How do you "discipline" your teens?

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tense
Posts: 679
Joined: Wed Nov 14, 2007 3:02 pm
Location: Herts

How do you "discipline" your teens?

Post by tense »

I have a generally very well behaved pretty laid back 14 year old girl. But last night, when I wasn't ready to take her somewhere the second she wanted (I hadn't been expected to take her until the planned lift fell through) she got really cross & started shouting at me that I'd ruined her life blah bah blah.

Now OK, she's a teen, with all that that entails. And TBH, I know she is feeling stressed at the moment, as I am having a serious health problem. But I will not put up with being spoken to like that. Obviously she didn't get her lift, but it's left me thinking I'm pretty unprepared in the "sanction" department.

Just wondered if you had clear consequences in place for when your teens step out of line, or do you deal with things on an ad hoc basis? I suppose it seems transparent to have the former, but does it assume that there will be bad behaviour? On the other hand, I am rather hot-headed :oops: so any "punishment" dished out in the heat of the moment would probably be excessive.

Can you tell I'm not looking forward to more teenage strops?! :D
Ed's mum
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Joined: Mon Aug 13, 2007 11:47 am
Location: Warwickshire.

Re: How do you "discipline" your teens?

Post by Ed's mum »

Ad hoc. Son is 14 also.
Generally we would remove possessions from his room.which he values, such as PS3. We cannot ground him or stop him from socialising as he spends nearly all of his time at school (monday to Saturday from 8 am until very late and Sunday Chapel).

Sometimes we decide that he is obviously so tired that he would benefit from any early night! And sometimes we ignore the poor behaviour as it stops him from having an audience. He hates that!

Sorry to hear about your serious health problem. Could it be that that might be impacting upon your daughter? From experience, my recent problems have meant that my children have worried about me more than they would normally; and this can be exhibited in seemingly selfish ways. Kids always worry about how things are going to affect THEM. Some are just better at disguising it!
Clare
Posts: 118
Joined: Thu Sep 21, 2006 11:43 am

Re: How do you "discipline" your teens?

Post by Clare »

I can empathise.

When they were younger I used to do time out and naughty step which I think I gleaned from Toddler taming.Which worked really well.

These days I do grounding(Which I have to say I don't like myself) and witholding of laptops and mobiles.
tiredmum
Posts: 1161
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 2:51 am

Re: How do you "discipline" your teens?

Post by tiredmum »

hi my dd1 is 16 - oh how i enjoyed my relationship with my slightly needy, hard-working, thoughtful, cuddly pre-teen! Then almost over-night (aged about 14 and a month! ) she turned into an independant, moody, selfish "dont touch me" person i didnt recognise! I missed her so much and really sought ways to make our stumbleing relationship go as smooth as it had when she was younger! But the sharing-chats and mum-daughter outings i instigated seem to work for a matter of hours only. I have grounded her on occassions and taken away special trips - not too often but when she over stepped the mark with disrespectful shouting bouts. But it didnt seem to change her or help really. I needed her to know she had done/said wrong but sometimes just leaving her alone seemed to work just as well.

Now she is 16 i see moments of the old dd1 peeping through. She is becoming more communiative, nicer to her sister, and generally more part of the family again. Phew! Hopefully the transformation will continue. My teen dd is just being a normal teen - some have a far worse time so i do think we have probably got away lightly so far! Good luck with yours. I think you can only be supportive but let her know when she is being dis-respectful.

Hope your health problems improve :)
mystery
Posts: 8927
Joined: Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:56 pm

Re: How do you "discipline" your teens?

Post by mystery »

What do you all mean exactly by grounding?

Can you remember back to 10 years or so ago? That is the age of my youngest children and they sound very like your teenagers. What hope do I have? :shock:
TraffordMum
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Joined: Thu Feb 22, 2007 3:29 pm
Location: Trafford

Re: How do you "discipline" your teens?

Post by TraffordMum »

I think disciplining at this age depends on the child and what motivates them, or what they value.

I really try hard (and don't always succeed) to work out if the bad behaviour is really bad behaviour or if there is an underlying reason that I should take into account in terms of punishment. I think hormones do play their part and, increasingly, stress over GCSE modules.

With my Y10 daughter I have noticed over the last 6 months that her temper flares very quickly and if I react to it things escalate and it is hard for both her and me to step back from the situation. I try instead to walk away from the situation and 9 times out of 10 she will come to me within the hour, or the next morning if the incident took place at night, and apologise for her behaviour. We can then talk about coping strategies etc.

If that doesn't happen, and either an attempt to talk about the behaviour ends in failure, or the crime is one that does require an instant response, my punishment strategy usually involves loss of pocket money, loss of iPod, or extra dishwasher duty. This might be an instant loss, or it might be a warning that it will happen if certain things aren't rectified, say.

I always follow through on my threats as well!

My younger daughter (Y8 and not at all hormonal yet) responds best to the threat of having her Facebook account suspended for a week. I have never had to follow through on that one. :lol:
mystery
Posts: 8927
Joined: Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:56 pm

Re: How do you "discipline" your teens?

Post by mystery »

Yes I can relate to that. It's the way I have had to approach discipline for years with mine. It always depended what bothered them, which changed constantly. So for example the naughty step, timeout etc would go through phases of not being particularly effective as they would have happily sat their a thousand times a day and still committed the crime. So I had to think of different deterrents. At other times it was effective.

Pocket money would work. But not sure about taking away the iPod - even at this age if they had one they would keep it well hidden to prevent confiscation - I'd have to do the reverse - I would just have to keep it myself all the time, and only hand it over for short periods as a reward for good behaviour - but that's not appropriate for a teenager.

What did people mean by "grounding" of a teenager?
Milla
Posts: 2556
Joined: Mon Nov 24, 2008 2:25 pm

Re: How do you "discipline" your teens?

Post by Milla »

I'm with Trafford Mum.
As for grounding, we've done it once (can't even remember the "crime" now - rudeness seems to be it). For each family it will be different depending on what their set up is, but for us this means not going down to the local park to "play" with his village friends. Has to stay at home. Coupled with grounding (the ultimate) will be no XBox (husband takes controls to work and leaves them there so no one can weaken), no phone, no iPod, no laptop. As I say we've done this once, and stuck to it (!) and it was effective. AND the sad thing was, he quite enjoyed being free of it al. Missed his phone - it was over Valentine's Day so he missed all the texts - I guess it made him appear cool and aloof - but his behaviour was great and he was far more like he "used" to be. And still is, basically. It IS those pesky hormones, and the long days they have (he has to leave the house at 7.15 for bus) so we try to go easy on him and not rising to the bait (you can see the surges, the picking a verbal fight just unfold) can often be as effective as barging in with a "you will not speak to your father like that..." sort of thing.
Looks like it's happening all over!
scarlett
Posts: 3664
Joined: Fri Jul 16, 2010 10:22 am

Re: How do you "discipline" your teens?

Post by scarlett »

I think they mean not allowing their teen to go out with friends etc and therefore " grounding " them in one particular place i.e home.

My 6 year old dd tells anyone who'll listen that I have grounded her...because she's heard it on tv.I have to keep explaining to her that you have to go out on your own with friends first before you can be grounded !!

My children are not teenagers ( although the 11 year old is developing morose traits....and started answering back ) but I find what works best is to make little of bad behaviour and then make a big thing about the child who is behaving brilliantly...The naughty child always brings themselves back to the fold and can then be made a fuss of......this only works if you have a whole tribe of children of course .....
mystery
Posts: 8927
Joined: Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:56 pm

Re: How do you "discipline" your teens?

Post by mystery »

Aah, well if you want to make your already effective discipline even better, you could have mine too!!
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