HELPING YOUR ADOLESCENT BECOME MORE RESPONSIBLE
Part I

IN THE MIDDLE- WHERE YOU DON’T WANT TO BE.

In the business world “middlemen” are a fact of life and often an essential part of the system necessary for doing business. However, when it comes to helping your adolescent learn how to do ” business” with the outside world, placing yourself in the middle only confuses your adolescent and dilutes the real experience he/she needs to have. What do I mean by “the middle”? And how will it help my teen if I can somehow get out of the middle? Let me explain.

TOTALLY DEPENDENT
Since way back in infancy your child had to completely depend on you for every, and I mean every, need that had to be met. In order to meet these needs you had to be pretty much in total control of your child’s environment.  Your child’s job was to scream and cry as a way of pointing out to you what was wrong and asking you, “will you please fix it?”  As parents, this hard-wires us to come running to meet whatever need we find and to fix every problem.  Then things began to change . . . .

THE PUSH FOR INDEPENDENCE
As you may have noticed, your growing children want more and more to have it their way. This is, of course, a sign of progress.  It is a sign that your child is successfully moving through developmental stages in readiness to leave the family nest.  Your child is becoming independent and autonomous, preparing for life in the outside world. However, this process is full of little detours.

Your hard-wired, control-centered brain is competing with your child’s need to expand his/her freedom on the one hand, and to have a natural dependency on you on the other. As you continue to assert your tendency to control (certainly a normal parental response) your adolescent is learning less and less about his/her  freedom of choice and instead becomes increasingly concerned with pulling against your control.

The result is that your adolescent’s world shrinks down to a power struggle with you, and the issues that your teen needs to become familiar with fade into the background. This is certainly one definition of being stuck in the middle.

GOLDILOCKS SAYS…….
So there must be an optimal stance, right?  A place that’s not too hot, not too cold, that’s just right! The answer is yes but the optimal stance is NOT in the middle.  It is more precisely an optimal location for you; a location  that allows you to guide and advise without the intrusive quality associated with being in the middle.
BUT, you might ask, “I’m afraid that if I ‘get out of the middle’ like you say, my kid will make a bunch of bad choices and make things even worse. At least I have the advantage of age and experience, he/she doesn’t.” This is the most common fear I see and it’s really quite understandable, you want your child to suffer as little as possible and perhaps avoid some of the things you had to learn the hard way.

An example from one of my cases neatly illustrates what I’m driving at:  Mr. and Mrs. Parent brought in their 14 year old son saying that they were seeing some frightening grade drop in his schoolwork and despite trying to be on top of his grades and closely monitoring how he was doing in class, the poor performance was continuing. They were bringing this up all the time with him so they were sure to know when things weren’t right, so they could do something about it even though they didn’t know what that “something” needed to be. After ruling out obvious things like clinical depression and learning problems, my talk with the boy revealed that he really did know how to do the work and could make decent grades if he wanted, it was just that his parents were constantly talking about his poor school work, trying to get him to do better, even threatening him with loss of privileges if he didn’t turn it around. He just didn’t feel like doing the work FOR THEM.

I suggested to the parents that they get out of the middle, de-emphasize the school work talk, and find more positive aspects of their relationship with their son to concentrate on. After several weeks, the parents reported that family life was less tension-filled, they could find ways to have more fun, and their son seemed to be interested in his school work.  In other words, their son now was paying more attention to deciding what he needed to do about his grades and what he really wanted to happen for himself!

Taking an optimal stance with your teen creates an opportunity for him/her to come face to face with his/her choices and the consequences that naturally flow from those choices. It’s an optimal position that doesn’t make it about a power struggle with you, but instead gives your teen an experience of dealing directly with the challenge.

WHAT WE HAVE SO FAR:

• Being in the middle makes it more difficult for your child to learn how to be responsible.
• This is because you end up making the choices for your teen rather than your teen “owning” responsibility and facing the logical consequences for the choices he/she makes.
• Your teen only agrees to what you want out fear of punishment or losing privileges.
• Control sets up power struggles with your teen.
• This is because your teen is at a developmental stage where he/she is attempting to figure out “who am I” and “what is important to me.” Your influence as far as putting in all the good stuff has already happened. It is now time for your son/daughter to begin to discover the consequences of his/her choices in the real world.
• Teach your child how to use his freedom of choice.
• This means allowing your son/daughter to be more involved in making choices and modeling appropriate choices.
• Act as a guide and advisor rather than an authority figure.
• Respect your child’s choices even though you sometimes don’t agree with those choices.
• Emphasize and preserve your relationship, deemphasize anger and negativity.

GROWING UP

Being able to accept personal responsibility for one’s actions will be a huge step for your teen. In fact, it is such a key step that many adults have failed to grasp it; adulthood does not automatically grant you that ability, you have to learn how to do it. I believe that being able to “get out of the middle” is a wonderful favor you can do for your teen as he/she begins this journey toward living in an adult world. Look for additional parts, coming soon, as we continue with  HELPING YOUR ADOLESCENT BECOME MORE RESPONSIBLE – Part II

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