Whenever your pre-teen or teenage kid has screwed up, teaching them a lesson after the fact isn’t exactly the easiest task.

One of the best ways to avoid that is to use the “side by side” technique I’ve described in my about to be published book, “Just Listen” Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone (AMACOM, Sept. 15, 2009).

Do this while driving in the car (where you’re both looking forward instead of engaged in one of those face to face lectures that they can’t stand) or engaged in some activity or errand to “buffer” the conversation.

If it’s a pre-teen/middle schooler and they’ll still engage with you, say: “How can you tell which one of your friends is most likely to go too far and get in big trouble?”

They may smell a rat and say: “What?”

If so, continue with: “Yeah, I was just wondering which of your friends is likely to go too far this year, because if they do and you’re their friend, you might get pulled in to help them out.  It might be helpful to know which one and what they might do, so you can be ready.  I mean isn’t that what friends are for?”

You don’t start to lecture them or tell them to avoid that friend.  Doing it this way is a way of helping them develop judgment about “going too far” and that doing so has consequences.

If they tolerate that question, ask them next: “While we’re on the topic of what’s coming up, how do you tell the difference between a class you need to stay up to date on and one you can kind of get away with doing stuff at the last minute?”  This again helps sow the seeds for their developing the capacity for anticipation and for judgment.

You can use a similar approach with a wide variety of questions.

And if you’re dealing with a teenage high schooler (or even one in college) who doesn’t want any advice and says, “Just leave me alone!” (Know any who fit that description?) here is something you might try to that again leverages a future that they haven’t screwed up.

Say to them: “As you go through high school or college, your mom/dad and I can deal with you in one of two ways.  In the first way, we can leave you  alone, including waking you up, getting on your back about homework (this won’t work with an intrusive micromanaging parent), making introductions for you to people (tutors, friends who can give you a job, etc.) that can help you succeed and get ahead.  You might actually prefer learning from your successes and failures and feel you’ve done it all by yourself.  In the second way, we can put both feet in and do any and everything we can do to help you become successful and happy in life. However if we do that, you can’t talk to us disrespectfully, tell us to “shut up” or swear at us, and if we do set up opportunities for you with people outside, you have to keep us posted on what you’re doing so those people don’t think you’re a flake.”

Good luck. Your kids’ adolescence can be a bumpy ride.

****

P.S. If you like these kind of tips, I think you will like “Just Listen” and hope you’ll check it out and spread the word to your friends.

P.P.S. If you missed my FREE American Management Association webcast, “The Simple Secret to Getting Through to Difficult People” that had 1700+ attendees, you can catch it at: AMA webcast.

Spread the Word

]]> http://markgoulston.com/usable-insight-get-your-kid-started-on-right-foot-in-school/feed/ 5 http://markgoulston.com/usable-insight-is-your-jhs-hs-or-college-child-underperforming/ http://markgoulston.com/usable-insight-is-your-jhs-hs-or-college-child-underperforming/#comments Sat, 27 Dec 2008 04:44:57 +0000 Mark http://markgoulston.com/?p=906 also seen at Basil & Spice:

Have an underperforming J.H.S., H.S. or college kid?
Maybe they’re just lazy…maybe not.
When logic and convincing doesn’t motivate your child
from the outside in, stop doing it…
then try understanding them from their inside out.
One lousy semester, does not a failed year…or life make.

Stop reacting from your frustration

take a deep breath

and read what follows below…

Does it sound like someone you know?

If so, ask them to read it,
ask them which line(s) speak to them and how,
listen, hear and care,
don’t interrupt or give advice unless they ask
and if you’re lucky
and if you haven’t hurt or angered them too much…
they might let you in.
If they do, tell them: “I’m sorry, I never knew you felt so bad,”
Let them get angry at you until they get it out
let them cry and keep crying until they’ve cried themselves out.
Then they might even let you help them
if you ask them the best way to do it
and then you just listen, hear and care…

Don’t be fooled by me.
Don’t be fooled by the face I wear.
For I wear a thousand masks that I am afraid to take off
and none of them are me.

Pretending is an art that’s second nature with me, but don’t be fooled,
for God’s sake don’t be fooled.
I give the impression that I am secure,
that all is sunny and unruffled with me,
within as well as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game;
that the waters are calm and I am in command,
and that I need no one.

But don’t believe me, please.
My surface may seem smooth, but my surface is my mask.
Beneath this lies no complacency.
Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, and aloneness.
But I hide this. I don’t want anybody to know it.

I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear of being exposed.
That is why I frantically create a mask to hide behind;
a nonchalant, sophisticated facade,
to help me pretend, to shield me from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely my salvation.
My only salvation. And I know it.
That is, if it is followed by acceptance, if it is followed by love.
It is the only thing that will assure me of what I can’t assure myself,
that I am worth something.

But, I don’t tell you this. I don’t dare. I am afraid to.
I am afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance and love.
I am afraid you will think less of me, that you will laugh at me,
and that you will see this and reject me.

So I play my game, my desperate game,
with a facade of assurance without, and a trembling child within.
And so begins the parade of masks, and my life becomes a front.

I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that is really nothing,
and nothing of what is everything,
of what is crying within me.

So when I am going through my routine
do not be fooled by what I am saying.
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying.
What I would like to be able to say,
what for survival I need to say, but I can’t say.

I dislike hiding, Honestly!
I dislike the superficial game I am playing, the phony game.
I would really like to be genuine and spontaneous, and me,
but you have got to help me. You have got to hold out your hand,
even when that is the last thing I seem to want.

Only you can wipe away from my eyes that blank stare of breathing death.
Only you can call me into aliveness.

Each time you try to understand and because you really care,
my heart begins to grow wings, very small wings, very feeble wings, but wings.

With your sensitivity and sympathy, and your power of understanding,
you can breathe life into me.

I want you to know that.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
how you can be the creator of the person that is me if you choose to.
Please choose to.

You alone can break down the wall
behind which I tremble, you alone can remove my mask.

You alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic and uncertainty;
From my lonely prison.

Do not pass me by.
Please… do not pass me by.

It will not be easy for you;
a long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.

The nearer you approach me, the blinder I strike back.

I fight against the very thing I cry out for. But I am told that
love is stronger than walls, and in this lies my hope.

Please try to beat down those walls with firm hands,
but with gentle hands–for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder? I am someone you know very well.
For I am everyone you meet, I am me and I am you.

– Charles C. Finn