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Adolescence
Adolescence and Honoring Agreements
Why adolescents can make more agreements with a parent than they tend to keep
Posted May 4, 2015
"She's allergic to work. It irritates her mood."
It’s a common and frustrating experience for parents. They ask the adolescent to do something, the adolescent readily agrees, but somehow what was asked for and agreed to, doesn’t get done.
Why would the adolescent agree to something they didn’t intend to do? Is it a case of faulty memory? No, they seem to remember what matters to them. Exactly. So, it’s probably a case of false agreement, better known as Positive Resistance—the adolescent using agreement to get out of doing what they agree to do.
POSITIVE RESISTANCE
The motivations for positive resistance are varied, although all seek the easy way out. It’s easier to give parents false agreement because you can always claim you just forgot, or you can buy time for making up a good excuse, or maybe they won’t check to see if you did as asked, or you avoid the time and effort it takes to argue, or so they can’t say that you refused to agree, or you can use having given agreement to claim you mean to do it later.
So does all this mean parents shouldn’t hold their teenager to agreements? Quite the contrary: it means parents need to have strategies for helping the adolescent keep agreements that are made. Six come to mind: Consistency, Nagging, Working the Exchange Points, Contracting, Active Waiting, and Explaining.
CONSISTENCY
When what parents want takes securing adolescent agreement, or what the adolescents wants takes giving agreement in return, parents need to treat that agreement seriously themselves. The rule is: never bring your teenager to agreement without committing yourself to see that it is kept. If you allow an agreement to go unfulfilled, you are communicating that sometimes you intend to hold the teenager to agreements made, and sometimes you don’t. Receiving this mixed message, the adolescent is likely to vote for “don’t,” to see if she or he can get off. After bringing your adolescent to agreement, demonstrate that now you expect fulfillment.
NAGGING
To get teenage agreements met, pursuit is often required when the teenager resists with avoidance and delay. Nagging is relentless repetition, using parental insistence to wear adolescent resistance down. Nobody likes it. It’s the drudgework of parenting. “I get so tired of having to keep after you!” And it’s a common aggravation for adolescents: “I hate how you nag!” But parental nagging is honorable, albeit taxing work. In service of getting agreements kept, it sometimes needs to be done. And if there are two parents in the family, this exhausting and unappreciated pursuit needs to be shared, or else resentment will arise between them. Nagging shows that parents will supervise and follow through in getting agreement kept.
WORKING THE EXCHANGE POINTS
Of course, there are several alternatives to nagging that can be effective. One is working the exchange points. This requires exploiting the teenager’s dependence on parents for multiple services, permissions, and provisions. Here, parents simply turn any teenage requests to their advantage by insisting on an exchange: “First you do for me and keep that agreement you made; then I am happy to do for you.” If the teenager proposes, “I will when I get back,” simply hang tough and insist on getting your part of the exchange satisfied first.
CONTRACTING
When agreements are casually ignored or dismissed, parents can formalize the procedure. They can insist on a written contract to verify that the agreement was made. The contract specifies the task agreed to, for example, and by what time it is to be completed, a signature required recording the understanding. “This is silly!” protests the teenager. “Yes, it is,” the parent replies. “But it is also serious. Since spoken words have proved insufficient, I intend to hold you to written account.”
ACTIVE WAITING
The following dialogue illustrates this third alternative to nagging.
The Scene: a teenager lying down, playing on an iPad.
The Opening Action: a mother walks in, smiles a silent greeting, stands by the bed, and looks fondly at the young person.
“Mom, what are you coming in here for? Why are you just standing there? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m just waiting.”
“For what?”
“For you to do what you agreed.”
“Well I will. I told you. I’ll do it later.”
“That’s fine. I’ll just wait quietly by wherever you are, until you do.”
The parent who shared this genial strategy said it mostly worked like a charm.
EXPLAINING
“What’s the big deal?’ the adolescent may want to know. “So I didn’t do as I agreed, so what?”
“The big deal is this,” the parent might explain. “When you make an agreement, you give your word. For your sake, not just for mine, I want you to be a Word Keeper, not a Word Breaker. Keeping agreements, promises, and commitments are the building blocks of trust in a relationship. This is not about just with me, but with other people in your life, now and in the future. Continue breaking your word and you will hurt, perhaps even lose, relationships that matter because you can’t be trusted. Rather than agree to do what you really don’t intend to do just to put me off; it’s better to declare your objection and engage me in discussion up front.”
Teach that if an agreement is worth making; it’s worth keeping as well.
For more about parenting adolescents, see my book, “SURVIVING YOUR CHILD’S ADOLESCENCE,” (Wiley, 2013.) More information at: www.carlpickhardt.com
Next week’s entry: Adolescence and Goal Avoidance
