Teenagers love a good debate, and will take the opportunity whenever it avails itself. If you allow your child to debate your decisions, you are sending the incorrect message that you and they are equal on a level playing field. You are not. This is not a competition; therefore, when you declare a conversation is finished, the subject is over.
Teenagers should not be invited to enter into any type of debate with you, nor should lengthy defensive explanations be given when the outcome of a decision is not favorable to your child. The oldest trick in the book is to force a change of mind with manipulation—wearing you down and confusing you until you can no longer remember the premise of your ideas or the manner in which you reached your conclusion. This trickery is aimed at undermining your parental role. The opinions of your teenagers are often invaluable when asked for, but your adolescent son or daughter has no business butting into any adult conversation uninvited and uninformed.
Further, if your teen demands to know how you came to your conclusion about an issue, you should not make them privy to the details surrounding your decision. Unless their safety is at stake, to include them in lengthy conversations is to cast them into the role of co-adult.
Parents of young children are capable of issuing directives such as “Never run into the street” without question and following up with a severe consequence if that directive isn’t followed. Yet, those same parents cannot enforce a directive to their teenager, allowing it to be debated or ignored.
We want to yell out, “What is wrong with you? Why can’t you be as certain, now that your child is older, about the dangers that lurk about? Why don’t you demand the respect you deserve? Where have you gone wrong and what are you going to do about it?”
Mary’s Story
From an early age Mary had an uncanny ability to “see through” explanations she was given by her parents. By the time she had matriculated to junior high school her debating expertise was known throughout her family and among friends and teachers. In fact, Mary was so bright that she argued just to argue, finding fun in winning, often at the expense of humiliating those around her. When the school suggested she come into therapy, Mary was thrilled at the prospect of a new arena in which to flaunt her skills. If we suggested she come to therapy once weekly, she cited examples of therapy working more efficiently on a twice-weekly basis; if she was asked to express her thoughts and feelings, she gave chapter and verse on her “trust issues,” accusing us of trying to take advantage of her vulnerabilities. She had managed to bamboozle herself by intellectualizing every thought, question, sentence or request made by anyone, until she isolated herself into an audience of one.
The fact was that Mary felt inadequate in comparison to her older sibling, who had always been the apple of their parents’ eye. Mary quickly recognized that although she did not have the talents her brother had, she could capitalize on the one talent she did have. If attention was what Mary was seeking, she found it by aggravating and humiliating others, once again confirming that negative attention is better than no attention at all.
Although Mary’s parents did not mean to favor their son, and, in fact did not admit to it, Mary’s perceptions, right or wrong, led to her developing a way to gain her parents’ attention. Through therapy, the parents began rewarding Mary for good behavior and disciplining her for any type of conversational behavior that was argumentative and demeaning. Her teachers were made aware of the plan and cooperated in the classroom setting.
The outcome was successful once Mary’s parents realized that every thought a teenager has does not have to be spoken if that thought is detrimental to the health or happiness of others.
No Democracy
The questions posed above are all good ones, and the answers may be more apparent once we clear up one of our favorite issues. Without clarity about this topic we might just as well throw up our hands in despair and turn our teenagers loose into society unplugged. The important distinction to be etched indelibly in your brain is this: Your family is not a democracy. That’s right, we said it! Further, your family should not be run by the impulsive, outrageous opinions of people less informed and less experienced than you. You have earned your right to be the adult through your own maturation process, and your children do not rank on a par with you. They never will.
Regardless of your children’s ages or education, you are the parent and the adult; that makes you the head of the hierarchy in your family for all time. Try as they might, your children cannot hope to obtain that status until the day you take your final breath. Even senility outranks coming-of-age children, since pearls of wisdom can still be harvested through the fog of dementia.
If you question the importance of the hierarchy platform, think of any functioning group and examine its underpinnings. Whether it is a religion, a political movement, or a neighborhood town meeting, every organized group has a leader, elected or appointed, and basic rules to be followed. Your family is no different. No one expects your children to live under a dictatorship, but neither should you live under the threat of tyranny, mutiny or treason.
To be a teenager is to be engaged in a power struggle involving a winner and a loser; if you are not certain of your position as head of your household, you will be easily upended by your power-hungry teen. Make your directives fair and decisive and you will have nothing to explain to your offspring.
Admit Mistakes and Guard Your Tongue
There may be times when you have not been fair—times when you made your decisions based upon anger and emotional volatility. If this is the case, you need to rectify the situation immediately. It is one thing to issue a fair decision and quite another to project your hostilities onto your child. Children will have great respect for a parent who admits he or she was wrong. They will see it as an act of bravery and take a lesson from an excellent role model. To see a parent as imperfect is to see a parent who is human. Apologizing for an oversight or an angry outburst and reassessing your teen’s request in their favor will be appreciated and remembered.
There are some parents who are afraid to admit failure, who see failing as a weakness, and believe that making a mistake means being vulnerable. There is no shame in making a mistake; the shame lies only in the pretense of perfection. Children who believe their parent is perfect are doomed to failure. Instinctively knowing they will never be able to attain perfection, they will embrace defeat. Perfection or the pretense of perfection causes anxiety and unhappiness for everyone, to no good end. Let your imperfection be seen and use it to your advantage; an apology from a parent is its own lesson in humility.
Stanley’s Opinions
Stanley was offended at being brought into therapy by his parents. “I don’t see what the problem is. I decide when my curfew is, and I decide what my bedtime is. Nobody tells them [pointing to his parents] when to go to bed,” he said. “How would they like it if I decided their bedtime?”
Stanley was unable to grasp the fact that since he did not make rules for his parents, he was expected to abide by the rules that they made for him. Yet, he did not have trouble adhering to the rules of therapy. If he was told to come to a scheduled appointment, he drove himself to the appointment on time. If he was asked to write a letter to his friend who had betrayed him, he did it without the least objection. He did not feel comfortable trying to upend the therapy agenda because he was unfamiliar with the arena; he recognized his place as the “patient” and not the doctor.
In his household, Stanley had been given “equal rights” with regard to his place in the family. He had been asked what he wanted to wear, what he wanted to eat,
