6 Tips for Striking the Right Balance
Clarify your purpose in parenting.
What is your primary purpose in parenting teens? Is it to spare your child any unnecessary suffering? Is it to preserve their innocence and purity? Is it to make sure that they believe exactly the same things as you or see the world exactly as you do? I would contend that these purposes are healthy and sound for the parenting of younger children, but not for the parenting of teenagers. I contend that our primary purpose, as parents of teens, is to prepare our adolescents to be good decision makers. This means developing their ability to think critically, ask good questions, think about cause and effect, consider consequences, set priorities, and engage in moral decision making.
What you don’t want to do is exercise so much control that you breed rebelliousness.
I’ve worked with a number of parents who control everything in their kids’ lives, every text message is sent to their phone for review, all internet content is filtered, location apps monitor their child’s every move and how fast they’re making it, and their computer use is supervised. If their friends curse or express ideas that conflict with family values, then these friendships are cut off. These kids can’t sneeze without their parents knowing about it. In my experience, this does more to make children good at deceiving their parents and finding ways to circumvent the monitoring devices than to make them good at decision making. I find that there’s something about human nature that chafes against total and constant monitoring. We all long to exercise our free will and when that’s denied to us we feel the intense urge to rebel. I’ve seen some teens so focused on exercising their autonomy that they start acting out in ways that don’t even really hold any appeal for them other than as a way to defy their parent’s control. They cut off their nose to spite their face.
What you don’t want to do is exercise so little control that your teen feels adrift and neglected.
Just as extreme control is unhealthy, so is extreme freedom. Adolescents still need the structure of rules, expectations, and consequences. It is through interacting with a healthy degree of parent imposed structure that teens develop the self-discipline to tell themselves “No,” the confidence to walk their own path without following the crowd, the strength to make themselves do what they don’t want to do, and the ability to delay gratification. Without structure and guidance, teens are adrift in a sea of competing opinions, instant gratification, and doing whatever seems best in the moment.
Your teen should be getting progressively more freedom and given progressively more responsibilities as they get closer and closer to the end of high school.
Remember the high-control parents I talked about, a minute ago? They’re not all wrong, their approach is a good place to start with younger teens. When adolescents are first given a new freedom, like surfing the web, having their own mobile phone, or setting up a social media account, parents should be monitoring diligently. But, with each passing quarter, wise parents will be thinking about how long the monitoring will last in its current form and what they would like to see in their child that would suggest that he or she is mature enough to be given more freedom. Take the initiative to check up on your child. Is she where she said she would be? Is all his homework turned in like he said it was? Has she demonstrated the strength to take a stand and tell her friends “No”? If the answer is consistently “yes,” reward that positive decision making with more freedom. By the same token, when increased freedom leads to poor decision making, those freedoms need to be taken away. Not forever, but for enough time that it makes an impression.
Monitor, but don’t be so obvious about it.
Parenting teens is like poker, don’t tip your hand too soon. When monitoring, focus primarily on safety issues, like is your teen chatting with strangers on the web, falling prey to internet pornography, engaging in other dangerous or illegal behavior? Major safety issues obviously need to be addressed immediately. Yet, other issues can be addressed more subtly and with more nuance. Don’t jump in and address every little indiscretion you come across. Remember that as your teen is developing his or her identity, he or she will likely experiment with many different styles of self-expression. Is your child cursing in text messages to friends? Maybe you can steer a conversation in the direction of how people make assumptions about us based on the language we use. If your teen posting provocative photos online? Maybe you can talk about the kind of romantic partner he or she wants to have and whether or not their posts are likely to attract that kind of person. Don’t let this turn into a lecture. This is about conversation. Explore both what emotional need is driving your teens poor decision making and healthier ways to meet that emotional need.
Your teen needs the freedom to fail.
If you are so controlling of your adolescent that it would be difficult for him to make a significant mistake, then you are doing him a major disservice. Your teen needs the opportunity to practice making all kinds of decisions before he graduates high school. Letting your child fail in a significant way might be one of the hardest things you ever do as a parent. I grant you it is counterintuitive. But, keep in mind that the most valuable learning often comes from our failures. It is in failing, while still in close connection with a loving parent, that teens learn how to pick themselves back up after a failure and do better the next time. Trust me, it’s better for your high school student to make some big mistakes, while you’re still there to coach her through it, than for her to do so her freshman year of college when she’s hundreds of miles from home and has no one but her peers from whom to seek guidance.
