age children and teenagers, withdrawing privileges, grounding, and drawing fines out of allowances are appropriate and effective.
• Rewards can be useful teaching tools. For younger children, parents can reward good behavior with things such as stickers. For older children, rewards can take the form of increasing privileges.
In general, Trumbull says that parents need to remember that children also need affirmation and encouragement. Correction or punishment without affirmation will be counterproductive.
Assign Chores
Introduce household chores, like Kay Wills Wyma did. Her plan involved assigning a new chore every month to her five children. By the time a year was over, they not only cleaned their own rooms, they cleaned bathrooms, did laundry, and helped prepare meals. Wyma found that giving her children meaningful work fostered not only personal responsibility but emotional health, to say nothing of establishing parental authority. You don’t need an elaborate plan, but you do need one that’s age appropriate. Cleaning up toys is a good place to start. Then move up to making beds, putting dirty laundry in its place, setting and clearing the dinner table, helping with yard work, and cleaning bedrooms. The key — and often the hard part, as Wyma found out — is making sure the chores are completed and having a plan for what follows if they aren’t. Be clear up front about the rewards and punishments.
Dr. Anderson believes chores are good for children in many ways. They don’t just teach responsibility, they keep children — especially teenagers — connected to their families.
Establish Rituals
Simple rituals with kids, such as movie and game nights, or weekly visits to a library or coffee shop, can help forge and strengthen parent-child bonds.
Have Family Dinners
Family meals go a long way in cementing ties. In fact, there’s research on the benefits of family dinners. The American College of Pediatricians examined a range of studies on the subject. They found evidence of so many advantages for families who had regular meals together that they now recommend their members encourage parents to partake of the family table. Better family relationships, healthier eating, better grades, and decreased drug and alcohol use by teens are just some of the many benefits of frequent (defined as five per week) family meals. “When families regularly share meals together,” according to the ACPeds website, “everyone benefits — the children, parents and even the community.”29
Shared meals can provide a sense of cohesion simply by bringing family members together. According to Drs. Jane Anderson and Den Trumbull, authors of the analysis, sitting down with each other at the end of the day allows families to reconnect, to communicate with one another, and to share values. Children like structure, and family meals help provide that. Dinnertime together is also a chance for children to observe how their parents interact and express emotions, and for the whole family to learn how to treat each other with respect. Teenagers who have more frequent meals with their families are more likely to report having positive relationships with them. Specifically, it doubles their chances of having “excellent relationships” with their fathers and with siblings.30 According to one study, 71 percent of teens consider spending time with family members the best part of family meals.31 Family dinners are an opportunity for kids to see their parents make family time a priority and for parents to share their values over the dinner table. Since this is time for kids to be with their families and not their peers, no cellphones allowed!
Take Family Vacations and Nurture Extended Family Relationships
Family vacations can also be valuable in strengthening family relations, and Dr. Sax believes they should be done without friends tagging along. Expensive trips to faraway places aren’t necessary. Visit places such as historic sites and state and national parks and bring a picnic. In trying to connect your child to your culture and your values, it can help to live near extended family (if they share your values), so that other adults such as aunts, uncles, and grandparents can help offset peer influence. If that’s not possible, there are other ways to have extended family members be part of your children’s lives. Besides visiting them when possible, have your children use Skype and FaceTime to stay in touch and establish close relationships. Extended family members can become part of the authoritative community that children need, even from a distance.
Build a Community
Doherty writes about what author and fatherhood advocate James Levine and his wife did when their teenage daughter became a challenge. First, they arranged a meeting with the parents of their daughter’s five closest friends. “Jim reports the result was an amazingly effective parent support group that met three times a year through their daughters’ high school years. The group opened up channels of communication among the families, helped parents hold firm against sometimes unreasonable demands from their daughters, and helped their daughters resist unreasonable peer pressure.” Don’t go it alone! Seek out like-minded parents at church or at your children’s school for support.
Expect Respect
Don’t tolerate disrespect from your children. In Take Back Your Kids, Doherty advises parents to “challenge every disrespectful behavior — without exception — because that is the only way that the child will understand your expectations and the meaning of the behavior you want to extinguish.” Maintain your own emotional control: be calm and focused. He recommends cultivating a tone of voice that communicates your seriousness.
It’s never too late for parents who want to stop the disrespect they’ve allowed to go unchecked. Doherty advises encouraging children to become allies in changing things. “Children are happier when they are consistently respectful to the most important adults in their lives,” he writes.32
Make a Family Mission Statement
Dr. Thomas Lickona recommends making a family mission statement. If you want to be clear about the values you want to foster in your children and the kind of behavior you expect from them, write out a mission statement that explicitly spells that out. He suggests posting it where everyone can see it and refer to it. Dr. Lickona provides this example of one family’s mission statement:
• We commit to being kind, honest and trustworthy, and fair.
• We don’t lie, cheat, steal, or hurt someone on purpose.
• We don’t whine, complain, or make excuses.
• When we make a mistake, we make up for it, learn from it, and move on.
• We work to keep our minds, bodies, and souls healthy, strong, and pure.
• We commit to learning and growing in our faith through practice and trust in God’s goodness.
• We live with an attitude of gratitude and joy.33
Have Family Meetings
This is another suggestion straight from Dr. Lickona, who believes that having regular family meetings is one of the best ways to build a positive family culture. Such meetings can also be used to solve problems, resolve sibling issues, and discuss policy on matters such as screen time and chores. “It’s the time,” he writes, “when you are the most explicit about the kind of family you want to be.”34 Dr. Lickona suggests starting with a half-hour meeting once a week and including popcorn or some kind of snack so it becomes something kids look forward to. Have one person speak at
