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Home › Articles › Parenting Strategies › Girls Gone Wild

Girls Gone Wild

Get Your Preteen Off the Fast Track

By Kelly Burgess

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Sells notes that most parents react negatively to the idea of rewarding kids for doing what is expected of them, but he also points out that a kid's work is being a kid, and that most adults won't work for free. Even more important, he encourages the parents to get the kids involved in creating rewards and consequences.

"Most parents think that their child won't give themselves any real consequences, but I find that the opposite is true. Kids will often offer up the one thing that will really motivate them," says Sells. "It just shows me how much kids do want limits and that they appreciate when parents set limits and stick with them."

Another step that Sells feels is important is to role play the conversation you're going to have with your child before you have it. This helps keep you on track and helps to keep the discussion from bogging down into a confrontation. He says it's not what you say, but how you say it that counts. In his practice, he actually helps parents with this by pretending to be the child who pushes the parents' buttons in order to help the parent figure out how not to go over the edge.

"Setting limits for your kids in a concrete way isn't a new idea necessarily, but many therapists just tell the parents to do it and then send them off to the slaughter," says Sells. "I've found that role playing with the parents first has a much higher rate of success."

*Name has been changed.


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