A reader writes in to ask: “We faced with some power struggles with our 14 year-old. They just keep getting bigger and bigger. No matter what we try to do it seems he has to fight us for all he’s worth. We don’t want to give in, but we are afraid of what might happen. Do you have any suggestions for how we can successfully take stand without losing the relationship?”

-You have asked a very good question, one that almost every family with teen-agers has to face at some point.

A general rule for parents of teens

Let’s start with a general rule about power struggles and teens:

Once you enter into a power struggle with a teen-ager, you
have already lost. Not because they are more powerful than parents.

Not at all.

It’s simply that once you enter into a power struggle, you may end up winning, but you do so only at the expense of the relationship.

Should we let them do whatever they want?

Am I saying that parents are to back off and just let teens do whatever they want?

Not on your life!

Shift the focus to yourselves

What I am saying is that, as parents, you have to work smarter instead of harder.

The first step involves a shift in your focus. Here’s what I mean:

Simply stated, the shift involves moving from what you want to make your teen do to focusing on what you are going to get yourselves to do as parents.

So how do we do that?

It involves a four-step process that helps you creatively solve parent teen difficulties and have fun doing it. I realize that’s a fairly bold statement. Read on and see what you think.

I call this four-step process Developing Your Parent’s Playbook.(tm) It’s my favorite skill to teach at seminars. Let’s take a look at each of the four steps.

Step 1: Identify the problem

Step 2: Identify one or two solutions you have tried that don’t work, even though it seems they should. This is where most parents get stuck. They keep on doing the same things that don’t work over and over again and expecting different results. The bottom line is this: If it’s not working, it’s not working, and it’s time to try something different.

Step 3: Here’s the fun part. Come up with creative, ridiculous, absurd, crazy and outlandish ideas that you would never do but are just fun to think about and get you laughing. Power struggles become so deadly-dull serious that we lose our sense of humor and therefore our creativity. The purpose of step 3 is to allow you to step back from the problem just a bit and laugh, so you can use your creativity again. I am always amazed at the natural creativity of parents in solving problems.

Step 4: Come up with creative, alternative solutions. Sometimes the seeds for solutions are in the crazy ideas from step 3. Other times, parents are able to find solutions they couldn’t see before.

Attachment parenting is getting a lot of media frenzy these days, but many parents are still unaware of the whole meaning of the term. Attachment parenting was initiated by renowned pediatrician, Dr. William Sears, together with his spouse, Martha – a term that describes a very responsive and nurturing style of raising a child.

Dr. Sears and his wife see attachment parenting as a style that helps promote the bonding relationship of parent and child emotionally through physical bonding. This is achieved through what Dr. Sears calls as the “Baby Bs” – breastfeeding, bonding, bedsharing, babywearing, and boundary building.

Advocates of attachment parenting encourage parents, especially mothers, to carry their baby and respond to him/her as needed, during the first early weeks of the baby’s life. Contrary to the age-old belief to let babies “cry it out” so as not to spoil him/her, a baby’s cry is an effective survival tool that babies use to convey their needs, which should not be ignored

Breastfeeding has long been seen as an excellent means of creating a bond between mother and child, but on top of that, breastmilk is the best source of nutrition for your baby from birth to sixth month. Breastfeeding ensures that mothers hold their babies frequently and constantly, for mothers who are exclusively breastfeeding. It also fosters the biological need for babies to keep constant contact with his/her mother as a transition from the womb to a baby’s first breath of air.

Bedsharing and babywearing are both physical means to keep babies in close contact with a parent. Bedsharing is achieved in many ways, which for some parents, depend on the available bedroom furniture. There are parents who lay mattresses on the floor just to achieve this. Babywearing is using a baby carrier when bringing your baby along for a walk. However, other attachment parenting advocates would contest using baby carriers when babies prefer to be carried on strollers. Nonetheless, bedsharing and babywearing are two ways to promote emotional closeness.

Expectedly, attachment parenting holds on to employing age-appropriate, gentle discipline to teach their children manners, and basic “rights” and “wrongs” – boundary building. In that case, attachment parents would rather keep dangerous objects (such as breakables) out of reach of a toddler than telling the toddler not to play with it, realizing the consequences are is incomprehensible for the toddler. The crux is for parents to provide guidance, be role models, reward good behavior, and enforce gentle punishments.

Attachment parenting, does not necessarily included the “Baby B’s”, and that Dr. Sears only uses them as tools in order for parents to get to know their babies and respond to their needs instinctively, while inculcating family values and fostering good family relationships.

Despite widespread availability of sex education in our middle and high schools, the incidence of teen parenting is still far too common  today.  As raw and unbiased statistics will show, unwed teen parents and their children will face huge hurdles in life and will most likely experience lowered expectations in their health, finances and education.

Health Problems Due To Lack Of Prenatal Care

Due mainly to the lack of proper prenatal care, teenage mothers face higher pregnancy health risks than women who deliver children at a later age, including anemia, pregnancy-related high blood pressure, underweight birth, premature delivery, and even death.

Teen parenting statistics reveal that up to 40% of teen mothers do not receive adequate, high-quality medical care during pregnancy. There is some debate as to whether this prenatal medical care is simply unavailable to these teen mothers-to-be, or the care is simply not actively sought during pregnancy. Without proper prenatal care, many children born to teen mothers come into the world in poor health.

Education Suffers

Alarming statistics show that teen parenting leaves many victims in education as only 50% of teen parents will graduate from high school before age 30. And, the real tragedy is that being a teen parent without even a high school diploma almost guarantees that the teen and her baby will live a life of poverty, dependent upon marginal government handouts as peers progress into adulthood and on to successful families and careers.

Teen mothers are encouraged to stay in school, by way of numerous state and federal programs, and 80% of them do – for a while. Unfortunately, the realities of caring for another life so early in the teen parent’s lives definitely takes a toll, as most will not earn their high school diploma.

Good Jobs Hard To Find

The lack of a quality education due to teen parenting translates directly into difficulties locating and keeping well-paying, steady employment. Without even a high school diploma, the teen parent is doomed to fill mostly low-wage service or light manufacturing positions – jobs that traditionally pay low wages and have high turnover. Even if the teen parent is able to find and keep one of these low-paying jobs, the low wages and lack of promotion to higher-paying positions (due to lack of education) makes it tough to make ends meet.

Due to the consequences of teen parenting, the teen and his or her small family with a job is in a catch-22 position – making too much money to qualify for government help, not making enough to rise out of poverty.

To make economic matters worse, only 10% of teen mothers receive any financial assistance from the father. 40% of teen mothers receive benefits from various government programs, thus beginning (or perpetuating) a vicious welfare lifestyle, that has claimed generations of teen parents, and doomed them to a marginal life of low expectations and government dependency.

One statistic to consider – women who deliver their first child between 20 and 24 years of age statistically have a much better chance of earning a college degree than teen parents, thus almost guaranteeing their lives (and the lives of their children) will not be spent in hopeless poverty.

The Child Of The Teen Suffers

The real victims of teen parenting are the children themselves. These children usually exhibit lower cognitive development (the development of thought processes) than those children of non-teen parents. Due to the poorer socioeconomic conditions these children grow up in, they tend to be underachievers in school and are more likely to not earn a high school diploma than their peers.

Children of teen parents also tend to have sexual relations earlier than their peers, and chances are much greater that these “children of children” will go on to be teen parents themselves.

Some Advice

The best advice? Don’t become a teen parent! There are so many strikes against teen parenting that the teens who do get pregnant in high school never realize just how bad things will get for them – until it actually happens to them.

These teen parents (and their parents) almost never take the unborn life they are creating into consideration – that no matter how much love and attention the child is given, teen parenting’s high costs will be born largely by the child created. And, that child has no choice in the matter – but the teen parent does. Consider adoption as there are many well-qualified two-parent families who will be able to give the child a real chance in life, and break the cycle of teen parenting.