Reply to Completely Lost It on my Teen DD

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm going thru this with my 15 year old son. god help us.[/quote]

15 was awful!!! That was last year, when we wondered if college was in his future, or maybe jail. This year he's wonderful, full of hugs. Right now he's in the room next door studying for one of his four AP classes, he's pulling almost straight As and he has plans for getting everything up to all As by the end of the quarter. I'm not making this up. DH and I joke that Martians invaded him and our real son is on a remote island somewhere--or maybe the Martians were last year.

OP, the advice to apologize was great advice. We screamed back at DS last year, and then we apologized. You may not have seen a visible reaction from your daughter, but she did clock it. You have the satisfaction of knowing you did the right thing, and you modeled it for her, and that the lesson will stick. Rising above the insanity is almost as satisfying as taking away the cellphone, which we did too.[/quote]

PP again. Also, you need to sit down as a family and lay out some rules for fair fighting. I forget all the rules we read somewhere, but here are a few. Try googling "assertive communication."
- No mindreading other peoples' viewpoints ("you won't let me go to the party because you hate my friends") 
- Talk in terms of "I" and "here's my viewpoint."  Express your own concerns in terms of how something makes you feel ("when you stay out past midnight, I worry about your safety on the roads") and hinge your rules around that.  
- No hyperbole involving words like "never" or "always," as in, "you never do XYZ" or "you always procrastinate"
- Say "I love you" a lot
- Praise her for things she does well.
- Everybody takes a break if the conversation gets too heated. An hour break, not 1-2 days.
Sometime when everybody is calm, make sure understands these rules and sees the logic in them.

Also, write out your house rules (curfew, chores). Up front, lay out some consequences and rewards, so that she knows them beforehand. You will definitely want rules about curfew, driving, chores, grades, whatever else is important to you. Let her have a say in some of the consequences or rewards, so that she gets some buy-in. Some stuff is obviously non-negotiable, like no drinking and driving, or some minimum GPA. Then, when you do need to inflict a consequence, stick to your guns even if you're tempted to relent - just do what you said you would do. [/quote]

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