Photoessay #2881 - Moving out

The parent group I work with helps parents of acting out and young adults move forward.  Both the parents and the young (and sometimes not so young) people.

When we are in a difficult parenting situation, we often enable the very behaviors we want to change.  "Watering the Weeds," from Duct Tape Parenting, a good parenting book for younger children.  We think we're being helpful and having standards and working with our children and, in some senses, we are.  But we often cripple them by not allowing them to live their own lives.

We're too afraid.

Of what might happen.

Of making us look like  bad parents

So we cajole and control; try to make them do what we think they should be doing.  We don't know when to stop.  In fact, if things get messy and our kids 'make bad choices' or 'act out,' we often redouble our efforts to 'get them back on track.'

This works sometimes.  But mostly it doesn't.  The parent give the message loud and clear 'you are incapable of making good choices so I must do your thinking for you.'  Which makes them even more determined to do things their own way.  I know I would.

It's so tempting to do 'if then' parenting.  If you do this then I will ....  We think it's giving positive incentives but it's control and manipulation on our part. Conventional parenting teaches if then parenting.

We might look longingly at other families where parents apparently control their children.  The parents say they have to go to school and they do.  The parents set up an emancipation plan and it seems to work well.  It often plays into our societally encouraged habit of generosity.

For example:  I was working with a friend who had a 15 year old daughter who was completely and intentionally out of the parents' control.  The mom tried hard to know where the daughter was going and to 'make sure' the situation was safe and approved.  You know, the 'know where your kids are' thing.

Despite the mom's best efforts to control the daughter's movements (and the scumbags she was hanging out with), the daughter always eluded the mother.  "I check and double check," the mom tells me.  But she's still running around all night!  But I know what I need to do!"

"What?"  I asked.

"Triple check!" the mom says with conviction.

"No!" I counter, "you need to realize that you cannot control where your daughter goes and stop trying to control what you cannot control.  You're making yourself nuts!"

Sometimes the parents reach the point when their adult child needs to leave their home.  They're enabling his bad behavior by giving him a safe harbor.  He continues his destructive ways and they are helping him.

Parent Group has a whole way to orchestrate the adult child's departure from the parent's home.  IMO I don't like subsidized moveouts (where parents provide money to help get the young person started).  Nor do I like conditional moveouts (where parents set forth some conditions in which the young person can stay).  It's time to let all that controlling behavior go.  It's time for them to decide the young adult chart own life course without the weight of your expectations.  It's time for them to put their energies in building their own lives.

I'm working with some parents right now and, even at the last minute, they lapse into the controlling mode (you can stay if you apply for three jobs each week, etc)  Aaack!

Be the rock!