3 Alternatives to Punishment with Your Teen

Raising a teenager comes with a whole host of challenges, budding independence,
introduction of new friends and environments, and maintaining patience while your teen
adjusts to all of the hormonal and life changes they are experiencing. Many parents can find
that their go to response when there is conflict is to come down hard with punishment and
restrictions. However punishment may not always have the intended effect that parents are
hoping for. Often Punishment can lead your teen to find other ways to engage in the
undesirable behavior and not give them the opportunity to learn or grow from the experience,
with it instead becoming a power struggle. Alternatives to punishment does not mean no
boundaries or limit setting though, it merely implies a softer way of getting the point across in a
way that your teen may be more open to accepting. Below we will be taking a look at 3
alternatives to punishment from Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish’s book How to talk so teens
will listen & listen so teens will talk.

1. State your feelings

 It is important to let our teens know how a behavior or an event has impacted
us. When we state our feelings we give them the opportunity to experience that
their actions can and do have an effect on those that they care about. This is an
important lesson as it allows them an opportunity to feel empathy and invites
them to potentially own up to their behavior in a way that is also not shaming
them.

2. State Expectations

 When we state what our expectations were for a scenario with our teens we are
giving them the opportunity to rise to the occasion rather than forcing a “lesson”
on to them.
 An example that Faber and Mazlish highlight is when a daughter returned home
late from a party at a friend’s house, the mother expressed “I expect when you
say you’re going to be somewhere at a certain time, that you will be good to
your word” (Faber & Mazlish, p.73, 2006).
 By approaching the conversation from this perspective it is placing control back
in the teens hands to build on skills such as trust, communication, and honesty.

3. Offer a Choice

 Faber and Mazlish highlighted another scenario in which a teen is skipping
homework due to soccer practices. In this scenario the teens parent highlights
the natural consequences of the behavior with their school work not being
completed and how that effects the teen in the long run.
 In the example the parent notes that they see two options, take time off of
soccer until all of the homework is caught up or a find a balance to doing both. In
this scenario the teen chooses finding the balance. We can then support the
teen with problem solving in that moment or they have the opportunity for self-
correction.

Faber, A., Mazlish, E., & Coe, K. A. (2006). How to talk so teens will listen & listen so teens will
talk. Collins, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

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