There is a surefire formula for making rules for teenagers. How about this approach:
“Okay, mister. Here’s the deal, and I would not want to be you if you even think about disobeying. Cell phone use: no restrictions. Bedtime is when you fall asleep. Use the Internet, but understand that your Internet use will be completely unmonitored. Illegal substances: use your own judgment. Sex: let us know when you want to do it in the house, so your mother and I can make sure we’re gone. And one last thing, young man: you should be home at whatever time you feel like on school nights. You got all that, mister? You just better!”
“Yes, sir!”
As the parent of a teenager, you have to make rules. But how can you know what your rules should be? Should you require your fifteen-year-old son to be home for supper every school night? Is it okay for your fourteen-year-old daughter to get a small tattoo on her right ankle? Once they are in high school, should they have a set bedtime? How can you know the right rules for your particular teenage child? And how can you make rules that will protect them, but still be obeyed?
One obvious aid is talking to other parents of teenagers. Hear what they have done. What they think works and doesn’t work. But remember, all children are different, and nobody else knows your kid as well as you do. Sometimes what other parents say seems relevant, but sometimes it may not be suitable for you and your teen at all. Still, it is always good to bounce your thoughts off others who are in the same predicament. It can at least give you some perspective.
“You what? You’d let your Christina go out with a twenty-three-year-old?”
“Well, he seemed very polite. She brought him to the house for us to meet him and he seemed quite nice. Very soft-spoken. Made nice eye contact.”
“You’re crazy! He’s twenty-three!”
“You think so? I must admit you’ve given me something to think about.”
The above example may seem far-fetched; but, as any parent of a teen knows, you can get caught up in a situation and lose yourself in a way that, if you could just step outside of it, you would see quite differently.
What was I thinking? Actually, he even looks kind of older than twenty-three.
You can talk to other parents; but, in the end, the decisions are up to you. So how do you decide? How can you know what’s right, especially when so many situations warranting decisions arise every day with your teenager?
The answer, of course, is that you can’t. But, don’t worry—all is not lost. There is a standard you can follow to help determine what is best for you and your particular teenage child. That standard is whatever you are comfortable with. Without the ability to see into the future you can’t possibly know what is exactly right for the great majority of the tougher decisions.
Maybe the following should be written on a little plaque somewhere in your house:
I’m the one who’s deciding what’s best. I can’t guarantee that I’m right. Sometimes I’ll be wrong. But I am comfortable that I’m the one making the decisions. And though my decisions might not always be right, I certainly am the right person to be making them.
But, of course, there’s another person in the equation: your kid. And they may not be certain that you are the right person to be making the decisions. Not certain at all.
“No, I’m sorry, Teddy. You can’t go to the concert tomorrow night. The rule is, no concerts on school nights.”
“But, Mom, you can’t! It’s the only time Blades of Confusion is playing anywhere in the area! It’s my only chance to see them—ever! It’s not fair!”
“No, I am sorry, Teddy.”
It is here, when a rule is under attack, that parents make a major mistake in regard to setting rules. And this mistake gives rise to my number one piece of advice about rule setting: the basis of your authority is not because you are right, but because you are their parent.
This is where parents consistently get into big trouble. For, if the basis of your authority is that you are right, they will run you into the ground.
“But Mom, you have to let me go to the concert! It is so unfair!”
“No, you are not old enough to be allowed out that late on a school night.”
“I will store an extra hour of sleep each night for the four nights before. I will show you on the Internet how a kid my age needs a certain total number of hours of sleep, so even with the concert I will have gotten the right number of total hours. You are so wrong! It is so unfair!”
“No, I am not going to look on the Internet. You are too young. It is too late. You never know what is going to happen at a concert.”
“Mom, nothing bad is going to happen! I will show you the police records for all the nights that they had concerts at the Blue Onion! You’ll see, there were no instances of trouble! None!”
Can you prove to them that you are right? Can you convince them? I can already hear what you are thinking: “No, because she’s wrong. How is she going to convince me that she’s right when she’s wrong?”
What if there were some kind of review board—the Teenage Rule Advisement Board—to whom every contested rule had to be submitted?
“We’re sorry, Mrs. Millstrom, but we find your son Teddy’s arguments to be the more compelling. Teddy may go the Blades of Confusion concert tomorrow night.”
“Yes!” says Teddy.
All that you ever get from trying to show that you are right is more challenges. It’s a never-ending court case.
“Mom, look at this! It’s an article that I downloaded from the Journal of Adolescent Behavior about a large study that showed that high school children who [are allowed to] go to concerts during the week do twenty-three percent better in school grades! You can’t refute the Journal of Adolescent Behavior!”
Again, it is fine if, in any given instance, having listened to what they say, you decide—for whatever reason—to change your mind. That is your prerogative. It in no way diminishes your position as the boss. Again, if you change your mind, it has to be done swiftly and early in any discussion. But should you decide to stay with your original decision, ultimately you have to fall back on your basic position: not that you are right, but that you are their parent. This is what you have decided, and they are stuck with it. Whether they like it or not.
So what should you do? What should you say?
Tell them the rule. Tell them why. When you set rules, give them your reasons—not to convince them that you’re right, but to tell them why you have decided on this particular rule. Keep the reasons simple, clear, and as honest as you can.
“No, I am sorry, Teddy, but the rule is that I do not want you going out that late on a school night. I feel you are too young to be out at such a late hour when you have school the next day.”
“But I’m going to get extra sleep to make up for it!”
“No, I am sorry, Teddy. This is what I have decided.”
“But you can’t just decide like that!”
You do not want to get into a debate as to whether you have the right to set the rules. You just do.
“I’m sorry, Teddy, but I do not want you out that late on school nights.”
“What gives you the right to make decisions that ruin my life? It is my life—and you are completely wrong!”
But your participation in this discussion is over.
Let me give you some more examples of rules and reasons:
“You have to eat dinner with us because it makes me happy for us to eat together as a family.”
“You cannot go to school wearing clothing that I think makes you look like a tramp, because I worry that it can give you a bad reputation.”
“No video games or TV on Saturday mornings, because that’s when I need you to help me straighten up the house.”
Those are your rules, and those are your reasons. Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re not. Maybe the rules are fair, maybe they’re not. But remember, the basis of your rules is not that you are right, but that you believe you are right.
“You’ve got to be kidding! Are you saying that if I’m right and my dad is wrong, I still lose because he’s an idiot and I can’t convince him that he’s wrong, even though he is wrong?”
Actually, that is the deal.
Okay, you made the rules. So now what happens?
It was Friday night and sixteen-year-old Aaron was supposed to be in by midnight. He had a midnight curfew on Friday and Saturday nights. Also, if there was going to be a problem with getting home on time, he had to call. Those were the rules.
It was now 12:30 a.m. and there was no Aaron, no call, no nothing. His mother had called him, but all she got was his recorded message:
“Hey, this is Aaron; leave a message. You know the drill.”
She left a message:
“Call me. Now.”
“Where are you?” she had texted him a number of times. “Call me.”
Supposedly, Aaron was out with his usual friends, but his mother didn’t have a clue as to where they were.
“I don’t know where we’re going to be,” Aaron had said before he left for the evening. “Jeff is picking me up in a little while. We’ll probably go over to Heidi’s, but I don’t know what we’ll do after that. We might go to a movie. I don’t know.”
Aaron’s mother was worried, but not very worried. She suspected that her son was not responding because he knew he was out well past his curfew, and also knew what would happen if he did answer his phone, which was that his mother would be very mad, and that she would tell him to come home immediately.
However, by 1:00 a.m., Aaron’s mother was getting worried, and by 1:15 she was starting to get seriously worried. She was about to call one of his friend’s houses to see if anybody knew where he was when Aaron called from his cell phone.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Where the hell are you? Where have you been? I’ve been calling you for the last hour! You get home right away!”
“Oh, sorry, Mom. I was trying to call you, but something has been wrong with my cell phone. It’s been doing this for a couple of weeks. Maybe I need to get it fixed, or maybe I need to get a new one. Anyway, I’m at JJ’s. Jeff’s car isn’t working good so we decided to stay here and try in the morning.”
“Who the hell is JJ?”
“You know, JJ.”
“I don’t know any JJ!”
“Anyway, me and Jeff are sleeping over here, but I’ll be back in the morning. I’m fine. It wasn’t my fault about the cell phone. I tried to call.”
“Other kids have cell phones too! You could have used one of theirs!”
“Mom, I tried to call. I finally got through to you. I’m sorry if you were worried, but it wasn’t my fault.”
It was now 1:15 in the morning, and the last thing that Aaron’s mother wanted to do was to get into her car, drive to some kid’s house—the location of which she didn’t even know—pick up her son, and come home. What she wanted to do was go to bed. She was relieved that Aaron was safe, but at the same time quite angry with him. Nevertheless, Aaron’s mother was not interested in an angry confrontation with her son at this late hour.
“All right. Stay there, but you had better be home in the morning.”
“Yeah, of course I will, Mom.”
“You better!”
What, in fact, had happened was that Aaron had been out with his friends and had gone over to JJ’s house, where a number of kids were hanging out. JJ was a kid whom Aaron barely knew but was a friend of his friend Kelly. Aaron had been drinking some, had lost track of time, but was having fun and did not want to leave in order to get home by midnight. Also, he didn’t want his mother to think he had been drinking—though not heavily—which he could probably cover up (he had in the past), but he didn’t want to take the chance. There was nothing wrong with his phone—though actually he did like the idea of getting a new one, as his was getting a little out-of-date. Maybe he would play that up at a later time.
The next day Aaron arrived home a little before noon. His mother immediately started in on him.
“You’re supposed to be in at midnight! I don’t want any of your crap about what happened, because I won’t believe a word of it!”
“But, Mom, it was true! Everything I said! It was not my fault! I was going to be home at midnight, but then, like I said, Jeff’s car started acting up and so we decided to stay put. I did call you, and I don’t know what the problem was earlier with my phone. You have to believe me, because it’s true!”
Teenagers break rules. Not only do they break rules, but if they do break a rule and are found out, they, to the best of their ability, try to slime their way out of any guilt. They also sneak and lie to the point that often you do not even know they have broken a rule. That is what they do.
Why do they break rules? Many people attribute rule breaking to outright teenage rebellion:
Screw them! I’m going to do what I want to do. In fact, I’m going to break their fucking rules just to show them that they can’t run my life. I’m the boss of me, not them. Fuck them!
They believe teens break rules intentionally, simply for the sake of breaking rules, to show you that you can’t boss them around.
However, I believe that teenage rebellion as a motivator of teenage behavior is very much overstated. In my experience, that is not why teenagers break rules. The reasons why teenagers break rules are rather simple and straightforward.
1. Teenagers break rules because—first and foremost—they believe that any given rule in some way will make their life less pleasant than they wish it to be.
Their stupid rule is making me come home earlier than most of my friends, and I’m going to miss out on fun.
Or perhaps,
They want me to put my dirty clothes in the hamper—every day. That may not seem like it would take a lot of energy. But they don’t understand how tired I get.
2. Teenagers break rules because they think they’ll prob- ably be able to get away with it.
I’m sure I’ll be able to think of some excuse. I always do.
3. Teenagers break rules because they believe that breaking the rule is not in any way potentially dangerous or harmful to them.
It’s not like smoking marijuana is going to turn me into a drug addict.
4. Teenagers break rules because breaking a rule is about now—when they are breaking the rule—and whatever negative consequences might ensue are about later.
I’m having a really good time now. Yeah, I know I’ll probably end up getting in trouble with my parents at some point. But I’m really not going to worry about that now.
So what should you do if they break a rule? First, remember that they will always have excuses. They will always have a story. And not only do they always have a story, but in their stories, nothing is ever their fault; they are always victims. What’s more, if they can possibly spin it that way, things in their story will be all your fault. Even Aaron could spin his story that way. I know what you’re thinking: How could his not coming home have been his mother’s fault? But let’s see what he says.
“If you had let me use your car last night—I mean, you didn’t go anywhere—then none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t have had to get a ride from Jeff. And then we wouldn’t have had to rely on his car, which got all screwed up. You yelled at me for something that could have completely been avoided if you had been more generous about the car.”
It’s your fault, and they get particularly mad when you don’t believe everything they’re saying. How dare you?
First off, do not waste a lot of effort establishing what really did or did not go on that night.
You would definitely not want to say:
“How come Jeff’s car is conveniently fine this morning and not okay last night? And how come your phone conveniently fixed itself? And how come, if your phone’s not working, you didn’t ask to use somebody else’s phone?”
“But, Mom, it is true! Jeff’s car was acting funny. It still is. If you don’t believe me, I’ll have him take you for a ride in it. (Jeff’s car is fine, but Aaron thinks it’s a good bet—which it is—that his mother will hardly take him up on the ride-in-Jeff’s-car offer.)
“I don’t know why my phone didn’t work, but it didn’t. That’s all I know. It’s working now, but I guess it could go out again. I don’t know. And the reason I didn’t ask anybody to use their phone? I was embarrassed to. You don’t know how really uptight kids get about having other kids use their phones. So it would have been really awkward.” (This he is making up on the spot.)
They will always have an answer for everything. It might not be logical. It may be absurd. But they will keep defending it, with great righteous passion, regardless.
Never will you hear, “Boy, got me on that one, Mom! You have to get up really early in the morning to sneak one past you!” Never.
It’s far better not to get caught up in the story at all, but to simply say:
“Aaron, you were supposed to be in at midnight. You weren’t. If you can’t get home when you’re supposed to, I expect you to call.”
“But, Mom—”
“I don’t want it to happen again.”
“But, Mom—”
And Aaron’s mother exits, having said what she needed to.
But doesn’t Aaron’s mother have to do something? She already did. She made it clear to her son that he broke a rule, and that this was not okay. And, most important, that the rule was still in place. What most parents do not understand is that their rules—just because of their very existence—have power. Considerably more than they realize. Let me explain.
The number one fact about rules with teenagers is that they work. Just because you made a rule and made clear to your teenager exactly what that rule is, the rule now exists; and that rule does have a considerable effect on your child’s behavior.
Jamal’s mother to her son: “I don’t want you having more than one kid over after school when I’m not there.”
That rule, now having been established, enters Jamal’s head. I’m not supposed to have more than one kid over in the afternoon if Mom isn’t there.
How does that rule play out?
Tuesday afternoon, Jamal makes plans with Brant to have Brant come over to his house after school. But then Dewayne hears about it and says he wants to come over too.
That would be cool, thinks Jamal. But then, Shit. Mom will get pissed if she finds out I had both of them over.
The rule does enter his head. It does exert pressure on him to obey the rule.
Maybe, heeding the rule’s influence, Jamal will comply.
“No, Dewayne, it’s not cool. My mom gets all ripshit if she finds out I have more than one kid over when she’s not there.”
Maybe Jamal will choose to break the rule.
Screw it. Mom won’t know, and I’ll just make sure one of them leaves before the time that she gets home.
“Yeah, Dewayne. Me and Brant can meet you right after school and we can go straight to my house.”
Either way, just because Jamal’s mother made the rule and made sure Jamal knows about it, he is far more likely not to have more than one friend over than if his mother had made no rule at all. As I will discuss, rules do not work perfectly. But they work far better than no rules at all.
But what if they break the rule and you find out? What if Jamal did have his two friends over at the house? And what if his mother found out, because later that day she happened to talk with a neighbor who mentioned that she had seen the three boys at the house? What should Jamal’s mother do then?
She should confront him. This means that she lets him know that he has broken a rule, and that is not okay.
“Jamal, I told you not to have more than one friend over when I’m not home and you went ahead and did it anyway. I told you and I expect you to obey me.”
And you keep the rule in place.
“I do not want it to happen again.”
What’s that going to accomplish?
Just by Jamal’s mother finding out, confronting him, being displeased, and letting her son know that the rule still stands, the rule maintains its power. Just as before, when the opportunity to have multiple friends over at the house after school comes up, the rule will enter his head.
Shit, Mom’s going to have a fit if she finds out I have a bunch of kids over.
As before, it will have power. And—as before—maybe he will abide by the rule and maybe he will not. But the existence of the rule still decreases the chances that Jamal will have more than one friend over after school.
You may, if you choose, add a consequence—usually some form of grounding or the loss of a privilege. But with or without the threat of a penalty, rules still have their sway. Rules have impact because the vast majority of teenagers do buy into their parents’ right to have rules. And it is they, the teenagers themselves, who are the ones who give the rules their power.
Most teenagers do not want to be an outlaw within their own home. They will rail against rules—how unfair, how unreasonable they are—but most teens strongly prefer to stay within the family system. They do not want to rock the boat too much. There definitely is a sense of peace and security that comes from living within the overall system at home. Teenagers want to be able to do what they want to do, but they don’t want to be estranged from their own family. They have enough anxiety to deal with.
Yeah, I’m not looking for hassles. I have enough going on in my life. I don’t want them to be permanently pissed off at me. It is much easier if I can usually stay on their good side.
Teenagers do not look to destroy their parents’ authority. They do accept their parents’ right to make rules for them. Which does not mean that they like the rules. Consequences add little because their power comes only from the child’s choice to buy into the system in the first place.
In truth, if teenagers truly wish to defy a rule, they will do so, consequences or no consequences—as parents, much to their frustration, often find out. If teenagers truly wish to defy a particular rule, they will—and there is nothing their parents can do to stop them, other than kicking their child out of the house. Consequences only have an effect because teenagers choose to let them.
How can you know whether your rules have power with your teenager—with or without threatened punishments? If they argue. Teens who truly reject their parents’ rules, who truly are not bound by them, don’t argue. Since they are going to disobey the rule anyway, what’s the point?
“Victoria, you just better be home by midnight!”
But Victoria doesn’t stay to argue. She just shrugs and heads out the door.
What do I care about their rules? I’m not going to follow them. I’m going to do what I want to do. I really don’t care what their fucking rules are. They really have nothing to do with me.
“You come back here, young lady! Did you hear what I just said?”
But Victoria is already out of earshot.
As I said, though, most teenagers do care.
I mean, they’re my parents. That’s what parents are supposed to do. Boss their kids around.
They just don’t like any of the rules.
Because these rules are all crazy and ruin my life! If they were good rules, that would be okay. But they’re not! So what am I supposed to do?
Most teenagers do their best to get around the rules—which is to say, sneak, lie, and above all obfuscate: twist your rules around so that you don’t even know where you’re coming from.
“I know you said I was to come right home but I had already told Steven that we would go to the hockey store together and I wasn’t comfortable just turning him down like that, and you have always said for me to be considerate, and I didn’t have time to call you and get in a whole long discussion about what I should do. So I took independent action—which is what you are always telling me I need to do and not be such a wuss. So I actually did the right thing. Huh?”
Obfuscating. This is something they are very good at.
Settling for Imperfect Control
Earlier I said that the nature of control with teenagers is imperfect. Let me elaborate. Again, rules work. But the way that rules work with teenagers is that they only sort of obey them. Usually. Not quite how you meant the rules to be obeyed.
“Jackie, do you know what time it is?” asked her father as his daughter came in the door.
“No.”
“It’s eleven-forty-seven. What time were you supposed to be in?”
“Uh, I’m not sure.”
“You know perfectly well. Your curfew is eleven-thirty.”
“Well, one of my contacts fell out. I couldn’t find it.”
The following Saturday:
“It’s eleven-fifty-six.”
“It’s not my fault. Gregory had to get gas.”
“Getting gas took twenty-six extra minutes?”
“I don’t know.”
The next Saturday:
“Okay, young lady, this better be good! Three times in a row! It’s eleven-fifty-five. Twenty-five minutes late for your curfew! This better be good!”
“I lost one of my contacts again.”
“No, ma’am! That one’s only going to work once, and you already used it up.”
“But it’s true! I lost one of my contacts again! And it took a long time to find it! It’s not my fault!”
“You know what, Jackie? Let’s see how you do with a ten-thirty curfew next week.”
“But that’s not fair! It wasn’t my fault!”
There is an important point embedded in the above example. To all appearances, it looks like the eleven-thirty curfew was not working. Three consecutive Fridays, Jackie missed the curfew. But I would argue that the curfew was working. It was pulling Jackie in—just not as promptly as her father wanted. But she wasn’t coming in at midnight, or 1:00 a.m. The eleven-thirty curfew was pulling her home. It is the way of teenagers and rules. They bend them. It is what you get. It is not totally disregarding a rule; it is just not following it exactly as you would want them to. The rule is still there and it is working. Just not perfectly.
Jackie’s father’s response was fine. But many parents make a serious mistake, which is that they believe any deviance from perfect compliance means that a rule has failed. Most parents feel that one tear in the fabric of control means that the whole cloth has fallen apart. And so they try harder and harder to hold up what they see as a failed rule. They feel they must maintain the letter of the law. Feeling they are losing the war, they may begin a series of progressively harsher punishments to regain full control.
“Two weeks’ grounding didn’t work? Let’s see what you think about a month!”
This doesn’t work. Parents never regain perfect control (if they ever had it in the first place). But, most seriously, they risk alienating their teenagers, becoming permanently perceived as the enemy. It’s fine to have your child hate you some of the time because of a rule they don’t like. But all of the time, over the course of their adolescence? That only invites worse trouble. You risk losing a battle that you may have been winning.
What you get with teenagers is imperfect control. But—as long as you confront them when they disobey and, above all, keep the rule in place—rules, though tattered, will almost always hold. The secret of rules with teenagers is in understanding that this is what you get—imperfect control—and then hanging in there with what you do have. Never feeling totally in control of your teenage child is not exactly comfortable, but it is control nevertheless. And to exercise this control—which doesn’t always exactly feel like control—is very important in the life of your teenager.
“YOU WILL OBEY ME!”
“NO, I WON’T!”
But then they do. Sort of.
For the majority of teens, rules work most of the time, as long as you keep them in place. That is, they work imperfectly. But that’s the deal you get if you have a teenager. With most teens it is enough.
Dealing with Out-of-Control Teens
Out-of-control teens are a whole different story. These are the ones who regularly stay out all night, have major problems with substance use, or are regularly in trouble with the law. These are the ones who are clearly putting themselves at significant risk.
In those cases, what I just recommended will not work. Dealing with truly out-of-control teens is very tough. Here is where parents need to employ all the help they can get—from professionals and sometimes through the courts. With truly out-of-control teens, parents often err by trying too long to do it all themselves. Feeling that they should be able to control a child whom they cannot control, they are reluctant to turn to the world outside of the home to take over a task that they are unable to do. The world says that you are supposed to be able to deal with your own kid. And if you can’t, then it is your fault. But very difficult teens can be very difficult to deal with, and even the best parenting efforts often cannot head off serious problems. With out-of-control teens, the wisest parenting is to get all the help that you can.
Obviously the above means that you—in varying degrees—are relinquishing the control of your child to others. And that can be a hard step to take. But you are still their parent. You have not given that up. The connection is still there. What is happening is that you are saying that for now, you, as their parent, cannot do the job that you need to do. For now, you are unable to keep them reasonably under control. For now, you cannot well enough prevent them from harm to themselves or to others. As I said, it is a hard step to take, but sometimes it is necessary.
Teenagers do not like to openly defy their parents’ rules. What they strongly prefer to do is to sneak around and lie. Teenagers lie. Good teenagers. Not-so-good teenagers. Short teenagers. Tall teenagers. They lie.
The plan was for Lila to stay over Friday night at her friend Trudy’s house, and go directly from Trudy’s to her soccer game the next morning (Saturday).
“Bye, Mom. I’ll be home tomorrow after my soccer game.”
“Have fun at Trudy’s, dear.”
“I will. Love you.”
A week later, Lila’s mother happened to run into Trudy’s mother in the supermarket.
“Thank you for having Lila over last Friday night. I hope she wasn’t much trouble.”
“No, she wasn’t any trouble—because they slept over at Gabriela’s house. Didn’t she tell you? There was a party. It turns out that Gabriela’s parents weren’t there. Apparently, it kind of got out of hand. You didn’t hear about it?”
Later that night:
“You lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie to you.”
“How could you lie to me like that?”
“I wasn’t lying! You never believe anything I say! You never do!”
“You’re still lying!”
Teenagers lie. They lie a lot. They lie because they don’t want to get into trouble.
“I could have sworn I had five twenties in my wallet. Garrison, did you take twenty dollars out of my wallet?”
“No, Dad.”
They lie because they want to do what we forbid them to do.
“Jared, were you just smoking marijuana? Your eyes look a little red.”
”No. Of course not. How could you think that?”
They lie because they don’t want to do what they are supposed to do.
“Lisa, shouldn’t you be doing your homework?”
“I don’t have any.”
They lie on general principle just to keep us out of their lives.
“Reggie, what were you just doing?”
“Nothing.”
Teenagers say how important it is that their parents trust them.
“Yeah. It’s important to me that my parents trust me. It shows that they have faith in me and that they recognize that I’m getting to be a mature adult being. Not just a little kid.”
Lying, to them, is beside the point.
“But you lie all the time.”
“Yeah, what am I supposed to do—tell the truth? ‘Well actually, Mom, I’m not going to be at Trudy’s. We’re all going over to Gabriela’s, who you don’t know and her parents are away and I’m probably going to get drunk and, if Jeannine is there, maybe smoke some marijuana, and I may end up having sex with this junior, Dan somebody, who’s really hot.’”
“YOU’RE WHAT?”
“See? That’s what I mean.”
As I said, teenagers lie. That’s what they do.
But here’s the good news: the vast majority of them grow up to be pretty good, honest, adult citizens—just like us.
Lying to one’s parents during one’s teenage years is not an especially reliable indicator of whether or not a child is going to grow up to be a dishonest adult.
And it is in regard to lying that parents repeatedly go astray. They get far too caught up in the issue of their teenager’s lying and lose the focus on what their teenager is lying about. They lose sight of what should be the main issue at hand.
“How dare you lie to us?”
“I’m not lying!”
“Not only are you lying but you’re keeping it up! You just keep lying!”
“I’M NOT LYING!”
Or, making it even worse—and further off the real subject—a parent takes it personally.
“How can you lie to me? I thought I could trust you! I thought our relationship meant more to you than this! How can you do this to me?”
Rather easily.
This has nothing to do with my mother and me. I still love her—most of the time. And I know she loves me. I would like it if I didn’t have to lie to her. But I do. There’s just lots of stuff I have to lie about, because if I didn’t I wouldn’t have a life. At least not the life that I want to have right now.
As I said, parents all too easily lose sight of what they really should be focusing on.
That Lila was at an unsupervised party, where trouble did happen.
That Garrison took twenty dollars out of his father’s wallet. (Perhaps his father should not leave his wallet lying around.)
That Jared has been smoking marijuana.
That Lisa was not doing homework that she was supposed to be doing.
So what do you do? Stay with the real problem at hand.
“Lila, I ran into Trudy’s mother and I heard what really went on last Friday night.”
“Nothing went on. I didn’t know Gabriela’s parents weren’t going to be there, and I just forgot to tell you that we were going over there. And I didn’t do anything anyway.”
“I’m just going to have to think about letting you stay overnight at friends’ houses in the future.”
There’s really not much more that Lila’s mother needs or wants to say. The next time her daughter wants to go on a sleepover, she will have to decide whether she will let her and, if so, what safeguards she can put in place. That is the issue. Notice that Lila’s mother does not even bring up the lying issue. The unadorned fact is that she cannot rely on her daughter’s truthfulness. But Lila’s mother is not alone.
To be the parent of a teenager, you need a certain permanent degree of skepticism. Parents significantly underestimate the extent of their children’s involvement in risky behavior: sex, drugs, and drinking.
It would be a whole lot easier to be able to trust one’s teenage children. But the reality is that they lie. So parents of teenage children are stuck with having to make judgments about what they will or will not allow with incomplete information. It is part of the difficulty of being the parent of a teenager. If your aim is to have a teenager whom you can trust, that would be great, but you are not doing your job if you count on it too much.
So how do you teach children not to lie? More by example than anything else. Children don’t learn honesty through enraged parents or big punishments. That only teaches them to try to be better liars.