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Monitoring your teenager
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2009-06-27
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Monitoring your teenager
Monitoring young children is easy because parents can watch over them. Monitoring adolescents is much more challenging for parents. This topic describes how you can effectively monitor your teenager as they become more mobile and independent, and begin to spend more time outside of your supervision. - Why monitoring your teenager is important
- The advantages of keeping track of your teenager
- Ways to make monitoring work best
- What to do if you have difficulties
What is monitoring? Monitoring is knowing where your child is, who they are with, what they are doing and when they will be home, at all times. It is also about letting your teenager know that you are interested, concerned, and aware of their activities when they are not with you.
Why keep track? Keeping track of your child through adolescence is just as important as when they were younger. Despite their protests, teenagers are not yet fully equipped to deal with the adult world, and still need their parents to provide structure, guidance and protection. Indeed, teenagers expect and want their parents to care about them and what they are doing. Parents can show they care by being interested and involved. Generally, parents who are involved in their teenagers’ lives tend to have more trusting and open relationships with their teenagers.
As well as showing that you care, there are other benefits to monitoring your teenager. Effective monitoring allows you to become aware of issues, and take action earlier to prevent more serious problems developing. Research shows that young people who not monitored by their parents are more likely to have behaviour problems. The types of problems linked to poor monitoring include antisocial behaviour, drug and alcohol abuse and low self-esteem.
Parental monitoring can help to reduce the risk of these and other problems. For instance, research has shown that good parental monitoring is likely to lead to less antisocial behaviour and drug taking. It is also linked to the use of contraceptives, safer sex practices and to a later start to an adolescent’s sexual activity generally.
Successful monitoring Monitoring is easier if you have a close relationship with you teenager. You will gain the information you need for effective monitoring if everyday interaction and communication with your teenager is generally positive. The best monitoring is low-key or even unnoticeable.
However, questioning and firm demands for information are necessary at times. Adolescents of all ages expect their parents to ask questions. Recently, a group of Australian adolescents was asked about monitoring. Younger adolescents expected their parents to ask lots of questions after they return home from an outing. Fourteen and fifteen year olds also expected questions about what they had been doing, but were more likely to see their parents’ questions as intrusive and a breach of their privacy. The older adolescents were more reasonable. They understood their parent’s concern, and were more willing to share information.
The teenagers in this study accepted their parent’s need to know where they were, whom they were with, and what they were doing. However, they resented questions about what they and their friends talked about.
This study provides some useful insights. Expect your teenager’s resistance to monitoring to peak in middle adolescence, before dropping away. Avoid prying. Think about what you really need to know, and what can be left as private between your teenager and their friends.
Other ideas that might help Here are some other things you can do to increase the effectiveness of your monitoring.
Talk to your teenager Keep the channels of communication open so your teenager can tell you things they want you to know. Using natural opportunities makes it less likely that your questions will be seen by your teenager as an interrogation.
Minimise unsupervised time Whilst it is important to allow some opportunities for independent activities, and time together with friends, look for ways to minimise unstructured time (or street time). Encourage and support your teenager to join organised clubs and activities where a responsible adult can supervise.
Establish and enforce rules about your teenager’s unsupervised time Rules make your expectations of your teenager clear. They are more likely to be followed if they are consistently backed up by consequences. An example of a rule and consequence is, ‘Come straight home from school and you can go to your friend’s house at 5.00 o’clock.’ The earlier this type of rule setting begins in your child’s life, the more effective it is likely to be later on.
Meet your teenager’s friends and welcome them into your home Encourage your teenager to spend more time at home by accepting and welcoming their friends. Even though this time is not spent with you, it allows you to monitor your teenager more easily.
Establish a sense of trust with your teenager Adolescents of all ages report that parental trust is important in their lives and that the fear of losing that trust would often stop them from doing the ‘wrong’ thing. They also said that they had to put in a lot of effort to regain their parent’s trust when it was lost.
Difficulties you might encounter When your relationship is not good, questions such as Where have you been? Who were you with? and What have you been up to? often lead to arguments. Parents may start asking fewer questions to avoid arguments, and teenagers may interpret this to mean their parents are not interested. Teenagers are less likely to share information if they don’t feel cared about. Effective monitoring gets harder when parents and teenagers are caught in this cycle.
Also, asking questions after an event is a particularly ineffective form of monitoring. The idea of monitoring is to ensure that your teenager is safe. Finding out they have been involved in dangerous activities after the event is too late.
If you are currently experiencing difficulties, improving the quality of your relationship is the first step to better monitoring. Other topics on this website discuss ways of strengthening parent-adolescent relationships.
What to do next ... Here are some ideas on how to make the most of these suggestions.
Think about the time you spend with your teenager and consider the following questions.
- Are our lines of communication open?
- Do I show an interest in my teenager’s life?
- Am I involved in some of their activities?
- Have I established rules about when, where, how and with whom my teenager spends unsupervised time?
- Have I made these rules clear to my teenager?
If the answer to any of these questions is ‘No’, you may choose to set yourself a goal to change them to ‘Yes’. The most useful kind of goal sets out what you will do, when you will do it, and how you will do it. For example, ‘Every morning, at breakfast, I will start a conversation with Michael about his plans for the day.’
For more ideas and further information, read other topics in this website or participate in an ABCD parenting group.
Finally, if you are concerned about your relationship with your teenager, and things don’t seem to be improving, seek professional advice. For confidential information and advice call Parentline 13 22 89. Interpreters are available.
Sources Barkly, R. A, Edwards, G. H., & Robin, A. (1999). Defiant teens: A clinician's manual for assessment and family intervention. New York: The Guildford Press.
Fuller, A. (1998). From surviving to thriving: promoting mental health in young people. Melbourne, Australia: Australian Council for Educational Research.
Hayes, L. L., Hudson, A., & Matthews, J. (2003). Adolescent Perceptions of Parental Monitoring: A Qualitative Study. Unpublished manuscript.
Hayes, L., Hudson, A., & Matthews, J. (2003). Parental monitoring: A process model of parent-adolescent interaction. Behaviour Change, 20 (1), 13-24.
Patterson, G., & Forgatch, M. (1987). Parents and adolescents living together, part 1: The basics. Eugene: Castalia.
Prepared by the Parenting Research Centre
© Victorian Government Department of Human Service
