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.
Order by phone. Money-back guarantee.
Call: 1- 800- 310- 6289 with credit card information
$9.95 each plus $1.00 Shipping and handling
All books shipped US Mail First Class.
shipping for 2 copies or more.
To correspond with the author:
policies@io.com
Return to Home Page
Copyright © Ad Wizards 1996.file.more_tip.htm.org.10.05.96.rev.10.20.97.