This is an actual (paraphrased) exchange we had with our 16-year-old son. If you are using the Parenting Funnel philosophy (Parenting from the Tree of Life – Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo) on how to provide freedoms to your children, this is how it played out at the Marr house. “A teen rebels not against authority, but against relationship” (Ezzo). As a child grows, parenting philosophy on why decisions are made should be transparent AND spoken aloud so they can understand and get alignment with Mom and Dad’s thought process. Here was our attempt to do so with Dano.
“Hey buddy, will you please go pick up your brother from basketball practice?”
“No.”
“What?”
“No. I don’t want to.”
“Hmm. Let me rephrase: Go and pick up your brother.”
“Dad, I don’t want to.”
“I don’t care if you want to. I’d like you to do it anyway”.
“Dad, my friends are rebelling against their parents and I want to do that too.”
“And you’re choosing now to assert your independence, in this way? Seems like an odd way to do it. But listen, I’ve asked you to help us because I’m busy and you’re not. It’s not like you don’t have freedom to do things. But you’re a part of this family and you need to help. We don’t ask too much of you. We’ve talked about how taking on responsibilities leads to greater freedoms. [This is a major point that we had talked about for years.] Taking on small family requests, without complaint [another major point], demonstrates you understand that we’re all in this together.
“This idea of independence where you are free to do whatever you want unencumbered by demands on your time, that world doesn’t exist. Hey, we want you free to choose. That’s the ultimate goal in our parenting. For every freedom you can think of, we can think of a hundred more that we want for you. We want everything for you, but not everything right now. [This offers the perspective that you’re not opposing them, but rather managing the pace of freedoms coming at them.] It’s important to us that you are safe. [This will come up many times.] Freedoms have to be balanced with your demonstrated ability to handle it. When your behavior shows us that you’re growing up and ready for more, we’re very ready to give you more freedoms.
“For example, driving the car to your friend’s house. We let you do that because you keep your room clean and do your homework. Those behaviors say to us you’re responsible. Down the road you’ll come to us later in high school and want to stay out late, and we’ll look at how you’re characterized everywhere else in your life to see if you can handle being out late. We’ll look at your history of fulfilling your word to us. [Key: A child must learn to maintain awareness that they’ve made a verbal commitment and must fulfill that promise. This is a difficult skill to acquire, but key to gaining parental trust.] When you say you’ll be home at 5:00, it kills us when we don’t hear from you till 5:30. We don’t want to text you at 5:05 and ask where you are. We want you to own the responsibility and the consequences of being true to your word. [Importantly, your child has to fail in order to succeed. Let them fail.]
“So, it doesn’t seem to me you’re actually wanting to rebel against mom and me. Instead, it looks like you’re enticed by the romantic notion of being your own man. Or you want to be seen as independent by your peers. Or maybe even you might think that these small responsibilities we ask of you are a huge burden. But let me provide some insight here: you’re growing up. And that means that you will have more and more weight placed on your shoulders which can be uncomfortable. Yes, you’ll get freedoms, but demonstrating you can carry the weight comes first. I think you’re frustrated with that reality. Mom and I are just the messengers for how life is. [Dano could see that these things were true.]
“And another thing, we’ve said before that we’re not perfect at parenting. If you’re looking at us to get everything exactly right, that’s not likely. We will make mistakes and maybe be overly cautious sometimes. But please know that we’re doing the best we can at figuring out the balance of freedoms for you. We are building trust in you being able to manage yourself in the outside world. That’s all. We don’t want to control you. And so, it’s important that you communicate with us what’s going on inside your head so we can talk through all the issues with you. Show grace for us by managing your tone and attitude, and we’ll do the same with you. That’s been a family trait for a while. It’s more important now than ever. I love you buddy.
“Now, go get your brother.”
That was the full extent of rebellion in our house among all 3 kids.
The awesome teen years are the most fun of them all,
Lis and Dave
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