The end of a long Saturday corralling teenagers and a toddler. National Service day was a success and all went well with consequences for my newest member of the teen pool!
You ever have a child that just absolutely refuses to follow rules and uses EVERY, and I mean EVERY, excuse as to why YOUR rules are dumb and should be ignored? Well, this last Thursday was my day for this experience! My partner got really tired of listening to a moody, passive/aggressive thirteen year old and told her to clean as the consequence to her big 'TUDE. The problem with this idea is that it started at 9:00 pm at night and she took off. Took off and disappeared!
Now our neighborhood is like many others, in that we have an over abundance of registered sex offenders living near by. So true to teenage fashion, my precious daughter whom I love, took off and disappeared at night with NO pants only short shorts and a sweatshirt. She didn't even have a pair of shoes on. However, Mommy is not one to jump at a chance to "rescue" my kids so I let her go for about an hour. Needless to say, the next three hours had me, my partner/hubby, my ex, her 17 1/2 yr old sister and a slew of friends and neighbors looking for her and eventually the police.
She eventually came out of her hiding place to come face to face with her biological father, the police and me. Now if you are anything like me and have an EX, there is a pretty good reason that person is your ex! This situation was no different in driving that point home with a sledge hammer! My thirteen year old made it sound like her step dad was beating her, which was NOT the case, so that she could get her dad's approval. The police took one look at me and one look at the ex and realized I was right! She was doing all of this because she didn't want the consequences her step dad gave her.
Raising teenagers in this day and age is difficult at best and frustrating at the most. I am not a stranger to raising teenagers since I have raised three other children to adulthood and have a toddler on her way. The problem is that my thirteen year old thinks that consequences are abuse and I am NOT talking about using her hands to clean the cat box or something completely vile. I am talking about sweeping or mopping floors, vacuuming, disinfecting a counter or two and doing dishes kind of thing. The reason I am telling you this is that the style for my parenting for teens is very similar to that which I do on a school bus...give them enough rope to hang themselves! So our mantra here is:
"You have ALL the power in the world to make WHATEVER choice you want to make BUT you are not free to choose your CONSEQUENCES!" Good or bad your choice will determine what your consequence will be and since I prefer to let the punishment fit the crime it can be very fulfilling in teaching them the right way to go!
So here is what happened after the police got involved. My daughter boo hooed about how bad she had it, her dad sympathized with her and threatened to take to court, thus coming to our daughter's rescue. I sent our daughter in to bed since it was a school night. Then I discussed the taboos of what he was doing and how I would have to come up with a consequence that would not affect her since it was his weekend and he had to do fun things to make up for his lack of presence. Like I said there is a reason we have ex's, and this one is no different!
Thank goodness, he finally decided to see reason! My suggestion was that not only would my daughter not get to go to the birthday party she was invited to on Friday but she would have to participate in the National Service Day activity that was being hosted by our church on Saturday! Hard labor to work off. My ex agreed and then we told my daughter this: "You had the power to make good or bad choices and tonight was an extremely bad choice! Now your consequences are that you still have to go to school in the morning which means you only get five hours of sleep instead of eight or nine, lose the birthday party and you have to work on Saturday too!"
My daughter hates my rules, because I don't argue with her or yell...I just tell her these are the rules cut and dry! Now do I have moments when I want to throttle her or any of my other children? OMG! YES!!!!! It isn't easy staying unemotional when dealing out consequences especially when you know they can do better and become the best person in the world! However, I have learned through trial and error, LOTS of mistakes that the BEST way to handle teens in today's world is to give them the power to make the choices YOU are able to live with and give them the consequences that they deserve!
Hope this helps...Off for now to give cuddles to my 23 month old before she grows up into the teen 'Tude I know she will become! Until then...good luck fellow parents out there!
Nikki
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