G2 - Parenting teens: Hunting & Trapping, Track & Field, Cops & Robbers

Parenting teens: Hunting & Trapping, Track & Field, Cops & Robbers
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A few months before my wife and I officially became parents of teens,
we discussed the potential for discipline problems on the horizon.

My wife wasn't worried. "The girls know they can tell me anything,"
she said. "We have created an open, supportive environment for them,
and they know they're safe. So they don't have to lie to us."

She stopped speaking to me long before I stopped laughing.

Teenagers lie. All of them. And the reason they lie is because
teenagers make terrible decisions and do dumb things. All of them.

What's that? You say that your child doesn't lie? Pardon the rest of
us while we chuckle wickedly.

The first step in dealing with these little liars is not to take it
personally. Time is on your side. You don't have to catch them right
away. We had our daughters read the recent coverage of Marion Jones.
She lied at the 2000 Olympics. They just caught her last month, and
man, is she ever grounded.

Recently, another parent told us that one of our daughters was part of
a group of friends that were sneaking out at night to hang out at the
park. We confronted her, and she denied it.

We were fairly certain she was lying, but there was nothing we could
do about it at that point. Old episodes of NYPD Blue offer guidance
for situations like this. (I'm sure Law & Order would work too, but we
don't watch that show.)

Every once in awhile, Sipowitz and the rest of the NYPD Blue gang
would bring in a "perp" for questioning. They knew they had the right
guy, but couldn't get him to confess. The cops would yell and
threaten, and the perp would just sit there, smirking. "Nice story,"
the perp would say, "but where is the proof."

Other times, Sipowitz would question someone that he knew didn't do
the crime, but he had enough evidence to make an arrest. At that
point, he has the option of either closing the case with the wrong
guy, or using the person's bad situation to try to get him to "flip"
on the real perp.

Bottom line: It's all about evidence. And you can't go after the perp
without it. Teenagers, like NYPD perps, are too clever to fall for a
bluff.

So we sat down with our daughter and talked about how disciplining
teens is a lot like hunting.

"You're thinking of hunting deer," we said. "When you go deer hunting,
you have to be in the woods, with a gun, at exactly the same time as
the deer. We're not doing that. We're hunting rabbit. When you hunt
rabbit, you set traps and then you go back inside and wait for the
rabbit to step in one."

We got the patented teenage eye-roll, and she went about her business.
That night, before bed, we used the old tape-on-the-door trick and
went to bed. Sure enough, next morning, we saw that our little rabbit
had stepped in a snare.

Deer can escape. A trapped rabbit has no more tricks left. With
evidence on our side, we could now go after her like Sipowitz at his
best. No need to listen to long, rambling stories or try to decipher a
stone poker face. "We don't need to ask you any more," we said. "We
know."

After grounding her, (by the way, when you take a cell phone, be sure
to check for the SIM card), we told her that after catching our
rabbit, now we could try to land a deer. Then we snuck out to the
garage to retrieve the baby monitor. Tonight it will be set up by our
front door. The motion detector light is pointed at our back door.
We'll be up in bed, waiting for our little deer to step foot in the
woods.