Here is a letter I received recently from a parent.
"My fourteen year old son is absolutely impossible.
He makes bad choices like lying, stealing, and cutting classes.
Nothing we seem to do can change him and motivate him to behave better.
We have tried disciplining him through taking away his cell phone, taking off his bedroom door, making him stand in the corner, sending him to bed early, and limiting his freedom.
But nothing we do can get him to behave.
What can we do to get our child to behave properly? I understand this problem very well and I hear it from many parents all the time.
Here is the problem:When your child is a teenager, there is really nothing you can do make him behave.
You cannot force him to obey your rules, you cannot force him to listen to you, there is really nothing you can force him to do.
This is why.
When your child was young, say three, four, or five; he was entirely dependent on you.
You were much stronger and bigger than he was and he was in awe of you and your status.
He obeys you because you can physically enforce your authority.
As your child gets older, say nine, ten, or eleven years old - you still have control of what he can do.
But you will see he is much less in need of you and must more able to resist what you want him to do.
Also, he has more of his own mind and opinions, so it is much harder to enforce authority.
However, since you are physically bigger you can still put him in his room and use physical enforcement.
When your child is a teenager, he is physically an adult and, for the most part, he is independent from you in terms of his custodial needs.
He does not need you for the physical things that younger children do.
Teens are really independent from their parents in many ways.
As a result, you cannot physically force him nor can you coerce him to obey you.
Even if you succeed in doing so, he is going to resent your use of force and coercion to get him to listen.
What you need to do with a teenage child, actually children of all ages, is to modify your teen's behavior through using your relationship with him or her.
What I mean by this is to work with your teen child using your positive warmth and your relationship to get him to do what you wish him to do.
Using your relationship with your child, the warm bond that you have as a parent is really the most effective way of getting any child to behave.
When it comes to dealing with teenagers there is really not much else you can do with them, and this is particularly critical.
If you do not have an approach on how to do this, we have a program that is designed to show you how to instill responsibility and respect for your authority in your teen and get him or her to behave and grow into a healthy functional adult.
It is called the Complete Connection Parenting Teen ProgramI suggest you check this out at your convenience.
One thing I must stress is that you do not want to get involved with programs or people who tell you, or give you discipline ideas and plans on how to use force to change your teenagers to behavior.
What is going to happen with teenagers is the following - as your child gets older and older he is going to really resent your use of coercion and force to discipline him.
He will eventually reach the age of eighteen or nineteen, walk out of your house, and not turn back.
You will lose your relationship with your child.
If you focus on the warm parenting bond that you have with your child you will have a warm strong relationship with your teenager that will continue well into his adult years.