Books like Surviving Your Adolescents: How to Manage-and Let Go of-Your 13-18 Year Olds

This book was a great reminder of how I SHOULD be interacting with my teens. It starts off by reminding us that teens have very mixed feelings about life's assignments. First, they are not sure they can happily live up to all life's challenges and second, they aren't sure they want to accept all of life's tasks. But research has repeatedly confirmed that teens do better in this section of their lives when parents a)maintain some type of behavioral monitoring and b)maintain as open and as friendly a relationship as possible with their teen. We need to remember that as parents of teens our goal is no longer to control them but to help them become competent adults who leave home, establish new relationships, contribute something to the world and who enjoy life. We, as parents, can do this by: 1)Not taking teen's behavior personally. This book reminds us that much of the annoying behavior of teen's is Minor But Aggravating(MBA's), we can deal with this by remembering the teen years are stressful, confusing, aggravating and long. We can not take MBA'a personally by taking responsibility for problems with our teens, by stopping ourselves and thinking, by moving from garbage thoughts to insight thoughts and by acting according to our new positive ideas. 2)Manage with reasonable monitoring and then letting go of the rest. Parents can do this by improving our relationship through regular doses of praise, one-on-one shared fun, active listening and avoiding the 4 Cardinal Sins and b)maintaining close but reasonable supervision by using House Rules and the Major-Minor Consequence System to enforce them3)Stay in touch with our teens. The author claims one way we can do this is by not engaging in the 4 Cardinal Sins which are Spur of the Moment Problem Discussions(he suggests making and appointment with your teen), Nagging, Insight Transplants(Lectures), and Arguing(If a discussion becomes an argument,he suggests saying,"this conversation is silly" and leaving). The author feels very strongly that these 4 parental behaviors ruin relationships and compromise our kids' safety by increasing the adolescent's desire to act up. Instead of the 4 cardinal sins we need to employ sympathetic listening, talk about ourselves(instead of them), have shared fun, and positively reinforce their good behavior. 4)Take Care of Yourself. Many of us, as parents of teenagers, will find ourselves in our own midlife crisis. We need to be taking care of ourselves,which may include some or all of the following: counseling, exercising, job issues, dealing with health care issues, eating right and marriage/relationship issues in order to be able to be the best parent possible for our teenager. 5)Relax and enjoy the unfolding of your adolescent's life.