Top Ten for Defiant Teens
I’ve been getting quite a few requests for help with teens lately, and while it is not my intention to devalue the complexity of life with teenagers with a one-fits-all solution, there are some general themes that, when implemented consistently, can bring a measure of relief to most difficult parent/teen dynamics. Here are the Top Ten Tips for relating with defiant teens.
1. Stable Parental Subsystem – In dual parent homes, of primary importance is a stable, solid parental unit in place above the child. That can look a number of different ways: A) When you set boundaries, be consistent with the maintaining of them, but make it clear that rules can change with the passage of time and other developments. B) Work out common positions with each other first, BEFORE you talk to your teen about things, so by the time you face your kid, you and your partner are on same team - “have each other’s backs – and can not be diverted into arguing with each other. C) Embody the following: “We know the difference between kid stuff and grown-up stuff, and “friends” and “kids.” You are the kid and we are the parents, so we are not going to leak grown-up stuff onto you. I.e. We are not going to discuss each other, our problems, your siblings, or our own personal relationship with you.” (In single parent homes, this looks like not co-opting your child into a confidant/friend for discussions about your money, your worries, your relationships. Get a grown-up friend for that and let your kid worry about kid stuff.)
2. Start to Change Your Child’s Identity Story - Look for opportunities to notice ways of being that you would like to support in your child, and start to re-enforce those with your attention rather than keeping your eye out for failings and misdeeds. Replace the negative labels your child is wearing (“always late”, “liar”, “lazy”, “bad at math”, “smart mouth”) with positive ones, and stress those when you talk to AND about him/her (“kind to animals”, “deep thinker”, “quick mind”, “wicked sense of humor”, “good with his hands”). This idea flies in the face of what seems like logic – i.e. “if I notice and point out my child’s flaws, s/he will work harder to change them.” But research shows that punctuating negative character-attributes tends to strengthen those very attributes rather than discourage them. (In fact a good general knowing for life that you can apply to all sorts of situations is: “That upon which you place your focus and attention, grows stronger.”)
3. Refuse to Return the Ball - "If one regarded an observed tennis rally as an undesirable interaction and therefore wished to end it as rapidly as possible, it would only require that one player not return the ball." - Richard Fisch
It only takes one person not to escalate a situation. In most parent/child relationships, the person most likely to be able to stay conscious enough to keep from escalating a conflict is the parent. Don’t get caught in the trap of exhaustive explaining, or defending. If you get drawn into arguing with your child, you have lost before you begin. Refuse to argue at all. Replace arguing with two things: A) asking questions about your child’s position and feelings (without trying to convince them not to feel the way they do), and B) stating your own position, in as few words as possible, over and over again as you validate your teen’s right to feel the way s/he does. You have the power not to argue. (If you need approval from your kid, or if judgment from him/her is intolerable, you are going to be in trouble on this one.)
4. Be Respect-Able – Generally speaking when a parent is not able to keep from escalating an argument with a kid, it is because that parent is afraid - afraid of not being respected, or not understood, or even not approved of. But can respect be demanded? Can it be forced? FEAR can be forced, but fear is a very different animal from respect. Fear engendered in a child will come back and bite you in the butt when you least expect it. The more anxious and out-of-control a parent is when s/he interacts with a child, the less respect for the parent is generated within the child. When you get bent out of shape by your child’s behavior his/her internal dialog looks like this: “How am I supposed to respect the authority of a person who can’t even manage his/her own feelings? How can I trust the authority of a person who is so easily pushed off center by weak little me?” Respect must be earned. Modeling self-mastery and reasonableness, inviting input from the child, not being threatened by defiance, these are the best ways to make it more likely that your child will listen to you when you speak. You combat defiance most effectively when YOU DON’T GET BUGGED BY IT, but instead get curious about it.
5. Don’t Manipulate With Emotion – Your emotions are not your teen’s responsibility. Defiant teens tend to view your tears, your pleading, and your long-suffering tirades as nothing more than an attempt to control them, or a sign of emotional weakness and instability in you. Whenever possible manage your own emotional reactivity. While it may help you get a little bit of leverage once or twice, reactivity does not work long-term with defiant teens.
6. Boundaries For Your Self are More Effective Than Control Over Him/Her – This subtle but vital idea is challenging to express in such a small space, but the value you could get out if it is worth me trying to explain it, never the less.
You can’t control your teenager. You can’t really control any other person, unless you tie them up and keep them in the basement. There is a sharp difference between ultimatums (attempts at controlling another person) and taking a stand for yourself, your rights, and your own needs. For example, there is a big difference between A) “You can’t borrow the car because I don’t want you drinking and driving.” And B) “You can’t borrow the car because it is my valuable asset, and the last time you drove it you did not follow my guidelines about taking good care of it.” Here is another example. There is a big difference between A) “You have to do the dishes because they are your job and I told you to.”, and B) “I am willing to provide food for you, if you clean up any messes you make with it in my house.” Here’s one more: A) “How dare you speak to me that way!!” lands differently over time than B) “If you would like me to continue to do the nice things I do for you, like drive you around, and pay for your sports equipment, I expect you to treat me with courtesy.“
You have every right/responsibility to make boundaries for yourself and your happiness and your comfort in your own home. Come at conflict with that understanding in the back of your head, with your focus on your self, and s/he will resist you less. Why? Because ultimately, by being very clear about the fact that s/he is creating one half of his experience of his relationship with you through his own choices, you will be giving your child more of what s/he wants: more charge of his or her own life.
7. Injecting Humor and Lightness – You don’t have to come across with a punishing tone of voice to make a stand for yourself. Stands that are matter-of-fact and non-reactive are far more effective. And when a fight is over, let it be over. Don’t hold on to negative emotions to punish your teen, or to further enjoy your own juicy sense of “victimization.” Give your teen the space to come back from the edge of defensiveness by modeling letting go of your own emotionality in favor of a fresh start. Inject humor whenever you can - in the middle of a fight if you can find a way to do it – while all the time being CLEAR and FIRM about your own personal boundaries.
8. Offer Affection and a Loving Tone of Voice Often - Give lots of clean slates, “do-over”s, and fresh chances in this regard. Let me be clear that I am not supporting you in being inconsistent about your personal boundaries with this one. What I am talking about is providing your child an infinite number of chances to receive emotional nourishment from you – uncolored by anything that has transpired between the two of you in the past. I am talking about you not pinning your demonstrations of love onto anything your child does or does not do, in a misguided attempt to control him, or punish her. Forgiving your child for totaling your car does not have to entail loaning her your new one. Love your teen no matter what. BUT healthy love does not offer you permission to model shaky personal boundaries or inconsistency.
9. Include Your Teen In Family Norm Building – Since boundaries change our time, including your child in conversations about family ground-rules and the consequences for overstepping them can help your teen feel less like a resistant victim and more like a participating member of the family. Even if s/he doesn’t get all of what s/he wants in the discussions, you listening and listening and listening to his/her needs and feelings can help her feel as if s/he has more of a voice. Ask questions like: “What do YOU think should happen when you don’t follow through with what you agreed to? What would seem fair to you? How do YOU think it should work so everyone gets his or her needs met?” (S/he may feel as if you are tricking him at first.)
10. Be Patient and Don’t Base Your Own Commitment to Change on Any Attachment to a Change In Him/Her. Whether or not your kid responds to your new ways of being is, in one sense, immaterial. It is likely that your changes will positively impact your teen, but even if it they don’t, YOUR life will still improve. Why? Because the more of a handle you have on your self and your reactivity, the better you will feel inside your own body, and the less the behavior of other people will bother you.
You teen may not like the change at first and try to trick you into going back to your old ways of being – because at least s/he could feel as if s/he had some leverage when you were so reactive and easy to push off of your center. You gaining power over and flexibility within your self may feel like a foreign and dangerous development, in the beginning. S/he may try every tactic to get you to go back to your old familiar and predictable way being. It may be awhile before s/he can appreciate the shifts in you, or the changing dynamic in your relationship. You, however, will begin to feel better inside yourself almost immediately.
I’ve been getting quite a few requests for help with teens lately, and while it is not my intention to devalue the complexity of life with teenagers with a one-fits-all solution, there are some general themes that, when implemented consistently, can bring a measure of relief to most difficult parent/teen dynamics. Here are the Top Ten Tips for relating with defiant teens.
1. Stable Parental Subsystem – In dual parent homes, of primary importance is a stable, solid parental unit in place above the child. That can look a number of different ways: A) When you set boundaries, be consistent with the maintaining of them, but make it clear that rules can change with the passage of time and other developments. B) Work out common positions with each other first, BEFORE you talk to your teen about things, so by the time you face your kid, you and your partner are on same team - “have each other’s backs – and can not be diverted into arguing with each other. C) Embody the following: “We know the difference between kid stuff and grown-up stuff, and “friends” and “kids.” You are the kid and we are the parents, so we are not going to leak grown-up stuff onto you. I.e. We are not going to discuss each other, our problems, your siblings, or our own personal relationship with you.” (In single parent homes, this looks like not co-opting your child into a confidant/friend for discussions about your money, your worries, your relationships. Get a grown-up friend for that and let your kid worry about kid stuff.)
2. Start to Change Your Child’s Identity Story - Look for opportunities to notice ways of being that you would like to support in your child, and start to re-enforce those with your attention rather than keeping your eye out for failings and misdeeds. Replace the negative labels your child is wearing (“always late”, “liar”, “lazy”, “bad at math”, “smart mouth”) with positive ones, and stress those when you talk to AND about him/her (“kind to animals”, “deep thinker”, “quick mind”, “wicked sense of humor”, “good with his hands”). This idea flies in the face of what seems like logic – i.e. “if I notice and point out my child’s flaws, s/he will work harder to change them.” But research shows that punctuating negative character-attributes tends to strengthen those very attributes rather than discourage them. (In fact a good general knowing for life that you can apply to all sorts of situations is: “That upon which you place your focus and attention, grows stronger.”)
3. Refuse to Return the Ball - "If one regarded an observed tennis rally as an undesirable interaction and therefore wished to end it as rapidly as possible, it would only require that one player not return the ball." - Richard Fisch
It only takes one person not to escalate a situation. In most parent/child relationships, the person most likely to be able to stay conscious enough to keep from escalating a conflict is the parent. Don’t get caught in the trap of exhaustive explaining, or defending. If you get drawn into arguing with your child, you have lost before you begin. Refuse to argue at all. Replace arguing with two things: A) asking questions about your child’s position and feelings (without trying to convince them not to feel the way they do), and B) stating your own position, in as few words as possible, over and over again as you validate your teen’s right to feel the way s/he does. You have the power not to argue. (If you need approval from your kid, or if judgment from him/her is intolerable, you are going to be in trouble on this one.)
4. Be Respect-Able – Generally speaking when a parent is not able to keep from escalating an argument with a kid, it is because that parent is afraid - afraid of not being respected, or not understood, or even not approved of. But can respect be demanded? Can it be forced? FEAR can be forced, but fear is a very different animal from respect. Fear engendered in a child will come back and bite you in the butt when you least expect it. The more anxious and out-of-control a parent is when s/he interacts with a child, the less respect for the parent is generated within the child. When you get bent out of shape by your child’s behavior his/her internal dialog looks like this: “How am I supposed to respect the authority of a person who can’t even manage his/her own feelings? How can I trust the authority of a person who is so easily pushed off center by weak little me?” Respect must be earned. Modeling self-mastery and reasonableness, inviting input from the child, not being threatened by defiance, these are the best ways to make it more likely that your child will listen to you when you speak. You combat defiance most effectively when YOU DON’T GET BUGGED BY IT, but instead get curious about it.
5. Don’t Manipulate With Emotion – Your emotions are not your teen’s responsibility. Defiant teens tend to view your tears, your pleading, and your long-suffering tirades as nothing more than an attempt to control them, or a sign of emotional weakness and instability in you. Whenever possible manage your own emotional reactivity. While it may help you get a little bit of leverage once or twice, reactivity does not work long-term with defiant teens.
6. Boundaries For Your Self are More Effective Than Control Over Him/Her – This subtle but vital idea is challenging to express in such a small space, but the value you could get out if it is worth me trying to explain it, never the less.
You can’t control your teenager. You can’t really control any other person, unless you tie them up and keep them in the basement. There is a sharp difference between ultimatums (attempts at controlling another person) and taking a stand for yourself, your rights, and your own needs. For example, there is a big difference between A) “You can’t borrow the car because I don’t want you drinking and driving.” And B) “You can’t borrow the car because it is my valuable asset, and the last time you drove it you did not follow my guidelines about taking good care of it.” Here is another example. There is a big difference between A) “You have to do the dishes because they are your job and I told you to.”, and B) “I am willing to provide food for you, if you clean up any messes you make with it in my house.” Here’s one more: A) “How dare you speak to me that way!!” lands differently over time than B) “If you would like me to continue to do the nice things I do for you, like drive you around, and pay for your sports equipment, I expect you to treat me with courtesy.“
You have every right/responsibility to make boundaries for yourself and your happiness and your comfort in your own home. Come at conflict with that understanding in the back of your head, with your focus on your self, and s/he will resist you less. Why? Because ultimately, by being very clear about the fact that s/he is creating one half of his experience of his relationship with you through his own choices, you will be giving your child more of what s/he wants: more charge of his or her own life.
7. Injecting Humor and Lightness – You don’t have to come across with a punishing tone of voice to make a stand for yourself. Stands that are matter-of-fact and non-reactive are far more effective. And when a fight is over, let it be over. Don’t hold on to negative emotions to punish your teen, or to further enjoy your own juicy sense of “victimization.” Give your teen the space to come back from the edge of defensiveness by modeling letting go of your own emotionality in favor of a fresh start. Inject humor whenever you can - in the middle of a fight if you can find a way to do it – while all the time being CLEAR and FIRM about your own personal boundaries.
8. Offer Affection and a Loving Tone of Voice Often - Give lots of clean slates, “do-over”s, and fresh chances in this regard. Let me be clear that I am not supporting you in being inconsistent about your personal boundaries with this one. What I am talking about is providing your child an infinite number of chances to receive emotional nourishment from you – uncolored by anything that has transpired between the two of you in the past. I am talking about you not pinning your demonstrations of love onto anything your child does or does not do, in a misguided attempt to control him, or punish her. Forgiving your child for totaling your car does not have to entail loaning her your new one. Love your teen no matter what. BUT healthy love does not offer you permission to model shaky personal boundaries or inconsistency.
9. Include Your Teen In Family Norm Building – Since boundaries change our time, including your child in conversations about family ground-rules and the consequences for overstepping them can help your teen feel less like a resistant victim and more like a participating member of the family. Even if s/he doesn’t get all of what s/he wants in the discussions, you listening and listening and listening to his/her needs and feelings can help her feel as if s/he has more of a voice. Ask questions like: “What do YOU think should happen when you don’t follow through with what you agreed to? What would seem fair to you? How do YOU think it should work so everyone gets his or her needs met?” (S/he may feel as if you are tricking him at first.)
10. Be Patient and Don’t Base Your Own Commitment to Change on Any Attachment to a Change In Him/Her. Whether or not your kid responds to your new ways of being is, in one sense, immaterial. It is likely that your changes will positively impact your teen, but even if it they don’t, YOUR life will still improve. Why? Because the more of a handle you have on your self and your reactivity, the better you will feel inside your own body, and the less the behavior of other people will bother you.
You teen may not like the change at first and try to trick you into going back to your old ways of being – because at least s/he could feel as if s/he had some leverage when you were so reactive and easy to push off of your center. You gaining power over and flexibility within your self may feel like a foreign and dangerous development, in the beginning. S/he may try every tactic to get you to go back to your old familiar and predictable way being. It may be awhile before s/he can appreciate the shifts in you, or the changing dynamic in your relationship. You, however, will begin to feel better inside yourself almost immediately.
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