Teenagers: Setting Limits

We have become parents of teenagers.
A new and daunting stage in our marriage is upon us.

We have found out very quickly that it is very important to set limits, but also at this age we have to be able to explain to them clearly why it is important to have a curfew and house rules. A teenager will no longer accept the always useful, up to now: "because I say so, period".

I remember how it was for me when I was a teen; we went to a great party and it seemed that we had to leave when the fun was about to begin. I still can recall the feeling of frustration caused by having to leave the great music, new friends, dance, food. The certainty that something really exciting would happen when I left and I would miss it!!! I had to do anything to stay past curfew... sound familiar?

I just read this great book by Anthony E. Wolf, Ph.D. "Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me & Cheryl to the Mall: A Parent's Guide to the New Teenager". I highly recommended it as an excellent guide to understanding the teenagers' literal metamorphosis during their teenage years and our role in preventing a huge disaster.

As Dr. Wolf writes in his book: "Prior to adolescence, when a child screws up, the worst that can happen is that he will suffer...But during adolescence mistakes are not so easily forgotten or forgiven by the world. They can count. To do badly in school, to succumb to drugs or alcohol, to allow oneself to become pregnant, all can lead to problems affecting the rest of one's life. Mistakes in adolescence not only can hurt; they can cause problems that do not go away."

Teenagers know they will make mistakes, they also know that we love them and that is why we have these rules. They can't stand to have someone telling them what to do. They want to be on their own and to be trusted. Dr. Wolf says: "In general, the judgement of a teenager is not as good as that of an adult. An adolescent simply has not been through it before. Even with parental controls teenager will still make bad decisions, but without such controls there is no question they will make even more bad decisions."

"And yet it is precisely this parental concern which assures that their children do not feel alone." Someone is watching over them.

So (we are finding out the hard way), setting limits and having written house rules are a very important part of parenting teens.

Being Alert - Helping Them to be Aware of Drugs and Alcohol

How can we prevent our kids from being exposed to drugs and alcohol? We see them everywhere. Kids today don't even have to go far away into a dark dangerous neighborhood to find them. Today, they can be doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons, in our own home, in our own community center or around the pizza shop in the corner.

There are all kinds of easy ways for our children to find them: a car that stops by and gives some signals - the deal is done. There are others, almost their own age that hop in and out parties, deal with the kids and leave, or it could even be some very trusted person at school. The fact is that it looks like there is nowhere to hide.

Perhaps the best we can do to help them prepare for what they are bound to face almost every day, is to provide them with strong beliefs, the right reasons to fight for and the assurance that they are not alone, that they have our support, that they have the grace of God.

I have been able to talk to mine ahead of time when they are eight or nine and then constantly afterwards, giving them examples on what to do if..., telling them that God gave us a body that we have to respect, take good care of it, exercise, eat healthy and don't introduce harmful things to it like alcohol, tobacco, drugs, piercings, tattoos.

Show them how truly happy people don't need any of those things to be happy - and hope for the best.

Leadership - Key Competences

I have being doing some research on how can we raise our children to be responsible, proactive, positive leaders in our communities.

We should focus on teaching them key competences such as:

- Communication skills, how can they express themselves so their message reaches out to the people they want to communicate with.

- Conflict resolution, so they can see problems with the right perspective, not enlarging them or diminishing them.

- Self-confidence, sometimes being different is being better, not acting on certain way just because everybody is doing it; think, analyze, measure consequences and then act.

- Being pro-active, to actively participate in community service projects, use their talents, skills and time to help others.

- Act facing God at all times, being responsible for their acts and consequences, making sure that He is with them in every step of the way, to help and guide them in the right direction.

- Time management, prioritizing God first, family second, school work third and then their social life. Learning on how to keep an agenda so they can be sure that there is time to do everything that is needed to be done, to do things on time, to have time to be with everybody else.

We need leaders that can help others reach their goals, leaders that can put their talents and privileges at the service to others and pass their experience and knowledge to future generations.

We need strong, confident, intelligent, well prepared, talented, virtuous leaders among us.

Truthfulness

Wow! I just came back from an awesome talk during my monthly retreat at my parish. This great person came and talked to us about being sincere and truthful. She explained how the word "sincere" had its roots on several theories that have been advanced to explain the derivation of the word, but none has been substantiated!

The most common explanation assigns the genesis of the word to the Latin sincerus, meaning "pure" or "clean", but many etymologists state that sincere is a compounding of sine cera, which means "without wax". According to this "folk etymology", in the time of the ancient Romans, devious dealers in marble and pottery would conceal defects in their products by filling the cracks and holes with wax. Honest merchants, who did not doctor their products, proudly displayed their wares as being without wax; that is, they were sine cera. I found this explanation to be enlightening and amazing, because if you think about the times when you have had to tell a lie, it usually is when you want to show something that you are not. You are most likely covering imperfections.

Every word we say and everything we do is a reflection of our own heart and conscience. It is very important to fill our inner life with good things, with God, good things to read, good intentions, good and positive thoughts - so our acts will be a reflection of the true good heart that we have worked on.

Sincerity gives us freedom to be the true person we are, to accomplish the projects we would like to see accomplished, to be the abnegated mother, lover and friend that we want to be. The truth goes together with the "why". Why am I serving this breakfast? Why am I taking my children to the park? In the answers we can see if we are acting only because "that is what moms do", because "I have to" or because "I love to see my children grow and play because I really want to."

Whoever gives love, time, comfort, can't go around asking for payback, because nobody told you to do so, you did it because you wanted to do it. If you are doing things for the wrong reasons you are being a hypocrite and that can't make you happy.

When we talk with our kids, specially our teenagers and find out that they are sad, uncomfortable with themselves, displaying low self esteem, then we should work, not only on their outer selves: the clothes, weight, lack of exercise, but most importantly, we have to help them find out their "whys". We have to help them find out what is really inside of them; help them be truthful to themselves, help them peel away the wax.

Teaching Our Boys To Recognize Their Emotions

I was just reading Dr. Dan Kindlon and Dr. Michael Thompson's excellent book "Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys". When they talk about emotional literacy, they say that "learning involves recognizing the look and feeling of our emotions, then using this skill to better understand ourselves and others. We learn to appreciate life's emotional complexity and this enhances all our professional and personal relationships, helping us to strengthen the connections that enriches our lives."

Usually moms worry about cliques and social competition among their girls and are more relaxed about young boys that seem to be alright, but the truth is that boys also do struggle with the same painful feelings of failure, rejection and not belonging. When they can't hold the pain any longer, they act on it. Their inner turmoil is expressed in academic failure, depression, drug addiction, alcoholism, troubled relationships and worse.

It is usually very hard, even for most adults, to understand, for example, the difference between frustration and anger, deception and hate. We have to help our children, specially our boys, to be reflective: stop, think, understand, measure the different alternatives and their consequence and then act.

We also have to teach our children to: "first, identify and name our emotions; second, recognize the emotional content of voice and facial expression or body language and third understand the situation or reactions that produce emotional states".

Just imagine how many hours of painful and pointless arguments between future husbands and wives can be avoided if we can help them now - when they are still children - to become emotionally literate and to master their communication skills with their parents, friends and siblings.

Raising Boys and Protecting Their Feelings

Our first daughter is a girl, then comes a boy, then a girl and then two younger boys. For me it is kind of natural to raise a girl: the gossiping, the clothes, the phone calls, boys... I went through all that and learned a lot from my experience.

But what about boys, how much do we know about them? We love them, but do we understand how they think? How can we know what they are feeling?

Michael Thompson points out in his books "The Pressured Child", boys do have feelings, they do care, they do go through a lot of emotional rollercoasters and the difficult part is that sometimes they can't comunicate with words what it is that bothers or worries them.

They can express anger by slamming doors or showing no interest in inviting friends over, trying to be alone, but how can us moms go inside their minds and hearts and help them translate those feelings into words?

I have found that it really helps improve communication if you ask them very specific questions like for example: With whom did you sit at lunch today? Tell me the names of your teammates at the dodgeball (football, basketball, baseball) game today? Who picked the teams? or ask them to draw a floorplan of their classsroom and write the names of their classmates in each table; listen to what they say about each one and ask questions about them.

After these very specific questions, I make up the moment to get into a great conversation and guide them with future examples on "what to do in case of... " like a peer pressure event, not beeing picked up first by the captain of the team, how they are going to handle the rejection of the love of their dreams, and so on. You are not being pessimistic, you are being realistic and giving them tools to work in the future on a particular situation "if" they have to go through it.

I have found that helping my boys understand and talk about feelings is very important, crying with them if it is necesary. Find out if it is a situation that goes on every day and makes their life at school or after school very difficult, stressful.

Changing kids from classrooms or moving to a different school doesn't fix the problem it only delays it, showing them the way to ask for help, giving them guidance on "what to do in case of..." , in my opinion, is the best way to raise them.

The Perfect Play-Day

Play-days are the perfect learning experience: it is a time to have fun, share, follow rules, develop creativity, solve problems and learn leadership.

As moms, we have to plan play-days carefully. Lets say that I invite a couple of 3 year old playmates over; I will typically do the following:

1) The day before the play-day:

- We agree on a schedule for the things that will happen during the play-day, like, "first I will pick you all at school. Then when we get home we have to wash our hands, leave the back packs at the door ready for when their moms come pick them up. Remind your friends that they all will have to help you clean up your room, because is not fair with your brother that he finds his room messy when he comes back from school..."

- We will choose the games and activities; I will ask my son if he wants to play with cars, trains, water guns, blocks, memory, dominoes, bingo, hide and seek... If we are going to have a two hour play time, then I will try to choose a different game for every 30 minutes and have some other ready as back-up, in case that they change their mind. I will try to avoid TV, computer or video games on play-days.

- Then we go and check if the games that we want to use are complete and ready.

2) On the day of the play-day:

- I will explain the program to the other kids and will let them know our rules: how they must always share and take turns, how it must be fun day and not a time for fighting or arguing and we make the agreement that in order to do our play-day again we all have to clean up the room after we finish playing.

-If they don't feel like playing one of the games that my son and I chose, I will give them some other options, that I know are appropriate for their age.

- I will show to them the bathroom that they can use and tell them the time we will have our snack, this way we avoid unwanted trips to the fridge. It is a good time to remind them things like: "it is not nice to jump on our sofa, or no food or drinks inside the bedrooms, etc."

More Ideas on Play-days:
Kids work better when they know what you expect them to do. It is not that you want them to become robots, but at three years of age it is hard to know how to have fun on a play-day. Usually they come in and have a good look at the place, rooms, games, people in the house and ask all kinds of questions. After they familiarize themselves with the environment, they will go do the things they are most interested in, but then they have some difficulties sticking to whatever they choose to do and here is when the big mess comes: they start opening all the games, putting them on the floor but usually they don't really play anything.

It is a good idea on the first sessions of play-days, that you give them some ideas of how to play, like "imagine that you are working at an airport and this area of the room will be where the counter is, this other part is the waiting room... Who wants to be the pilot? Who wants to be the passenger? Who wants to be the flight attendant?" Let them imagine and use their creativity. Always make room for any kind of crazy idea, like "imagine that the counter is made of chocolate" or "if the plane where shaped like a square without wings..." After they are more or less organized, you may leave them on their own and they will probably start making up some other things.

It is also a good idea that they don't see all the games that are available to them the first time they play in your home, because the next time they come over, the games will not be new to them; it is better to make them think like they have a new game every time they come. This is why I try to give them out one at the time. All this is part of learning how to play.

Sometimes we do a learning play-day like phonic bingo or landmark bingo, art and crafts, playing with numbers, etc. depending also on my time. What we have seen is that the most popular game at our playdays is the Alphabet Bingo.

Our play-days are always on the same day of the week, and we rotate the house among the parents of the play-day group. We have found that every time we add new friends to our play-day group, the kids will be the ones that explain to the new ones how things work at our house.

Girls' play-days are different than boys' play-days. Girls usually are complicated when they start to fight over who is the best friend of whom, or who has the most beautiful costume. Boys are loud and energetic. If I have a coed play group and with different ages we often play restaurant, so we have role play for boys and girls, like a couple that comes to the restaurant with their baby, a chef, a waitress; this also works for office, store or bank, that way we have cashier, customer service people, etc.

Remember to always have fun and enjoy this great time in your child's life!