How much change in behavior should I expect?
How much change in behavior should I expect from my teenager? This is a very good question and one that I am often asked. Many times we as parents have an idea or an image in our head as to how we would like things to be and how we would like things to look. Our kids having been made privy to that information since they were, in some cases, still in the womb, have decided in order to proclaim their individuality and independence that they will have different ideas. Sometimes their efforts causes the pendulum to swing too far and they get into trouble. So the question is a good one as they begin to extricate themselves from the difficulty. Often, we, the parent, look for too much too soon.
It is worth remembering that the distance required to be in the game, on the playing field, is only 4 inches or the width of the boundary line. We do not nor should we expect that our child would make it all the way back to the center of the field in order to restart his play. It is not uncommon for us as parents to be so excited at every little improvement. The problem is if we think that, we immediately snap back to our earlier expectation. The example I sometimes use is building a fire either outside or in your fireplace. How often have we delighted in our hard work of getting a fire going by carefully laying a base, crunching up paper, putting on small pieces of wood or twigs and delight in the results of a little flame? However in our excitement we reached to soon for the larger piece of wood and put it on our little fire only to see the whole thing go out.
Sometimes I think of it like a racehorse. A horse that goes lame. We bring it into the barn, we put it in the stall, feed it a special diet, wrap the sore leg and overall heal that part which cannot bear the full weight. Then the day comes when it’s time to take him out onto the track. We see he’s running pretty well. We are very encouraged and immediately began to fill his saddlebags with our old expectations only to find that after a couple of turns on the track he is ready to go back to the barn.
Parents are often waiting for the other shoe to drop. The approach of reviving the old expectations or at the very least reviving them too soon makes the shoe dropping an inevitability.
A couple of things to remember when considering moving your child’s behavior in a positive direction.
First, ask yourself if he or she is back on the playing field operating once again within tolerable parameters. And second are you able to communicate with him? Both of these are very important. It is advisable to take a wait and see position. Remember it is more important that we know what they are thinking than it is for us to make sure they know what we are thinking. They already know!
If ever there is a situation to remember that life is more about direction than scheduling now would be it.
