Freedom Without The Consequences
Freedom Without The Consequences
By Mark Hughes, Parent & Teen Life Coach @ The Karma Institute
Today’s teenager is given greater freedoms than any other teenager that has come before them. Many have cell phones, a lot of them have use of a car at 16, and almost all of them demand greater freedom but don’t want the responsibility of the consequences. They have come to take for granted their liberties and have done little to assume the responsibility of their behavior.
Our teenagers have come to expect greater entitlements. They expect certain privileges to be extended to them as a matter of course. They don’t often ask if they can do something, they tell us. They consider their non-stop schedule to be routine, certainly not out of the ordinary. Look around, all the other parents of teens are on the same merry-go-round, too. We indulge our kids early on with sports clubs, private lessons, lavish parties and graduations, and seek first their happiness by permitting recreation to take precedence over household chores. And we wonder why our teens think primarily of themselves? We as a generation of parents have gone overboard with indulging our kids with a belief that they are entitled to have fun, seek pleasure at all costs, and enjoy life without the balance of work and responsibility.
One warm summer day, I was out mowing our lawn while my daughter was working on her art work and my son was “finishing up” on a video game. Across the street a couple was washing their car while their son was in the garage practicing his drums. At the end of the street, a father, wearing goggles and protective clothing, was swinging the weed-wacker while his two sons were playing catch. Have we lost our minds? I have shared this scenario with a number of my therapist friends and asked, “how did we get to this situation with our kids”. To date, no one has given me a reasonable answer. I personally have come to believe, being a single parent myself, that given 50% of marriages end in divorce, 50% of us feel guilty and overindulge our kids to make up for our failure as a parent. With that many more Disneyland Parents around, there are that many more kids competing for entitlements.
I know that as a parent I find it much easier to give in than to reason with my teenager’s ambition to “be entertained all the time”. I also know when I give in it is driven most of the time by my desire for them to be happy. Are we serving our teens by suggesting life is all about being happy? Shouldn’t they learn there are disappointments or responsibilities sometimes? It takes a lot of patience and perseverance to logically reason with your teen about the importance of balance: play vs. responsibilities, happiness vs. duty. None of us like it but we must be ready for the heat when we say, “No”. The problem is that you can’t say no all the time to a teen. Saying no repeatedly is saying, “go ahead and build up resentment, do it anyways, and lie to me about everything”. Until the teen is a part of the decision making process, there will always be resentment and resistance if we say “no”.
Recently, my teenage daughter took the initiative to drive quite a distance to put some of our things under shelter when the thunderstorms were brewing. I was quite proud of her and told her, “true maturity is when you do something you don’t want to do but you do it anyway”. How often do we encourage or reward our children for doing things that they don’t want to do but they do it because it is the right thing to do? We need to do that more. We need to be willing to teach our children that being in a family requires us all to do things we don’t want to do. This is accomplished by making agreements that the teenager has agreed to keep. Something magical happens when they keep their agreements regularly and begin to get a feel for doing the right thing regardless of the forfeiture of fun.
The key to raising teens is empowering them to make their own decisions. That starts with developing family guiding principles that they agree to. These are predetermined principles that are used in making sound decisions (ie safety, harming others, moral, legal, etc.) It is extremely important that you have established boundaries and mutually agreed upon agreements. Having clearly defined boundaries (ie curfew, friends over, nights out, etc.) and mutual agreements (ie “I’ll get my chores done before I go to the movies”) will move you towards a more harmonious household and teach your teen that with freedom comes responsibility. They learn that by demonstrating responsibility, they open themselves up to more freedoms. Empowering your child to make sound decisions on their own and recognize that breaking agreements can result in consequences teaches them how to be responsible members of the community.
Once this is put into place, parents are better prepared to ask (vs. demand or dictate) their teen if their decision or their action is reasonable or within the guidelines of their established agreements. When the teen begins to take ownership of their decision making and steps into the responsibility of their actions, the sense of entitlement seems to diminish over time. This is the process of turning into an adult and taking charge of your own life and being accountable for your actions. After all, isn’t that what we really want for our kids?
The art of making good decisions is an invaluable life skill. It turns the unruly, unreasonable, unpredictable, adventurous teenager into one that learns life is not all about them. It builds their confidence and self worth while they define who they are by the decisions they make. It rids them of the unaccountable decisions that lead them to violence, drug and alcohol abuse, or destructive behavior that rules a large percentage of our youth population today. Turning the decision making process over to the teen does not promote indulgence but rather teaches responsibility and self respect. Accountability encourages teens to consider more thoughtfully their zest for entitlements by questioning themselves about the decisions they make. At that crucial moment in a teenager’s life, isn’t that what we want?
Mark Hughes is a parent and teen life coach and founder of The Karma Institute. Mr. Hughes holds workshops and speaks nationally on the topics of parenting teens, hiring Millennials, divorce recovery, and overcoming adversity. He can be reached at mark@karmainstitute.org.
