It’s been a long time since I wrote about my kids and their computer addiction. The first time I wrote about the problem was three plus years ago. My two oldest teens were staying up to 4 in the morning after they supposedly went to sleep. They were getting unsocial, grades were slipping and they weren’t going out anymore.

I took the computers away except for school and never allowed computers in their room. The computer addiction was quite apparent at this time. Continue reading Computer Addiction and Your Kids

We have already discussed in part 1 that independence is a natural occurrence, so let’s move into setting up ground rules so we as parents can survive this time without going insane and they as teens can go out without ruining their lives before they even start.

What makes a good parent is preparing for this inevitable time by setting up ground rules. The first thing for you to think about, as a parent, is having rules about what kind of things have to take place for the teen to earn the right to have more independence. Yes, I just said that going out is a privilege and not a right. It is critical, as a parent, that this rule is not negotiable. I can to tell you from experience that if you don’t want to spend long hours worrying about them or not worrying and getting that phone call that you don’t want to get, take control.

Now, let’s talk about what some of those rules ought to be in order to get those privileges.

The “What makes a good parent” rules:

• The teen needs to exhibit a responsible demeanor that justifies new privileges

• The teen needs to being doing well in school

• The teen needs to respond to a parent in a way that the parent can be comfortable when the teen is away

Responsible demeanor means your teen recognizes that you are the boss and not them. It means that they have a responsibility to act with dignity out in the world and not like a thug. Teens are a work in progress. They learn by watching their friends or by other teens they want to be friends with. Without teaching your teens about their responsibilities, they will be quite susceptible to those other teens. What makes a good parent is teaching them constantly what a good demeanor is and rewarding them for displaying good judgment with more privileges and taking away privileges for bad judgment.

Now, we are going to discuss good grades. You can’t get around it, parents. A huge part of what makes a good parent is helping your teen achieve in life. Socializing is an important part of growth in teenagers. No one is arguing that. But be a leader with your teen. If they aren’t doing well in school, they aren’t going to do better with more socializing. It is critical that your teen associates privileges with doing well in school. If you have bought into the idea that grades don’t really matter, I have 3 words for you… “get over it”. If your teen is not doing well in school, they shouldn’t be going out, period, until they improve.

Please read part 3.

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.

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

No matter how many kids you have, at some point , there will come a time when you just can’t go any further in bending to help them. This article is about giving you strength to make the tough decisions. What makes a good parent is raising your kids to be self reliant, good decision makers and good people.

Sometimes, you will be good at all three and sometimes you Continue reading What Makes a Good Parent and Standing Firm

Let’s discuss some important points.

A huge part of a parent’s role, even in the disintegrating marriage, is to stay unified in regards to what is important for the children. It is important for the parents to keep the kids routines consistent, like before the troubles. What makes a good parent is continuing with good habits for the kids such as these:

• They continue to do their homework on schedule

• They continue to get good grades

• They continue to do chores

• They continue to show respect for both parents

• Parents continue to acknowledge good behavior in the kids

• Parents continue to overtly show affection for their kids

Let’s now move onto a more positive situation, namely the ongoing family.

A big part of what makes a good parent is using the example Continue reading What Makes a Good Parent… Parents Loving Each Other Part 2

I have written many an article on what makes a good parent, (see my archives here at Keyboard Culture), but today I want to talk about the parent’s relationship to each other as a foundation to having great kids.

The home is nothing if it isn’t a safe haven for your children. Your children need at least one place in their life where they can let their guard down and be themselves. This doesn’t mean that the home is a place that they can misbehave but it does mean it should be a place of comfort, love and security.

Let’s look at being on a boat as an analogy of how the parent’s relationship creates balance for our children. On land, what gives us our balance is that the earth is steady so when we walk our brain can calculate how far to reach with our legs on each step. In a boat, however, the ground is moving. When we attempt to walk on a boat the deck can come up or down with the waves and the brain is forced to constantly reset for balance. Our brain then has to work much harder for normalcy. The parent’s relationship, and it’s effect on the kids, is similar. If it’s consistent Continue reading What Makes a Good Parent… Parents Loving Each Other

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.

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

The third part of what makes a good parent, action and patience involves giving your child a vision of the future. One thing I have learned from years of working with children and teens is that they pretty much don’t see how today’s actions can affect their life in the future.

I’ll give you a personal example. When my wife and I got together my second step son had some issues with it and he was acting out. Unfortunately, for him, one of those ways was to stop studying for his classes. In one semester he got three D’s. He literally had to spend the rest of his high school tenure making up for that mistake. Trust me, if he had known then what he knows now he never would have chosen that direction to act out. As it turned out he got a scholarship to Clemson in engineering but he had to kick some major butt to get it.

A great technique in helping your children develop, (and what makes a good parent), is to give them Continue reading What Makes a Good Parent…Action and Patience Part 3