Monday, January 08, 2007

What To Do With Teens Who Are Not Acting So Terrific

What To Do With Teens Who Are Not Acting So Terrific



The best and most effect book I have found is “Parenting your Out of Control Teenager 7 steps to reestablish Authority and Reclaim Love” by Scott P Sells PhD. Yes, I thought the same thing, MY TEEN is not OUT OF CONTROL. But the girl who showed me the book said it will help even if your teen is a good one. So I bought it and started reading. The main concept is “contracts” that you make with your teen. these contracts have the behavior that is not acceptable, consequences and rewards listed. (you make them up according to what is important to you and your teen. It is important to have a backup plan 4 levels deep, as teens are very resourceful. In other words if you have a consequence you will need a consequence to back it up and one to back up that one and so on. The book gives samples of forms or you can write your own. The teen and you sign them. It even tells you what to do should your teen refuse to sign. It has a regular section and a section for teens that are WAY out of control. It gives the reasons why sending them away to a “boot camp” does not work.

Although my teens would never admit it, I think they liked the PIR's the best. PIR stands for Positive Incident Report. You mark the teens good behavior that you notice and post them.

Here is an example of a contract I have with my teens. This came out of the frustrating “laundry habit” of saying on Sunday morning “no mom I don't have any laundry” when asked and then nagged repeatedly to get it. Then at 9:30pm saying “here's my clothes and I NEED them by tomorrow if I am going to school”. So the contracts reads that “clothes are to be to the laundry area and sorted by 10am if I was going to wash them, and if not ,they were responsible for washing their own.” And only after I got done with whatever laundry I was doing. It took about 3 weeks, and all of a sudden first thing Sunday morning the clothes were out and sorted without a word from me. What this book does it gives you the freedom to be a mom without nagging. It is such a relief. We have done contracts for being disrespectful, chores, and schoolwork. it is difficult at first because they will resist change but I noticed once they realized there was no way out, and mom is nagging less, we haven't need to use them as much. I highly recommend this for ANYONE with teens.

And finally the best place I have found to buy books is AMAZON. You can buy good used books for a fraction of the cost or buy them new. They arrive in a timely manner, and you don't even have to leave the house. they store all your info too so the next time you shop you can just click and state yes when asked if you want to use the card on file. It works for me! Oh I guess that should be in tomorrows post.

Dont forget to tune into Sunday Festivus right here. Air you grievances this week in a positive way. You'll feel better I promise! And I will link to your site! See below for this weeks Festivus.

Coming in tomorrow's Wednesday Works for Me.....what is metal, has a bit of diamond and is very useful for staying beautiful? Check in tomorrow to see.

No comments: