When your kids are hitting the mid to late teens, the art of knowing when to let them spread their wings, plays a major role in what makes a good parent. With each year from 15 years on, your teens will want more and more independence. This can be a miserable time or a great time depending on how you handle it.

I would like to talk about a few points that will help bring it to an empowering time rather than a miserable one. Before we make these points, we need some ground rules. First you must accept  independence as a natural occurrence. The second thing is the parent needs to evaluate, within themselves, why they would or wouldn’t allow a teen to have more privileges. The third part is that for a parent to allow more independence, the teen needs to exhibit a few important characteristics.

Let’s first talk about independence as a natural occurrence. Continue reading What Makes a Good Parent and Knowing When to Let Go

I found that these last two weeks I had to do something I hadn’t done much in the home and that was to speak my mind with my kids about what I thought was getting dangerous in America.

John Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country”. It was probably one of the best lines any leader has ever said to their fellow countrymen. It was meant as a catalyst for action to do what has always made America great. It meant you are your country so do something for it. Barak Obama had some of the same message for our kids. Stay in school. Do your best. Achieve. But I don’t agree with everything he said nor with some of his tactics, specifically asking children to help him pass his reforms an bills. I believe in what we can do for our country, but let kids be kids.

Last week the president was going to address the children and teens of America. On the whole, I think it is a great idea to have the leaders of this country speak to our youth. I personally feel there is too much of a disconnect between Americans and between Americans and their country. Like another young president, John Kennedy, Barak Obama has a chance to move the young of America. What makes a good parent in the home is leadership. What makes a good parent of the country is leadership.

Sincerely,

Dr. Bocknek

The Problem Solving Expert for Parents and Families

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Dr. Robert Bocknek is the problem solving expert for marriage, parents and families at www.takebackthehome.com and www.keyboard-culture-parenting.com.  He can be reached at bocknek@takebackthehome.com. He is author of the “Take Back the Home course” and the “Learning how to Learn course” which can be seen at www.takebackthehome.com.

Continuing from part 2, understand, humans often take the easiest way to get out of pain and that’s why drug use is so prevalent in society. What makes a good parent in this situation is for the parent to call the school and find out what happened.

Ask all the prevalent questions. Have a meeting with the teacher without the student and maybe afterwards, with the your child. Stand firm. Let the child or teen know all the facts you have found out and help them form a strategy for success in the class.  Let them know you will be monitoring them so that the strategy will be implemented. Regularly, let them know that this kind of strategy is what they will need to do in their life to increase the odds that they will be successful and that’s why they need to do it.

Let’s now talk about standing firm.

You may be thinking, “Dr. Bocknek hasn’t said anything about how or when to stand firm.”

You are right!

But you can’t solve Continue reading What Makes a Good Parent and Standing Firm Part 3

In part 1 of “What Makes a Good Parent and Standing Firm”, we began talking about that even when you do a good job as a parent, your kids can still make mistakes. We then added that you have to help your kids deal with their mistakes and not fix it for them. I would now like to give some examples of how this plays out in the real world.

Have you ever watched an infant bang their head while crawling under the coffee table and then have the parent soothe the crying baby by hitting the table and saying “bad table”? It’s funny. Right? The baby will often be happier then.

What did we teach the baby? We didn’t teach them to be careful and learn, did we?

Now, I’m not saying you can’t do that but what makes a good parent is helping them learn.

Let’s now use a more important example. Continue reading What Makes a Good Parent and Standing Firm Part 2

Let’s continue with living with integrity. The last point we discussed was keeping your word and teaching the value of this to your teenager. Let’s look at some other essential points.

2) Acknowledgment.

Have you noticed it’s easy to find fault and comment on it? What doesn’t come as natural is acknowledging a good act. It’s important to acknowledge good behavior in your teenager. What makes a good parent is creating an environment in the home so your teenager is Continue reading Parenting and Expectations with Teenagers Part 3

In part 1 of “Parenting and Expectations with Teenagers”, we discussed what is reasonable for you as parents to do when pushing your teenager. We talked about GPA, and its importance in measuring your child’s success. The second point I want to make today about, what makes a good parent, is preparing your teenager to become an adult.

Since you are reading this article you probably are a parent and you have already experienced and learned many lessons about adulthood. My question to you then, is do you want your teenagers to suffer through the same mistakes you went through on your way to adulthood, or, are you out to help them navigate through the waters?

What makes a good parent is finding ways to bring your teenager to adulthood as painlessly as possible. In part 1, we talked about doing well in school and using GPA as a measuring stick. Now let’s talk about living life with integrity.

Living life with integrity is easy to say, harder to do. Don’t you agree? Continue reading Parenting and Expectations with Teenagers Part 2

Today, I want to talk about what is reasonable for a parent to do when pushing our teenagers forward.

What makes a good parent is being able to come up with a plan for your teenager, implementing it and then, when things don’t go according to plan, being able to alter the plan to keep your teen moving in a good direction.

Where do you begin when coming up with a plan?

What makes a good parent requires, you as the parent, stepping back from your own busy schedule and taking the time to give quality energy into thinking about what you want for your teenagers. This doesn’t mean general terms like, “you want them to be happy, you want them to be successful or you want them to be good people”.

If you have taken the time to read my previous posts you will know that I have written extensively on these core principles before. Let’s leave it to say, for this article, that your teenager being happy, successful and a good person are the building blocks of true success in life, but here I want to be more specific.

Let’s spend a little time with some concrete action steps and ideas for implementing what makes a good parent. We will be keeping our discussion today to addressing teenagers in high school or college.

1) Grade point average. Like it or not GPA is a critical measuring stick of how your teenager is doing. For those of you reading this and thinking GPA doesn’t matter, I highly encourage you to look inside and recognize the err of your thought process. You most likely are falling into one of two categories,

a) You are being defensive because your teenager isn’t doing well, or

b) you are one of those people stuck in the sixties progressive (actually regressive) mindsets that competition is bad.

The facts are that colleges look at GPA when your teen is applying for school, when they are in school and when they are applying for grad school. If time is an issue for you as a parent then you should know GPA is probably the easiest way for a parent to judge how their teenager is standing up relative to other teenagers and to how your parenting style is working.

So what you want to do is sit down with your teenager and let them know what your expectations are in regards to GPA, (I highly recommend 3.5 because scholarships and grants often use that number as the minimum requirement). Then you let your teenager know that attaining that GPA is going to be the centerpiece of what they think about.

Teenagers need to understand that doing well in school is their job. You take your job seriously and they need to take their job seriously. Creating this mindset will go a long way for them to create success in their life.

Please read part 2 of Parenting and expectations with teenagers.

Sincerely,

Dr. Bocknek

The Problem Solving Expert for Parents and Families

*******

Dr. Robert Bocknek is the problem solving expert for marriage, parents and families at www.takebackthehome.com and www.keyboard-culture-parenting.com.  He can be reached at bocknek@takebackthehome.com. He is author of the “Take Back the Home course” and the “Learning how to Learn course” which can be seen at www.takebackthehome.com.

In part 1 of “Parenting and Unconditional Positive Regard”, we talked about dealing with issues regarding your child’s school issues. In this issue, I want to talk about daily things we do or don’t do and what makes a good parent, resembles our action.

I want to start this discussion with the premise that your desire to have a great relationship with your children, is a core part of what you view as what makes a good parent.

Let’s start by looking at how we view activities with our children. What makes a good parent is getting to the mindset that scheduling in time with our kids, (including our teens), is an essential pathway to creating a positive relationship with our children.

What did what I just said mean? It meant explain to your kids why you want to schedule in time with them.

What makes a good parent is; Continue reading Parenting and Unconditional Positive Regard Part 2

What makes a good parent? What are the main things, you can do, to succeed as a parent? Your relationship with your children is going to go through many ups and downs. Expect it. There are going to be times where you want to strangle your kids and there are going to be times when you wish you handled yourself better. So how do you keep your relationship with them growing through all this turmoil?

What makes a good parent begins with the parent’s unconditional positive regard for their children. But what does unconditional positive regard mean? I would like to begin with telling you what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean when your child is failing or doing poorly in school that you say, “its ok honey, you’ll do better next time”. It doesn’t mean, when your children talks back to you that you take it because you love them.

What makes a good parent is standing up, and leading your children with unconditional positive regard as I’m going to describe to you right now.

When your child is doing poorly in school, you begin with taking responsibility within yourself how you weren’t on top of how they were doing. I’m not going to call you a bad parent if your child does poorly in school. But, I can tell you, what ever parenting style you use, if your child repeats poor performance a second straight semester and you haven’t made major changes in what you as a parent do, you are not doing what makes a good parent.

So what would you do in this circumstance? Continue reading Parenting and Unconditional Positive Regard

A couple of weeks ago I had a very interesting conversation with a 15 year old that made me think about what makes a good parent. The 15 year old in question was very well mannered, intelligent, and as he said “very stressed out”. I asked him if he is getting bad grades. He said no. I asked him if he is getting into trouble. He said no to this too. So I asked him what’s up. He replied he didn’t know what he was going to do with his life. I thought his comment was amazing so I decided to tell his story to a few parent friends of mine. When I brought this conversation up to them their responses were fascinating. Some asked if he is going to career counseling and others said, “he is only 15 years old”.

My point here is what makes a good parent isn’t always in line with good people with good intentions. Here’s what I mean. I know the boy’s mother. She is doing everything she can to make him successful in her mind. She has great intentions for her son and for the most part she is doing a great job with him, but he is really stressed out about his future and is only 15 years old.

For you parents reading this story, let me give you some advice. What makes a good parent is leadership.

Leadership for a 15 year old should entail the following: Continue reading Reasonable Expectations for Our Teens