Margaret Gordon's Top 12 Tips of Parenting Teens

I found this list of 12 tips very enlightening. The following is taken from Karyn Gordon's Guide to the Teen Years.

1. Accept the uniqueness of each of your teens.
2. Be willing to admit your own mistakes and ask for forgiveness if you have hurt your teen.
3. Spend time with each teen; play with them, get to know their likes and dislikes.
4. Help them when you are asked but don't take over! Give them space to develop their own gifts.
5. Affirm them, focus on their good qualities, praise them for effort and work well done.
6. Teach them to be truthful.
7. Set realistic boundaries and rules, but be flexible.
8. Be consistent with your boundaries and rules (this is not always easy but it is important)
9. Be authentic, be real! Kids can tell right away if we are phonies.
10. Teach them to be responsible for their own things like jobs, money and school work.
11. Love them unconditionally; be patient, kind, accepting of who they are as people; separate who they are from what they do.
12. MODEL, MODEL, MODEL what you preach and teach. For example, don't tell them to tell the truth and then ask them to lie for you on the phone. 

(From: Karyn Gordon's Guide to the Teen Years, HarperCollins, 2008, p57)

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