Troubled Teens Resources

The old adage of building a solid foundation to ensure the stability of the structure erected upon it applies equally well to the foundation of discipline and expectations you create for your teenager to stand upon. Having ground rules established for your teenager long before problems can erupt can assure the teen’s stability and resilience for the adolescent years ahead of them. In other words, prevention can eliminate the need for any future crisis intervention.

One suggestion is for the parents to create a “Home Rules Contract“.

“The primary purpose of a Home Rules Contract is for teens to be held accountable for their behavior while allowing parents to maintain a reasonable amount of control. A Home Rules Contract will teach teens that there are consequences to breaking rules, the knowledge of which hopefully will transfer in the teen’s mind to school rules as well as the legal system.

A Home Rules Contract will not resolve the issues of feelings and emotions involved within the relationships between parents and teens. It can only act as a basic agreement that may allow you to work toward a resolution for problem behaviors, minimizing the disruption and interference that can many times occur during the process of getting bad behavior under control and restructuring a family’s rules.”

A sample contract can be seen below.

A. Teen will not use any alcohol or drugs.

• Consequence: Teen will be grounded for one week. Grounding consists of: staying home, no friends as guests, no phone calls, etc. etc.) Punishment will increase one week for each subsequent offense (i.e., if teen is caught using substances a second time, punishment will be for two weeks, etc.)
• Note: It is VERY important to clearly state what being grounded consists of so that there are no avenues for manipulation by the teen to get out of the punishment).
• Privilege: Teen will be allowed to continue going out with friends and may have continued use of the car.

B. Teen is expected to return home immediately after school except if prior arrangements are made with parents. Teen will inform parents where he/she is going and will be home by 8:00 p.m. on school nights and 11:00 p.m. on nonschool nights.

• Consequence: Teen will be expected to come home twice as early as he was late for one week. (e.g., if 30 minutes late, then curfew will be one hour earlier for the next week).
• Privilege: Teen will maintain current curfew and gain trust (some parents may want to allow their teen to work his/her way up to a later curfew by proving himself or herself, but parents should never set a curfew later than the legal curfew in their area).

C. Teen will perform all assigned chores in a satisfactory manner, according to the standards set by parents.
(It is helpful to provide a written list of daily chores so there is no misunderstanding - a dry-erase marker board hung in the kitchen or other family area works great for this purpose).

• Consequence: Teen will not be allowed any privileges until required chores are completed, including TV, radio, computer, having friends visit or going out with friends.
• Privilege: Teen will maintain access to all privileges of the house, including watching TV, using the computer, having friends visit, and going out with friends.

from Teens With Problems