Dear Jean,

My daughter is 14 and has been changing for a few
months now. She is very pretty and smart and has a lot of common sense...so I thought. She has gotten into the popular crowd as being popular and accepted is very important to her. She has started to lie and sneak around lately. She snuck out one night at 1:30 in the AM.

She wants to go to parties. Some I let her go to in
which I have talked to the parents and know that there will be supervision. I did not let her go to a couple because I knew there would be drinking. She fought me about that but I did not give in. My husband and I explained how that even if she didn't drink, she still shouldn't be around people who do that. She says I don't trust her and that she isn't going to do those things.

Now there is a 16 year old boy who wants her as a
girlfriend. I told her that she is too young for an
older boyfriend and that she is too young to date. I have heard from several parents and kids that he is after one thing...sex. I have talked to her several times about sex, pregnancy, reputations, diseases etc. She said she doesn't want to [be sexual], but still wants this boyfriend. She thinks she could handle the situation if it comes up. She is flattered that he likes her, understandably. I forbid her to see him or talk to him on the phone or the internet. I told her she had to break up with him and she didn't.

She is furious with me. She says that I am too
over-protective and that I will not let her run her
own life. She says I am ruining her life.

I think that I let my kids do a lot of things within
reason, but these things are not reasonable.

I am worried about the lying and the sneaking around and am scared for her to start school because then she will see him everyday.

Should I stand my ground and be firm with this even though she hates me now? She seems to be losing her morals and values and that really bothers me since they were strong before.

Please tell me how to talk to her without pushing her away.

Thank You, Worried Parents

Jean responds:

Dear Worried Parents:

Thanks for writing to parentingadolescents.com.

My guess is that your daughter's lying and sneaking around are at least in part responses to an attempt on your part to pretend a control over her that you don't (and can't) really have.

Adolescents are committed (when they are healthy and normal) to achieving the ability and right to run their own lives, to control their own behavior, to determine their own values, to find out who they are. Obviously, they are not yet adults, and there's the rub: they don't yet have the skills and knowledge to run their own lives, but they have to be given the opportunity and freedom to begin to learn how to do it, to acquire these skills and knowledge.

I advise parents to take this kind of stance: "You are now beginning to learn how to run your own life, and that is appropriate. In four short years, you'll be much more on your own than you are now. I want to facilitate your learning how to control your own behavior, and for this I know you need increasing freedom. At the same time, because you are not yet an adult, and I am responsible for your behavior legally, I have to set some limits on your behavior. What I want to do is turn your life over to your own control more and more, to give you increasing freedoms as you demonstrate the responsibility for being able to handle these freedoms."

Then, you discuss limits in areas that are both important to her welfare and have proven problematic already, such as hours and remaining in the house once she's gone to bed. I don't usually suggest parents try to "set limits" around sexual behavior because this is an area that doesn't respond very well to "rules," but rather to modeling (by you and other adults), instruction (getting her the information she needs), and empathic conversation with her in which you draw her out on her own values, her own thinking. Help her find out where she herself is on sexual behavior questions, help her to identiy her own thoughts and feelings. To do this, you have to provide an environment free of criticism, blame, or panic.

As parents, we often feel we have to be sure we TELL our kids what's right, what's important, etc. Yes, this may be required and useful. But where we often make the biggest mistake is in TALKING AT them, rather than LISTENING TO them.

Regarding forbidding her to see the boyfriend: she has sent the message, loud and clear, to you by her behavior, that you CANNOT MAKE HER NOT SEE THIS YOUNG MAN. It may help considerably if you acknowledge to her openly that YOU KNOW you cannot make her stay away from him! That way, at least she doesn't have to go ahead and see him "just to prove" that she can if she wants to! I strongly advise parents of teens against forbidding contact with particular people because it doesn't work: you simply cannot enforce this limit, and because you cannot enforce it, your authority is weakened, not strengthened. Never set a limit you can't enforce!

There is a great deal of instruction in the Archived Q&A's on setting limits and devising appropriate consequences for their violation, and I think it would be helpful to you to read this material, along with Q&A's on independence and autonomy. You find them by typing these words into the Search box: limits, consequences, independence, sexual behavior.

Hope this helps a little, please feel free to write back after you've read the Q&A's in the Archives on these topics, if you have questions.

Jean.

Disclaimer: Ms. Walbridge's response to your question is intended to be educational and informative. It is not a substitute for face to face consultation or psychotherapy with a mental health professional.

top of page