A friend of mine tells this story:

          When she was 16, she met a 25 year old young man from an island in the South Pacific who had come to town as an exchange student at one of the local colleges. They met at a party and he started hanging out near her high school at the end of each day so he could walk her home.  She was intrigued. This guy was older and much more interesting than the boys she had known since kindergarten.

          It was flattering and fun until he started to ask her out for an evening date. Somehow, she says, she knew he would have 25 year old expectations for dating, including sex and alcohol use, and she also knew she just wasn’t ready for it.  But did she tell the young man “no”?  Of course not. She told him she would have to ask her mother.

          Her mother, being wise, did say the “no” the girl couldn’t say for herself. But, -- here’s the most important part of the story--, she did not thank her mother profusely for getting her out of the jam. Instead, she blurted, “You never trust me!” and ran sobbing to her room, even though she remembers feeling enormously relieved.

Sometimes our kids count on us to set boundaries that they can’t set for themselves, even while they rail against it.  Good sense often takes second place to fitting in with the group, the appearance of independence, the desire to seem “mature”. Somewhere teens usually do know when they are at risk but they haven’t yet developed a strong enough sense of self to withstand group opinion. They need clear limits from their parents both to push against and to use as a safety net.

Yet – every parent knows how the mother in the story must have felt. She knew she couldn’t give her daughter permission to go on the date. She also knew that her daughter knew it wasn’t a good idea. And, being human, she didn’t like being screamed at. What was she supposed to do with the accusation and anger flung at her by the daughter she was only trying to protect?

Here’s where parenting-as-art comes in. Ideally in situations like these Mom shouldn’t return daughter’s anger with more anger of her own. (That only adds Mom noise to kid noise and would soon escalate to a screaming match.) She shouldn’t list all the ways she is right and the daughter is wrong. (Being right isn’t the point.)  She shouldn’t get into a tussle about whether she does or doesn’t trust her daughter. (This is an alluring side issue for both but getting into it avoids the issue at hand.)  And she shouldn’t back down. (Her daughter needs Mom to be firm because she can’t be.) In short, the less she says defensively, the better.

What she can do is very calmly and quietly say something like:  “I know this is hard and in the end there is little I can do if you decide to disobey. But you and I both know you’re not quite ready for this and I’m very willing to be the heavy so you have a way out. I have confidence in your good sense and I know that sometimes kids need for parents to be the bad guys. So, you decide what to do next.

What? Let her decide? Yes. Exactly. Because this statement is honest. We all know that there is really very little we can do if our kids disobey. We can’t lock them up. There is a limit to our ability to enforce rules by removing privileges (any kid in a fight will just stop caring). Intimidation in the form of adult temper tantrums is less and less effective as the kids get older. Kicking them out doesn’t solve anything except the most immediate problems. They’re still our kids and our responsibility.

The most important, and the most effective, thing we can do when we need to say “no” is to model respect, state the obvious, and have faith in the work we’ve put into raising them this far.  Teens who have been loved, respected, and given choices along the way usually will rise to an invitation to be the mature young adult you expect them to be. They may need to put on a display of righteous indignation in order to preserve their own developing sense of dignity but, if you refuse the invitation to fight and hang in there, they will usually come around.

Sometimes they even have a point. In the story above, it’s clear that the girl shouldn’t go. But sometimes, even more than sometimes, they are ready to do more than we think they are. We are so used to seeing our children as precisely that –children-- that it’s often hard to recognize that they have grown some since the last time we considered an issue. There’s no faster way to lose the respect of your teen than to have an automatic “no” ready any time they want to do something new. They will soon give up on talking to you.

Willingness to listen and to give a little (or even a lot) when they are asking for new limits pays off big. Kids learn to be reasonable by being treated reasonably – even when they are being unreasonable.

Dr. Marie advises:

When your teen-ager makes bad romantic choices. . .

·        Know your kid. Does she/he need you to be the heavy? If you’re not sure, ask.

·        Don’t meet adolescent anger and unreasonableness with anger and unreasonableness of your own

·        Do use the same good communication skills you expect to use in adult conversations when speaking with your teen. They will usually respond in kind.

·        Keep your priorities straight. Preserve the relationship and help your child learn from mistakes.