Parents of teens may notice that some of the parenting tools they used before don’t get the same results when used with adolescents. Being an effective parent is an evolutionary process because kids need slightly different nurturing at different ages. During the teen years, a parent’s role changes from pilot to co-pilot, so that teens can gain some experience navigating the terrain of life.
Moving into the co-pilot role is tough and takes plenty of patience, especially when the other pilot is a rookie at many new tasks. Parents can use the ideas below to support themselves and their teenage children as both parent and child adjust to their new roles.
New Year’s Resolutions Ideas from Jane Nelsen
Jane Nelsen, co-author of Positive Discipline for Teenagers (Three Rivers Press, 2000) offers the following thoughts to parents.
- "I will remember when I was a teen, and will give my children what I wanted from my parents."
- "I will remember that someday my teens will be adults who will be my best friends."
- "I will follow the three Ls for parenting my teens: love, listen, learn.”
Parents of teens may want to print a copy of these reminders and store them in their wallets or purses. Parents can pick one or more of these ideas for New Year’s resolutions of use Jane Nelsen’s ideas as inspiration to create their own unique resolutions.
Schedule Weekly Quality Time With a Teenager
When children become teenagers, the parent-child relationship changes for sure. Adolescence marks a stage of development in which teens declare their independence to their parents and often in the form of rejecting their parents’ values. These age-appropriate, yet insistent actions of breaking away from parental constraints creates plenty of friction between parents and teenagers.
Quality time can be the small drop of “glue” that holds the parent-child relationship together during the turbulent times of adolescence. At times spending quality time together may be the only positive aspect of parenting a teenager. Committing to spending quality time with a teenager on a weekly basis, if done with an “I want to get to know you” attitude, can be one of the most rewarding New Year’s resolutions for parents of teens.
To make the most of spending weekly quality time beneficial at all to the relationship, a parent should focus the entire time set aside to get to know a teen, enjoy his or her child and do plenty of listening. There’s a time to discuss what’s keeping teens from taking out the trash, but weekly quality time isn’t it.
Read a Positive Discipline Book
To help parents of teens understand the unique parent child relationship during the stage of adolescence, Jane Nelsen and Lynn Lott wrote Positive Discipline for Teenagers. The book offers explanations about a teenager’s social and emotional development and the importance of this stage of childhood. Also, the book offers parenting tools to use that help parents remain calm and focus on the issue at hand (chores or limits) instead of getting pulled into a teenager’s emotional reactions.
The original Positive Discipline book is another book that explains that full philosophy behind the recommended parenting tools. Some parents may not understand a few of the Adlerian parenting tools unless they understand the long-range goals for parenting – preparing teens to be competent, capable adults. Jane Nelsen has written and co-authored more than 13 parenting books, so there are plenty of books to read.
More New Year’s Resolutions for Parents of Teens
One tip for creating New Year’s resolutions is to make them measurable. It’s easier to know if you’ve achieved a resolution if the goal is concrete and measurable. Parents of teens can choose one of the following measurable resolutions or use the list as examples to create their own concrete goals.
- Attend a Positive Discipline parenting class
- Schedule one night a week that a teenage child will help cook dinner. Learn about the benefits of a teen cooking dinner and make the cooking experience a time to teach a teen life skills in a fun and relaxed way.
- Subscribe and get updates to Jane Nelsen’s Positive Discipline blog.
- Stop doing something for your teen that he or she can do for himself or herself. Take time for training a teenager to do the skill on his or her own first. Examples: Laundry, cleaning their bathroom, taking their car to get the oil changed.
New Year’s resolutions can help parents of teens adapt parenting skills to support teenagers in becoming more independent as well as maintain a reasonably positive parent child relationship. Spending quality time with teenagers and other Positive Discipline tools can help make the next year a better one.
Kelly Pfeiffer - Kelly Pfeiffer teaches Positive Discipline workshops to parents and trains child care providers on various child development topics.
