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How To Wake A Teenager While Avoiding Conflict |
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Written by Richard Joffray
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Wednesday, 07 June 2006 |
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One Parent’s Process There are many times that I wished that I had a manual while raising
my children, however I quickly realized that every child is unique and
your experiences with them happen at totally unique times of both the
child’s development as well as one’s own.
As my children started to become fully functional beings that can act and think for them selves, a few inevitable problems have arisen. Most of them I have identified as my own issues from my own childhood and some are new. What I am going to say in this article came to me one morning as I tried to wakeup my son in order for him to have time to get ready for school and still have time to eat his breakfast. To avoid conflicts in the morning and promote self sufficient behavior I have resorted to waking him through a cheap intercom that one of his friends thought that we could have fun with since my son lives in a small house right outside the kitchen door where it is difficult to hear each other. By the way, I cannot recommend this type of living arrangement enough for those parents that actually trust their kid enough to live in a place that has separate access to and allows them access to come and go as they please.
This technique of non-coercive communication seems to have separated personal parental needs and shear information to allow my son to be informed that it is time to wake rather than the feeling that comes from a parent nagging him to get up. This seems to work without any conflict, however it does not get to the real reason that he cant get up by himself. To do this I am going to try to answer a few questions myself before moving forward. - Have I just gotten into the habit of being the alarm clock and not allowed him to do it on his own?
- Have I voiced my concerns with him of why it is important to be up early and ready well before the time that he needs to leave?
- Have I totally discussed this issue with him to come up with other ideas? This would show my concern and allow him to have direct input to a solution.
Answering these questions might avoid taking further steps and I might find that this issue will be resolved while leaving my son feeling that he has solved this one on his own. If this does not seem to work out and he continues to sleep through his alarm as well as my continual announcements of the time, I might need to move to the next level.
The next step will have to be confrontation. To do this I will need to have direct evidence of the amount of times that I have had to actually either threaten to go into his room and throw water (which I don’t think I would ever do) or even had to announce the time through the intercom. Making this list will prove to him that he is not doing it on his own and having to rely on me. That information presented to a teenager can be very powerful since their entire goal is to do everything on their own without parental intervention.
At last resort if this behavior continues I will have to either decide on my own or together through consultation, a set of consequences. I am sure that with prior communication and identification of the actual problem that no further actions will be needed, however I will need to be prepared to act on those consequences should they be necessary.
Wish me luck!
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