Principal
How to Change your Parenting for the Teenage Years
Parenting teenagers is traditionally seen as the most difficult parenting stage. However, many parents have discovered that raising teenagers is a lot easier than raising younger children. For this to be the case, there are three changes parents and carers make to survive their kids’ adolescence.
Step up the coaching
When kids are young it’s common for parents to take over many aspects of their lives. They establish bedtimes, cook meals and make doctor’s appointments. Parents decide where they will go to school, if they go to camp and where the family will take a holiday. Children are content with this approach and will enjoy having their days organised by loving adults.
Teenagers, on the other hand, need to start managing their own lives, which can put them at odds with over-protective or over-controlling parents and carers. Wise parents will aim for redundancy well before the teenage years so handing over control isn’t so foreign.
Psychologists William Stixrud and Ned Johnson, authors of The Self-Driven Child believe parents need to hand over a great deal of decision-making to adolescents. Not straight away and not in a way that negates their need to take responsibility for their actions. They advise parents/carers to gradually involve teens in creating rules that govern their own behaviour, keep challenging their choices and provide emotional support when they make poor decisions. A parent/carer gives up being a manager and takes up the role of life coach.
Influence teens differently
Most parents/carers would like to download all their knowledge of the world into their teenage children’s brains so that they could always make good decisions. Giving teenagers information doesn’t guarantee that you can influence them as you did in childhood. Teenagers are highly attuned to status and hypervigilant to the way they are treated by adults. If you talk down to them, they will turn off as you are talking to the low status or child-like part of the brain. Talk to them as if they are autonomous young adults and they are more likely to listen, as you are talking to the high-status part of their brains. If you wish to discuss topics such as respectful relationships, the use of alcohol or preparing for life after school, avoid talking to them as if they are children. Speak to them as you would to someone with the highest possible status - someone you respect, and they are more likely to engage with you.
Have hard chats
Conversations with preschool and early primary school years are comparatively easy compared to many conversations you have with tweens and teens that revolve around hot topics such as sexuality, school performance and the future. Avoidance of hard chats and the emotional minefields they lead to becomes the easiest option. Teenagers are dealing with some difficult issues, so parents/carers need to create safe opportunities to talk about the hard issues.
Christine Carter, author of The New Adolescence believes that parents should think beyond having a ‘big talk’ about difficult topics and bring up these topics using short observations and simple questions. She writes, “Even when we have lots to say, it’s more important to give them a chance to speak, and to work out what they are thinking in a low-risk environment.” Practise staying calm despite your discomfort. Welcome it if your kids sense your discomfort as it reveals your human side.
In closing
Young children and teenagers have very different needs. Effective parents/carers adapt their parenting style to meet the developmental and emotional needs of their children at each stage of growing up. Teens need greater autonomy, skilled guidance and plenty of chances to talk about the issues that bother them and worry their parents. That may mean that you need to shift your parenting gears a little to meet their needs in the teenage years.
Michael Grose presents: Changing Parenting Gears for the Teenage Years
Our school has a membership with Parenting Ideas. As part of this membership, you can attend the upcoming webinar ‘Changing Parenting Gears for the Teenage Years’ at no cost.
About:
In this webinar, Michael Grose discusses the importance of changing parenting gears during the teenage years. He shares the critical shifts parents/carers need to make when raising teenagers.
When:
Wednesday 31 August 2022 8:00 PM AEST
To redeem:
Follow this link to the website:
1. Click ‘Add to cart’
2. Click ‘View cart’
3. Enter the coupon code TEENS and click ‘Apply Coupon’ Your discount of $39 will be applied.
4. Click ‘Proceed to checkout’
5. Fill in your account details including our school’s name to verify your eligibility. These are the details you will use to login to your account and access your webinar and resources
6. Click ‘Place Order’
This offer is valid until 30 November 2022. If you’re unable to make the broadcast time, just register anyway and you will get access to the recording.
Click here to view a quick tip video by Dr Justin Coulson related to this Insights article.
The Issue with Demanding Parents
As a Principal, I am often asked how I find dealing with demanding, and sometimes rude, parents. From my experience, I have always found that the vast majority of parents are wonderful to deal with: respectful, reasonable and willing to allow us to deal with the young adolescents in our care.
But every school, including ours — every single one — reports more frequent and more difficult problems with parents. One small minority of parents are the most difficult: those who bully the school. These parents are habitually rude, demanding or disrespectful, engaging in personal attacks on teachers and leaders, demeaning and threatening them. They repeatedly violate the College’s policies, values, and norms of conduct. They send emails late into the night, on the weekends, and demand a response first thing the next day without due consideration to the complexity of the organisation a school like ours actually is.
I recently read an opinion piece in The Dallas Daily News that accurately described the phenomenon that principals and schools are dealing with. These “bully parents” come in three basic types: the Righteous Crusader, the Entitled Intimidator, and the Vicious Gossip.
The Righteous Crusader is perhaps the most confusing for teachers because this parent claims to have identified a moral problem and attacks the school for failing to address it. All educators are potentially vulnerable to the charge of failing to protect children because it cuts to the heart of their mission. Teachers can thus be easily threatened by a charge as mild as, "My son says you don't like him”.
Entitled Intimidators make no bones about what they want: special treatment for their son/s. They demand that rules be waived, exceptions made, policies upended. They want teachers they dislike fired. A parent recently told me that he would not re-enrol his son without a guarantee that a particular boy would not be placed in any of his classes. We live our touchstones. Depending on the offence, all boys should be afforded the opportunity and support to improve. It may take a few goes, but they will get there. Demanding exclusion is simply not acceptable. Perhaps moving to enrol their son in a parent-run school is a more appropriate setting for this kind of parent. Teachers, especially early-career teachers, take some time to hone their craft. They work really hard and respond to feedback when they receive it.
The Vicious Gossip has what psychologists call a character problem, one that plays itself out in continually finding fault with the school or with teachers and broadcasting these complaints, often to a group of vigilante recruits. These parents truly enjoy the relative anonymity of WhatsApp where unfounded claims are circulated but we at the school cannot defend ourselves. Sometimes this parent has a valid concern and has identified a genuine teacher weakness or administrative failing. It is the exaggeration of the issue — the relentless, destructive quality of this parent's storytelling to other parents, the repeated gathering of what Richard Chait, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has called the "Volvo caucus in the parking lot" — that qualifies it as bullying. We have both talked with teachers who have been victims of such campaigns and who end up feeling defamed and victimised.
I am writing about this topic because I have been dealing with such issues, relentlessly, from a vocal, tiny minority all year.
I would like to reiterate that if you have issues with your son:
- Follow our recently published Complaints Procedures/St Patrick's College Complaints Handling Guide. The person who deals with that area of school life is best placed to sort out an issue. Not satisfied? Escalate it up the complaints tree.
- Be patient. We have classes to teach, meetings to conduct and planning to do. We often need to triage another issue so that the most urgent and pressing matters are addressed first.
- Please check your tone in your emails and in phone conversations with staff. There is no need for personal attacks, especially when you are describing another boy or teacher in the school. They also deserve dignity and respect.
- Suspend your judgement. You are almost always hearing only one side of the story and often, you are not privy to all the information we have.
- Refrain from asking personal questions about other students and the consequences they may have had to accept. These are matters for each boy’s parents.
At the end of the day, there needs to be a fundamental trust and respect for ALL the students in the school, and the teachers and leaders. We are only human, and we do not always get things right. I absolutely understand your anxiety and that of your son, but life is not simple, relationships between teenagers are complicated, and they should be using their time at school to build life skills on how to manage conflict and challenging situations.
If you are unhappy about how things are managed at the College, and my assurances are not enough, you can escalate your concerns following the procedures that are published on our website. The saddest outcome of all is when a student is withdrawn from the College for a fresh start in a new school only to have the same issues repeating themselves because the fundamental, underlying issues have never been dealt with.
St Patrick's College App
I am most appreciative of the positive feedback that we have received over the new SPC App. If you, and your son, have not already done so, please download the app and then in ‘Settings’, select your subscriptions.
We will be retiring the previous Teams App at the end of this term, and we will all need to be gleaning our information using the new valuable tool.
Parents should try to reconnect to Parent Lounge and if you have any difficulties, you can contact itsupport@spc.nsw.edu.au. Students should make sure that they can access the Student Café so that their resources and links are at their fingertips. At 3:10 PM each day, the boys can take out and use their cellular phones and check if there has been any change to training venues or times.
Parents' and Friends' Trivia Night
Congratulations to the Executive of our Parents’ and Friends’ Association for the
success of our Trivia Night held last Friday evening at Strathfield Golf Club. Funds
raised from that evening will help us beautify the College grounds and play facilities once the Scientia Building is completed.
EREA News
I am pleased to announce that James Coyne, Chair of our College Advisory Council, has been appointed to the position of Company Secretary of EREA. James commences this week and will be based in Sydney.
This role has been established to support the new governance structures. James will develop streamlined Board and Committee reporting. He will ensure that we refine our processes to comply with all corporate governance legislation and regulatory requirements.
James is highly experienced and has held Company Secretary and General Counsel roles with the GPT Group and Lend Lease Corporation for over 20 years. Prior to this, James worked as a commercial lawyer.
James is a Fellow of the Governance Institute of Australia and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He holds Bachelor of Arts and Law (Hons) from the University of Sydney.
He was proudly educated by the Christian Brothers and will step down from his role as Chair of the St Patrick’s College Advisory Council.
On behalf of all members of the St Patrick’s College community, I congratulate James on this appointment and welcome him to EREA. I look forward to working with him in a different capacity and will announce who our new Advisory Council Chair is in due course.
In Our Prayers
We pray for Austin Fazzalaro (Year 12) and his family. His grandfather Agostino Fazzalaro has suffered a major stroke following surgery. It is a challenging time for the entire family.
In Memoriam
We pray for Thomas Gorrie (Year 5), his father Old Boy Matthew Gorrie ('91) and their family on the loss of their grandmother and mother Lynnette Gorrie, who passed away last week.
We also pray for Christian Koutsogeorgis (Year 5) on the passing of his grandmother.
We keep in our prayers Mrs Marcella Ayoub (Uniform Shop), on the loss of her mother-in-law, Julia Ayoub earlier this term.
We pray for the repose of their souls and all the souls of the faithfully departed. Requiescat in Pace.
Dr Vittoria Lavorato
Principal
SPC boys can do anything!
**except divide by zero