Written Agreements...Making sure that all involved know the rules...

I dont know how many times Ken and I have told our teenagers they can do something and told them the rules of how it can be done and what times is curfew etc...and the kids have turned to us when the event is closer or that day and told us that those are not the rules we have said before....

I have a bit of a bad memory...and if I can not remember exactly what has been said just the gist of it usually...Ken has a memory that is called a selective memory Lol...So it is sometimes hard for him to remember things too...So recently this is what we have done to help us and our teens to actually remember what was agreed on in the first place...

Have you ever written up a type of agreement with you child? This is what we are trialing at the moment in out house and it seems to be working...

First when one of the kids ask if they can go somewhere etc...we talk about it just Ken and I and write out what we think is fair etc with rules curfews and things like that...

Then we go to the child in question and ask them to read over them...We then give them the opportunity to dispute anything we have thought as fair and will adjust it if we think they have a good case...We usually put the curfew a bit earlier so we have room to comprimise lol...Then they think they have gotten a little more than we wanted to give them...

When it is all sorted we then give them a copy and we keep one for us....So then when it comes to the time for them to go the rules of the event are all in black and white and we can hear no more of ifs buts and maybes from that teenager involved...

Things were getting so bad here that we were being told that we had said we would let them stay till this time or that we would give them a certain amount of dollars when we did not remember any money discussions coming into it and this way there can be no question about what has actually been discussed at all...It is kind of like a contract between us and them...

This sort of thing sometimes works in schools for behavouir so that is where we got our idea on this...The kids seem to be happy with it and so are we...So I thought I would share this here with all of you...So if you are having trouble with this sort of thing with your teen why not try a  contract with them...

Have a great day
Cheers
Angie