A very common fear is whether your kids will be able to take care of themselves when they leave home. Will they make good choices? Will they be able to manage their money? Will they choose good friends? Will they shop for healthy foods, cook, clean, and take care of themselves?
There are so many skills that kids and teens need to learn at home to become independent. Often teens want to be treated “as adults” but you know they aren’t mature enough so this causes conflict and makes you afraid as well. Their prefrontal cortex where reasoning, judgment, planning, and impulse control are developed is working hard and won’t be fully mature until around age 25.
Yikes! That’s many years of struggle, poor decisions, and close calls. You’ll hear about some of them, as I did, but many will happen without your awareness. (I received a phone call from my daughter when she was a freshman at college after she spent the night in jail with a girlfriend. That tested my ability to show my love unconditionally.}
So, the question is, (FIRST NAME), what skills are you teaching your kids now? I hear of too many parents letting their kids get away without doing anything because their kids put up a big fuss. This is not good for them nor for you. Your lack of effective “enforcement” means that you haven’t learned parenting skills that work. Every child can be trained and this is your job.
Start figuring out what language you are using that isn’t working by taking the Limit Setting Skill Level Quiz. Learning what to STOP doing is the first step before adding effective strategies.
Copyright 2022 – Cynthia Klein, Family Happiness Expert – Coach, speaker, and author of Ally Parenting: A Non-Adversarial Approach to Transform Conflict Into Cooperation. Learn more about Cynthia’s services and contact her at her website, https://bridges2understanding.com. Contact Cynthia for permission to reproduce any information from this article.
