Positive Discipline for Teenagers. Empowering Your Teens and Yourself Through Kind and Firm Parenting ( PDFDrive ) (1)

Fearful Parenting

Fearful parenting is not letting go because it is too hard. You may feel
scared and fear permanent damage if you let go. You may think control
works. Another form of fearful parenting happens when you don’t see
small-step alternatives to control, so you think your only choice is to do
nothing, and that isn’t okay with you. You may think control or
permissiveness is the only option.

Fearful parenting is worrying more about what others might think or
say than doing what is best for your teenagers, including allowing them
to learn from their mistakes. It means being more interested in
perfection than in the growth of your teenagers. You think it’s your job
to “overparent.” Maybe you don’t have anything better to do. Fearful
parenting is reactive because you are sure that you have only one chance
to deal with any given situation and you don’t dare make a mistake or
your child will suffer irreparable damage. Fearful parents don’t mean to
hurt their children, but there are many things they do unknowingly that
stunt their teens’ growth and development. Overprotection, control, rigid
rules, permissiveness, and a lack of communication are but a few of the
methods that contribute to stealing strength and capability from teens.

Courageous Parenting

Courageous parenting means facing the fear (yes, it is scary to let go and
allow your teens to make mistakes) and doing what needs to be done
anyway. Courageous parenting means taking the time to teach skills
even though it’s easier to criticize or rescue. Courageous parents have
faith in their children to learn from their mistakes in a supportive
atmosphere that does not include criticism or rescuing. Courageous
parenting is having faith in the basic capabilities of your teenagers and
knowing they can learn when given the room and support they need.

When you think of your teens as competent and capable people who
have the ability to learn what is good for them through experience, it’s
easier to be courageous.

Accidental Empowerment

Sometimes teens are allowed to work things out for themselves simply

because their parents don’t know what their teens are doing so they
don’t interfere. Roy shared an example of accidental empowerment:

I’m so glad I didn’t know Ian was cutting classes to go surfing for
most of the school year. He had a friend in the attendance office who
was covering for him, and his grades were A’s and B’s, so I never
found out. When Ian finally told me about his escapades, I said,
“How could I have missed all that?” He said, “Aren’t you glad you
did? We would have been fighting constantly and it wouldn’t have
changed anything except our relationship. I learned what I needed to
learn, too, when I couldn’t get into the university because of my
grades and had to start off in the state college. But you know what,
Dad, I’d probably do the same thing all over again. I’ve made tons of
great friends both surfing and at the college, and it cost a lot less for
me to figure out what I wanted to major in.”

If you are a courageous parent, you need to:

1. Surround yourself with other people who have the same
goals. (This may mean starting your own parenting support
group or working with a therapist who understands and
promotes Positive Discipline.)

2. Practice kind and firm parenting skills.
3. Teach skills to teens so they can manage their own lives.
4. Read this book again and again. You will learn something
new with every reading.

Parenting teens is an art form and it requires a big commitment on
your part. You need to take time for training yourself, as many of the
Positive Discipline parenting methods don’t come naturally. The great
news is that the more you practice respectful relationships with your
kids, the better your skills and theirs will be in all relationships.



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Thanks to our editor, Nathan Roberson, who was extremely helpful
and supportive of our many requests.

Thanks to our husbands Hal Penny and Barry Nelsen, who are
endlessly supportive and pick up so many pieces when we are knee-deep
in a book deadline.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

JANE NELSEN is the author and coauthor of twenty books and is a
licensed family therapist with a doctorate in educational psychology
from the University of San Francisco. She finds much of her material as
the mother of seven children, twenty-two grandchildren, and two great
grandchildren—and a very supportive husband. She wrote the first
Positive Discipline book in 1981. Later she teamed up with Lynn Lott to
write Positive Discipline for Teenagers, Positive Discipline A–Z, Positive
Discipline in the Classroom, Positive Discipline for Parenting in Recovery, and
When Your Dog Is Like Family (an ebook). Many books in the Positive
Discipline series have followed, and now have a following of thousands
in many languages.

LYNN LOTT is the author and coauthor of eighteen books and is a

licensed family therapist with a master’s degree in marriage and family
counseling from the University of San Francisco (1978) and a master’s
degree in psychology from Sonoma State University (1977). She has
been in private practice since 1978 helping parents, couples, teens, and
individuals and now does therapy with clients all over the world through
Skype. In her spare time, Lynn is an avid skier, reader, cook, and hiker.
She resides in California and Florida with her husband, Hal Penny. Lynn
is the mother of two, stepmother of two, and grandmother of six. For
more information about Lynn, visit www.lynnlott.com.

Together, Lynn and Jane have created training workshops in Teaching
Parenting the Positive Discipline Way and Positive Discipline in the
Classroom. Dates and locations for these live workshops (and the DVD
training formats for people unable to travel to live workshops) can be
found at www.positivediscipline.com, where information also can be
found about parenting classes taught by Certified Positive Discipline
Parent Educators in the United States and other countries.