CHAPTER 1 Who Is This Strong-Willed Teen? Does your teenager challenge your rules and authority on a regular basis? Do you feel frustrated and worn down by the constant testing, arguments, and power struggles? Does your teen's behavior seem so extreme that you question if it's normal? If so, you're not alone. Consider the following. Fourteen-year-old Corey is a workout! He doesn't hit the pillow on school nights until after 1 a.m. and gets up twenty minutes late each morning. The time would be later if his mother didn't prod him every five minutes after his alarm goes off. Corey usually functions on five to six hours of sleep. No wonder he's getting D's in two classes, his father thinks to himself. He's running on empty. When Corey arrives at the breakfast table, he snarls at his two sisters, grumbles in his father's direction, then turns up his nose at the meal his mother prepared and complains that there is never anything good to eat. This is not a battle I want to fight, his mother says to herself as she prepares Corey his own special meal. She tells her husband that she worries about Corey's nutrition, but what she really worries about is all the grief Corey will dish out if he doesn't get his own way. "I'm out of here," says Corey, as he gulps down his last bite and heads for the door. "Wait a minute," says his mother. "You forgot to clear your dishes." "I'll do it when I get home!" he shouts as the door shuts. Her husband thinks she's too soft on Corey, and so do his two sisters. "It's not fair!" they complain in chorus. "He never has to do his chores." By the time Corey leaves the house in the morning, his mother is ready for a nap, but she knows this is only the beginning. Round two begins in the afternoon, when Corey returns from school and the homework battles begin. She wonders how long she can take it. Sixteen-year-old Kristal is sweet and cooperative one moment, angry and defiant the next. Little things set her off--unexpected changes, departures from routine, a misplaced hairbrush, a puzzled look from her parents, or simply not getting her own way. Emotional storms and meltdowns are common. "Living with Kristal is like riding an emotional roller coaster," says her mother. "It's exhausting!" Kristal's parents alternate between punishing and giving in, depending upon how volatile Kristal appears or how worn down they feel; but nothing seems to make any difference. They wonder if Kristal's behavior is normal and question whether they did something to cause her to behave this way. Thirteen-year-old Alex has a short fuse and often acts before he thinks. When things don't go his way at home, school, or in the neighborhood, Alex gets loud, uses profanity, calls names, threatens, and sometimes hits others. He's been suspended from school three times for fighting and talking disrespectfully to his teachers. It's only October. "When we ask him why he behaves this way, Alex says he doesn't know," says his mother. "How can he not know?" "It's too bad they don't spank kids at school anymore," Alex's father laments. "When Alex acts like that at home, we give him an earful, then we whip his ass. He has to learn. We've threatened to take away his TV, Internet, and cell phone privileges for the rest of the year if he's suspended again." Lynn, age fifteen, is destined to be a great trial lawyer. She's bright, intense, and very persistent. Lynn will argue with anyone about anything if she thinks there's a chance of getting things to work out her way. Sometimes she just argues for the sport of it. In fact, Lynn has been known to change her position midway through an argument and argue the opposite position even more tenaciously. She's willing to use any tactic to win her case--anger, drama, rudeness, even dishonesty. "I never would have imagined talking to adults the way Lynn talks to us," her father complains. "We reason with her every way we know, but everything turns into a heated argument." Do any of these teens sound familiar? If your son or daughter resembles one of these, you're not alone. I see many teens each year that parents and teachers describe as challenging, difficult, spirited, stubborn, hell-raising, defiant, or just plain impossible. Although no single term adequately describes all, or even most, of the teens I see, the one that comes closest is "strong-willed." These are normal teens with extreme behavior. They are harder to raise, difficult to discipline, and at greater risk for behavior problems at home, at school, and in the community. Strong-willed teens are not part of some conspiracy to make life difficult for others. They just do what strong-willed teens do. They test harder and more often, resist longer, protest louder, use more drama, take more risks, and carry things further than most of us would imagine. They are the supercharged versions of normal teens, the "movers" and "shakers" of the teen world who bring out strong reactions in others. Teachers and principals know them as the 10 percent that cause 90 percent of school discipline problems. Parents know them as their biggest challenges. I know them affectionately as "my kids" because I spend a lot of my time with them. Yes, I'm the proud parent of a strong-willed son. My youngest son, Ian, is a delight, but during his childhood and teenage years, he also was a workout. He wasn't the least bit impressed by the fact that I write books on this subject. At home, I got no breaks or professional immunity. Ian pushed hard against my rules and authority. At times, I wondered whether his behavior was normal, especially when he became a teen. Do you sometimes question whether your teen's behavior is normal? Perhaps you worry that you've done something to cause your teen to behave this way. If so, you'll be relieved to know that the problem, in most cases, is not parents. Most are doing the best they can with the information and guidance tools in their toolkits. The problem is not the teen, either. Most strong-willed teens are just being themselves and doing what strong-willed teens do. The real problem is the parents' inadequate understanding of adolescence and a bad match between the teen's temperament and the parents' limit-setting style. The parents' information and guidance tools are not well suited for the job. The predictable result: conflict, miscommunication, and power struggles. When parents arrive at my office looking for help with their strong-willed teen, one of my first tasks is to assist them in understanding their teen's temperament and this crazy time we call adolescence. Then we examine how the parents' limit-setting styles match up with their teen's temperament and discuss the predictable conflicts and friction points that develop around a bad match. That's what we're going to do in this chapter. A new perspective awaits you. You're not the problem, but you're a big part of the solution. A better understanding and improved match are well within your control. Understanding Your Strong-Willed Teen My youngest son, Ian, is a great force in our family and a great source of pride and joy. He's bright, adventurous, sensitive, a risk taker, and very determined. Sometimes I think he was more determined to train his mom and me than we were to train him. He kept us on our toes. If we were unclear, inconsistent, or indecisive when we asked him to do something, he would let us know. He'd continue testing and wait for a clearer signal. Like most strong-willed individuals, Ian didn't wait until his teenage years to show his cards. He started out as a strong-willed infant. He was strong-willed throughout early and middle childhood, and he was a strong-willed teenager. Today he is a strong-willed adult. He's still the bright, intrepid, determined risk taker I've always known and loved, except now he directs his energies into triathlons, scuba diving, skydiving, and his career. His extreme temperament traits have served him well, but Ian was not easy to raise. From the time he was a very young child, Ian always understood the "bottom line," and he knew how to get there. He pushed hard until he found it, and when he did, he pushed a little harder to see whether it would hold up. If it did, he stopped pushing, at least for a while, and accepted the limit or boundary. But Ian always pushed a lot before he got there. It was wearing! The pattern became even more intense during his teenage years. My older son, Scott, usually cooperated for the asking without all the pushing. How would you react if you asked two teenage boys to cooperate in the same respectful manner and got two consistently different responses? Would you become upset? Confused? Would you question whether something was wrong? The persistent testing that is so characteristic of strong-willed individuals, children and teens, is also what drives most parents crazy. Why would anyone do this? I'd ask myself. Is this normal? I would never push anyone as hard as Ian pushes me. Does your teen push hard against your rules and authority? Has he or she done so from an early age? Do you react in extreme ways and question whether he or she is normal? Join the club. Now it's time to get better acquainted with your teen. The following are some basic facts about strong-willed teens that will help you better understand his or her behavior and your reactions to it. * Strong-willed teens are normal. You've probably worried about whether your teen is normal when teachers or relatives point out that your teen's behavior seems extreme. They're probably right, but "extreme" does not mean "abnormal." Most strong-willed teens are normal with extreme temperament traits that magnify and intensify during adolescence. They're supercharged, but that doesn't mean they are brain-damaged, emotionally disturbed, or defective. Most have no diagnosable problems at all, though some do. There is no rule that says you can only have one thing going on in your life at a time. Some strong-willed teens also have learning disabilities, hyperactivity, emotional problems, and other special needs, but a strong will does not mean they are abnormal. * Strong-willed teens are not all alike. Each strong-willed teen is a special individual with his or her own unique temperament. No two behave in exactly the same way. Sure, they all test parents and behave in extreme ways, but they don't all do it to the same degree. Some are easier. Others are more difficult. Some are almost impossible. * Strong-willed teens are hard to understand. Our individual temperament shapes the way we think, learn, and behave. When others think and behave as we do, we can readily identify with them and better understand their experience. When others think, learn, and behave differently from us, however, it is not easy to understand them or to identify with their behavior. Why would anyone do that? we ask ourselves. From our perspective, the behavior is confusing and makes no sense. Teens today grow up in a very different world from that of their parents. When temperament and adolescence are thrown into the mix, we can appreciate the strong potential for confusion. Strong-willed teens, and most teens for that matter, are hard to understand for exactly this reason. As you learn about your teen's temperament and how that temperament shapes the way your teen behaves, behavior that once seemed confusing begins to make sense. * Strong-willed teens require a lot of guidance and discipline. Of course, this statement seems obvious. Teens who test a lot require frequent limit setting. When you accept this statement as a fact of life rather than a source of annoyance, your attitude and perspective change. Mine did. I began to see my son's behavior more clearly and stopped taking things personally when he tested me. I realized that his job was to test, and my job was to set clear, firm limits and guide him in the right direction. My improved perspective did not change his behavior, but it sure made my life less stressful. * Strong-willed teens do not respond to discipline methods that seem to work with other teens. Why do some teens respond so differently to the same request? One cooperates, while the other resists. Is the problem the resistant teen? Or the request? Most parents feel confused when their best guidance efforts work with one teen and not with another. The issue is less confusing when we consider the individual temperaments involved. Teens with compliant temperaments will cooperate with most discipline approaches, even ineffective ones, because their underlying desire is to cooperate. They permit parents a wide range for ineffectiveness. Strong-willed teens do not respond cooperatively to ineffective discipline. They require clear, firm, and consistent limit setting to make an acceptable choice to cooperate. Ineffective limit setting is the fast lane to power struggles with a strong-willed teen. * Strong-willed teens learn differently from their peers. Strong-willed teens do much of their learning "the hard way." That is, they need to experience the consequences of their poor choices and behavior repeatedly before they learn the lessons we're trying to teach. It's not enough to announce your rule that playing music loud in the house is not okay. Strong-willed teens need to repeatedly experience having their music turned off or having to use their headphones each time they decide to test the rule and blast their music. Their learning style can be frustrating and confusing because it is so unlike that of compliant teens, who will cooperate the first time for the asking. "Hard-way learning" is still good learning. It's just harder on parents. * Strong-willed teens bring out strong reactions in others. How do you feel when your teen challenges or defies your rules and authority? Angry? Frustrated? Confused? Threatened? Intimidated? Embarrassed? Guilty? Inadequate? Discouraged? Resentful? Exhausted? All of the above? These are all normal reactions to extreme behavior. Strong-willed teens often place strain on marriages, cause sibling conflicts, and create other problems within the family. Learning to temper your responses will be one of your greatest challenges in getting through the storm of adolescence. There is plenty of truth in the old adage that teenagers were put into our lives to teach us patience. * Adolescence is temporary, even for strong-willed teens. Now, here's a piece of good news! Adolescence doesn't last forever. Yes, your teen will have to go through the physical and emotional maturation process like all other teens, and he or she will have to complete some important developmental tasks along the way. But the most intense part of the process is temporary. This fact is hard to appreciate when you're immersed in the turbulence, but it does subside and get easier. Teens are movies, not snapshots. They grow and change, and most often for the better. You'll see that the temperament your teen brings into adolescence is the same temperament that will reemerge when he or she completes adolescence. Excerpted from Setting Limits with Your Strong-Willed Teen: Eliminating Conflict by Establishing Clear, Firm, and Respectful Boundaries by Robert J. MacKenzie All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
