Law of Belonging – One of the greatest needs of teenagers (after music, screen time and the phone) is a strong sense of belonging. They need to feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves. And guess what? If they do not get this need met in a healthy place, they will begin to look for ways to get this need met anywhere else they can find it.

Law of Power – Once you’ve entered into a power struggle with a teenager, you’ve already lost. It’s like the closing line “War Games”, “Interesting game, the only winning move is not to play”.

Law of Control – Trying to control a teenager is like trying to put pants on a gorilla. It’s just going to frustrate you and really irritate the gorilla. Not a great way to live day to day.

Law of Management – A management approach puts the parents clearly in charge. The goal is to eventually manage them out of your lives, and into their own.

Law of Voice – In a well functioning family, the teens almost always get a voice. They just don’t always get a vote. Consistently violate either side of this equation and you’ve got trouble.

Punishment is often done out of anger and is usually for the parent.

Punishment breeds resentment and a desire for revenge.

Teens have many creative ways to get you back.

Law of Consequences – Consequences teach teens about the real world. In general they need to be related, reasonable, respectful, swift, strong and short-term.

Law of Structure – Parents need to set boundaries & structure from day one. If you don’t do it while they are young, what makes you think they will obey curfew when they have a car?

Law of W’s – When teens are gone from home, parents need to know who they are with, where they are going, what they will be doing and what time they will be back.

Law of 20 Feet – The law of 20 feet states that at a certain age, you must walk at least 20 feet away from your teen if you are in a public place. Thirty feet if you’re in the mall.

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.