How to Discipline a Teen

Video Transcript

DR. F. FELICIA FERRARA: Hello. I'm Dr. Felicia, the parent coach, and I've been working with families and teens for over 25 years now. And I'd like to speak to you about a very important topic and that's how to discipline a teen. This is a very difficult age, the adolescent years. Yes, we know in history, they've always been known to be turbulent no matter what generation we come from. In today's day, disciplining a teen is very crucial to shaping obviously the responsibility and maturity as an adult. What you want to do with the teen is you want to make sure that when you punish them it's not an impulsive punishment. You want to make sure your punishment matches the crime. For instance, you don't want to just lash out and just say: You're punished for a month; you're grounded. Because someone has to stay in the house and make sure they stay grounded for that month and that means you're also depriving your own activities. You might say: That's it; we're not going on that family vacation anymore. Well, that's not fair because now you're punishing the whole rest of the family for that behavior. So you want to make your punishment consistent and fair and appropriate with the misbehavior, whatever the teen did. It's very important that you set guidelines for your teenagers because if you don't they certainly can go astray. Very often, children, when you do set guidelines will thank you as an adult for setting them straight and on the right path during the times when they might have made the wrong choices. But remember, making wrong choices is part of learning. It's part of growing and it's what shapes an adolescent into the final adult they become, so keep your punishments fair, consistent and unique to that individual teenager. By all means, stay consistent across your punishments across all your children if you have several teenagers. Don't favor one over the other because they'll pick that up right away. So stay consistent, stay fair and make the punishment match the infraction of the rules. And also one more tip, write your rules down so that there's no misunderstanding later on in life. And when the event occurs, you don't want to have another argument. If it's written, you're in the clear. All right with that? And I wish you all good luck for any parent of a teenager. Good luck.