Raising teenagers to have integrity

Stephanie Brookes, Contributor, Jakarta

Parenting teenagers can be a real challenge. Guiding your teenager through the teen years can be a tricky juggling act between enforcing strong boundaries and allowing for hormone levels rising 10-fold (in boys).

We try to be a good role model by embracing patience, kindness and understanding but at times it seems impossible not to lose control or "spazz".

Every parent wants their child to have high self-esteem, but they have to earn it: We can't just give it to them because it's good for them. With so many issues to contend with, we also have to effectively listen to what our teenager really wants, and that is to be as independent as possible.

Teenagers learn by making their own mistakes. We must allow them to do this, but at times it can be very hard to hold back on the advice we want to give them. Lets face it, we as parents have learned a lot through experience.

We have acquired wisdom over the years, but by allowing our child to fail, experience disappointment, loneliness, grief and even sadness, they learn to become their own person.

Our job as parents is to let them have these experiences and not try to step in and rescue them at the first sign of trouble.

Key issues in parenting

Two issues play key roles in managing our teenagers: integrity and intuition.

Integrity involves making moral decisions. Morals are what we hope we have instilled in our children, through their formative years, so they may make the best choices in difficult circumstances, but integrity is what we what we need to call on to enact these morals when tested in challenging situations.

Teenagers are famous for mocking our shock and disdain. They love to point out to us our hypocrisy when we lecture them on truth, yet how they heard us tell someone on the phone that we could not make it to that function because we were not feeling well, and instead went out and ran some errands.

As adults we learn the value of integrity usually when we lose it. As soon as we violate our integrity we begin to feel guilt, remorse and disappointment within ourselves.

As we go through life, it seems we do battle with this constantly. We beat ourselves up and ask: "What was I scared of? Why couldn't I just tell the truth? Why was it necessary for me to make up a nice excuse? Would I have said something different if it were another person who had asked me to come to that function?"

When we ask ourselves these kinds of questions, then we seem to embrace our integrity and handle things differently next time around.

This brings us back to teenagers. When teenagers fail to hold on to their integrity, they learn from their mistakes, just as we do as adults. They need to make lots of failures along the way to adulthood.

Another step in the process is the importance of their being able to discuss these occurrences with a parent, or a significant adult who will listen reflectively and without being judgmental, to help them work through these issues.

When they are experiencing those feelings of "not feeling quite right" about something that has happened, they need to turn to someone who will not judge them but offer support through active listening and act as a sounding board.

If you are specifically asked for advice, only then advise.

When you talk to teenagers about integrity, they are quizzical. Most teenagers hate lectures, yet lecture we do, or at least that's how it feels to them, when we start to give advice.

However, when you talk about intuition, they seem to understand this and are even curious about the topic. They experience a range of emotions and feelings through their experiences and sometimes they don't know or even think about how they came to know what to do, they just acted.

This is their identity -- who they are -- and it is this independence and sense of identity that they crave.

It was strange. I'm not the sort of person who likes to be on stage and I have never considered myself a leader, but when I was encouraged to run for Student Council I just knew it was the right thing to do. I just had a gut feeling.

This is intuition talking.

Mom and Dad went away for 3 days and I had the option to stay at home alone with the maid and driver or stay at a friend's house.

My first reaction was to jump at the opportunity to stay home alone but then when I thought about it something felt right about it. What would my friends think? What would they conspire to get up to with all that freedom and no rules?

Surely everything would be fine, but then again maybe the weekend would get out of control. In the end I opted to stay at my friends house, because something just didn't feel right about staying alone.

This is integrity talking.

Good communications

The most important thing when raising teenagers is to stay connected to them. Talk, talk and do more talking but pick your moment.

If your teenager is like mine, you will only get a grunt at 4.30pm after school, so be aware that a teenager has different times of the day when they are more receptive and open to talking.

I find late at night is the best time. Ask open-ended questions to get the conversation going, not yes or no answers.

Instead of "Did you have a good day today" ask "What was the best part of your day today?"

Also, car rides are good conversation-grabbing times. You are both looking ahead in a car, and not confronting each other as in a one-on-one scenario, and also they are a captive audience.

Make the time to go to school with your teenager once in a while or, instead of sending the driver to run and fetch your teenager from a friend's house, you go as well.

When you open up a conversation, involving an integrity issue, appeal to their ego-driven self first.

If you want the discussion to be successful appeal to this intuitive side first -- the gut-feeling impromptu side of their nature first -- the non-rational thinking perspective -- and then focus their attention on the integrity side and try and have them open up to a more balanced, holistic and carefully considered point of view.

Intuition is what actors call upon when they need to improvise a scene because their co-actor forgot their lines. Or, when your teenager meets someone for the first time, and feels there is something very special about that person. Teenagers will quickly understand that analogy.

Teenagers will need to use both their intuition and integrity together.

Temptations

Lets talk about sex and drugs. Research shows that 20 percent of teenagers who have been drinking alcohol or using drugs and have engaged in sexual activities have regretted it the next day.

Our teenagers are going to be exposed to alcohol and drugs and be tempted to be one of the crowd or may even feel pressured by their peers, but if they have an understanding of the relationship between intuition and integrity and they have learned to trust their inner voice, they are more likely to make more sound choices.

On instinct they will want to steal the moment, because we all know teenagers live in the now (they're kids, aren't they?) but being able to recognize trouble and avoid it is when integrity steps in.

When they walk out the door next, remind them to "Be home on time and remember you're are a wonderful person. If you find yourself in a situation, use your intuition and trust yourself to do what is right."

Our goal as parents is to raise our kids so they learn how to decipher what is right and wrong. We just need to give them the tools and confidence to go about it and allow them the right to make mistakes along the way.

Without these mistakes they will never learn to recognize, value and trust their integrity.