Last week we set the stage for how to help your pre-teen make smart choices for their budding friendships. This week, we look at the other half of the battle, which involves ongoing supervision and involvement in your child’s activities.
As always, just the right balance is called for here. You will probably not succeed as a ruthless dictator. Nor will you succeed as an indifferent, too-busy-to-pay-attention enabler. We need to actively pay attention, and guide our kids’ choices as best we can, while accepting our limitations. God knows we can’t know it all or control it all. Still, we have the right to know WHERE our children are hanging out, WITH WHOM they’re hanging out, and WHAT they are doing while they’re hanging out.
Make it clear that your children are earning the privilege to go out and socialize with friends. The more honesty and integrity they show you in their choice of social activities, the more trust and independence they can earn. So when they say they’re going to be with friend X at place Y doing activity Z, they darned well better be doing just that. You have the right, in fact the responsibility, as a parent to pre-certify that this choice is A-OK – that it’s consistent with your family’s values and your child’s best interests.
How do you safely certify your child’s social choices? Here’s my list of “Top 10 Tips:”
1. Be very clear with your child what is and is not acceptable behavior, and what consequences will follow what behaviors. Remind your children that the fun or not-so-fun results are up to them and the behavioral choices they make. If things have been really rough, you can literally make a list and post it of “Approved” and “Not Approved” Persons, Places, and Activities for your child.
2. Get to know the friend’s name (both first and last – you’d be surprised…), as well as the friend’s address, phone number, and parents’ names. You need to know this information in case of an emergency, so get it up front as a matter of course, period.
3. Talk to the friend’s parents, on the phone and then in person, about the kids’ plans, your expectations, and the need for open communication between you and them. These are your allies, make sure you feel that way!
4. Have your child invite the friend(s) over to your house for an after-school activity or dinner before your child does other things with them.
5. Spend the first few minutes chatting with your child and the friend about their day, interests, family, etc. Then briefly review house rules with them together. Yeah, the kids may be uncomfortable, embarrassed, or bored, but you want to know if this friend has the basic social skills and manners that you expect. And you want this friend to see you as a present parent, one who is in charge of this household, who they are accountable to, and who they can turn to if there is any trouble.
6. Let the kids go have their fun, keeping one eye and one ear on the activities. Check in periodically, offer refreshments, whatever, but do so sparingly. Now is the time to show some trust.
7. Provide consistent discipline. Don’t let the children get away with behaviors you find unacceptable just because you’re afraid of embarrassing your child in front of your friends. Stick to your guns right from the beginning, and you will be sending a powerful message to your children and their friends. A little bit of this may actually stick and lead to some self-discipline when they are away from your monitoring eyes and ears.
8. Wrap up the get-together by having a brief, casual conversation with the kids together again, perhaps while transporting the friend home. Regardless of transportation arrangements, make sure all the kids always check in to say “hello” and “goodbye” with you. It’s a safety check, it’s good manners, and it’s establishing a real relationship with them, so they will respect your influence in a more real way. Plus it’s just plain friendly and fun.
9. Afterwards, process briefly with your child how it went for them. You are not interrogating, you are earnestly interested in whether your child had a good time, and if they think they want to spend more time with this friend. Have an open dialogue, and be frank about what you enjoyed or didn’t about the friend. If the friend crossed clear limits for acceptable behavior, be clear that this cannot continue. Don’t attack or criticize your child. Support him or her in thinking about what to do given the problem. Encourage your children to think about how they could stop or redirect that behavior in their friends, how they could pursue other activities or situations that wouldn’t as likely lead to the forbidden behavior, or how they could better spend their time with other friends.
10. If things went well, encourage and support your child in spending more time in various activities with this friend. The best defense against antisocial behaviors in adolescence is having your child engaged in prosocial activities and relationships. Fill the void with good stuff, and more good stuff will happen.
In addition to academics, success in the social arena is becoming the primary job of your pre-teen. Help them succeed. Join your child in constructive thinking about their behavioral and social choices. Then let them venture off to experiment.
It’s not a perfect science – for parent or child – mistakes will be made. But with these safeguards in place, we all stand a better chance.
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