I have found that one of the many great frustrations of parenting adolescents is inherent in trying to make sure they get to school in time. We live very close to our kids’ schools. It’s literally a 3 to 7-minute walk. Yet, this morning we got an email from one of the teachers that our son is consistently arriving late, and this is disruptive for the class, given that it is a hands-on type of class. As a psychologist and someone with a lot of expertise in behaviour modification and management, I must admit that it is little maddening that we have not found the silver bullet to get our kids to school on time consistently. And it’s certainly not for lack of trying! We have pulled out all the stops, used various psychological techniques and strategies, instituted negative consequences for being late and positive consequences for being on time, put two alarm clocks in their rooms, enticed them out of bed in the morning with delicious breakfasts (which they often don’t bother eating), tried to work with them on self-management and organizational skills, and the list goes on. Although there has been some progress, it has been slow and limited.
At times, wanting to let go of this struggle, I have stepped back and asked myself why it’s so important to me that our kids get to school in time. The quickest answer that comes to mind is that their grades suffer when they’re late, it’s getting harder to get into university, and we want all of their doors to be open as they progress through school. It’s also disruptive to other students when the kids are late, becoming more prompt might be one way to improve organizational skills more broadly, and so forth. All these reasons are reasonable, and I think another reason that I don’t normally acknowledge is that I probably place a value judgement on being on time. It just simply seems better to be on time but it does to be late. I guess I value timeliness, as much as I wish I had fewer deadlines in life! I’d love to be free from the tyranny of time, and yet, I value being on time. As parents, we somehow have to grapple with the decision of whether we should impose our values on our kids, and sometimes, maybe we shouldn’t. That said, they’re stuck with us and our values, like it or not! I think there are many good reasons to be concerned about promptness, and at the same time, I find that if I am too attached to the kids being on time, my effectiveness as a parent starts to decline.
So, as with many of the things that we talk about in DBT, this is yet another situation where some kind of balance of acceptance and change is necessary. We can practice radical acceptance that the kids have difficulty getting to school on time, or radical acceptance of specific instances when they didn’t get to school on time and maybe even the resulting drop in grades, while at the same time, continuing to work on ways to improve the situation. Just simply throwing our hands up and doing nothing but accepting the situation probably wouldn’t be the most effective strategy. At the same time, being desperately focused on change also backfires, particularly with adolescents who really don’t want to be controlled. In some ways, our brains are a lot like adolescents, too. Given how difficult it is to control emotions and thoughts, one could argue that they just don’t want to be controlled! It can be helpful to both accept the emotions and thoughts we have while also making meaningful changes in our lives to reduce our suffering in the long run. As therapists, we also have to accept where our clients are right now while simultaneously helping them to change and build lives that are worth living. My plan is to try to practice what I preach. ~ Alexander L. Chapman, Ph.D., R.Psych.