How to Avoid Power Struggles with Teens

Power struggles with teens are inevitable if you have one or two in the house. With a houseful of teens, 4 to be exact, a large portion of my day is spent on power struggling. At one point, I found myself doing nothing but power struggling...no way to live, I thought.

I had to implement some sort of strategy to overcome the frustration and stress from a constant flow of power struggles. As a result I found a local support group for parents called WASSUP, Waukesha (my hometown) Alliance Supporting Strong United Parents. Here's some of the tips I've been able to apply to a lot of these situations. These tips have been successfully used for even some of the most troubled teens in this group with success.

First Validate Your Teen

As parents who have spent enough time engaging in round for round of arguments with a teen, you may feel like cutting to the chase and making your point without giving a thought to how your teen may feel, however, validating your teen's feelings will help you gain a bit of respect and control over successfully reaching your goal with your teen. Let them know they're heard.

Make Your Point and Exit

When you encounter a time that requires you to confront your teen to explain a point you need to make, and possibly a consequence or two, it's important to stick to the facts and not get thrown off track with a lot of back and forth dialogue that isn't relevant. Make a valid point and exit without further reactions that could prolong your conversation and risk unhealthy reactions.

Stick to Your Guns

Once you've made your goals and intentions as the parent clear, be vigilant regarding your follow through. When you become wishy washy after a bit of time has passed, you've just dropped the ball with your message. It won't be long until you've lost the game and your teen feels free to do things their way because they sense you've backed off.

Detachment

If you still find your teen attempting to engage you in an argument and you need something to help you through the process, you may want to consider "detachment". One oof the members of our group offered this concept and I knew it from a different group involving the 12 steps. It's a very effective way to turn off your tendency to react to provocation from others, your teen included. It takes practice, but you'll improve over time. By "detaching" you disengage your reactive tendency and you can stay focused on what's important without emotion getting involved.