Guide for Parents to Help Your Teen Follow House Rules
It may be difficult to get your teenage daughter or son to follow house rules in the beginning. One thing about house rules is to let everyone know what they are. Don’t give the teenagers any warnings after they are aware of the rules. If they break the rules then they will have to deal with the consequences. Don’t let them slack off otherwise then they will think that you aren’t serious and won’t care about the rules.
Teenagers need to know that you are the boss of the house. Whichever rules that parents have for their house then the teenagers should follow. Make sure that both mom and dad enforce the rules otherwise the teenagers will try to use parents against each other. Here are five tips in order to help you let your teenagers know that you are serious about them following the house rules.
1. Make them have consequences every time when they misbehave. Be firm about this and don’t let them slack off on the rules. Let them know that you are serious about the house rules and that you expect them to follow the rules. You can make them do extra chores or ground them from seeing friends or any after school activities. You can even take away tv time or anything else that they enjoy.
2. Take away the Internet or take away the keys to their car. Teenagers either love to play on the Internet or love the freedom of having a car. You will only have to take away the Internet or the car keys a few times for them to understand that you are serious. They won’t try to keep pushing the limits since they want their freedom back.
3. You can take away their money. You can take away their allowance money and you can even take away money from them that they earn from a part time job while still in high school. They will eventually get tired of not being able to spend any of their money that they earned. Teenagers love money and if you take away their money then they will be more eager to follow the house rules.
4. You can always send your teenagers to summer school. Most teenagers don’t like summer school. Summer school would get teenagers to behave pretty quickly since they would dread going to summer school for the entire summer. One thing to keep in mind though that summer school wouldn’t work on a teenager would does love to learn since he or she would probably enjoy summer school.
5. You can remove each tv and computer out of the house. It will really make the teenagers bored. They will want to have the tv and computer back real fast so they would be willing to follow the house rules then. You want to use this as a last resort in order to get them to behave. Teenagers love to be entertained so taking away all entertainment devices such as tv and computer will make them want those privileges back soon.
