How To Raise A Successful Teenager

 As I've been preparing my oldest child to move out of my house and live on his own, I am realizing just how important it is for our teenagers to have skills of independence. This is not something that we can cram in the summer after they graduate from high school so that they are ready to move out and live on their own. Independence is something that we have to be teaching them and allowing them to practice over and over and over throughout their teenage years. Since my son is getting ready to leave on a mission, he will be living in Mexico for the next two years. And part of the process of getting ready for that is that he had to get his passport and he had to get a visa and all of that requires a whole bunch of paperwork. Well, we finally got it all done and ready to send in so that he could get his final visa. And the last thing on the list was that we had to just put it all in an envelope and mail it. But of course, when you are sending your passport, you want to make sure that it's packaged in the right way and that it's going to get there quickly and that it's insured and protected so that you don't have any problems. And, having a lifetime of experience shipping things, I figured that the cheapest way to send this and still have the protections that we needed was probably to send it through the post office using a flat rate priority mail envelope for, you know, around 13. So I told my son exactly that and sent him off to ship this package so that we could get his visa. Later that day, I found a receipt from UPS on my counter for 29 and realized that he had misunderstood my instructions and instead of sending the package at the post office for 13, he had gone to the shipping store and paid a whole lot more than he needed to. Now, this is not a big deal at all, but it was just a good example to me that we don't know what our kids don't know until we have them do stuff on their own. Independence is such an important skill for our teenagers. Not only does it build their skillset in the actual things that they're doing and prepare them to live independently, but it also improves their problem solving skills when they are able to be independent and do things on their own. Because inevitably, they are going to hit a point where they have a problem and they're going to have to figure out how to solve it. But probably even more important than building their skills and their problem solving ability, it builds their confidence and their resilience. The transition between living at your childhood home to being an adult and living on your own is hard enough as it is. They are going to be experiencing so many emotions as they go through that transition. They're going to feel lonely. They're going to feel overwhelmed. They might be homesick and miss all the familiar comforts that they have grown up with. And imagine experiencing all of that and trying to figure out how to do basic tasks that you didn't realize you don't know how to do. Instead, wouldn't it be such a gift if we could give our kids the confidence that they know how to do the things they need to do because they have been doing them for years. And that is a gift that I want you to be able to give your child. Now, I have always been a little bit of a hands off parent. My parenting style has included lots of independence, lots of teaching my kids skills, and lots of letting them do it on their own. And I think some of that was out of necessity. I had a lot of kids in a little bit of time and I just could not possibly do it all. So my kids had to learn independence just so our family could function. But I have seen how that has really served us so well in so many ways. Yesterday, my seventh grade daughter called me from school at lunch and let me know that she was so excited because she had figured out how she could fix her schedule. Now this darling daughter of mine loves to play the cello and last year she did orchestra and just loved it so much. She was so excited to move up to advanced orchestra this year. But, when we got her schedule for the coming year, orchestra wasn't on it. And we talked to the school and realized that the way the master schedule had been set up, she had conflicting classes. And so, if she wanted to be able to take orchestra, she was going to have to give up her Spanish class. And that Spanish class is actually getting her high school credit, so she didn't want to do that. We had kind of resigned ourselves to the fact that she just wasn't going to be able to take orchestra this year because I had talked to the school and they had told me about the schedule and we had tried to work through lots of different scenarios and there just wasn't a way to make it work for her. But this cute girl of mine decided to take matters into her own hands and she started talking to all of her teachers at school. And as she talked to them about her dilemma of not being able to take orchestra and being so disappointed about it, her teachers worked with her and were able to come up with a plan that actually made it possible for her to fit orchestra into her schedule. Something that we could not come up with when I was talking to administration, but the teachers knew their schedule and were able to make some adjustments so that she could do the thing that she really wanted to do. Now, we're still waiting to hear whether it's all going to work out the way she hopes, but I was so proud of her for taking the initiative to talk to her teachers and advocate for herself and find solutions to the problem. This is the kind of confidence that I am talking about. This is what we create for our teens when we foster in them that sense of independence, when we allow them to do things and stop doing everything for them. Just like we talked about last week, we want to set them up for success by starting small. And I want to give an example of what this might look like, how we might start small and get bigger and bigger over time by using the example of making dinner. Now this is an exclusive to the teen years. This is a process you could start at any age with your kids, but I just want to show you the progression. If we want our kids to be confident in the kitchen and able to cook for themselves and make food that is delicious and healthy, we might start by inviting them into the kitchen with us when we're making dinner and have them be our helper. Give them little tasks that they can do and teach them how to do it so that they can learn. Things like stirring and measuring and chopping. As they start to learn some of these skills, we might have them be the cook and we be their helper. So they're in charge of doing it all and telling us what they need us to help with. Then we might put them in charge of making a meal that they know how to make from start to finish on their own. We would want to be nearby to answer questions if they need help, but they get to manage it and do it on their own. Next would be having them cook while you're gone. Having them be in charge of dinner one night when you're not home at all so that they have the opportunity to do it all on their own. Once they've gone through this process with recipes that are familiar to them, you might encourage them to find a new recipe and repeat this process. We have done this process at our house and I can tell you that some of my kids are actually better cooks than me because they've been able to find things on their own. Go through the process on their own. And sometimes they have to find solutions on their own that are actually better than the solution I might've given them, because I don't know how to make sourdough bread, but my daughter wanted to learn. And so she researched it and figured it out. And now she is a sourdough bread expert and it all started by giving her opportunities to build her confidence in the kitchen. So how do we do this? How do we build our teens confidence in their ability to be independent and do things on their own in these small and simple, gradual ways so that they don't get discouraged or overwhelmed and give up? We have to learn how to support them and stop doing it for them. Supporting means answering questions, providing resources. Providing encouragement, communicating your confidence in their ability to figure it out, and helping them find solutions for themselves. Doing it for them is telling them what to do, taking over, intervening when things get hard, and redoing the things that they have done because they weren't done up to your standard. Here are three things that you can do to stop doing it for them and start supporting them. The first is provide tools instead of solutions. If your child is struggling to manage their schedule and they can't remember where they're supposed to be and when and they can't keep track of their assignments and they're just having a hard time with organization. Instead of taking over and telling them where they need to be and when and having a nightly checklist where you tell them exactly what they need to do or having them tell you what homework they have and then telling them what order they should do that homework in. Instead, it would be so much better to help them find a planner. that they like and to teach them how to prioritize and to help them learn the skills and have the tools they need to plan and organize their schedule on their own. Second, you want to ask guiding questions instead of suggesting solutions. Questions like, what do you think you should do next? Or where do you think you could find that answer? Or what resources do you have available to help you with this? Even questions like, I wonder if you could find more information about this on YouTube, or I wonder what would happen if you just try that, can be a really great way to guide your teen toward finding the answer for themselves. The third thing you can do is be a listening ear instead of a helping hand. Now sometimes our teenagers do want us to just offer them a solution, to just give them a suggestion, but most of the time what they want is someone to listen, someone to empathize. Someone to acknowledge and validate what they are experiencing. Trying new things, learning to be more independent, comes with a lot of failure. And that doesn't feel good. And your team just wants some support. They want to know that it's going to be okay. And that you support them. And that you believe that they can handle this. Finally, I wanted to give you a list of ideas of areas where you can stop doing things for your teen and encourage them to start becoming more independent in these areas and start taking responsibility and doing these things for themselves. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it is meant to get you thinking about some areas where you might be able to help your teen develop the skills that they need to become more independent. Making dinner. Purchasing cleaning supplies and laundry supplies and testing products and deciding how they like them. Talking to their teachers. Filling out their own paperwork, especially at like registration or doctor's offices. Managing their homework schedule. Doing their own laundry. Having their own bank account. Doing their own car maintenance. Handling conflicts with friends or teachers. Purchasing their own clothes and staying within a budget. Using public transportation, coordinating their own rides to get places, waking up to an alarm, making appointments with doctors and dentists, going grocery shopping and staying within a budget, talking to their coach when they have an issue on their team, comparing prices for things that they want, and doing the research to find things that are going to be a good value. I hope that this has gotten you thinking about some things that you can stop doing for your teen so that they can start to develop these skills for themselves. And more importantly, develop the confidence that they are going to need as they grow up and get ready to leave your home and live on their own. As always, if you want more help with this, or you just want to make sure that you have done everything you need to do to prepare your teen to leave your home and be a successful, emotionally healthy adult, please join me inside the Enjoy community where I can support you even more. This is the kind of stuff we are talking about and learning about and working through together in the community, and I would love for you to be a part of it too. https://client.jenbelltate.com/membership