What Are You Doing in There?: Balancing Your Need to Know With Your Adolsecent's Need to Grow - Softcover

Giannetti, Charlene C.; Sagarese, Margaret

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0767912977 ISBN 13: 9780767912976

Verlag: Harmony Books, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

A reassuring guide for parents on how to navigate the fine line between protecting and invading the privacy of adolescents offers strategies on how to stay informed while respecting a child's "privacy zones," offering additional information on setting limits and promoting mutual respect. Original.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

CHARLENE GIANNETTI is a journalist who has written eight books, includingWho Am I?... and Other Questions of Adopted Kids.A mother of two, she lives in New York City.MARGARET SAGARESE is a former teacher and the author of many previous books. She lives on Long Island, New York. Their other collaborations,The Roller Coaster Years, Parenting 911, Cliques, and Patience of a Saint, are all available from Broadway Books.

Aus dem Klappentext

The "middler years," ages ten through fifteen, have always been characterized by an urge for independence and secrecy from parents. But these days, that secrecy can lead to more danger than ever before. Tackling the frustrations and fears of parenting in a world where cyber predators make headlines every day and "normal" adolescents act out in ways that beg the question "Where were the parents?", What Are You Doing in There? presents a new way of approaching a child's private life.

In their inimitable, candid style, Charlene Giannetti and Margaret Sagarese offer a variety of strategies for staying informed without resorting to snooping, eavesdropping, or other embarrassing KGB-like tactics. Within each of a child's six privacy zones bedroom, friends, romance, school, body, and the Internet Giannetti and Sagarese educate parents about common cover-ups and how to establish limits that enhance a spirit of mutual respect within the household. Exploring not just whether to worry, but how to go about getting honest answers, What Are You Doing in There? charts a course designed to instill maturity that will last well beyond the middler years.

The media constantly exhort parents to find out what the kids are really up to. Now there's finally a common-sense guidebook for addressing suspicions without doing more harm than good.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

The Bedroom

"Knock Three Times Before You Enter"
My bedroom is on the third floor.
My mother broke her kneecap,
so now she can't come up.
--Seventh-grade girl

Have you noticed this yet? One day your daughter is content sitting at the kitchen table doing schoolwork under your wing. Or your son parks himself nightly next to you, watching TV till bedtime. Then seemingly overnight, you notice your child is gone. Your son no longer shadows you. Your daughter spends nearly all free time in her bedroom. As children grow into adolescents, boys and girls gravitate away from family areas such as the den, living room, or finished basement and move into their bedrooms.

This change of routine is perfectly natural and normal. Parents, not middlers, often have a hard time adjusting. Human nature being what it is, many mothers' and fathers' knee-jerk reaction is to become suspect. A parent begins to ask: What are you doing in there? What's going on in there? Underneath is concern that something bad might be happening behind that closed door.

In our first book, The Roller-Coaster Years: Raising Your Child Through the Maddening Yet Magical Middle School Years, we prided ourselves on alerting parents to developmental milestones that ten- to fifteen-year-olds (as we coined this age group "middlers") experience. A major turning point is the emerging need for privacy. Around age twelve, children begin to think of themselves as having their own lives, apart from family. They hold their thoughts, feelings, and their relationships closer to their hearts. The child who once seemed to be an open book now closes the covers. As your child moves through early and into later adolescence, she is likely to share less information with you. You may even get the feeling that she is becoming downright secretive.

Keep in mind, though, that middlers grow at different rates. Some barely ten-year-olds bristle at every question you pose or comment you offer. "My parents try to give me a speech about everything," huffs a twelve-year-old boy from New Hampshire in our survey. And yet other fourteen-year-olds may still be telling you every detail about their daily lives without a prompt. Whether your child is nine or thirteen is irrelevant, though, because you will know when that need for privacy begins. How?

He will be spending more and more time away from you either with peers or hanging out in his room. Don't panic.

In this chapter, we'll tell you how to get inside your child's head, and inside his room, without having to resort to undercover tactics. Rather than seeing a child's room as a hostile bunker begging for a break-and-enter offensive, we will advise you how to make it over into a discovery zone. Therein lies information, evidence, and secrets. Our guidelines will show you how to effortlessly gather all the information you need in order to feel comfortable.

Getting to Know Your Way Around--Their Bedroom

As children move into double digits--ten, eleven, twelve--they covet control over their comings and goings. They seek independence. The bedroom becomes personal territory. Once upon a time, only a parent closed a child's door so a little one could nap without the disturbing noises of the family. During these years, it's your child who will be closing the door. A new knock etiquette comes into play. Entering without knocking is defined as "barging in." Even if your child isn't putting a Do Not Disturb sign on the doorknob, you get the sense that you are not always welcome.

The changing of the guard at the bedroom door signals change. Your child is staking her claim for ownership over her bedroom. She wants you to observe her idea of the protocol. Protocol? Many of us aren't even aware of how we do enter our child's domain, much less that sensitivity is in order.

In our survey we ask ten- to fifteen-year-olds, "If your mother or father wanted to come into your room, how would they act?" Half (50 percent) reported their parents would come in without knocking. Mothers and fathers rated themselves far more considerate than their offspring rated them. Next time, knock.

When you do go into that room during these years, you will notice changes. The bedroom fills up with clutter. As children morph into adolescents, music scores the transition, loudly or silently inside headphones. Like all good parents, you want to get into this privacy zone because it is the latitude and longitude of what's happening inside your child. If you are like the majority, you make a huge mistake. You try to fight your way in.

Sidestep the Messy War Zone

Over the years, we quizzed parents to reflect on the biggest battleground they had faced with their adolescents. We offered a list of scenarios. Back talk? Unsavory friends? Drugs and alcohol? Messy room? The majority of parents confessed their child's messy room created the most fireworks.

The bedroom does indeed have the potential to become the universal battleground. The typical parental battle cry is "Clean that room." The usual retort is "It's MY room!" Or "Leave me alone." The operative words here are my and me. The right to be a packrat and live in a pigsty is vigorously defended. In the battle for independence that adolescents wage, control over the state of the bedroom is the prize.

Initially, the messy room controversy surprised us. In a world with the specter of AIDS and Ecstasy hovering, populated by tattooed punks and wild-childs with pierced bellybuttons and peeking thongs, where fresh-mouthed kids verbalize disrespect, why did unmade beds or strewn wrinkled clothing unhinge mothers and fathers so?

After searching the souls of parents and interviewing experts on early adolescence, we learned the messy room conflict is not really about dirty socks or discarded sweatshirts. It's deeper. It is about authority and discipline. When a child retreats into her own world and takes a stand, it feels threatening to a parent in the authority department. Some parents turn downright reactionary, resorting to I'm-the-boss mode, a recipe for instant and repeated argument. It's as if we fear if we give an inch, our children will steal a yard.

Avoid this trap. Take a deep breath here. Don't think pigsty or packrat even if those terms are on the tip of your tongue every time you glance into your child's doorway. If you see only disarray you are missing a more important perspective. If you remain bent on establishing your dictatorial order, you deny yourself a golden opportunity.

Think and Act like an Anthropologist

In the world of espionage, there is a term, humint. It stands for human intelligence, all the information that comes voluntarily from individuals versus data that is unearthed by devious means such as bugging phone lines or hacking into computers. Humint is a term and a tactic you can master.

Instead of focusing on discipline, we suggest you choose, literally, the discipline of anthropology. Why? Your child's room is actually a treasure trove, albeit a disorganized and disheveled one. Think of it as an archaeological dig. Greet it with curiosity. Treat all the contents therein with delicacy and respect. Okay, we can see visions of smelly Skechers and crumpled brown khakis dancing across your increasingly doubtful mind, but wait. The contents for better or worse hold the clues to who your child is, and is becoming. Anything (and everything) that intrigues or bores him exists within those four walls. They contain yesterday's cherished memories and tomorrow's dreams.

Take an inventory. There's the stuff of childhood. This may include Star War Legos or Barbies, action figures, board games, or baseball cards. Then there's the stuff pointing toward adolescence: cologne, bodybuilding or fan magazines,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Harmony Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2003
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0767912977
• ISBN 13: 9780767912976
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 213
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar