parenting mistakes

there are two kinds of assistance that parentscan give their teens. first one is instructional assistance, the second on is inner mind oremotional assistance. and they take slightly different ways of delivering. of course bothof these types of assistance, we are not going to do as parents until we are invited to doit. the first the instructional type is the have to do it stuff and we are used to tellingour kids everything. so, the way the shift happens is we are going to let them do thethings they need to do, especially when we start to tell them and they start to say irather do it myself mom. at that point we walk away, we say if you need me i will bein the kitchen, if you run into a problem just ask me, i am available; we walk awayand let them do it. when asked we provide

that instruction. the only covenant to this,the only place where i actually do instruction to begin with, is when it comes to thingswhere they might get themselves in trouble or in harms way; like learning how to drivea car, operating a piece of property. with that i tell them right off the bat, i am goingto show you how to do it, i am going to demonstrate it, i am going to let you do it and demonstrateto me that you can do it well and then i am going to walk away and let you do it. andat that point i am going to walk away and let him do it. with motional and inner feelingstuff, with that once again let them have their feelings, let them sit there and dowhat they need to do. at the same time letting them know that whenever they would like todiscuss it, we are here to discuss it with

them. and when they do start to discuss theirfeelings, a very, very critical thing at this point is to let them finish talking about,let them finish their sentence. i know one of my problems with my son was that i wouldjump on his lines and what happens when you jump on a teenager's lines meaning you arealready giving them an answer before they are finished with a question, even if youknow where their question is going to go is that they feel that you aren't listening tothem. and at that point they shut up, leave and you just lost your opportunity to somevery good parenting. so, the deal here is you shut up, they talk. when they are finishedtalking, you stay quiet for long enough so

that it seems even if you have an answer,it seems like you have been pondering their

question and then you either give an answeror even better ask a question so they can come up with their own answer and that waythey will start to be able to come up with their own answers and then you have been areally, really good parent.