Because I said so!

Lucy was vividly recalling a turning point in her relationship with her mom over 50 years ago. She was graduating from 9th grade and told her mother that after the graduation ceremony she was going to spend the afternoon at a lake with some of her girlfriends. One of the other mothers was driving them to the lake and bringing lunch. Her mom replied “You’re not going.” When Lucy asked her mom why she couldn’t go, her response was “Because I said so”.

Lucy was enraged with her mother’s explanation. She angrily told her mother that she planned to go to the lake with her friends despite the fact her mother told her she couldn’t go. When her mother asked for an explanation, Lucy replied “Because I said so”. Lucy did go to the lake with her friends that day. Her relationship with her mother remained cool and unaffectionate throughout the rest of her teenage years.

When parents declare to their children something will or will not happen “because I said so”, they are trying to use their authority to end the discussion. A better approach is to carefully listen to a child’s request and ask questions to address any concerns you have before deciding. Providing respectful, thoughtful explanations for your decisions will help maintain good relationships with your children even if the decision isn’t the one they wanted.

Delaying parenting decisions

When our kids make a request and we feel pressured to make an immediate decision, we may rush into a decision that we later regret. This happened to one mom when her 15-year-old son asked if he could go to a sleepover at a friend’s house. She was heading out the door for work so she quickly asked him if the parents were going to be home and if girls would also be there. He told her that the parents would be home and that there would be girls at the sleepover. He assured her that the other parents were ok with it.

In her rush to get to work, she told him he could go. Later on she realized she was completely uncomfortable with allowing her son to go to this sleepover. She called her son to let him know she had changed her mind. As she expected, he was quite upset.

She regretted she had made such a quick decision. In the future she says she will give herself more time to think it through by letting her son know that she’ll get back to him with an answer.

Parents do themselves a big favor by taking time to think through their decisions before reacting.

Allowing kids to make mistakes

A dad told the story of how he was shopping with his 6-year-old son and his son decided he really wanted to buy a toy car with his allowance money. The car he wanted was flimsy and the dad was fairly sure that it wouldn’t last long before it broke. The dad mentioned his concerns to his son but still allowed his son to make his own choice on whether or not to buy it.

Well his son bought the car. Within a week of having it, the front wheels broke off. Instead of saying “I told you so”, the dad helped his son glue it back together. Although it wasn’t quite as good as before, the son thanked his dad for helping him fix it. This boy’s respect for his dad grew that day along with some wisdom about buying cheap toys.

Confronting teens on tough issues

How you handle confronting difficult situations with your teen greatly influences your teen’s response. Nancy, a mom with teens of her own, told me her story of getting caught with cigarettes when she was 14-years-old. She grew up as the oldest of three siblings in a family where one of their values was no smoking.

However, Nancy had started smoking. Her mom found out when she took wet clothes out of her daughter’s swimming bag in order to wash them and found a packet of cigarettes. To this day she is amazed at how well her mom handled the situation. Instead of yelling, she explained she had found the cigarettes and requested that if Nancy was going to smoke that she do it outside the house and not in front of her younger brother and sister.

Nancy felt horrible about having disappointed her mom. She’s sure that if her mom would have yelled at her and told her to stop smoking, she would have continued smoking just to be defiant. Because of how her mom handled the situation, she said she felt very guilty and chose never to smoke again.

When we remain calm when confronting our teens, we have a much better chance of positively influencing their behavior. By keeping our composure, our teens are faced with reflecting on their behavior instead of focusing on our anger.

Getting kids to pick up their toys

A common frustration among parents of young children is getting them to pick up their toys. Parents often complain that their children forget to pick up the toys even after many reminders.

One mom explained how she solved this problem. Her 3-year-old son loved playing with his blocks. She asked him several times to pick up the blocks but instead he continued playing with them and eventually walked away. Although this mom felt angry, she simply said to her son, “That’s ok, I’ll pick them up.” She then picked up the blocks and put them away where her son could not get them.

She explained to her son that since she had to pick up the blocks, they would be put away for a week. This news greatly upset him. However, from that day on she found all she had to say was “That’s ok, I’ll pick them up.” and her son would quickly pick up his toys!

What teens are really doing

What parents think their teens are doing and what their teens are actually doing are often two different things. Parents can learn a lot about these common misperceptions in Stephen Wallace's book Reality Gap: Alcohol, Drugs, and Sex--What Parents Don't Know and Teens Aren't Telling.

Wallace, CEO of Students Against Destructive Decisions, documents what's been learned about teen behavior through the indepth "Teens Today" study conducted from 2000 - 2006. This study reports data like:

• average age for alcohol initiation is 13


• by 12th grade, more than 75% of teens are drinking


• 35% of teens report using drugs


• 52% of high school students report having had sexual intercourse

The book provides wonderful advice for parents in handling and discussing these critical topics with their teens.

Stress of parenting on relationships

Probably most couples are unprepared for just how much extra work having children will entail. I remember thinking that nobody really warned us about how precious little personal time we would have after our first child was born (and before she was born I had not considered taking a shower my personal time!).

With all the extra work children require, it’s easy to see how both parents can feel like they are giving more than their share and start feeling angry with their spouse for not doing more. When reading the article “Mad at Dad”, I was reminded of how deep and corrosive these feelings of anger and resentment can be. According to this article, “46% of moms get irate with their husbands once a week or more. Those with kids younger than 1 are even more likely to be mad that often (54 percent).”

When our children were in pre-school, we heard of so many parents of young children getting a divorce. Having children certainly puts a stress on marriages. Couples need excellent communication skills to address difficult topics like differences in parenting approaches or who does what chores. Coming to agreement on things like dividing up the chores may be difficult but is also essential for marriages to remain strong.