Teen resisting scheduled bedtime
12/04/07

Q: We enforce a 10 o'clock bedtime for our 13-year-old. She has to go to bed one minute earlier the next night for every minute she is to bed later than 10:00 the night before. She feels we are treating her like a “little kid.” We simply want to ensure that she is not tired in school. What do you think?

A: I think you are about to plummet over the perilous precipice of micromanagement. Regardless of where they are found, micromanagers create tense environments where conflict, deceit, and disloyalty are the inevitable outcomes. In your case, I sense it’s already “two down, and one to go.”

Furthermore, I agree with your daughter that you are treating her as if she cannot be trusted to make good decisions concerning even minor responsibilities, one of which is seeing to her own bedtime. In effect, you are indeed treating her as if she is a “little kid” (her way of telling you that you are micromanaging her).

If I was running the bedtime show in your house (and my daughter, now in her mid-30s, tells me that the following was the understanding when she was 13), I would simply tell said daughter that she had to be in her room at 9:30, with lights out at 11:00, and that you were also willing to extend those times one hour on non-school nights.

I would make very clear to her that she is responsible for waking herself up in the morning, but that you will do it for her if she has trouble doing it for herself. However, should she need your help in that regard, you will take that as indication she cannot handle the responsibility of knowing when to turn her lights out, in which case you will have no choice but to reinstate “lights out” at 10:00. Under the circumstances, I predict you will have no further problems concerning this issue, and that your relationship with your daughter will improve dramatically to boot.

Please be sure to tell her that I am the source of her new privilege. I desperately need some credit with the younger generation.

Q: Our 4-year-old daughter doesn't like it when we compliment her for a good job or anything else she does well for that matter, including using good manners. We’ve explained to her why we compliment her, but to no avail.

A: It just so happens that I have a fail-safe solution to this problem: take a load off yourselves and stop complimenting her. Compliments make some people feel self-conscious, and your daughter is most likely one of the people in question. She’s telling you she doesn’t want compliments, which means she’s fine without them, so let well enough alone. Then again, perhaps you’re being overly effusive when you give a compliment. Maybe you’re going on and on and on when a simple “Good job” or “That was nice of you” would suffice. Or, you may be giving too many compliments; complimenting your daughter about every little thing she does well, rather than withholding them for really important occasions. The fact is, the merits of praise have been much overstated by the high self-esteem cheerleaders. Praise delivered too often becomes meaningless. In any case, I think you’re daughter is telling you to calm down. Sometimes, even 4-year-olds know what’s best for themselves.