Teens and Respect

Thank you all so much for the discussion that we had on last week’s topic.

This week I wanted to focus on respect.  Sunday I picked up the latest issue of Home Life magazine at church (shameless self promotion, I am quoted on page 54).  I also picked up the February issue and it had a very convicting article about the spiritual impact of your child’s disrespect. This article stepped all over my mama toes so I wanted to take a few minutes to discuss the meat of it today.

Here is the line that really stuck with me:

If you aren’t teaching your children to respect you, how can you expect them to respect other authority figures, and most importantly, a holy God?

I have to admit that my children were much more respectful of me (in tone, words and actions) when they were smaller.  I take responsibility for the decline in their respect because I am not nearly as consistent with discipline as I was when they were little.

To be honest, it was easier to discipline them when they were five and six years old.  A time out or sending them to bed early nipped behavior in the bud.  My boys were crushed if I was upset or disappointed in them.

That is simply no longer the case!  Grounding from privileges takes a lot of work to enforce and I often find myself giving in.  And, sometimes it really seems ineffective.  However, this article reminded me of parenting principles I had lost sight of including the fact that delayed obedience is disobedience.

Have any of you ever put off listening to God when He lays something on your heart?  I am guilty of that, for sure.  How will our kids ever understand the importance of following through with what God has in store for them if I don’t expect obedience from them the first time I make a request?

The article had the following tips for children that are resisting respect that I found helpful:

• Ban the use of a favorite technology until you see noticeable improvement in your child’s behavior (at this rate Jared will not get his cell phone back until he’s 30)
• Ask your child to rephrase statements to communicate respect (this would probably work better than getting angry and yelling back, huh?)
• Require your child to apologize to others if she (or he) publically displays disrespectful behavior to you. (This one really struck me as something that would be effective.  Kids this age hate being embarrassed yet we allow them to embarrass us with their behavior)
• Draw up a contract that specifically details your expectations and the consequences.  Have your child sign it (we did this after reading this article!)
• Consider seeing a qualified counselor to get to the root of the problem if your child demonstrates excessive aggression.

Aren’t these great tips?  I really needed to read this article because sometimes everyday my kids tell me I am so much stricter than their friend’s parents (and I start having mama guilt).  This article served to remind me that I am not responsible for parenting their friends.  I will give account to God one day for parenting Jason, Jared and Matt.  Period.  And, I am doing them no favors by not expecting the respect I deserve.

Especially when the result of not teaching them the value of respecting authority could have eternal consequences.

What do you think?  I would love to hear in the comments or feel free to write a post about this or any other topic applicable to Teens/Tweens and add it to the linky below.