Text Your Teen
If you’re in the black hole of the teenage years with your kids like I am, here’s a suggestion for getting through to them: Text your teen
I swear that I could almost see the transformation happen over night. My teen went from being a fairly well-behaved, respectful child to an insolent teen. It reminded me of when she turned into a terrible two, and the only thing she could communicate was “no”. Now the “no” has turned into an eye roll, and it’s just as frustrating.
A little too old for time out, she only seems to respond to threats and shouting. I’ve turned into the mean mom I never wanted to be…my mother! While I’m not ready to give in and send an insolent, disrespectful teen full of attitude into the world, I do get tired of hearing myself yell. So, what’s a good parent to do?
Then I realized that most of her communication with her friends these days (much to my chagrin) is via text messaging. In fact, she’ll have a friend come over to the house and instead of talking, playing a game or watching a movie together, they’ll sit side by side and text other friends. It drives me crazy, but they don’t seem to mind. Finally, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” came to mind. So I got myself one of those cheap Blackberry phones and started typing rather than talking.
OMG! What a huge difference this has made. The screaming is down to a dull roar in my household (at least from the mean mom…I can’t speak for the drama queen teen). Now instead of nagging about chores, I send a text reminder to her Blackberry Curve with the smile face :) of course. Instead of getting into that hormone-induced argument that is waiting to happen almost daily, I’ll speak my peace gently and suffer the eye roll. A while later, I text a little message explaining further what I meant, why I said it, and that I hope she understands how much I care about her turning into a lovely young woman. Another smiley face of course :) or a wink ;-). How can she get mad at that?
You may think that I’ve lost my ability to communicate with my teen. Well, the screaming mommy communication style wasn’t working for me, so I’m just trying another method. We still do plenty of real talking in my home. But, hey, if teens respect the text message more than the verbal word, I can either fight it or use it to my advantage.
So far, so good. The daily drama continues (as it probably will until she’s 18), but the fallout is much quieter. And in a strange way, I think she appreciates that I’m trying to learn her language (the language of text).
Oh…one more great advantage to the whole texting craze. I have been able to resurrect the time out. The consequence for misbehavior now is not yelling, but a cell phone time out…usually 24 hours or more, depending on the offense. Try it. Your teen’s attitude will turn around so fast, she’ll get whiplash! :-O