When it was m turn to speak, my question to the parents was, “Wouldn’t you like to know if your child makes good choices?” I bet you would desperately like to know. You cannot always be around to monitor, make sure of or enforce their decisions.  Your teens needs to make life-and-death decisions about drinking, driving, hanging out with drug-using friends, and texting while driving.

I spoke about ways to know if your child is capable of making good choices. They best way: give your child choices and get out of the way of the consequences that follow. The choices, of course, have to be within the bounds of what they can safely handle. But within those limits, you will gain tons of data about their ability to choose. Then you will better know if you should let your teen drive.

This morning, in a bit of serendipity, Love and Logic, my favorite parenting helpers, said they have a new CD that discusses how to parent teens in regards to them driving (link). (I haven’t listened to this CD, however, past CDs tend to be full of great nuggets of parenting advice, though it can be a bit disorganized and hard to find that nugget once it has past.) If you have listened to it, please let us know in the comments.

Have you figured out ways to know if your child makes good choices? Let us know in the comments below.

But hold on, what if a child received a negative comment? What then? The study was done in Israel, which makes me wonder about the ability to transfer its findings cross-culturally, especially given the often mean-spirited or trolling nature of blog comments in the US. (You should see some of the comments I delete from this blog, and I’m a well adjusted adult therapist, not an adolescent forming my identity, in part from what my peers think about me.) I believe this article is too blithe about kids putting up their personal angst for all to see.

Also, there are all the other concerns about online privacy, information being searchable and lasting for ever.

The kids in this study were not blogging already, they were asked to for the purposes of the research. This may add a bit of mental and emotional protection for the participants because they can distance themselves from what they write by framing the writing as for the researchers, and not really about or for themselves. Youth who begin blogging for themselves will likely pour out their hearts in more vulnerable ways and take negative comments more personally.

A more nitpicky critique is that the assessment of kids social distress was taken from reading the blogs. I think a better way for this would be to interview or test the kids themselves.

I am just more cautious about what can be done to information we share online than others. Youth are much more comfortable sharing with a large, unknown audience than I would have them be. Time will tell if I’m the conservative fuddy-duddy or if I’m right and we had better be more caution who we share our innermost secrets with.

Link to the APA article.

Link to the research paper.

Of the various items in Magary’s list, the two I tackle the most with parents are avoiding power struggles and controlling yourself since that is the only person you can control.

Please avoid power struggles. If you are struggling for power with a kid when you own the house, you buy the groceries, you control the car, you pay the phone bill and you provide the allowance, then you have brought your child up to your pay grade, or more likely, you have demoted yourself. The best way to avoid a power struggle–control yourself.

Which parent sounds more in control to you?

• You can’t have any dessert until you finish your dinner!
• I provide dinner to children who finish their dinner.

Have a friend throw a couple of “You can’t,” “You must,” “Don’t you ever”‘s your way and see if it doesn’t just pull you into saying something sassy back. Hearing a “You…” is hearing someone tell you what to do. Most of us do not like to be told what to do and we push back. Kids are supposed to grow more independent–it is their job–, and so they are primed to let you have it if you start telling, even demanding, that they do something. That is were the magic is in the second example.

When you say what you are going to do, you are controlling yourself and yourself only. You have provided little invitation to argue, though there might be one to whine. You may provide the same type of answer, such as, “I am only able to hear requests for dessert when asked in a big girl voice.”

So here is the link to the SPA post: 9 Things I learned in the Parent Encounter Program.

So the new address is 1600 S. Main St., Suite 225, Walnut Creek CA  94596. Only the suite number has changed.