Discipline your teenager: As your child grow from a toddler to teen your responsibility about your child also increase. Adolescence is a time when your teens change physically, emotionally, and socially.
If we talk about your responsibility in this phase of your teens growth then I will definitely say it’s a great responsibility for you also .The main objective of parenting about discipline in your teens is to help your teens to develop self-discipline in their lives.
Moreover, main purpose of your parental discipline should be to provide instructions and encouragement to your teen to live according to your family rules. Even when they are independent.
Topics
- Difference between Discipline & Punishment
- Why to discipline your teenager
- 15 Discipline strategies that can work for your teen
Difference between Discipline & Punishment
As parents this is the most important thing that you should know before you read any further.
Because when you have this awareness right your approach to discipline and punishment will change drastically.
We tend to interchange and use the words discipline and punishment as if they are one and a same. We think both are negative and teenagers will resist it.
Both are not negative but yes. Teenagers might resist to both. But more of punishment than discipline. Discipline and punishment are not one and the same and their approach is vastly different.
There are two types of discipline. It is positive and negative discipline. Punishment is only a small part of negative disciplining.
Discipline is a practice that is followed by parents or people of authority two teach children to follow the rules laid out in the family.
When we discipline our teenager. We are trying to help them to modify behaviour or developed our child character or protect them from untoward incidents.
Discipline contains teaching, learning and instructions basis the need.
Do you know that you can effectively discipline your child and build a strong relationship with them? Usually this is not possible when you only focus on punishing the child.
As mentioned, punishment is way of negative discipline. Usually punishment is given to put a stop two certain unacceptable behaviour.
Discipline and punishment impact different parts of our brain.
Discipline touches the thinking part of our brain. Since in disciplining we either attempt to teach or learn or instruct the teenager. When they hear us, they start to think and reflect on our input.
While punishment impacts the emotional part of our teenager brain. So, when we resort to punishment, we impart emotional pain on the teenager. This leads to fear, anxiety, depression, or anger and backtalking.
If you like to know more about these teen related issues. Your can browse though these topics using the given link. Teen issues.
Why to discipline your teenager
From now on, you have only left with few years to prepare your teen for real world. So, it is a great time to prepare your teen for coming life and challenges of life. Usually teens demand more freedom in this phase of their life.
So, it is a great responsibility on parents to manage such situations while providing proper guidance and enough freedom to their child. And at the same time discipline your teenager.
To know more about how to prepare your teen to face life challenges read our trending article Face challenges.
Discipline is all about guiding your teen on a proper and appropriate behavior.
Usually discipline for teenagers starts with open communication and warm relationship.
Discipline is about agreeing and setting limits for your teens about family rules and appropriate limits and help them to behave within these limits and rules.
15 Discipline strategies that can work for your teen
In this blog you can find some strategies how you can Discipline your teenager. Ways that when followed consistently in time will lead to discipline that can work for your teens.
Here are some effective tips about how to discipline your teenager that you can follow to develop discipline in your teen.
Set ground rules very clearly
You can Discipline your teenager by giving clear instructions. Setting ground rules clearly avoids a lot of conflict between you and your teen. When you set ground rules it is best that you explain to your teenager why the rules are set.
Also tell them why it is important for you and them, and how it will benefit them. Be available and open to clarify any doubts if they might have.
Such open communication can help in the teenager accepting the ground rules. Setting an acceptance of ground rule is the first step towards positive disciplining.
Make your expectations from your teen clear
Make your expectations clear is very effective way to direct your teen’s actions.
During simple talks and in a friendly way you can tell your child that what you are expecting from their studies, results this year or what you expect about their social habits and behaviors.
For instance, some of the sentences I have used which I found to be effective is. “I know, you always tell what you feel is right”, “I know my child is never going to lie in any kind of situation’’, “There is no way my kid will hide things from me..”.
You see where I am going with this. This kind of expectation not only build self-worth in your teen, but they will try to live-up with your expectations and it works to benefit both.
You like to know other ways in which you can develop self confidence in your teenager you can read article self-confidence.
Give reward and praise
Is a very good preventive method you can use to discipline your teenager. Give reward or praise to your teenager whenever you feel that your teenager has lived up to the family values. Or adhered to the expectation you had of them.
It will increase your teenager to repeat this acceptable behaviour. Also, it indirectly reinforces to your teenager your expectations from them.
Praise your teens for their good works and behavior and make sure it is not false praise. When we give our teens reward and praise then they will become more likely to do good things.
Clear and repeated communication
A good communication is the heart of any relationship.
When I say good communication, it is not just talking to your teen. It is having clear and repeated emphasis of ground rules again and again whenever possible
For example, when your teen is letting you know that he is going out with friends you can respond back by saying “okay be back by 7”. While you have already set the expectation that children must come back home by 7:00 PM. And your teen is aware of it. Yet, you are just using another opportunity to make sure that you are repeating and making it clear to your teen that 7:00 PM is the ground rule for returning home.
Similar examples are “Dinner at 7 PM, we will be waiting”, “Don’t drive more than 60 kmph”. Etc.
Such constant repeating of instruction will drill down the message into your teen and help you to discipline your teenager.
Model self-discipline
It is one of the best teaching ways to discipline your teenager. You are the first educator of your teen. Your self-actions make a great impact to your teens.
If you show self-discipline in your daily routine, then by following you your teen would show the same behavior.
You are the role model of your child if you do not follow the rules and discipline strategies, how you can expect your child will follow these?
As a parent it is your responsibility to teach your child self-discipline being an example yourself.
When you set yourself as a good role model you can effectively deal with all the challenges that your teen is throwing at you.
If you are a father and you would like to know on other ways in which you can deal with your teen son do reader article father and son.
Give extra responsibilities to your teen (Coaching)
If you really want to develop a responsible behavior in your child, this thing can help you a lot. By giving extra responsibilities to your teen they will try to meet with your expectations.
It can be any type of responsibility. It can be a chore in the house that is to be done like taking out trash, or doing laundry, cleaning table. It can be running errands for you during the weekend.
Make sure you are clearly defining the responsibility to your teenager. Do not try to throw adoc responsibilities at them often. Be consistent and not erratic.
This will help your teen in planning and scheduling their day better and have less flash points with you.
Try to align the responsibilities with your teens interest to get maximum output out of it. Example my first son likes going out and hence his responsibility was to buy our weekly provisions. And my second one likes gardening and he took the responsibility of tending to our vegetable garden
This kind of responsibilities make your teen extra more disciplined, responsible, and mature.
By making kids feel responsible and needed. Helps them in combatting depression. Where they feel that they have no purpose in this life. To know more about depression in teenagers read important article depression.
Spend quality time and share a good relationship with your teen
Believe me this is the best thing you can do if you really want a positive attitude in your teen. Because if you share a good relationship with your teens, they will feel free to talk about anything. This thing can prevent you and your teen from future problems.
Try to discuss things with your child with solutions. During your friendly talks you can teach your child important life lessons while you also discipline your teenager.
These life lessons also include sensitive topics such as sex educations. You can teach them your expectation on this topic by giving them awareness about sex.
Sexual discipline is also one of the primary things that parents need to enforce in their children. To know more about conversation openers and how to go about having a sex education talk with your child read article sex education.
Step into your teens World
Just think if we talk about boring things or things that are out of our teen’s interests, they will ultimately get bore from our conversations.
Because of this they will try to avoid conversations with us. To avoid such situation, we should become an interesting parent for our teens, so they can freely discuss things with us.
This is also a very effective way in which you can build emotional bond with your teenager. To know other ways, you can build emotional connection with your teen read our article emotionally connection.
When you have a good emotional connection with your teenager. Your teen is more receptive to hear you out and follow your instructions and be disciplined.
Prepare your teen for Trouble
One of the main goals of discipline is to help your teen stay out of trouble.
Life is unpredictable and in future your teen might get into a problem or trouble. As a parent it is your responsibility to prepare your child for such kind of situations.
Teach them how to overcome the problems and its consequences. Or how they can find solution of problems. Plan for situation that can cause trouble in your child life, educate them about it.
When they get into trouble and where your discipline has failed. Look at the intent to decide your next course of action. If it was unintentional then go about teaching and coaching them to conquer the situation.
Coaching is a method followed to discipline your teenager. And this will become a reference point for your teen, and they will be wiser in future.
Also, a teen who is confident to face challenges in life has comparatively less chances to have anxiety issues. To know more about anxiety issues in teenager read our article teen anxiety.
Give Consequence to your teen (Corrective)
Sometimes natural consequence teaches some life lessons, but in normal routine you should teach your teens that there is always a consequence of their action.
This consequence can be good and bad. From this your teen will learn a good behavior and ultimately do good actions.
You can also give consequences to your teens when they violate any rule of family.
For instance, if your teens break the rule of curfew of your house then you can disallow them to go outside for next week. This kind of punishment will teach them how to be punctual.
I understand that it is not easy, and this can lead into some serious anger and back talking episodes from your teen. However, being stern and consistent with your teen is very important. Equip yourself on how to handle back talks. Our article on teenage backtalk will be of some help to you.
Show firm behavior about rules and regulations
This is a corrective way to discipline your teenager. If your teen often violates your set of rules, then you need to give clear instructions to your teen.
Tell them you will not bear such kind of irresponsible behavior about the rules.
Tell them consequences of their irresponsible behavior. Do not make it an empty threat. Follow it through.
One of the things that I do when my sons break family rules is to ask them for what the consequence is. They will tell you what the consequence for their action is.
In that way I do not have to spell out the consequence instead all I have to do is acknowledge it and execute the punishment.
You can also tight rules like an earlier curfew or reduce the amount of time that they spend with electronics like mobile phones and computers.
Tell your teen to take responsibility of their actions
During teenage phase teens usually master in negotiating and in manipulating things. Whenever they will make a mistake they will try to negotiate or not accept the responsibility of their actions.
It is not a good habit at all. For this reason, you should tell your child to always take responsibility of their behavior.
You can also ask for fixing something they broke. For example if they are irresponsible with the car ,take away their driving privilege.From this thing they will learn to take responsibility of their actions and behavior.
Or ask them to replace something that they have broken by paying out of their pocket money. But ensure they own the mistake and take responsibility for it.
Have a progressive approach
You cannot develop and teach discipline overnight in your teens. It is impossible. This process takes time and teens also struggle with this. So, you should show patience.
Tell your teens they can make mistakes, or they will falter, or they can even fail, but the important thing is to learn from mistakes and strive harder next time.
Do not keep pointing out the mistake once you feel your teen has learnt their lessons and moved forward. Being regressive and nagging and pointing fingers will only make your teen frustrated and angry.
Discipline your teenager in a progressive forward-looking manner.
Look for “why’’ behind your teens behavior
If you notice a bad behavior and inappropriate action of your teen, for solution you should look for “whys’’.
It can be possible the reason of your teen misbehave is stress or any kind of depression.
So, before going for punishment you should find a reason of your teen action. This thing will develop more understanding relationship between you and your child.
And you will also get some insights on how to take the next possible step rather than blindly punishing the teen for the action.
Conclusion
Development of discipline strategies in teens is our responsibility. It is the important part of parenting. So, do not be depressed and frustrated you can do this.
This process become easier when you start self-discipline, your child automatically learns from you and the possibility of future troubles minimize.
Be a good role model for your teen and for this try to be more disciplined as it is very important for your child personality development.
In short, I just want to say discipline is a vital part of your child’s personality and success.
By discipline your teenager you help them to become clearer about what to do or what to not. To be more socially acceptable, personally balance life and be successful and happy.