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Independence is the ultimate
goal of adolescence. Even though it’s sometimes hard
for parents to think about letting go of their
child, the best relationships are the ones that
teens come back to, as adults, recognizing how their
parents have helped them into adulthood by not
clinging or pushing them away too soon.
We recommend that parents look for opportunities to
teach independence, starting in childhood. Giving
choices, encouraging (reasonable) risk-taking and
allowing a child to make mistakes are all ways that
parents build the skills that make independence
possible.
We’ve talked a lot about the push-and-pull of
adolescence; teens desperately want to become adults, but
are also afraid of it. You can help make this
process feel at least a little safer by helping your
teen to prepare gradually. Trying new
things, making choices and making mistakes becomes
even more important in the teen years. Here are some
areas that can offer good practice for independence.
Managing time:
Encourage your teen to be responsible for his or her
own time. “How much time do you need for homework?”
“How long to do you need to unwind after school?” If
the answers to these questions are “None” and “Until
midnight”, then your teen needs some help making a
schedule. Many teens can come up
with a reasonable time for getting things done, with
some practice and initial limits from you. You may
want to let her try out her schedule through, say,
one grading period. If grades go down, the schedule
needs work and maybe more supervision from you.
Getting themselves up:
Many parents complain about the daily battles trying
to get their teen out of bed. Teens need almost as
much sleep as infants, and often don’t get enough of
it. After you’ve done your part in limiting the
distractions before bedtime (TV and phone calls are
common culprits!), help your teen be responsible
for getting himself up. Every teen should have his
own alarm clock. The natural consequence of not
getting up could be a detention at school, or losing
a job. After a few repetitions, your teen will
likely get the message, and you don’t have to do
anything. If you feel your teen is deliberately
avoiding school, there may be a more serious problem
that requires outside help.
Learning to Handle
Money:
Not knowing basic financial skills can be one the
first things to trip up a newly independent young
adult. Look for chances to teach basic money skills.
Some parents give their teen a set amount of money
and let her plan the weekly grocery shopping or
family vacation. Have her help you pay utility bills
and budget for expenses. A few experiments can teach
a lot more than lectures. Explain carefully about
credit cards and limit access to credit. Teens are
impulsive, and easily get stuck in the trap of
charging more than they can pay off. An after-school
job is a great opportunity for your teen to start
practicing the Law of Thirds: Save /invest a third,
spend a third, donate a third. Teens should have
their own savings accounts.
Making Mistakes:
More than anything else, teens learn from making
mistakes. As a parent, your job is to try to make
sure that the mistakes your teen makes aren’t
life-threatening, like getting into the car with a
drunk driver. In other articles we’ve recommended
creating a safety agreement with your teen so that,
for example, your teen can call home and get a ride
with no questions asked rather than drive drunk.
Talk with your teen about the safety agreements you
feel are important.
Most mistakes, though, will not fall into that
category. No one is perfect, especially parents.
It’s important that you teen see that that you do
not expect perfection from him or from yourself, and
that you can admit your mistakes when you make them.
Letting your teen make mistakes, and letting him
suffer the consequences of a mistake, can be hard to
do. But when you give your teen permission to make
mistakes, and let him know you love him anyway, you
tell him that you believe in his ability to take a
fall, get up and learn from it. And that’s what
being an adult is all about.
Remember, stay patient, keep talking and keep trying. You
and your teen are worth it! |
