Curfew: 10:00 pm on weeknights. 11 pm on weekends.

No video games except from 8-9 pm.

Homework time is from 3-5 daily.

No Social Media until you are 17.

Rules. Rules. Rules.

How many kids do you know who love rules?

I haven’t met very many kids who like rules. But we all need boundaries for our behavior. As we work toward raising kids ready for real life, how can we switch the paradigm from a list of rules to a set of equations where their input and choices influence their outcomes?

When you remember our own childhood, you probably think of playing on the neighborhood playground after school, coming up with games or playing sports with a modified set of rules. Today’s children spend more time in structured than unstructured activities. Instead of drawing boundaries for a field with sticks and working out the details of what constitutes a home run or a goal, they play on chalked off fields with coaches instructing them. Instead of using Legos to come up with their version of a house or helicopter, many “engineers” follow the intricate instruction booklets included with every new boxed set. Instead of creating a town for Barbies or stuffed animals, television and video games fill the after school hours for many children.

We need to give kids room to create their own rules.

Darell Hammond, who lived in a group home as a youngster, founded the non-profit KaBoom to encourage communities to improve the lives of children. He urges kids to “get off the soccer field and onto the playground. Children need to get out of the gym and into neighborhood stickball games. We need to give kids room to create their own rules, set their own terms, and move their bodies in their own ways.” When kids are empowered to make their own rules, they learn executive function skills and are more likely to follow them because they believe them to be more reasonable than imposed rules.

What would it look like if we switched from making rules to helping our children follow equations?

How do we maintain order in our homes and yet allow our children to participate in making and maintaining the boundaries? Tim Elmore of Leading the Next Generation give some suggestions.

One thought is, take an age-old parent/teen dispute. Perhaps instead of having a curfew for teenagers, we could have some parameters around what time they come home. For example: before you leave, we want to know where you will be, who you will be with, and an approximate time you will be home. If you find you will be more than half an hour late, text us to let us know. As long as you are reasonable with these guidelines, you don’t need to have a set curfew time. Seems a bit scary as a parent to not know exactly when your son or daughter will be home, but if we want them to be able to navigate managing their own time in the future, this is a good step.

Another thought is what to do about video games or social media time? That’s another doozy. As a parent, it is much easier on us to have rules around these issues so we can try to manage them. However, learning how to manage oneself online is going to be a vital skill for everyone in this generation. It is prudent to allow tweens and teens to manage themselves while they are still at home and have parents to guide them. Because we each currently have various gaming and screen time rules, an equation for these will look different for each family. Things to consider might be: having a list of responsibilities to be completed before screen time is allowed, letting your older kids determine how much screen time they think is reasonable, and then asking them how they will manage sticking to their limit. With younger children you might have an equation that allows a one-to-one or one-to-one-half ratio for earning screen time. If they read/play outside/do chores for an hour, then they earn commensurate screen time to use at their discretion.

When kids are involved, there is more compliance.

If we change the paradigm from setting rules in an attempt to control our child’s behavior to discussing boundaries and equations for achieving a mutually agreeable goal, we may find we have fewer arguments. When kids are involved in making the equations, you set them up to develop executive function both in negotiating the parameters and in learning how to manage themselves within their new freedoms.

What is your position on outdoor rock concerts that go on all day and into the night? How about co-ed camping? Any thoughts on cliff jumping, white water rafting, or setting off fireworks? Many teens, possibly yours, will be asked to participate in these sorts of activities this summer. If you haven’t already now might be a good time to figure out if and when you want to draw the line.

It should be said right at the start that every summer thousands of teens across the country engage in what nervous adults might call risky activities  but  come to no harm. The chances that your kid will be injured or will injure someone else while having fun with her friends are very, very small. These sorts of sad events make the news because they are news: they don’t happen all that often.

And while every parent worries and might want to keep her child locked in a cave until age twenty-five, we all know that teens must have opportunities to make decisions and weigh risks. The brain’s prefrontal cortex – the area responsible for planning ahead and seeing the possible consequences of an action – undergoes tremendous development in adolescence. But in order to make that development happen, a teen must have plans to make, plans that could result in serious consequences if not thought all the way through. So to keep from stunting your child’s brain development, he must make his own decisions and see what the results are. You can’t keep your child safe by doing all the thinking for him.

But there’s no need to step back and let the chips fall where they may. You can be proactive, in preparing your teen to make big decisions, in knowing what you think she can handle and in laying down the ground rules early. Here are some thoughts.

1. Be prepared. Make sure you know who your child’s friends are (first and last names). Make certain your child knows that you are there for him, no matter what, and that he should call you if he gets into trouble, no matter when. Despite the costs and other issues, your teen should probably have a cell phone so he’s not dependent on using the phone of someone else. Know if your child is a good swimmer. Make sure your child – boy or girl – knows how babies are made and how to keep from accidentally making one.
2. Establish some basic rules about driving. The most dangerous place for your teen and her friends is a car. Even if your child doesn’t drive and her friends are too young to drive, realize that she may find herself in a car with a teen driver and a whole lot of other kids. If your child does drive, realize that she will be pressured to give rides to her friends and that no matter how good a driver she is when you’re riding along, she will be a worse driver with other kids in the car. So establish some rules and practice some scripts – things she can say when she turns down an offer of a ride or when she declines to give a kid a ride. Let her know how many people she can have in the car if she’s driving (your state may have laws about this).
3. Establish a curfew and hold your teen to it. Whether curfew is 10 pm or 2 am, be ready to check to see that it’s observed. If your child isn’t home at the appointed hour, call his cell phone. Meet him at the door when he finally shows up. Being the parent of a teen means being up at night just as much as being the parent of a newborn is. Let your kid know you’re paying attention.
4. Require an itinerary. Before your teen heads out the door, know who she’s going to be with, where they all are going, how they’ll get there, what they plan to do, and when she plans to be home. Naturally, your teen will tell you that she doesn’t know. Naturally, she may tell you about plans that never happen, even about things she has no intention of doing but that she thinks will sound good. The itinerary you hear may be far from the truth. But asking her to tell it to you will make an impression. It’s a way of emphasizing that you care.
5. If you think it’s unsafe, don’t permit it. Remember that teens feel a lot of pressure to go along with whatever the crowd does. It’s difficult for a teen to refuse to do something he’d rather not without looking like a baby or a coward. So help him out. Tell him no. Give your child the ability to say “My dad would kill me if I did that!” It might be just what he needs to stand up for his true feelings.

Realize, though, that what you permit and what you don’t may not matter. Your child may very well do exactly what she wants despite your prohibitions. So  do what you can to prepare your child to be safe, to use her head, and to make her own (good) decisions. Summer is the time your teen is most likely to get into situations she didn’t expect and might not know how to handle. Figure out ahead of time how to help her be ready and how to still have lots of fun.

© 2012, Patricia Nan Anderson.  All rights reserved.

Summertime, when the sun is hot and the days are long, might give your teen the idea that all the limits are out the window. But it’s also possible that it’s your teen’s friends who think that and not your own child. He or she may be looking to you to help hold the line.

So while certainly you don’t need to make your teen observe “school night hours” during the summer and you won’t expect your teen to cover up every inch of skin, there’s no reason to let all the rules fall by the wayside. A reasonable curfew and reasonable standard of dress are still reasonable expectations, even in the summer.

Your child may secretly thank you. There’s a lot of pressure to go along with the crowd, both to stay out till all hours and to parade around in clothing as revealing as possible. The pressure comes with name-calling. If a teen wants to go home before the rest of the gang, he’s a wimp. If a girl wants to wear more modest clothes, she’s a baby – or worse. So teens who don’t want to go along with the crowd may feel they have to go along, just to remain friends. Unless you help them out.

When you set firm rules and enforce them, you give your teen an ironclad excuse that doesn’t reflect badly on him. He can say, “My dad would kill me if I did that,” and everyone else will understand. Standards for behavior help your child maintain limits she wants anyway. And standards remind your teen that you are the parent and you care.

The idea that summer is a rule-free interlude separate from real life has its roots in the psychological idea of a liminal zone. The liminal zone is a mental state in which usual behavior patterns are suspended – like letting yourself eat junk food on vacation or read trashy magazines in the dentist’s office – and are suspended nowhere else. It’s the basis for the idea that “what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas.”

But of course the entire summer isn’t a liminal zone. It’s an important part of your teen’s life. What happens in the summer isn’t likely to stay only in the summer.

So negotiate some summer rules with your teen. Both of you may be glad you did.

© 2012, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved.