Parental Authority: Do You Have It?
Talk So Your Kids Will Listen
“I listen to my father because I have found that he tells me things that turn out to be true,” said Allison (18 year old high school senior) as I drove her home from the basketball game the Wednesday after the Saturday night party where some of her classmates got into trouble, getting drunk and trashing the house of a classmate. “Like ‘Never go out without money,’ he says.”I felt like saying: “That’s interesting. Your parents think you never listen. It drives them crazy that you get mad at them every time they try to tell you something, and that you insist on doing it your own way. Yesterday, your mother even said to me with a sigh ‘It’s as if she is bound and determined to make mistakes.’” But I just listened.
(Doesn’t she know her parents and I are friends? Ah, yes. She does, doesn’t she. Hmmmmm.)
She continued: “I wish I could talk to the parents of my friends and tell them how to talk to their kids. I wish they would tell them things like ‘Never go out without money.’ There we are at Starbucks and they’re all, ‘Allison, can