Teen
How to Discipline "Chadolescents"
In case you missed the previous column, "chadolesence" is my new term for pre-teens, chosen because it reflects the current realities that children get older faster, yet are still children at heart. This creates special challenges to parents who are faced with 11 and 12 year-olds pushing limits that were usually reserved just for teenagers.
Q. Where do I set the limits? The language of my sixth grader is often offensive to me, yet I know it is common to his friends and is a constant part of the movies that he gets to see. There are more demands to stay out later, go further from home (e.g., go into Boston), and more boy-girl parties then I remember having at that age. Both of us work, so our son also has more unsupervised time in the afternoons and it's very hard to get many details about what he's been doing. Any suggestions?
A. The process starts with parents taking the time to determine what your values are and being willing to stick to them. But it also means involving children in the process. Children really do want limits; in fact much of their testing behavior as they get older is to make sure you are still in charge. It doesn't seem that way when they get angry, but inside they are nearly as scared about what they are facing as you are!
Let's start with the language of our "chadadolescents." It has grown more foul at an earlier age because of the movies they see in theaters, on videos and on cable. Unfortunately, in the earliest years, it is often greeted with a mixture of shock and laughter and the child gets very mixed messages. It is also influenced by what you model in your moments of anger. Swearing may be simply testing limits, mimicking friends, or a true expression of frustration and anger. It helps to discriminate which of these is going on. Regardless, you must decide what the limits are in your home and create consequences to reinforce the rules. As previously suggested, sit down with your child and draw up some rules and consequences. If he refuses to participate, simply inform him that the rules will then be drawn up without his input and he's less likely to be happy about them.
One simple rule should be that whenever your child is talking to you in unacceptable language, you walk away from the conversation. No yelling. No fuss. Just end of conversation until he is able to speak to you without being foul-mouthed. Other common techniques include the old-fashioned but still valid use of a container that part of the child's allowance drops into whenever his language crosses the limit of acceptability or charting the frequency of unacceptable language so the child can see a visual record of how often this happens and rewarding the child's ability to lower the frequency.
As for going into Boston with some friends, at 11 or 12 that's a rather questionable freedom. I would continue to require supervision of an older, responsible person (could be a sibling you trust). But the key response to requests to stretch-the-limit is to seek compromise rather than an automatic no. This gets into the concept of win-win negotiations, i.e., you first try to understand why the request is important, then try to get the child to recognize the validity of your concerns (this is often very difficult but if the child comes to learn that it is a valid stage in achieving at least a piece of new freedom, he'll gradually learn to participate), then brainstorm together to find a compromise that addresses the needs of both parties and allows everyone to feel they've "won".
My favorite example of this is the "wild card" technique. Say your child has requested a later curfew, beyond what you feel is reasonable. After some appropriate discussion (you might learn it is actually being prompted by a single upcoming event or a child whose parents are leaving him alone at night allowing for unsupervised parties), you might suggest that your child can literally have a card with the later curfew written on it and can turn it in one weekend night each month. You can set a review date in three months and if the new freedom has been handled responsibly, add a second card. In this procedure. It'll be a minimum of 9-12 months before the new curfew becomes the norm and by then the child is old enough for it to be acceptable!
A few brief but important additional suggestions. NEVER allow your "chadolescent" to attend a party unless you have spoken to the parents first. If the child says he won't go if you call, it means he doesn't want to go. Do not underestimate how much you still do for your "chadolescent" and learn to stop doing some of those things if his behavior isn't deserving of them (rides, purchases, time together). Continue to do one-on-one activities of some kind. The bonding is essential and it's those moments alone, even if just running some errands together, when the child suddenly reveals something important about his life. If your child is unsupervised after school, try to arrange for checking in with a neighbor and insist that there be telephone communications and verifiable statements of where he is.
And don't forget the bottom line is still to find ways to enjoy your child because he only passes this way once.
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