Your Adolescent Child: Parenting Defiant Teens

Parents of teenagers frequently come to me and complain about bad teen behavior

Here is a letter I received recently. The letter states:

"My child is now fourteen years old and he seems to be able to endure any type of discipline program or approach we use with him. We have tried taking away his cell phone, taking off his bedroom door, we even stand him in the corner, or send him to bed early. We do things to limit his freedom. However, he continues to make poor choices: he lies, he steals and he cuts classes. Our teen argues, talks back to us and things like that. Nothing we seem to do is able to motivate good behavior. How can we get through to our child?"

I understand this problem. Many parents have a similar problem with their own difficult teenagers.

Here is the reality. There is nothing you can do to force your teenage child to behave. What you have to do is to change you approach entirely in order to get your teenager to comply with you wishes. Here is why.

When your child is very young, say two or three years old, he acts out or he misbehaves, it is very easy to take him and put him in a corner or in his room and do things to enforce your authority. The reason is because you as the parent are much bigger, you are much stronger and he does not have the assurance of an adult or an older child.

As your child gets older, he is bigger, he is more self assured, he is more independent of you. By the time he is nine or ten, it can become quite difficult to discipline your child. However, since he is still a child at that age, you can still do things to limit his ability to get around and discipline him.

What happens when your child becomes a teenager? As a teenager, he is basically an adult. He is independent in most of his needs, he does not need you for most things physically and emotionally he is already stretching his wings and getting out into the world - he does not need you emotionally as much. As a result, there is very little you can do to enforce your authority.

He is big, he is stronger - he may even be stronger than you by a certain time and there is nothing you can do to enforce your authority. Therefore, trying to coerce your teenage child to behave is going to backfire. It is not going to work in the long run.

You have to change your approach. The way to do that is to focus upon your relationship with your teenage child.

I want to point out to that no matter how bad things look you have a relationship, and usually a good relationship, with your child. He may be talking back, he may be misbehaving, he may be giving you an attitude. But your child is still your child and you are still the parent and you have a way of using your parental authority and parental respect and parental love that your child has for you to get your points across and to get your child to behave.

However, you have to understand how to do this. There is an approach - if you do not know this approach or have a handle on it or nowhere to turn, we have a program called the Complete Connection Parenting Program for Teenagers, which will take you through and show you exactly what you must do to get your child to behave properly.

But, I want to warn you - try to avoid people who give you different ways of disciplining. What is going to happen is that, even though you may be able to coerce your child at the age of thirteen, fourteen or fifteen - by the time the child is older he is going to become more and more independent of you. As a result he is going to resent your authority and he is going to break away from you completely and never look back. You do not want that to happen.

You have the authority as a parent, you have the respect as a parent and you have your child's love because you are the parent. You can use these tools to make positive concrete changes in your child's behavior. Use what you have and you will have a great relationship with your child long into his adult years.