It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

"Mom, can I go to the mall with my friend Jenny?"
No, not after you came home late last night.
Well everybody else gets to.
I don't care what everybody else gets to do, you can't
You just don't trust me
You've got to earn it
I have
no you haven't
have too
have not
SLAM!!! etc.

If the above conversation sounds familiar, you're probably the parent of a teenager. I especially love the "everybody else gets to do it" line. My parents response to that was "if everybody else stood on their head in the middle of the street at 3am in their underwear, would you?"

Probably would have.

I never understood what all that meant; but I do know that raising teenagers can be an extremely challenging task. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the parents of the teenagers I work with in my practice.

Now don't get me wrong. Most teenagers are pretty OK people. The vast majority seem to stay out of the juvenile justice system and eventually become adults. It's just that most of the teenagers I've worked with are 16 going on 26 and 16 going on 6, all at the same time.

There is a proverb that goes something like "raise a child in the way they should go and when they are old they won't depart from it". What that implies is at some point they are going to go away from it. Some families seem to go through the passage of the teen years with little or no struggle. Many other families find it one of the most challenging and at times, maddening stages for their family. Parents of teenagers really try hard to navigate these difficult waters. One of the areas that seem to be the most difficult for parents is the issue of trust. Let's take a closer look at how trust operates in families with teenagers, how it sometimes gets damaged, and how it can be built back.

A few families seem to go along and never have any problems with or damage done to the trust level for their kids. Others can really struggle with this issue. One of the places families tend to get stuck is seeing trust as an either/or situation. The teen lies, breaks curfew, experiments with drugs, or something equally trust damaging. The parents feel like they have lost all trust in their teen. The problem, or the "sticking point", here is how do you build the trust back from nothing? How do we set it up so kids can earn back trust? Viewing trust as a matter of degree can help create a map back to a trusting relationship.

Here's an example of building a map back to trust as well as creating the structure to earn trust back. Let's say the teen has broken curfew by a few hours. The first step is looking at trust on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 is the least amount of trust, 10 is the most. Let's say that coming home late reduced the trust level from a 9 down to a 3. That's a gap of 6 trust levels. Creating a map back to a high trust level will be difficult if you try to go from a three to a nine all at once. It's just too big a leap.

The next step is to talk about and agree on what changes and/or behaviors need to occur to go from a three level to a four level; then from a four to a five; a five to a six; and so on. In this way several positive structures are set up. The parents have a way of monitoring their teens progress and the teen has something to work toward. In addition, there's a built in incentive for the teen. In many families, trust is kind of like playing video games at the mall. In the video arcade, the more tokens you have, the more you can play. In much the same way, in families, the more trust you have, the more you can do.

At this stage many parents will ask "How do I know things are really different, that I'm not getting fooled?" That's an excellent question and the best answer I can offer is simply to watch and see if the behavior matches the words. If it does, you're on the right track. If the behavior doesn't match the words, then you know someone trying to pull the wool over your eyes.

Trust is a crucial element during the sometimes difficult time of the teen years. If damage to trust occurs, first, remember that this is a common, although serious, occurrence. Second, begin building the road back to a trusting relationship. If you find yourself still stuck along the road, it may be time to call in some outside help in order to get unstuck.

And one last thing - the teen years do come to an end, and if you are really lucky, you get to live long enough to watch your children have teenagers too!

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