Parenting Tips for Parents of Teens, From Our Parenting Community

The boyfriend is staying way to late on school nights. Since he is older and is not working, getting up early or doing homework is not a big deal for him. My daughter doesn’t do her homework and wants to sleep every free minute due to not getting sleep at night. I hate to be the bad guy every night and tell him to go home. He just don’t get it. My daughter seems to think that the 10pm rule can be broken whenver she wants. What can I do to break this bad habit once and for all?

Read every book you can about teenage brain development. It really helps to understand how their brain is working.

Get teenagers involved in something outside themselves. Teens benefit greatly from attending religious youth groups or community-based teen groups. These groups often place a strong emphasis on thinking about others while having fun. Mission trips and community service opportunities often become some of the greatest experiences of teens’ lives and a good lesson in seeing that others have it much worse than they do.

Pat, you’re more right about your daughter than you know. Teens need a lot of sleep, especially young women.

My solution would be to send a text message to BOTH their cellphones each night at 10 PM. (You have the message sent automatically at 10 pm from your computer via Wuduplz.com. It’s free.) It amazing how seeing something in writing–where there is a record that they WERE, indeed, told–is makes it harder to ignore.

So, that’s it? Well, no. Stay cool, but be firm. You’re asking for a way to do this “once and for all.” That’s seldom possible with teens (or anyone else, for that matter). They’ll try to wear you down. You have to be a rock and be willing to do it over and over and over and over again. But, be cool about it. Laugh as they try to wear you down. “Nope, not going to work. Good night, boyfriend.” You could start singing, “Good night, boyfriend, good night.” THAT should get him to leave.

I have had a similar sitution with my daughter. I sat her down and told her we needed to make a schedule for her visitors. We both made suggestions on what we thought was fair. At the end we decided that on Monday and Tuesday nights her visitors needed to come over after school and leave by the time I arrived home from work, 6pm. On Wednesday and Thursday nights her visitor could stay until 9:30pm and Friday and Saturday would be open until 12pm. Sunday no visitors at all. This would allow her to complete any homework she had not finished and prepare for the coming week. at first it was hard but after awhile my daughter actually told me she was glad to have Sundays to just relax and get back on track before the week began. Mind you sometimes depending on the situation we bend the times but only under specific reasons. Stick to having open discussions and let her have some say in the situation.

You do not mention your kids ages but my son is 15 and I definately pick my battles about things, but asome things are not up for discussions. Like weeknight phone calls are off limits and homework time is at a set time and he is into bed by 9:30 or his 5am wakeup is a killer. Teens need to sleep. His electronic devices are plugged into a docking station in the living room along with mine. We talk a lot and I listen a lot. Even if he is always talking about truck, cars, tires and such. And I do ask about his friends at school and girls I know he talks to. I teach him to be responsible and capable of taking care of himself and offer lots of positve re=inforcement but I do not try to be his pal. We laugh and cut up but he knows the line of too much. I think too many parents are spending too much time trying to be nice and a pal and worried that their kids are not going to like them or be happy so they get walked all over or taken advantage of and not respected. Our kids look up to us to be strong and decisive and for guidence and to teach them how to make it through life. I do not care if my son gets mad at me for inforcing rules..he will get over it, that’s life.

Hello how are you ?I have some questions i have a 9yr.old daughter and i am having problems trying to figure out how to talk to her about sex and male gender i really do not no where to start or begin when we were at home coming up those things were not discussed.I do not want to do that to my daughter she still acts childish for her age ,i do not no at what age to start talking to her about all that.Can you please give me some advice on that issue.

I am close to 16 years old and shouldn’t be giving advice to anyone but from a teens point of view I never had that talk with my parents I think they were to uncomfortable too, I figured it all out at school and from my friends and the internet, probably not the best way to go about it. You definetly should have that talk with your daughter if she is mature for her age then find a way to talk to her alone, it may be uncomfortable for you and her but it might make your relationship closer, make her safe, and get it out of the way. If you don’t tell her she’ll figure it out someway. Alot of the kids at my school figured it out the hard way if you know what I mean, I was never that unfortunate. I think that 9 years old is a bit too young but tell her when yoor comfortable, I can tell you they usually learn about sex in 8th grade science.I would wait until around 11 or 12 years old because I never really got to be a kid the way the worlds going you may want her to have some “play time” before she grows up

I started talking to my son just before he enter 6th grade because that is where they start seeing a lot of outrageous behavior from all kinds of kids. Each year on our summer vactions I get a little more detailed in my info as to what he can expect to be happening to his own body and what he will hear and see around him. Kids are taking drugs and having oral sex in 6th grade so I explained all the stuff to him first. 3 weeks into school he told me he was already seeing and hearing signs of that stuff. He is in 10th grade now and has been exposed to much more shocking stuff but he was ready with his eyes wide open because I told him what he
might see, hear or be tempted about. His dad is deceased to I have had to tell him sexual stuff and try not to embarass him with “TMI”(too much information) I went on Amazon.com and found some great books written for teens (boy in my case) I bought 3 books and he keeps them in his room or bathroom and he reads them in private and has them to check out at different phases he goes through.
I must say that the biggest problem we are having is the girls that are chasing him.
I think that best that parents of girls could do for their girls would be to teach them to love themselves and make sure that they act respectful. Girls call our house all the time, hang up on me or are very rude, even when he tells them he does not want to talk to them they keep up the calling.
Try to keep your kids from growing up too fast but keep them informed of the future possibilities so they can cope better. We can not live their lives for them but they need to know that we are their best resource.

We leave a light on upstairs and an alarmclock set 20 minutes AFTER my son should come home. If we don’t wakeup to the alarm that is good. If we wakeup at night and see the ligh off (no light coming under our door, then we know he is home. Never had any problems with my son, but one time he was about 30 miles away with his friend’s band and they had car problems. Did not get home until around 2:00 am. Another father had gone to rescue them. With a Minnesota winter, having automobile problems can become deadly. System has worked will for my son and for his parents.