How to deal with this? First of all, don’t be so hard on yourself. You’ve done nothing wrong in trying to increase your child’s skillset and give him or her an opportunity to grow. And YES, you should do it again! But, carefully… Think about why your child was not able to handle it and see if you can work it out together.

If you don’t see any physical, educational, or emotional problems for your child to take responsibility for something, then take a small step back. Give him or her challenges that they can actually handle before giving them complete freedom.

Are you setting up an example?

Very often children are copycatting our behavior or the behavior of somebody really important to them. Did you betray their trust, at least once?

Were you going to show up for a rehearsal or a little league practice, but completely forgot about it and made an excuse? Children don’t just do things without good reasoning behind them. Are they trying to get back at you?

If this seems to be the case, then just talk it over and make friends with them again. Explain that you are a human and can be clumsy sometimes, but that is totally DIFFERENT from being completely irresponsible!

Do whatever it takes so they will forgive you and never, ever lie! Even a child WILL understand if you make a mistake, but they will never forgive if they found out that you lied to them…

Now, anytime you think of your child messing something up really badly, try to understand them too, if they made a mistake. Too much pressure about it will only force them to lie and ruin the whole relationship between the two of you.

How about teenagers?

Let’s say you have a good relationship with your teenager and they don’t want to get back at you, so why would they break a promise?

Several reasons:

• They are almost adults with all the adult-like peer pressure that they get from other teenagers in their company. Even if they don’t want to go to the party, they are going to the party!
• Once again, an example of other adults is highly motivating and all they are trying to do is to be like them. That is easy to understand because they don’t feel like children anymore.
• Manipulation, manipulation, manipulation! Did I say that enough? It starts early and never ends… And you end up wondering why people do what they do? Your teenager is like any other person, who will fall for any sort of manipulation (especially from somebody they are attracted to).

What NOT to do in teenage relationships!

You are practically dealing with adults here! This is not a child that will believe in any fairy tale that you think of telling them to cover your…%#$.

Sneaking and spying on them will only hurt their feelings and create an atmosphere of distrust. Do you think they don’t know? They know you do that and it makes them feel miserable.

Of course, you can keep on doing that if you want them to leave your house rather quickly, but if you plan to have a good long-term relationship (with grandkids, and everything), treat them the way you would like to be treated. It is that simple!

YES, they are not perfect. Are you? How open is your relationship with them? Are you still treating your teenage son or daughter as a child? Do you even love them?

Actually, the last one is the most important question, because all our relationships are based on how much we love or don’t love somebody. And yes, it’s OK not to love somebody! Sometimes we can’t help it, it’s the way it is…

Don’t feel guilty or ashamed if you don’t love your teenager, you may REALLY end up loving them when they turn into adults and feel total ADORATION toward your grandchildren! People grow, people, change, and your need to be a “stepping stone” toward their success in life and not a “stick in a wheel”.

Your own behavior is most important. If they love you (they may not, it happens as well), they will model EVERYTHING you do! They don’t do it consciously, it’s a survival instinct. We all model somebody we admire, and parents are their first source of information.

This brings us to the next point…

Are they admiring your next-door neighbor?

This is in general, but the idea is that they will “grow out of you” eventually and move on to new role models. It basically means that anyone older, taller, stronger, with a better car or amazingly good looks will be someone that they will listen to “almost religiously”.

Once again, this is a normal behavior in the adult world. We do this all the time. Just look at the place where you work. Even though we don’t like to admit it, without hierarchy involved no business would work.

When you look into the psychology of your workplace, you will notice that workers look up to their direct managers and behave just like them with their co-workers (when the manager is not around). Isn’t that frustrating sometimes? But, it’s a fact.

Why would they do that? They respect that person and think that behaving like them will bring them respect as well. Maybe or maybe not, but in any case, they incorporate someone else’s behavior into their own.

If we do that, why would we want our little adults to do something different? Just like us, he or she wants to “fit” in this world and makes decisions based on that.

Word wants us to be a certain way, and social psychology is something unavoidable, unless…

You have the power!

To do what? No, not to fight with social rules that make no sense, but a lot of people seem to follow. To be that sincere and wonderful “spark” of something good in this world and somebody that your child will turn to when they had enough of nonsense!

They will never betray you if they feel safe, respect you and care about you. Even so, social instincts can be way more powerful than love itself!

Don’t think that they don’t love you if they behave horribly! Try to see where the behavior is coming from. Visit the places they visit (that doesn’t mean spying). Talk to teachers they talk to, just to get an idea.

What kids are like in school? What are their friends like? Any romantic relationships? Their world is rather small at this point and clues should be everywhere (if you are not avoiding them on purpose, of course).

If you end up letting them down, just give them a hug and say that you are sorry and will try to do better next time. If they betrayed your trust, them that you will love them forever and they can not do a thing to change that…