Life Code: The New Rules for Winning in the Real World (27 page)

I never picked that battle because it didn’t matter. And you, too, should learn to roll with it and actually get involved in it; you’ll be amazed how much that will mean to your child. When Jordan wanted to dye his hair, Robin would get her hair stylist to come over and do it for him and cut designs in his hair. I’m telling you, they would laugh till they wanted to pee, and you could see what it meant to Jordan that, instead of rolling our eyes and judging, Robin and I just went with the flow. And now, he’s about to graduate from USC and is a successful musician and could not be happier, and we couldn’t be more proud.

I’m not saying you have to go along with everything your children want, but choose the things that don’t lead to permanent damage or risk. And you could actually create a bonding experience along the way.

Of course, there are some things you just can’t ever stand by and let your kids do, like drugs or sex at too early of an age. Neuroscience now tells us that the brain does not reach maturity until around age 25; before then, your children’s neo-cortex hasn’t developed enough to enable adult reasoning. Teenagers can’t “see around corners,” so it’s up to you to protect them from themselves and their instincts. You have to be the one to tell them not to burn bridges and foreclose options.

Both research and 35 years of experience have taught me that one of the best strategies for doing so is to appeal to your children’s self-interest. Instead of saying, “Don’t do drugs because it’s wrong,” or “Don’t have sex because it’s immoral,” say, “Don’t do this because here’s what it costs you when you do.”

If you can teach your daughter to value herself enough that it would be offensive to her to be used by a boy for sex, there’s a better chance you’ll succeed in persuading her not to have sex than you would just by telling her it’s morally wrong. Try a script like this:

Remember what you learned about different people’s “currency?” Your children need to learn the same lessons. For example, your daughter should realize that what her boyfriend wants is to have sex with her. But what she should want is to keep control of her life. Once she realizes that, she can say, “We’re not going to do that. Let’s negotiate for something else.”

The same is true if your child is in danger of being in an abusive relationship or involved with an addict. Help them understand that they should value themselves enough to say:

If you can teach your child to value themselves enough to say that, then you’re going to have a lot better chance of getting them to have some boundaries they simply won’t cross than you would by just lecturing and nagging them. Remember what you learned about “drop-dead deal-breakers?” Your children need to draw the same lines when it comes to self-protection. Just as you did, your children have to understand that if they’re faced with an abuser, they need to get out.

It isn’t just physical abuse. Just as you learned in Chapter 6, your children need to learn that if a relationship is not two-way, if it’s always them doing things for someone else, it won’t work. It has to be two-way. You need to teach your children this: If the other person has nothing to offer you, never does anything for you, can never meet your needs, or you can’t ever rely on them for anything, you are in a one-way relationship.

Again, as a parent, you have to appeal to your children’s self-interest. Teach them to be their own best friend, to be selfish on their own behalf, and to advance their own ball. As I was raising my boys and teaching them to be psychologically-minded and to be smart about it, pretty soon they started to internalize the mind-set and then generalize it to a variety of situations. Isn’t that the ultimate goal of all discipline?

Now I’m a grandfather, and I’m learning some lessons about parenting all over again. And some of them are coming from my son, Jay. He was a teenager when I wrote my first book,
Life Strategies
, and he wrote a spin-off called
Life Strategies for Teens
that became a best seller when he was still in high school. In it, he said two things that are still relevant here.

When I first read his manuscript, I came across this line: “Parents, you need to talk to your children about things that don’t matter.” And, I thought that didn’t make sense. It had to be a typo. After all, as a parent, you need to talk to your children about things that
do
matter, right? But Jay went on to explain, “Because that’s going to open up the channel for when it’s time to talk about things that do.” What Jay meant was that parents should be talking to their children about sports, music, fashion, or whatever their children want to talk about, even if it strikes parents as trivial or a passing interest. Just keeping an open channel of communication meant that talking would be possible later, when it’s time to discuss things that do matter.

His point makes sense if you think of an analogy. If you’ve ever been in an emergency room, or even seen one on TV or in a movie, you know the first thing someone yells is “Get me an IV!” They stick a needle into a vein and get some saline flowing from a bag. The point is to be ready for whatever happens so they don’t have to try to insert a needle when the patient is thrashing around or in a Code Red. Likewise, if the first time you try to talk with your children is when they have something difficult to talk about, you may have a tough time getting a conversation going. It’s better to have an open channel ready and waiting.

Remember, there are a lot of things that children can be ashamed of and find really hard to talk about, such as being bullied or teased or made fun of or being cast out, isolated, or excluded.
You
know it’s not their fault, but to children, the message is “Nobody likes me.” They feel like the bottom line is that they’re losers. They’re also afraid you’ll make it worse (by “tattling” to the principal of their school or other authorities).

This can be the loneliest moment in your children’s lives. Never take the view that “kids will be kids” and that things will just “work out.” You’re absolutely wrong; they won’t, and that’s why I outlined some ways in Chapter 6 that you can deal with authorities.

But the point here is to talk with your children first, before any next step is taken. Jay also made some good points in his book about how to talk to children about difficult subjects like this. For example, in his book, he talked to two groups of kids—one that used drugs and alcohol and one that didn’t. He asked the kids who were on drugs why they used them. “I’m not judging you,” he told them. “Your parents won’t know. This is all anonymous.” And the most consistent reason he got was that they had no reason
not
to use drugs or alcohol. For them, the question wasn’t “why” but “why not?”

That didn’t make a lot of sense to Jay until he asked the kids who weren’t users why they weren’t. He expected a high moral factor in their answers: “It’s wrong,” “My parents taught me better,” or something like that. But that’s not what they said. They didn’t say it was wrong, and they didn’t judge people who were users. Instead, they said using drugs just didn’t fit into their plan. They just said things like, “Look, I want a car, and to get a car, I have to have a job, and to have a job, I can’t be doping around.” They did it because they wanted to be on the basketball team or the debate team or something like that. They had things in their lives that they were passionate about and that were more important to them than doing drugs.

Remember, kids want what they want, when they want it, and they want it right now. So, right now, they want to be on the debate team, to be on the basketball team, and to get their driver’s license. Since things like that are more important to them than using drugs, parents need to make sure their children are in pursuit of some goal that makes the use of drugs counterproductive. You need to give them a reason
not
to do drugs besides just the fact that it’s wrong. Help them find something to be passionate about. If they’re not moving toward something like that, then they’re much more susceptible to doing something nonproductive, like drugs.

Jay taught me something else about a kid’s point of view. He said, “Sometimes you parents move us forward, and sometimes you just contain us. Sometimes, it’s a victory if you just help me get through my sophomore year without self-destructing. That’s okay, because hopefully the next year you can actually get me to move toward something.” And if they don’t already have a passion, you need to help them find one. I thought that was pretty insightful for a 17-year-old!

But parents need to do more for their children than just talk to them. The biggest influence on a child’s development is the behavior of the same-sex parent. And the lessons they learn from watching how their parents behave, for good or ill, will last them a lifetime.

Remember that “stranger danger” accounts for only 10 percent of child abuse. Ninety percent results from people who parents bring into their children’s life or who are already there. Think back to #1 of the “Nefarious 15.” BAITERs
infiltrate your life, seducing you with promises and flattery.
We’ve already talked about how they “groom” and isolate potential victims and infiltrate your family. Recall that shocking statistic: A child is
33 times more likely to suffer abuse
with a biological mother who is living with a man who is not the child’s father.

So, you need to look at all the risks factors facing your children. What are the risk factors that the world brings to the situation? What are the risk factors that your family structure brings? What are the risk factors that
you
bring to the situation? If you’re a single mother, it’s pretty clear to me. You do
not
have a right to have your boyfriend move in with you. You
absolutely, unequivocally
should not have a man living in your house. You are putting your child at risk. I don’t care who it is. You may say, “Oh, but he’s the exception. I know him.” No, you don’t. And you don’t know his friends. You don’t know his relatives. So, you have to step back and say, “Wow. I’m a single parent, and if I let my boyfriend move in with me, my child goes from high risk to
ultra
-high risk of being victimized.”
And you simply do not have the right to do that
. That is a sacrifice you must make. You could be living with someone who could victimize your child or put your child in harm’s way indirectly. Maybe
he’s
not a BAITER, but what about his drinking buddies? His cousin, whom you’ve never met? Or people who might come around that your boyfriend does not even know because they are the friend of a friend? Remember, your primary responsibility is to protect, nurture, and prepare your children for their lives as adults.

As a parent, you need to examine your legacy. All families have legacies. What was passed on to you, and what are you passing along to your children? What are your family values, practices, strengths, weaknesses, dysfunctions? They all tend to be passed on from generation to generation until somebody makes a conscious decision to change. So, if you have a legacy of abuse, molestation, or alcohol or drug addiction, you have to make a conscious decision to break that generational pass-through. You need to ask yourself what you experienced as a child that you don’t want to pass on to your children, as well as what you have to do in order to make sure that you don’t.