I've Had It Up to Here with Teenagers by Melinda Rainey Thompson Read Free Book Online Page A

is ancient history to atoddler. Little kids live in environments controlled by parents. I loved parenting my kids at that age. I’m a big fan of control. Time-out worked for me. I have friends who ask, “How did you make them stay in time-out?” I don’t know how to answer that. My kids never got up until I told them they could. I found it easy to manage toddlers. They’re not hard to outsmart. I’m a resourceful woman. Also, little kids crave their parents’ approval. They actively seek to please. Don’t you love that about them? I do.
    Teenagers are another matter entirely. It’s a quick ride from Play-Doh to prom night. Suddenly, you’re there. Teaching teenagers the consequences of their actions is like going straight from peewee football to the NFL draft with no stops in between. You have to hang tough and be ready to hit whatever comes over the plate. You have to field whatever comes at you. (I don’t know what’s with all the sports metaphors. They just feel right.)
    Teenagers have quick reflexes and little to lose. They think fast on their feet. They’re clever, and they were born technologically savvy. The best you can do is try to keep up. They can text with their cell phones in their pockets or under the table while you are talking to them about something else entirely. The kids you love more than your next breath will lie to your face with the audacity of antique dealers. They aren’t inherently bad deep down inside—way deep down. It’s just that they are wholly, completely, and totally absorbed in themselves. They want to do what they want to do, whether or not it is a good idea, whether or not they could get killed doing it, and whether or not the timing is right. The fact that they aim to please only themselves means that, quite often, what they want to do runs right smack into what you told them not to do. That’s when things get sticky. They have to
choose
to do the right thing.
    At our house, we are all about choices. “You always have a choice,” I tell my kids. “If someone holds a gun to your head, you have a choice.” The problem is that the choices stink. You can do what the gunman wants, or you can risk getting shot. No matter how much I talk about alcohol, drugs, sex, and other dangers, my teenagers ultimately have to decide for themselves how they are going to behave. The challenge for me is to convince them to choose wisely. “When you make a choice,” I tell my kids, “you better be able to live with the consequences—in the big world and at home.” It’s a toss-up whom they fear more: me or God Almighty. “You always have to pay the piper,” I remind them. With regard to sex, for example, I say, “Please don’t allow ten minutes of fun result in eighteen years of child rearing. Once you have a child, that kid’s needs become more important than yours. Got it?” You can’t be vague with teenagers. You have to lay it on the line and hope they pick up what you put down.
    Disciplining teenagers requires subtlety and creativity. You have to find a way to get them where it hurts without actually hurting them. I’ve found one of the most vulnerable areas on a teenager is the plug-in soft spot. My teenagers are attached to their cell phones, iPods, computers, and televisions with umbilical cords. One of the fastest ways to get their attention is to cut that cord. I promise you one thing: if you do this, your teenagers will pay attention to you. They may yell like they’re being hacked to death with machetes, but they will hear what you have to say. Remind them that Mama giveth and Mama taketh away. It’s all about finding the balance between rewards and consequences. It’s a delicate dance.
    Like most families, our run-of-the-mill, go-to consequence is grounding. In a nutshell, that means the teenager is restricted tothe home front for whatever time period