1. They know more than you know about important matters. (I concede that you probably know infinitely more than your parents about computers, the Internet and cellular phones, but they do know more about life than you do).
2. They want the very best for you even if you do not agree with them about what is the very best for you.
3. They tend to look at long-term ramifications of almost everything while it is likely that you tend to consider the here and now as if there will be no tomorrow.
4. They tend to see the big-picture for the whole family while it is likely that you think the big picture is a close-up, celebrity head-shot, of you.
5. They want a wonderful future for you more than you probably have the capacity to even imagine.
6. Their instincts about whom you date are probably more accurate than yours. If your mother or father thinks he is a loser or she is too demanding they are probably right. You’d do well to act on their advice.
7. What they want from you is very easy to deliver if you simply take the time to discover what it is they want.
Seven things for teenagers to accept about their parents:
Child screams like you have never heard before and for everything…
My granddaughter (under 2) and her parents are staying with us. The child screams: when she doesn’t get her own way; during the night when she wakes up; at bath time; for food; for attention. When I say scream it is so loud and lasts for so long it’s unbelievable. We cannot go to a public place. My daughter says it is in the child’s nature and she can’t do anything about because “it’s her personality.” What can I do to ease this unbearable situation we find ourselves in without hurting anybody.” (Letter edited)
Tread lightly. Making comment or assessment on another’s child (even if it your grandchild) will probably result in hurt feelings, even if what you say is not hurtful. Someone is not speaking up or standing up to the child so she is wielding more power than is good for a child.
If the screaming is rewarded, it is effective and will therefore continue. Both parents have to render the screaming ineffective or it will seem to be “her personality.” I’d suggest three days of un-rewarded screaming might break the child of this awful behavior. If mom and dad do this, your daughter might not feel so victimized by the child’s behavior.
see also:
difficultrelationships.blogspot.com
After years they need “space”!
Question: I have given myself completely to someone for five years who now tells me they need space. I am completely lost and don’t know what to do. This is so unfair. It is a horrible thing to do to anybody. Please help.
Response: Giving yourself “completely” to another is not a sign of love. It is an unwise idea, even in marriage, for such complete self-abdication for another can be very smothering for the victim of such love.
When one person needs space, it suggests there has been little necessary space required for any relationship to thrive. Take time to go through all of the cycles of anger, rage, and regret for, if you do not, you will visit these emotions when entering other relationships, even relationships of a non-romantic nature.
It is no wonder you feel lost: you have vacated yourself for five years only to return home to find no one is living there!
While your pain is presently extreme, you will be tempted to re-establish the relationship.
Try to see this separation as an opportunity to turn your life “right-side-up” through realigning your understanding of what makes a relationship attractive.
see also:
difficultrelationships.blogspot.com
It’s his manners, not your mothering!
My son (16) will not immediately send thank you cards for all the wonderful presents he received. He drags his feet and gets it done only with the threat that I am going to tell his aunts and uncles to leave him off their lists in future. What do you suggest I do?
Nothing! If your son was 13, or younger, I’d suggest you insist he obey your instructions and do whatever you expect of him. At sixteen he is certainly beyond an age where you are able to decide what kind of person he will be.
I’d suggest you stay out of what occurs between your son and his generous aunts and uncles. He is old enough to know what he ought to do, and old enough to reap whatever consequences may result from his lack of common courtesy.
Do not fall to the temptation to explain yourself (or to explain him) to his relatives. Leave it all up to him. This is a good opportunity for your son to see that it is he alone who is responsible for how he relates to others. Remember, his not sending thank you notes reflects on him and not on you. This is about his manners, not your mothering!
Too close? No – too busy! Babies will change that……
“My wife and I have a degree of independence and separation that we will seldom even see each other if we don’t work at it. This is all well and good while we do not have children but I predict a huge change when we blessed with children. We are having great lives together as almost newly weds (we got married three years ago!) but our struggle is not too much of each other, as I have read is the problem many of your readers face, but too little time to be together. Any suggestions?”
Space is hard to maintain...
Regarding children, you are correct. The arrival of an infant or two into your busy lives will radically assist you both to modify your degree of independence and separation. Children, especially infants, will demand many changes of both of their parents and they will be changes I trust you will both willingly embrace.
Should I ask him to have tests for STD before we have sex?
“Last month I met a man and things are heading towards sex. Should I ask him to have tests for sexually transmitted diseases before we are intimate?”
Rod Smith, MSMFT
I challenge you to tell this person that you do not enter deep relationships with men until you have seen what they are like under pressure, seen how they treat their parents, children, street people, waiters, bank tellers, and helpless animals. Tell him you do not build relationships with men who are in debt, who do not give generously to the poor.
Love, commitment, honesty, integrity, the things people usually want from an intimate relationship, are impossible to achieve with someone you have just met and these qualities are unlikely to emerge in a relationship when sexual behavior occurs before the relationship is sufficiently developed.
Some things just have to be repeated about “love” and control…
The content of my Email suggests there are broad principles that deserve repeating:
1. Love and control cannot coexist in the same relationship. Love appreciates a person’s absolute freedom, or it is not love. Controlling another, even for their “own good,” is never loving. People who love with authenticity resist any desire to exercise controlling behavior. Healthy people are vigilant to exorcise controlling tendencies from within themselves when such tendencies rear their very ugly heads.
2. Monitoring another’s behavior: wanting to know what they do all the time, who they talk to, what they eat, who they phoned, who phoned them, what they are thinking, are not indications of love, but of jealousy. Early in a relationship such behavior can be perceived as interest, or as signs that someone cares, but such monitoring is not caring or loving behavior. Love increases freedom. Love doesn’t box people by policing their thoughts or actions.
4. Too much too soon is a sign of doom in a relationship. Feeling very close very quickly, telling everything to someone on a fist date, falling in love “overnight,” having sex because it felt like a person was an instant soul-mate, are signs a relationship has jumped ahead of important developmental milestones.
What do parents want from a young son or daughter?
Apart from the obvious, like your good health, success, and happiness, healthy parents usually want very little from their sons and daughters. Giving your parents what they want will certainly not over-burden any middle or high-school student.
Essentially, your parents want to know you. They want to be included. Involved. They want you to know them. They probably do not want you to be their best friend but they do want you to be friendly, thoughtful and polite.
What they do not want is exclusion from your life in ways convenient to you, then inclusion in your life, again, in ways convenient to you. Many young adults seem driven to be totally independent of their parents, while at the same time presuming to share in all the benefits as one who is totally dependent.
A simple challenge
If you sincerely increase your willingness to offer your parents your time, hard work, good attitude with regards to school and family, their demands (rules, expectations) upon you will radically decrease. If you pay particular attention to increasing the quality of your relationship with your parents, their demands will become increasingly flexible and you will enjoy growing and healthy autonomy.
This is not manipulation, a game or a trade-off. When you genuinely offer your parents an authentic inroad into who and what you are, you will be demonstrating your capacity to cope with the very freedom healthy parents want their sons and daughters to have and enjoy.
Don’t lie to your parents. Being deceived by people in your inner-sanctum is as painful as painful and shocking as being hit, from behind, by a speeding bus. It is disorienting and often results in permanent damage. Truth is a far more attractive currency than lies. No. It is not “natural” or “normal” to lie to your parents and it is not “part of growing up.” Rebellion is not required for separation and development.
Ten ways to know you are growing up …
1. You take responsibility for your academic progress.
2. You don’t look for someone to blame when things go wrong.
3. You take responsibility for your attitudes and actions.
4. You have high standards when choosing friends and activities.
5. You avoid things you know are bad for you.
6. You focus on giving rather than on receiving.
7. You apologize face-to-face when apologies are necessary.
8. You do not talk negatively about people behind their backs.
9. You save more money than you spend.
10. You don’t pout when things don’t go your way.
Copyright 2006, Rod Smith, MSMFT
Should we go to the party?
Q: My extended family is in constant struggle over my father’s dependence on alcohol. It upsets my teenage children when he becomes abusive to their grandmother and to me, their mother, after a few drinks. I really don’t want to visit my parents over New Year. My eldest son, whom I did not think would even remember the unpleasant incident from last year, has asked if he can stay home if the family goes to their home this year. It would hurt my father’s feelings if he knew the truth, but I do not want to subject my children to all that again. My husband is fine with whatever I decide. What do you think I should do?
A: If you want a “Happy New Year” you might want to start it with a happy event! You are concerned about hurting your father’s feelings but will allow him to hurt your children and you? This is absurd! Don’t go. Tell your father his behavior from last year has had regrettable consequences. I would not suggest a parent ever knowingly subject their child to harmful experiences. Wild horses couldn’t get me to your dad’s house for New Year and I am not even related to him!
Mistakes single parents make…
1.“Over working” for the other (absent or present) parent;
2. Getting between the child and teachers, friends, coaches as if the parent can and must protect the child from all consequences, inevitable dangers and everything negative;
3. Giving the child the impression that he or she is their reason for living, the very reason the sun rises on any new day;
4. Treating the child as if he or she is so different and so special that he or she will never really need to be accountable for his or her behavior, mistakes, or failures;
5. Allowing the agenda of the child to take precedence over all other agendas. (Where established plans with other people are sabotaged because a child chooses not to cooperate.);
6. Giving a child things (games, toys, and so forth) to make them happy, while refusing to offer correction, guidance, teaching, and boundaries, and so give the child the necessary tools for a fulfilled, mature future;
7. Speaking, thinking, feeling and interpreting the world for the child, rather than accepting that each child is a separate person, who is able to speak, think, feel and interpret the world, at ever increasing degrees him or herself.
