Help! My Teenager is an Alien by Sarah Newton

Author:Sarah Newton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2007-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

4. Tell her the consequences if she continues.

‘If you continue to do this then I will become unhappy, more stressed and will therefore be less patient and a misery to be with.’

Notice how we are only stating how it made Neil feel. The list does not touch on how it made Karen feel. There are two reasons for that: one, we can assume that Lauren does not care how Karen feels at the moment; and two, Neil can only speak for himself.

Neil was really unsure of this at first but loved Karen and was willing to do it for her. So that night when he came home he had a long conversation with Lauren following the system we had set up. She did not say much apparently, but she did apologize, and she cried. From then on, when Lauren was swearing and shouting at Karen, she simply said, ‘Lauren, do you realize you are swearing and shouting at me? It is not acceptable for you to do that.’ The first time she said it Lauren stormed off saying she did not care, but as time went on she began to apologize and then stopped swearing altogether in front of Karen.

For a few months all Neil and Karen did was use this approach. One afternoon I had an excited email from Karen saying that Lauren had asked her if she could go through the list of agreements with her and Neil that night. I gave her some advice – to let Lauren have a say, ask her what she thinks of each item and how she thinks they can achieve this as a family. They did exactly as I said and Lauren came up with some good ideas. She set her own bedtime. She told Neil and Karen how difficult she found it when they were being all ‘lovey-dovey’ in her presence and asked that they respect her space and feelings when they were around. She even suggested ways that the family could all have fun together. She asked to be put in charge of making up a duties roster (perhaps so she could have the pick of the best jobs) and asked Neil to go through some financial arrangements with her. As a family they came to an agreement about what each one of the agreed rules meant and what the consequences of breaking them would be. If Lauren did not give enough notice she would not get a lift; if she invited friends round without asking she would not be allowed to have them round for two weeks, and so on. Things in the home were definitely calmer and more pleasant and Karen did not feel constantly under attack. However, she and Lauren still had no kind of relationship. This was the next thing for us to deal with, bringing us back to the second point in the plan Karen and I had drawn up earlier.

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