More Tips on Parenting from
Mickey Michaels

Your Room is a Disaster:

• It will be a constant source of conflict and frustration if you insist that a child keep her own room perfectly neat and clean at all times.

• It's a matter of consideration for others that everyone picks up his own clutter from the common areas.

• This does not apply to the child's own room.

• You don't have to live there. If you keep the door shut, you don't even have to look at it.

• The older your child gets, the more the ability to control her own space becomes a central need for her.

• If you don't turn it into a control issue, eventually your child will decide to clean up her own room.

• If you make it a power struggle, she will resist no matter what.

Single Parents:

• If you're trying to keep a perfect house, lower your standards.

• If you're trying to be Ward or June Cleaver, forget it.

• Ward and June Cleaver never had to deal with the issues you do.

Choices, Decisions, Control:

• Choices make children feel they have some control over their lives.

• Children who are given some control feel less need to rebel.

• Let children make their own mistakes and learn from them -- as long as the consequences aren't fatal.

Money and Responsibility:

• It's a parent's obligation to provide a child with the necessities of life. The luxuries are optional.

• The parent gets to define what is necessity. If the child wants more than that, she can pay the difference with her own money.

• Shoes are a necessity. Designer tennis shoes are a luxury. Stereos, TV's, VCR's, and CD's are luxuries. A car of her own when the child turns 16 is a luxury.

Surviving the Teenage Years:

• All teenagers think their parents are hopelessly 'out of it'.

• All teenagers think their parents are embarrassingly weird.

• All teenagers find it humiliating to be seen in public with their parents.

• All teenagers would rather be orphans -- except they need you to drive them to the mall!

Don't Take Anything Personally:

• Bizarre behavior and total rejection are normal teenage behavior.

• If you hate the way your teenager dresses, be grateful that she doesn't have green hair and a ring in her nose.

• If she does have green hair and a ring in her nose, bite your tongue and consider this a character-building experience -- your own!!

• Keep your mouth shut! The more you resist it, the longer she will cling to it. It will become a battle for control that you cannot win by force.

• Once you give up control willingly, she is then free to choose an appearance that is less bizarre.

• Your teenager's need to rebel is in direct proportion to your need to control.

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