Covenant House Vancouver

How unreasonable is it for a parent to ask a child to check in with the parents to say where they are going after school, and to ask for the phone number of the place where a child is going in the evening, and to ask to speak to the parent who is supposed to be home when the child is going to a party? I am being told I make her look like a bad kid because I'm always checking up on her, but I'm not comfortable that she won't be in an unsafe situation, and I want to make sure the places she's going are safe and that the parents ARE home. She is 15.  

RESPONSE:

Not unreasonable at all! Reasonable request indeed...but let's look at the bigger issue...

What you want is to know your kid is going to safe place. What your kid wants is to not be embarrassed.

Where can you compromise?

Can you agree to limits that your daughter can have a say in? Be creative, what other ways can you get the info you want without causing embarrassment? Can you negotiate?

As with any negotiation, there is giving and taking on both sides....be flexible and say you want the same from her....this will give your daughter a sense of control....and that is a good thing.

Don't go in expecting to "win" the negotiation...so go high and expect to "lose" down to a level you can live with.....

 

We are very concerned about our 16 year old son and haven't heard you talk on the radio about this subject. Our son over the last year or so has been withdrawing from us as well as his friends. He won't have friends over any more and only sees one friend outside of school. Luckily they have an activity they do together twice a week or I fear he wouldn't see any of his peers. He stay is the basement most of the time or in his room. He prefers to play video games over everything else. I'm not sure where to go with our concerns.

Each month our crisis shelter manager appears on CKNW's The Christy Clark Show to discuss parenting teenagers.  Many different topics are covered and we can't get to all the questions from callers, so we welcome your questions and will do our best to answer them quickly.  To submit a question go to Ask Covenant House. We will pick the most popular questions/themes and the answers will be posted on the blog.