Supporting Your Teenagers : Balancing Freedom with Responsibility

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Just because you’re willing to make some adjustments
to your family’s schedule to support your teenager’s growing
independence doesn’t mean that you have to—or should—rearrange your
family’s schedule to accommodate everything your teenager wants to do.
If you’ve shown respect for your teen’s scheduling needs, your teen
should show a reciprocal respect for the rest of the family’s schedule.
You should have an understanding with your teenager that any of his
activities which will impact the family’s schedule must be communicated
and incorporated into your family’s planner with as much notice as
possible. If a scheduling conflict is apparent, it should be resolved
well in advance of the conflicting activities. Because sometimes
teenagers don’t think broadly enough to realize that their plans affect
others, you may want to specify which activities require advance notice.
Here are some examples:

  • Not eating a meal at home

  • Having guests for a meal

  • Wanting to use a family car

  • Having friends spend the night

  • Doing anything that will preclude the teen from completing assigned chores on time

  • Needing to use anything that belongs to the family collectively (computer, television, workbench, tools, oven, and the like)

You should decide how
much advance notice you need to keep your schedule from being derailed
and make sure your teen understands the reasoning behind that
requirement.


Learning to Drive

Driving is one of the
privileges that accrues in the middle-teen years. It is a major
contributor to both your teen’s growing independence and responsibility.
These days, having a student driver in the house takes a lot more
scheduling than it did in the past. In addition to a driver’s education
course that involves classroom and in-car training with a certified
driving instructor, most states also require the student’s parents to
ride in the front passenger seat alongside the student driver for a
specified amount of time, usually around 50 hours.

To see your
student successfully through the process to licensed driver without any
scheduling crises, you should plan ahead and set aside time in your
planner to accomplish each of the following steps:


1.
Find
out your state’s driver’s license requirements. This first step is a
good task to assign to your teenager. He’ll already have some idea from
school, and he probably can get any additional information he needs from
the Internet. Try to get this information well in advance of the time
your teen can actually begin the process so that you can plan ahead.
2.
Coordinate
your calendar with your teen’s if she needs to appear in person to get a
temporary permit so you’re both available when the registrar is open.
Also, double-check that your teenager has all her paperwork in order
(birth certificate or whatever else is required) so that you won’t have
to make a second trip. If your student has to take a written exam before
getting her permit, make sure you’ve planned that time into your
schedule.
3.
Phone your insurance agent before you allow your teen behind the wheel to make sure your policy covers his driving.
4.
Register
your student for driver’s education class. Make sure you understand
when the class meets and when your student must be available for in-car
instruction.

You can save some time in your own schedule if your student can take
driver’s education at the school she attends so that you don’t have to
drive with her to and from class.
5.
Create
a log to keep track of the hours you spend in the passenger seat while
your student drives. Make sure your log is set up to track time spent on
highway driving, night driving, parking/maneuverability practice,
foul-weather driving, or any other conditions that have specific time
requirements.
6.
Have your teen coordinate with you and make an appointment for her driving test.


tip

If your teenager has
any physical condition that may require special licensing or testing for
her to be able to drive, make sure you find out the requirements and
schedule the extra steps. Give yourself enough lead time so that your
teenager doesn’t get left behind by her friends.
7.
Call
back your insurance agent after your teen gets his license to
double-check that your new driver is covered and to find out whether you
can get a reduced rate by submitting proof of driver’s education or
good grades.
8.
Celebrate this milestone with your family!


WHO HAS THE CAR?

When
the number of drivers in your family exceeds the number of motor
vehicles in your family, you have the potential for conflicts over the
use of the car. If you analyze the situation, though, you’ll find that
you need only a slight shift in the way you’re used to thinking to
accommodate the extra driver without a problem.

The
excuse that the person who took the car didn’t realize someone else
needed it will never be valid if you’re keeping your family’s planner
up-to-date. Anyone who’s licensed to drive is certainly capable of
looking at the family’s planner and determining whether another person’s
activities require a car at any given time. The new driver should be
accustomed to figuring out whether someone would be available to drive
her to an activity. The same assessment of the family’s calendar will
reveal whether a car will be free at a certain time.

You
also might want to get every driver in the habit of indicating on the
family’s planner if a particular vehicle will be needed for an activity.
For example, if someone has agreed to drive four kids to a soccer game,
he should indicate in the planner next to the entry for the soccer game
that he’ll need the van, not the car.

As
with all scheduling conflicts, work out car conflicts well in advance.
Walking, biking, carpooling, and public transportation may all prove to
be workable solutions.


Accepting the Duties of Citizenship

Your teenagers may think
they’re adults, but they can usually still use some guidance to assure
that they take care of some of their responsibilities that may not be
obvious to them. As your teenagers seek employment and reach their late
teens, they have several obligations that you may need to remind them to
put on their schedules, including

  • Registering to vote when they turn 18

  • Registering for the draft when they turn 18, if they’re boys

  • Filing
    income tax returns when their gross income exceeds the Internal Revenue
    Service’s threshold amount or when they’re due an income tax refund

Other activities you may
want to help your young adults learn to schedule and implement on their
own include banking, investing, securing insurance coverage, and
handling medical appointments. Your teenager will quickly develop an
appreciation for how complicated adult schedules really are. That
realization will help provide her with the motivation to find a good way
to keep track of everything.


To do list

  • Review time-management principles with your teenager

  • Reinforce your family’s system for avoiding scheduling conflicts

  • Help your teenager select a stylish individual planning tool

  • Show your teenager how to use the features of her planner that most match her preferred and dominant learning modalities

  • Encourage your teenager to switch planning tools if a different planner will work better for him