The July issue of Child Development highlights the impact of teen conflict at home on their peer relationships and vice versa.

Given the impact of teen-parent conflict, here is a script that, if used regularly, is guaranteed to reduce unhealthy communication between parents and children. Below is an example of a parent and child initiated conversation using the Conflict Script. It may seem contrived initially, but overtime it becomes the default of how to handle disagreements that will have positive spillover into your teens relationships outside the home.

The conflict script has rules for the speaker and listener. Both parties have to commit to calm talk and careful listening.

Rules for the Speaker: use the acronym POPIR (pronounced popper) to remember.

1. Permission to speak

2. Objective description

3. Primary Feelings

4. Internal Interpretation

5. Request for the future

Rules for the Listener: use the acronym CARC (pronounced Cark) to remember.

1. Cop to what you did do

2. Apologize

3. Reassure

4. Commit to change

Part 1: Mom is the speaker, daughter listener

Mother: Can I talk to you about what happened this morning. (1. Permission to speak)

Daughter: Sure.

Mother: This morning, when I asked you what your plans were for after school, you didn’t answer me and walked out of the apartment. (2. Objective description)

Mother: I felt anger, shame  and sadness. (3. Primary feelings)

Mother:What I made up in my head is that you don’t respect me and don’t see that I am trying to care for you. (4. Internal interpretation)

Mother:What I would like in the future is for you to answer me when I ask a question or tell me you don’t know if you are not sure of your plans. (5. Request for the future)

Listener:

Daughter: I did walk out of the house without answering. (1. Cop to what you did)

I am sorry for doing that. (2. Apologize)

I do respect you even if I don’t show it all the time and I do know that you want what is best for me. (3. Reassure)

I will answer you when you ask me a question. I know how annoying that can be.(4. Commit to change)

Part 2: Daughter is the speaker, mom the listener

Daughter: Is now a good time to talk about our fight last night? (1. Permission to speak)

Mother: Let me glass of water and we can sit down on the couch and talk.

Daughter: Last night you into my room without knocking, snuck up behind me and read my Facebook chat out loud.  (2. Ojective description)

Daughter: I felt angry and scared. (3. Primary feelings)

Daughter: What I made up in my head was that you don’t respect my boundaries and don’t trust me. (4. internal Interpretation)

Daughter: I really want you to knock before you come in my room and if you are worried abut something going on just ask me. (5. Request for the future)

Mother: I did sneak up on you and read your Facebook. (1. Cop to what you did)

And I apologize for not knocking. (2. Apologize)

I do understand your need for privacy. (3. Reassure)

And I will be more direct about questions that I have about what is going on with you and your friends. (4. Commit to change)

Gauranteed results!

A counterintuitive and interesting study was published in the Journal of Family Psychology about what helps and what hurts in talking to your teens about sex.  Conversations warning about the possibility of contracting an STD and disapproving of sex in general, were actually correlated with higher levels of sexual initiation, unprotected sex, and sexually transmitted infections.  It seems that the largest influence for safer sexual behavior was the teen’s positive perception of the relationship with their parents, not specific information.

The investigators found that higher levels of adolescent independence and lower levels of parent-adolescent relationship quality significantly predicted lower levels of condom use and this held especially true for younger adolescents.  Additionally, the teens that had lower levels of condom use could be predicted by having parents that disapproved of teen sexual activity.  So the more time the teen had unsupervised, the lesser the quality of his/her relationship with parents, and the more the parents outwardly disapproved of sex, the more likely their teen was to have unprotected sex.

Almost 80% of the adolescents that reported being abstinent during the beginning of the study reported the same a year later.  What predicted sexual activity for the remaining 20%?  Some of the strongest predictors were low parent-child relationship quality, higher levels of parent disapproval of sex, and parents’ talks about sexual costs such as STIs.  That’s right.  The parents that disapproved of sex and emphasized sexual risk had a higher likelihood of having a sexually active teen.

The best route for parents when it comes to their teens and sex is to focus less on the specific behavior/consequences and instead spend more time ensuring there is a healthy relationship that allows for open communication.

Source:
Deptula, D., Henry, D., & Schoeny, M. (2010). How can parents make a difference? Longitudinal associations with adolescent sexual behavior. Journal of Family Psychology, 24 (6), 731-739 DOI: 10.1037/a0021760

Sleep away camp is one of the most wonderful ways for children to form lifelong friendships, enjoy their independence and to just plain have fun. When it comes to getting letters, no news is good news!  The obligatory once a week, “Camp is good. I miss you,” letters are just fine. Try not to get pulled into the thrice daily checking of camp websites posting pictures of activities. You want your kids to really feel that other worldy feeling of summer camp.

So, if your kids are away, here are some do’s and don’ts:

Don’t call camp and complain that your child isn’t been photographed in more activities.

Don’t worry if you get minimal contact by mail, it is a good sign that your child is having a great time.

Do take adantage of your freedom and enjoy the time with younger kids, spouse and friends.

Do remember that the independence, skills and experiences that kids get at camp are some of the most beloved–so relax.

Our children’s emotional inner lives are complicated. Even by the beginning of the second year you can see ambivalence emerging. “Pick me up, put me down”, all at the same time. As they grow and develop, blends of feelings, and even opposite feelings can — and do exist at the same time. This can be confusing. Imagine your preschooler wanting to go to a friend’s party and also being scared. Or your school-age child wanting to give up on learning something hard and feeling angry about not getting it easily. How about your teenager wanting to have sex with her boyfriend and worrying about how it will impact the relationship. These conflicts are the stuff of life.

As a parent you can help them by pointing out, “A part of you wants to go, and a part of you is scared.” “A part of you feels like giving up and a part of you is frustrated because this is so hard to learn.” Instead of seeing only one overriding sentiment and overreacting to it, it helps parents to recognize that our child is not, “a scaredy cat”, or a “quitter”, those are just parts of them.

As you teach your child about mixed feelings, they start to find center and are more able to find what they most want to do. “I can hear you have mixed feelings about having sex and I have faith that as you make room for all those feeelings, you will make the best decision for yourself.”  Giving a voice to these different aspects of your children calms them down as they feel known and understood.

As the semester came to an end in college, I remember excitedly making my summer reading list. Nothing I had to read, just things I wanted to read. Creating the list was a signal that summertime was near, with less responsibility and a little more breathing room. I loved making those lists with my kids and doing the ritual trip to Barnes and Noble to pick out a stack for each of them. They ranged from Caldecott winners to The Babysitter’s Club.

With your children this can be a time to let them explore their interests, make choices while you support the idea that reading is fun and valuable even when not in school. In the age of Amazon, the actual bookstore experience is a special one, you stumble onto things you never even thought about, you look carefully at book jackets and have the solid feeling of a book in hand. This is a great summer ritual for you and your children.

A study of the mental health of college freshman shows record low levels of mental health and record high levels of stress. In “The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2010,” involving more than 200,000 incoming full-time students at four-year colleges, the percentage of students rating themselves as “below average” in emotional health rose. Meanwhile, the percentage of students who said their emotional health was above average fell to 52 percent. It was 64 percent in 1985.

” The study also reports that our children are coming into college already struggling. This jives with anecocdotal reports from college guidance counselors. While the economy may account for some of this stress, the demands of college admission and the drive for achievement is taking a toll. “The share of students who said on the survey that they had been frequently overwhelmed by all they had to do during their senior year of high school rose to 29 percent from 27 percent last year.”

The positive take away from this is that parents of middle and high schoolers can actively comfort and reassure children that their worth is not equal to their achievement. Parents need to counter the prevailing cultural ethos, and even maybe their own beliefs, that academic achievement is the road to happiness. The trends are clear, the mental health of our children is declining and anxiety and depression are on the rise. While as parents we can only control so much, one thing we can do is not add to the stresses of modern life. We can consistently remind our kids, in word and deed, that there are many ways to a fulfilling life. WE can give them a healthy does of skepticism about the “succeed at all costs” messages that bombard them. If they can internalize these values they can use them to counteract pressure they face.

It’s amazing how sophisticated and knowledgeable kids are. Middle schoolers can seem like adults with their vocabularies and knowledge of both current events and celebrity gossip. We can easily get pulled into treating them like adults both with expectations that are too high while exposing them to too much information. Here are some things to consider and compare:

Take some time to think about yourself when you were 11 or 12. What did you worry about? What was school like? Friends? Did you have too much freedom or not enough? What was home like? What did you do after school? How much homework did you have?

Chances are life was different. Familial issues may have been complicated but school life and outside pressure to achieve and excel were probably less pronounced. We can’t change the way the world works for our children but we can remember that they ARE children and they deserve to operate as children do.  No matter how sophisticated our children may seem, they still need lots of comfort, down time, play and silliness. Even as adults, we do too!

The new MTV series Skins has created much buzz since the January 17th premier with allegations of actually being child pornagraphy. The show really pushes the envelope. The first episode is filled with an abundance of flesh, drug use and teenage despair. Here is our best advice for parents: watch the show.

Rather than just banning it in your home, or surrendering to the fact that we ultimately can’t prevent kids from watching it, we can educate ourselves and enable an open and honest dialogue with our teens about the content.

Longtime Soho Parenting colleague Terry Real was interviewed on Good Morning America about his response to the racy show. His insightful and down to earth take on the series is helpful to parents. Watch Terry here as he explains the impact of the show on budding teenage sexuality. Both Terry’s and Soho Parenting’s message to parents is that communication with your teen is more important than whether they watch the show or not.

By Kim C. Flodin

Kim Flodin has been part of the Soho Parenting community 20 years, is a writer and mother of two daughters. Her work has been featured in Newsweek and New York Times, among other publications, and you can read more from her on her blog – http://blogsgotnotitle.blogspot.com/.

After a lifetime of even-temperedness, becoming a parent struck a chord that released both a passionate, besides-myself love, as well as an intense anger when things got tough.  My rage kicked off in my first-born’s toddler years; it intensified during my daughters’ teen years, especially my second child’s adolescence, which has been stormy.  If she yelled, I yelled louder.  If she got snarky, I replied in kind.  If she threw something, I threw two things.  It wasn’t pretty.

With my elder girl wrapping up her teen years and my “baby” half-way through them, I can report that things have been better, a lot better.  For months now.  And not by magic.  To help turn the tide, I had to learn that:

* I needed help.  Last year, my husband and I enrolled in a six-week, one-on-one immersion in counseling specifically to learn new skills and new ways of doing things, all the while going to half a year of monthly parenting coaching sessions.  I kept (and keep) up my individual therapy.  I mean, really, I can be taught.

* My home is refuge for my children from a sometimes-scary world, and if I infect this refuge with more scariness, where can they turn to?

* This is not about me and my hurts and my pain.  I have other places to bring that to and other people to whom I turn for help.  I have to be bigger than that for my girls.

* My hurts and pain, and even my rage, are real and deserve honor and attention in appropriate settings.

* It’s important to sometimes shut up and stop teaching, guiding, critiquing, limiting, punishing, expressing disappointment and dismay, and instead paint our nails or play ping-pong.

* I can still be mad, piping mad, but there is a line between anger and rage that I wish to respect always.

* I don’t have to make my kids admit that they understand my every opinion or decision and that they have become so won over by my exquisite reasoning and persuasiveness that they express, “Aha, mama, I see the light,” and willingly accept my every limit, conclusion or judgment gladly and with grateful hearts.  Sometimes, it’s enough to just say, “It is so.  I’ve explained why.  You don’t have to like it; it is still so.”

* It’s ok for my kids to be angry with me.  Their anger can work itself out without my responding every single time in kind.

* It’s overwhelming to them and to me to vent all my collected frustration at their every mishap in any given moment.  “What!  You didn’t clean your room again?  You never clean your room, and you don’t go to bed on time, and you are always behind in your assignments, and you need a haircut, and you were late coming home from that party, and and and.”  As one wise counselor advised, “Don’t kitchen-sink it.

* Taking breaks really helps in the moment of anger (walk away, mama), and in the bigger picture (a date night out, a few days away).

* “We are all doing the best we can.  We can all do better.”  More wise words from the wise counselor.

* We are all destined to follow our own paths and sometimes those paths are mysterious and winding and all the amount of guidance and “whoah, Betsy’s” that I extend can’t always change a child’s individual journey.  Or at least not now in the moment and maybe never, as hard as that it is to accept.

* I do love my children unconditionally.  If they take a million years to figure things out, make terrible mistakes, and maybe never get their act together—these things won’t matter more to me than that I love them above and beyond anything in this world.  Period.  End.  Stop.

Do you want a sure fire way to model good behavior for your kids? Take them with you to vote.  For small children it is beginning an important ritual with them. For your school aged children,  not only is this modeling it a great opportunity to discuss what voting means and what a privilege it is. It can open up many discussions about  what matters to you, hear their ideas, and get them engaged with the world around them. It helps give them a sense of power and voice and responsibility.

Though it seems like government disappoints so much, voting is still a rite that many people in the world don’t have.  Though so many huge problems exist around us we can do our little part and instill that value in our children. That half hour or so, that you spend going to the polls together will be embedded in your child’s mind forever.