Whether your child is at boarding school or closer to home, it’s all too easy to end up trying to control kids to keep them safe. Dr Justin Coulson suggests there’s a better way….
We all want our children to grow up making intelligent and sensible decisions, but that’s easier said than done. Teens are especially notorious for their ability to make brash decisions under the influence of their developing brain.
I was recently chatting with our guest speaker for the Dubbo and Newcastle Expos – positive psychologist, Dr Justin Coulson about the best ways to help our kids grow up with that built-in ability to make good decisions. His answer surprised me. He said as parents (and teachers) we have to stop being so controlling.
But we can’t just let our kids do whatever they want, right? Correct.
Dr Coulson gave the analogy of driving a car – we want to make sure our children have the sense to do the right thing even when the police (that’s us parents) aren’t around. I’m sure anyone with a child living away at boarding school can see where he’s coming from.
How do we do that? There are many ways, but Dr Coulson says one of the most important aspects is to make sure children internalise the rules we adopt as families. Most rules are thrown at children from an external source. We say things like “You can’t do that” “I said NO” or my personal favourite “because I said so”. These become rules for the sake of them without the why attached. This sort of reasoning has the potential to push unwanted behaviour underground where we as parents don’t get to see what’s really going on in our childrens’ lives. It also reduces the likelihood that a child will come to us if there are issues they don’t know how to deal with. Scary stuff.
If we can start getting our children thinking about why rules are in place, we’re on the way to creating young adults that have the ability to adapt their behavior to whatever situation arises. Dr Coulson says the best way to do this is to get kids to explain the rules back to us. We might say, “We have a rule here that we don’t hit, can you think of why?” This gives the child a chance to internalise the rule and parents an opportunity to see where there are gaps in their reasoning. It also lets children be involved in the rule making and helps us to see things from their perspective.
Of course it’s probably easy to see why hitting might be wrong, but when we start to talk about things like social media, phone use, teenage drinking, dating, going out – it gets more complex. In my next blog I’ll let you know what Dr Coulson says about applying these same principles whilst having harder conversations.
But for now, next time you find yourself saying “because I said so”, why not try turning it around to, “why do you think you shouldn’t do that?” Good luck.