. “I think too much is made about self-esteem,” says Elkind. “Feeling good about yourself is healthy. But people should feel bad if they have hurt someone or done something wrong. Kids need to feel bad sometimes. Guilt is a healthy emotion. When kids have done something wrong, we hope they feel bad, we hope they feel guilty.”
What do you think? Feel free to comment or email me.
10 Parenting Tips for Raising Teenagers [WebMD.com]
May 20th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
I am a great listener & great encourager. But I don’t know how to deal with my feelings of disappointment in my son. I always try to be supportive, but when I see him chosing what I think is a wrong path, ie bad friends, or girlfriend that will dump him, or taking the easy way out of something . It is hard to hide it in my face even though I don’t say anything to him. I am thankful he’s not into drygs & drinking etc and my heart goes out to those parents that feel helpless concerning such serious things. But nevertheless I still feel helpless and discouraged at how he is truning out in his attituide and things he does. How do I fix myself?
May 22nd, 2008 at 6:17 am
I really don’t think you need to fix yourself. What would be so bad about telling your son your disappointed in something he’s choosing that is clearly wrong and hurtful to him. You feel disappointed because you love him and want what’s best for him. You’re clearly respecting his right to make a mistake and recognizing that we’re all human and that he is entitled to learn from his mistakes like you did. If you don’t like one of his friends for a particular reason tell him nicely. He might get mad at first but maybe he will start to realize that you’re right over time. I know how you feel it’s really hard to watch your child make mistakes but being a parent is a lot different than being a friend. I think letting your feelings known will pay off in the long run.