‘Everything is a mess’
‘No-one ever listens to me’
‘This is the only chance I’ll ever get’
‘I’ll die if she doesn’t come’
‘You always say…’
‘Everyone else’s mother let’s them’
‘I can’t go in without it, he’ll crucify me’
‘My hair is a complete mess!’
It is also understandable that even the most rational, articulate parents often respond with similarly over-blown words and phrases. After all, we are also frequently feeling powerless and frustrated! When our brains pick up these emotive language cues either our hurt inner child or our controlling ‘auto-parent’ have a tendency to leap into similar action without our consent. As a result, you may (like the best of us!), find yourself using overstatements without even realizing that you are doing so. Ask your nearest and dearest to tell you when you say something like:
‘All you ever think about is you’
‘You are driving me to complete distraction’
‘How can you say that when we’ve sacrificed everything so that you could…’
‘Your mother never has a moment to herself, leave her alone’
‘Your father will have a heart attack if he finds out…’
• Cut, apologize for and rephrase the negative clichés – we all laugh at them when we hear them in sitcoms, but they are not so funny in real-life. They are one of the worst kind of put-downs. Their sarcasm cuts into self-esteem even if they are rapidly thrown back in our face (where indeed they deserve to be). And yet they get used generation after generation with very little modification.
Now that we live in an age which is more aware of the power of conditioning, we can stop the cycle. But you will find it hard, as indeed I did. Often the best we can hope for is that when we hear ourselves say them, we stop, say sorry and rephrase what we wanted to say. For example:
‘Is this what you call early?…Oh, sorry, that was unnecessarily sarcastic…Seriously, I have been very worried about you. You said you would be in early and I assumed that meant before 11.30.’
‘One day you’ll be sorry…the way you carry on, you’ll become a…Oh God, I sound like my father…sorry, that wasn’t very helpful, I was just sounding off because I am worried.’
‘So, that’s in fashion, is it?…Sorry, that’s a put-down. I was a bit taken aback, it looks odd to me, but then I am over 40!’
‘Oh, I see, that’s tidy – I didn’t realize…Sorry I shouldn’t be sarcastic. I know you have tidied it, but you have forgotten to remove the coffee mugs and your boots and coat are still on the chair.’
‘Whenever I come sailing in with a new hairstyle, I can read the disapproval on their faces, and I can be sure someone will ask what film star I’m trying to imitate. My reply that it is my own invention is greeted with cynicism.’
Anne Frank
Rule 5: Review the ‘Rulebook’ Jointly and Frequently
‘The joy of being young is to disobey – but the trouble is, there are no longer any orders.’
Jean Cocteau
Of course no self-respecting teen loves rules. Indeed, an essential part of their growing-up job is to hate them and break them!
Perhaps you feel that your child has been doing just this from the moment he or she could walk or talk! If so, you may well wonder why rules should suddenly become such a special ‘issue’ at this time. The reason is that during their teen years, testing them takes on some different and quite specific extra functions.
In their earlier years, children test rules either to get more attention from those who care for them or to establish a sense of security. ‘Pushing the limits’ gives them the confirmation that they are still being seen and heard and it helps them to map out their safety zones. It is a way of finding out where they can go and what they can say without getting hurt or losing the love of their carers.
The moral implications of rules pass younger children by. This is quite simply because it isn’t until adolescence that our brains develop their capacity for abstract reasoning. So, until this time most children do not have the neural equipment to allow them to grapple with intellectual concepts. This means that although they may know what the world thinks is right and wrong, they cannot understand why they should or shouldn’t do something. Once they reach teenhood, testing the ‘rulebook’ becomes a tool which they can use to explore moral ideas and beliefs. (Provoking you into argument is of course another popular way of doing the same thing!)
Discovering their own belief system is part of the quest for self-knowledge. (Self-knowledge is one of the essential elements of inner confidence, which we discussed earlier. See page 5.) Teenagers naturally experience an urge to find out what kind of person they are or want to be and to establish their own set of consistent values and beliefs. If they complete this task, they will then be able to act quickly and decisively on their own. In contrast, children who don’t discover their own belief system will always be dependent on others to help them make difficult decisions and let them know what is a right and what is a wrong course of action to take.
Furthermore, not only do children need to challenge the rulebook in order to firm up their inner confidence, they need to do so for their outer confidence as well! If our children were to become the acquiescent saints that we sometimes wish they would be, how would they learn the invaluable skills of debate, negotiation, assertiveness and emotional control?
These are, after all, essentially practical skills and they cannot be learned effectively in a theoretical way. Teenagers need to use a hands-on experimental approach – with you, the parents, as the ideal guinea pigs! You are the close-at-hand authority figures and have already proved your unconditional love innumerable times before.
There is no escaping the challenges of the ‘rulebook’ if you truly want a confident teen!
Of course it is tempting to try and avoid the trials and tribulations that obviously result from working through this particular stage of development. Many parents would say that their lives are difficult enough without having to turn their home into a battleground of wills. So it is not surprising that they opt out by, for example, doing one of the following:
– throwing away the rulebook: ‘Okay, it’s your life…you make a mess of it if you want to…I don’t mind…you’ll soon find out on your own…I don’t know what’s right or wrong these days…you’ve got a key, do what you like…’
– handing over the task to someone else: ‘Wait till your father gets home…I wonder what your teacher is going to say when I tell him…I didn’t make the rules…it’s the law – a matter for the police…God is your judge, not me…’
– taking a ‘sickie’: ‘My head’s hurting, I can’t argue…you’ll kill me if you carry on like this…I’m too stressed…’
Hopefully, you haven’t yet succumbed to the temptation of going down one or other of these routes. Establishing and enforcing rules and boundaries are very much part of our parental responsibilities. Confidence cannot be built in an environment without them. It would be too scary and too