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Key points
- Compliance is not a matter of asserting parental control; it is a matter of getting adolescent cooperation.
- Adolescents need, and know they need, a family structure of rules and expectations to operate within.
- Always recognize adolescent cooperation and agreement with parental appreciation.
Looking back, many parents might say that their daughter or son was easier to govern as a child than as an adolescent.
They would not be misperceiving.
Detaching from parents and childhood for more independent action, and differentiating from parents and childhood for more individual expression, the adolescent is increasingly driven for separation, experimentation, and opposition to create more room to grow.
In this sense, an adolescent is no longer just a “child.” As one parent, invoking the Wizard of Oz, put it: “This isn’t Kansas anymore!”
An adolescent is no longer a child
So, consider one aspect of this difference. While a child grew up in the age of command, believing in the illusion that parents had sufficient power of authority to make her or stop him, the adolescent knows better.
She or he now realizes that parents do not control their decision-making: “My choices are up to me. They need my cooperation to do what they say.” In this sense, the adolescent grows up in the age of consent.
Compliance is not a matter of asserting parental control; it is a matter of getting adolescent cooperation. And, to coin a common piece of prickly adolescent advice, parents should “get used to it.”
Why adolescent consent?
If this change from command to consent rings true, then why does the adolescent go along with anything parents want? I believe the answer is that in addition to still agreeing with some of what parents want, still wanting to please parents, and not wanting to rock the boat with parents, adolescents have a more powerful incentive to mostly fit into the family structure of responsible rules and expectations that parents set, and it is this.
Part of the adolescent awakening about having theoretically unfettered personal choice is the young person knowing this means they have much more freedom now than is comfortable and good for them. Yes, they feel more liberated; but they also feel more frightened because the larger world of personal and older possibilities is truly daunting. How are they to make all the decisions that come with making their more independent way? And how are they to know which decisions are to the good and which are not?
Freedom can feel overwhelming, which is one reason why it often feels easier to take it in the company of peers than just by oneself: "Freedom feels safer with friends." Another reason is that it can feel easier to let parents decide what you can or cannot do than to have to figure life out and make up your own mind: "Freedom feels safer when my parents support it."
How parents can get discouraged
I believe adolescents need, and know they need, a family structure of rules and expectations (do’s and don’ts of conduct) to operate within. However, some parents can get discouraged on three counts.
- “What’s the point of setting limits and making demands when we get so much argument? She doesn’t respect our rules!” No. If she argues about the rules, she respects them enough to take issue with what you want. Disrespect is when she ignores what they have to say. She is giving consent to their authority to state the family rules when she says she doesn’t agree with them.
- “What about refusal? What about when she won’t do anything we want?” No. Anytime parents start believing they are bankrupt of influence over their adolescent, they need to stop and inventory the adolescent consent they are already being given. So, although she is refusing to do much homework thoroughly because in her view it’s a waste of time, she is consenting to get herself up in the morning on time to get to school. She is consenting to live by regulations at school. She is consenting to behave in class and even participate in class discussions. Parents always need to fit the adolescent’s current opposition within the larger picture of cooperation and consent.
- “What about defiance, when he refuses to live within our rules? We’re just wasting our energy and time!” No. Even if the unruly young person goes through a period of violating family rules and requirements, continuing to state a secure family structure is not a waste of parental effort. It provides a steady reference for what parents believe is in youthful best interest. Parents must toughen up to let natural consequences of free-living bite and keep repeating and reminding, explaining and insisting, continuing to offer constructive choice points for safe and responsible behavior. Just because they are not getting compliance at the moment doesn’t mean that they won’t get it in time. Their constancy in providing a responsible family structure counts, so they need to hang in there.
In most cases, it’s harder to get ready consent from an adolescent than was more willingly provided by a child, but it is by no means impossible. What doesn’t serve parents, in the face of strong teenage resistance, is backing down, shutting up, bowing out, and essentially giving up their structural responsibility, thereby setting the adolescent dangerously free.
Gaining consent
To get compliance, parents have to positively or negatively appeal to the young person's immediate self-interest to persuade the teenager to go along with what they want or do not want to have happen. Gaining consent is a matter of convincing, not control.
And there are many strategies for convincing worth a try. Consider a common few:
- explaining personal need,
- bargaining and negotiation,
- offering incentives as motivation,
- providing reasons to give justification,
- arguing and winning the disagreement,
- hearing out complaints before getting agreement,
- pursuing a request with relentless supervision until it is done,
- making future permission or provision contingent on present cooperation.
Responsible parenting gives the adolescent continual opportunity for constructive consent—a chance to make choices to go along with what parents believe is necessary and wise. And when they finally get consent, they need to positively recognize this act of cooperation: “Thank you for going along with what we asked.”
Always recognize adolescent cooperation and agreement with parental appreciation.
