Making Contracts for Teenage Behavior
Being Specific in Your Expectations of Your Teens Actions
Mar 30, 2009
Part of the duties of parenting teenagers is to help them learn appropriate boundaries for their actions. This includes not only expectations for behavior but consequences for inappropriate actions. A contract between your teens and yourself helps to spell out the rules in a clear format bringing abstract ideas to concrete terms.
Contracts can cover a wide range of topics and parents may wish to add different contracts as the behaviors or situations arise. However, topics such as chores, allowance and discipline methods should be an ongoing part of the adolescents daily life.
Elements of a Good Contract
A contract with your teenager should follow the etiquette of any agreement. The points should be clear and the language should be specific enough that your teen cannot claim he or she did not understand expectations. The more concrete you make terminology the better as your teenager's mind is developing and abstract concepts may be outside of their grasp.
Avoid generality such as "Todd agrees to be good" as good is a vague concept. A contract item such as "Todd will complete his homework nightly" is a much better item. Consider these other points:
- Use contracts for specific behaviors or actions. Commonly contracted items include homework, chores, anger expression and respect to parents.
- Define the behavior or action clearly with as much wording as necessary. For example, a chore checklist which must be completed to earn a specific amount of allowance.
- Define rewards of completing the contract. Here you need to be very specific as to what the "payoff" is each time the contract is successfully honored.
- Define the consequences of failing to follow the contract. Again, be specific about the consequences of breaking a contract.
- Have the contract signed by the teenager and yourself.
Successfully Using Contracts for Teen Behavior
In order for contracts to succeed as a parenting tool, the teenager should be involved in the creation of the contraction. Encourage your teen to participate in the wording of the agreement and illicit their input on payoffs and consequences.
Because contracts for behavior need to be specific, you may need to revisit them often to either add behaviors or update consequences to reflect more age appropriate behavior. As your teen develops, so should the scope of the contract.
Although you will want to be able to refer to the contract, don't keep it displayed publicly. Teenagers are very sensitive to their peer group's reaction and you don't want strangers thumbing through your agreements with your child.
For ease of use, you may wish to keep the body of the contracts with your teen stored in a word processor file both you and the teen have access so that it can be collaboratively expanded when needed. However, don't make changes to the contract without involving your teenager.
Contracts can serve as a useful parenting tool. Contracts with teenagers need to be specific and define the action or behavior and the payoff for successfully fulfilling the contract. Likewise, consequences need to be clearly stated. If contracts are to be helpful, you will need to include your teen in the creation of the agreement.
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