For about 3 or 4 years, I worked as a taxi driver in Newmarket, Ontario (about 2000-2004), I observed first hand the 'party life' of the young high school girls as they travelled to and from their destinations at night. Mainly the teenage girls were just being teenage girls -- going out to meet the boys -- but sometimes the parent/child relations around curfews got more than a bit crazy and out of control.
One day I sat down to write a bit about my experiences -- and my editorial comments -- from witnessing what I saw relative to the stress and strain between daughters pushing their curfews past the limit and way over, and fathers or mothers 'going off the deep end' relative to confronting their daughters on the regular broken curfews.
As a parent raising a teenage boy, I don't pretend that I was the perfect parent -- far from it. I was probably too liberal and permissive. (But it is a little easier in some ways raising a teenage boy than it is a teenage girl -- particularly around the 'safety' issue.) My daughter lived primarily with her mother but I had a few summers where I got to feel first hand what it was like to worry about the 'safety' issue at night.
Fulling admitting some of my own 'parental' flaws, and things I wish I could do over again, maybe you will still find something below that is of some value. It is directed to both kids and parents. Adlerian Psychology spends a lot of time on these parent/child issues and I will refer you to some classic books in this field at the end of this piece. I spent two years studying at the Adlerian Institute and will have more to write about my studies there later.
-- dgb, April 21st, 2009.
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A Cab Driver's -- and Father's -- Guide to a Better Working Relationship and Conflict-Resolution Strategy Between Parents and Teenagers -- written around 2001.
1. Every problem and every conflict has a solution to it (without resorting to the need for threats, name-calling, mud-slinging, trash-talking, and/or violence).
2. There is no problem too big to be unsolvable or beyond hope. If something is not working out for us, then we simply need to change our perspective, and try another way. Failing this -- or failing this working -- then we may need to ask for help in solving our problem, resolving our conflict, and/or at least find someone who is willing to listen to us, support us, and encourage us, both in our difficulties and in our successes.
3. There is always a person in our world who will listen to our problems, listen to our conflicts, no matter how big and horrible, or small and insignificant they may be or seem.
4. Kids, promise to yourself that you won't ever use a weapon except in the most extreme instance of self-defense.
5. Kids, settle your disputes, your conflicts, your problems without a weapon, without a gang, without name-calling, without trash-talking, without threats, without intimidation, without escalation, without violence...
6. Parents, listen to your kids! Show them that you care about them, that you love them, encourage and support them, even as you displine them, and/or put boundaries on their teenage behaviors. Show them that you are not just there to tell them everything they can't do, or are not doing right.
One of the worst things you can do as a parent is to threaten to evict them, or follow through with this threat, particularly if they are under 18 and don't know yet how to support themselves.
Don't paint yourself into a corner -- especially this corner of potential or actual eviction. Don't go here no matter what, no matter how bad your child might be misbehaving, no matter how much he or she may exasperate you, because there has to be another solution to get you out of this horrible impasse. Step away from all such 'power-battles' and 'power-plays' when you are dead centre in the middle of one and no one is budging. (Maybe try a 'role-reversal' and ask your child what he or she would do if he or she were the parent.) Don't let things escalate terribly out of control. This is how domestic violence starts -- between parents and kids; and/or between spouses.
Take a 'timeout' as long as is necessary for things to cool down. Come back to the issue later, even the next day, when both of you are in a better, less aggressive, less emotional, frame of mind, when both of you can engage in a more product form of creative problem-solving and conflict-resolving.
I know that parents raised as children in an authoritarian family, have trouble giving up authoritation power as parents. But it is important to teach your child 'self-assertion' and 'self-discipline, hand in hand with each other; not just 'squash' your child under the intimidation of your authoritarion power. Besides, the older your child gets, the less that approach will work, and the more it will alienate you from your child, teach your child how to be 'sneaky' and 'manipulative', to lie to you, or to flat out engage you in a power contest of 'Make me! (Expletive deleted.) I will do what I want, Dad or Mom, regardless of how much you scream at me, threaten me, and try to intimidate me.'. Then you are painted into the 'violence' or 'eviction' corner again -- both of which are horrible places to go. Teach your child 'dialectic democracy' and 'dialectic homeostatic balance' because that is more of what we need in the world, not more of the old 'authoritarianism' and 'rebellion'. Authoritarianism pits people against each other as rivals. Dialectic-democracy teaches people to engage with each other, to make contact with each other, to exchange 'self-assertive statements' and to negotiate towards 'civil, harmonious homeostatic balance'. With dialectic-democracy, ideally, all the cards are on the table -- everything is 'transparent'; in contrast, with 'authoritarianism' and 'submission' (real and/or faked), resentment, rebellion, power and revenge are always 'underneath the table' so that 'what you see is not what you get'. Or if your child is brave enough and honest enough, then everything will escalate to the point of testing the limits of your power -- which in the end are nothing more than 'physical violence', 'withdrawing funds', and/or eviction. In the end you are teaching your child the basics -- usually bad -- of 'intimidation', 'force', 'retaliation', 'power', 'revenge', 'extortion', 'bribery', 'anarchy'...need I go on. All the nice things in life.
Even if you win your power battle, you are likely going to lose your child -- and he or she may be a long time coming back to you.
As a cab driver, I have seen the street kids, 14, 15, 16, sleeping inside and outside of donut shops, no money in their pockets for food, shelter, or transportation. It is not pretty. It is very sad. Some of them come or came from good, middle to upper class homes. They either left their homes and/or were evicted because of a power battle that spiralled out of control. It might be years, if ever, before they speak to their parents again. In the meantime, they have to learn how to live on the street in ways that there parents -- if they care about them -- are likely to shudder to think about.
7. Kids, understand your parents concerns about you! Understand that even when it might not seem like it, they probably care about you, probably love you, worry about your safety, worry about you getting into trouble, worry about you getting pregnent and/or violated if you are a girl, worry about you getting hurt, worry about your drinking, worry about your getting into drugs, worry about who you are with and where. It is likely they cannot sleep at night until they know that you are safely home. If they have to go to work in the morning, or even if they don't, and you are still out cruising past your curfew, into the wee hours of the morning, they are probably at home worried sick about you until you are home, and they are no longer scared to death of what may be happening to you, especially if you are a girl. And then once you are home, they are likely to be very mad with you, mad at you for having put them through such mental self-torture, mad because you didn't meet your curfew, mad because you didn't at least phone them to tell you what was going on, and that you were at least safe. Worse still, is when you don't answer your cell phone when your mom phones you to find out what the heck is going on, and where the heck you are, only to get your sweet voice on the answering machine...once, twice...and make that three times...like a goverment office that you can't get through to. One day, Ms. 'I want all my freedom and i want it now', you too may be a parent, and have a teenage daughter, and then 'what goes around, comes around' -- you can experience very directly what it feels like to be in your mother's shoes tearing her hair out at 3:00 in the morning, as you party on...
With freedom comes the need for self-discipline, committment and responsibility to those you love and care about in your life. Learn the second half of the golden rule: Don't do to others what you would not want them to do to you.
Treat your loved ones well and they will continue to treat you well, be your 'Rock of Gibraltar'. Abuse them and they may not be there for you when you need them most. It's not pretty living on the street. It's not fun trying to support yourself before you have learned the necessarry life skills to properly do so. Abuse your loved ones past their limit -- and you will learn the hard way what its like to live life without them.
8. Parents and kids! Negotiate on curfews that you can both agree on and both live with. Kids, once you have agreed to a curfew with your parents, then abide by it. Stick to your word unless, in special, unique circumstances, you can work out a special one night agreement over the phone, or before. Sticking to your word -- saying what you mean and meaning what you say, not manipulating your parents, lying to them, playing them, giving them false stories -- is your bond of sacred, mutual trust and respect with your parents. This sacred, mutual trust with your parents -- as opposed to the opposite, a lying, manipulative relationship -- will provide the difference between you having a safe haven at home, a place you can call home, a place that provides you with relief from your day to day stresses vs. a home that is a horrible war zone that you only want to escape from. Parents, it is your responsibility to be good role models and to demonstrate as good role models how this process of mutual trust and respect works: 1. between you and your spouse; and 2. between you and your kids. Your kids will take whatever you teach them, directly or indirectly, into all their teenage and adult relationhsips. Kids can see and interpret 'hypocrisy' -- don't believe that they can't. They will learn what you do as well as what you say and if you are a hypocrite, they will learn hypocrisy.
9, Encouragement -- the importance of encouragement -- cannot be overstated. Better to support and encourage your child's successes than to emphasize his or her failutres. Go easy on the negative feedback, asserting your concerns, your wants, your expectations for your child as well as for yourself but give your child the freedom and flexibility to respond to your concerns, wants, and expectations. Remember that he or she is a unique person in his or her own right -- and not just an extension of your own brain and possibly unfulfilled 'self-expectations'.
10. Negative feedback and criticism that is not couched in encouragement and support, respect and trust, is often construed as 'nagging', 'discouragement', and 'control-manipulation' -- and in turn leads to all sorts of negative compensations from your child -- from 'excessive rebellion' to 'excessive submissiveness and approval-seeking (often with underlying 'covert rebellious' behavior at work such as lying, reverse-manipulation, and 'saying one thing, then doing another').
11. Parents, don't underfund your kids! If they are teenagers and they don't have a part-time job, they need money to function whenever they go out. And they probably will need money to get home unless you are planning to pick them up, or it is your teenage son who can walk home, or you trust who is bringing your teenager home. If cabfare is needed -- especially in the case of your daughter -- make sure she has it, to the extent that you possibly can! You don't want your teenage daughter stranded who knows where and without enough money to get home, and to get home quickly if she needs to. You don't want her driving home if she has had too much to drink, or getting a drive home with someone else who has had too much to drink. That can spell disaster. We've all seen the commercials. Put an emergency $20 in the mailbox, under the mat, or inside the door before you go to bed. Or if your local cab driver is good enough to extend your child 'emergency credit', please help to make sure that this driver is properly re-imbursed next time in. Don't let your child start to abuse your cab-driver's 'liberal flexibility and good-will'.
12. Parents! You may not see this in larger cities like Toronto, but in smaller cities/towns like Newmarket, Richmond Hill, and Markham where cab drivers serve the local community, and service the same customers, often your kids who don't have their own cars yet, day after day, week after week, month after month -- be appreciative that your local cab driver -- especially if he or she is a father or mother too -- cares about your kids, and is doing the best he or she can to help make sure they get back home safely at night so that you can stop worrying, stop stewing, and go to sleep!
These suggestions are brought to you with sincerity, concern, and caring from a Newmarket taxi driver of 5 years, and father of two teenage kids, one boy, one girl, who knows some of the trials and tribulations that both parents and kids put each other through over issues of freedom and independence vs. family, community, and general social responsibility. They are not meant to be an 'end-point' but rather more of a 'starting-point' for further research, discussion, and debate vs. the very contentious and difficult issue of 'authoritarianism' vs. 'democracy' in the family.
-- dgb, exact date unknow, approximately 2001, slightly modified April 8-9th, 2009).
Suggested Further Reading:
Check out the work of Alfred Adler, Rudolph Dreikurs (A New Approach to Discipline: Logical Consequences 1968, and, 'Coping With Children's Misbehavior', 1948, 1958, 1972); and Shirley Gould ('Teenagers: The Continuing Challenge', 1977).
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