The ultimate goal of parental discipline is to help adolescents develop sufficient self-discipline to manage themselves and their lives independently and well.

1. Clear rules are consistently supported.

  • The teenager knows where parents stand because they keep standing in the same place.
2. Patient insistence is relentlessly applied.
  • The teenager knows that if it’s important enough for parents to ask for, it’s important enough to parents to steadfastly see that it gets done.
3. Correction is non-evaluatively given.
  • The teenager knows that being held accountable does not bring personal censure as well.
4. Constructive conduct receives positive recognition.
  • The teenager knows that parents always place any mistakes and misconduct within the larger context of everything she is doing well (and everything that she could be doing badly that she is not.)
5. Speaking up is expected.
  • The teenager knows that whenever parental discipline of the corrective kind is called for, he will get a full and fair hearing so his side of things gets to be told.
6. There is reciprocal giving.
  • The teenager knows she lives in a family system where to get one also has to give.
7. Concern comes before consequence.
  •  The teenager knows that even in response to misbehavior, parental concern for his wellbeing comes before deciding what is due for what he did.
8. Individual choice is respected.
  •  When parents have a child that enters adolescence, they know that the age of command (believing “I have to do what I am told”) is over and the age of consent has arrived.
9. Guidance is faithfully given.
  • Because the communication is delivered directly and with sensitivity, the teenager knows that any counsel communicated is given with her welfare in mind, and so is taken to heart.
10. The first consequence is communication.
Parental discipline is a responsibility and an art – creating influences that keep your adolescent on a constructive passage, restoring a healthy direction when he or she has momentarily fallen away. Instruction and encouragement are most of what it takes. Correction needs to play lesser role.