Remember what these “what makes a good parent” articles are about. They are about being able to let go with your teen and not be miserable. Trust me, the less you are stressing out about your teen going out, the better the experience is going to be for you and for them. If you know they have good common sense and represent you well out in the world, you will be less stressed. If they are doing well in school, you will feel better about letting them go out. Furthermore, on this front, when they are doing well in school they tend to hang out with a better, brighter group. Lastly, when they are staying out late or for a long time, knowing that you can get a hold of them greatly diminishes stress.

On a closing note, with this “what makes a good parent” topic, allowing your teen to have more freedom and seeing that for the most part they handle it well, is another opportunity for you to be proud of the job you are doing as a parent. Remember, raising great responsible kids, is a critical part of helping create a great society. When you look around at all the problems in society and all the bad news on TV you will be able to feel good that you are playing a huge part in not adding to the mess.

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 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.

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 two problems if you can’t even solve one. This means you have to have a strategy for success for your kids first before you can help them work through their mistakes. So far we have been talking about how to implement a successful strategy. What makes a good parent is recognizing that no strategy always works and no one always follows the strategy.

Parents, you do no service to your children by not having them take personal responsibility for their outcomes. This doesn’t mean throwing your children in jail. It does mean you can’t keep protecting them when they don’t do the right thing.

Standing firm with your children is about helping them to be a success in life. What makes a good parent is having an honest relationship with your children, where they know that they are expected to do the right thing and when they don’t that there is a penalty. Having children is a responsibility to yourself, your family and your country. Stand firm with your kids. You will be happy you did.

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.

Sometimes, you will be good at all three and sometimes you will only be good at one or two of these. I would love to say that if you most of the time do the right thing the right results will come out. I can’t. What I can tell you is that it is an odds game. What I mean by that is that if you do the right thing most of the time, with your kids, the odds are most of the time you will get the results you want. What makes a good parent is the ability to make the tough decisions, no matter how painful, to move your kids to the right place.

The first point in making the tough decisions is doing your best as a parent. This may seem like an obvious point but I want to speak about it a little. Especially to mothers reading this article, what makes a good parent is accepting you can’t be mommy for ever. You can be a strong mother, forever, just not the mother who is raising a baby. For many of you, this will be extremely difficult. Many mothers have a level of nurturing, hard-wired into your system, that very few men will ever develop or understand.

In my experience, accompanying this huge nurturing capacity is a certain amount of, “I can’t do enough for my kids” capacity as well. Part of the reason for this latter part is the feeling that if you didn’t have this mentality you wouldn’t be doing your best as a parent. On this point, what makes a good parent is the ability to realize inside when you did your best, your kids at some point will still make mistakes and it’s not your fault. When they make those mistakes, they will need to be responsible and work their way out, themselves. Teens, especially, need a chance to work out their issues themselves, whether it be in doing badly on a test in school or getting a speeding ticket.

Parents, you have and will make bad decisions in your life. How you deal and have dealt with them now shapes your life. Helping your children deal with their bad decisions, as children and teens, is one of the most important things you can do for them. Handling their bad decisions for them, without out them taking responsibility is one of the surest ways to make them more likely to have a hard time as an adult.

Please read part 2 of “What Makes a Good Parent and Standing Firm”.

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.

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:

• He or she should do well in school

• He or she should be respectful, polite and basically a good person

• He or she should have chores in the house to facilitate responsibility

• He or she should have limited time on the internet and video games

• He or she should be out enough during free time to learn social skills

• He or she should be doing volunteer work, (important for college)

• He or she be encouraged to participate in fun stuff

• He or she should have down time to do whatever they want

Our teens need to work hard and be good people but they are just coming off childhood. What makes a good parent is part keeping a watchful eye on them, part pushing them and part allowing them the space to learn from their own experiences. This third part is critical.

We need to remember our kid’s happiness is at the heart of their success. Fifteen year olds should not be thinking or worried about their future. If they know what they want to do at that age, well, you are just lucky.

So please for your teens sake, remember to tell them how proud you are of them, how much you love them and cut them some slack if they are doing great.

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.

When you embark in critical thinking conclusions reached may be the opposite of previous positions you have taken before. Why would your position change? Because new facts and compelling arguments become apparent that makes it very difficult to keep the previous notion. I’m afraid we are in the time of the dumbing up of America. Life has become so busy that true thinking is taking a back seat to letting others think for us.

To make this a balanced article on teen parenting, let me sight some examples on both sides of the political spectrum. On the right, we have turned the pro life ideology from being a strong belief to annihilating any candidate who won’t quote the bible and condemn, as a murderer, anyone who disagrees with them. On the left, the president and congress espouse how they are going to cut the deficit in half, forgetting to mention that the halving is of the quadrupling of the budget. Even that can only be achieved, though, by people spending money, which they can’t, because of higher taxes and unemployment.

People argue these points, now, like they are espousing facts. I would argue that the only thing holding these people back is facts. Why use critical thinking when repeating politically correct statements are so easy.

For you reading this article, stop this crushing stupidity in your homes and get back to basics. When teen parenting, first remember, you as a parent have a job to teach.

What you need to teach your kids is:

• To carry themselves with respect, dignity and ethics in the family and out in the real world.

• To read, rather than watch TV, videogames or YOUTUBE

• To enjoy learning new things

• Their job is to do well in school and help the family

• They should not just believe what they hear, but take the time and study, evaluate, ask questions and see what is known so they can reach good conclusions

• You love them to death

Please read teen parenting and critical thinking 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.