How Do You Disipline a Teenager?

I'm not talking belts, spankings, and timeouts.  (Not that we ever used a belt.) No, I'm talking teenagers.  I have reflected back to the times where timeouts were a God send, a time where your tone of voice meant everything, a time when just the lift of an eyebrow meant that your children would stop dead in their tracks, and handling a problematic situation was easy. 

Now I'm not saying that I am an expert in the field of disiplining a child, but I am an expert in disiplining my children.  We have good kids, they are considerate, and kind, but lets face it, they are kids.  Perfect by no means. 

I have always hated yelling at them to clean their rooms, only to go in 10 minutes later, and see that nothing has been done, and if anything the room looks worse now than it did ten minutes ago.  I know that I am not alone here. 

Last night was off to the same start, Their room looked like their had closet thrown up.  They weren't yet home, so my husband and I were talking about what to do about them, about the situation.  "They're 13." "They should know." "Did you keep your room clean at 13?"  These were all things said between my husband and myself last night.

Yelling doesn't work, and call it what you want, grounding, restriction, on notice, it just plain doesn't work.  Or at least has never worked in this household.   My husband and I have always come up with off the cuff ideas about dealing with a situation.  Conservative by no means.

 I remember a time when they were about 5 or 6, and my father had given us a set of plug in intercoms.  I don't know how we came up with this, and looking back on it now, maybe it was a little mean, but we ALL get a big laugh out of it now. Call it mean, or funny, but it down right worked, and worked well for the next 8 months. We had put one of those intercoms downstairs, and the other under their dresser, yes, under their dresser.  Now before we did anything, we had taken the next couple of days to go out of our way and discuss with the girls that if they had a messy room, that the "Messy Messy Monster" would come and eat their toys.  He would come when they were at school, so they wouldn't be able to save any of their toys that weren't put away.  Well one Saturday, we had been trying to get the girls to clean their room, after about an hour and a half of absolutely no progress being made, my husband went downstairs.  I was in their room with them, trying to help them, and get them to pick up their own things, when my husbands gruffy voice came over that intercom under their dresser.  "I'm the Messy Messy Monster, and I am going to eat your toys!" 

I have never seen two kids jump, as high as they did.  Their eyes as big as silver dollars, I had to leave the room,  because, yes, I was laughing.  As they begged me to stay and sit on the floor while they quickly cleaned their room, I explained that the Messy Messy Monster would not come into a clean room, they got the message.  Their room was spotless in 20 minutes time.  A new household record.  Their rooms would remain spotless for the next 8 months, until they found the intercom and realized it was us the whole time. 

Oh those were the days, the days when you could say any absurdly ridiculous thing, and what you said was the truth.  Not that we did this on a regular basis, only when it was absolutely necessary.  Those days are long gone. 

That brings me to last night.  The girls arrived home in time for dinner.  Ah, the perfect time for a family discussion.  Now like I said, I don't really like to punish the girls, and looking back now, I don't think we have had to "punish or ground" them for years.  As we ate dinner, we simply told the girls that we don't want any arguement, no sighing.  After dinner, they were to go and get their laptops, their cellphones, their Nintendo DSi's, their iPods, and their guitars and place them on the diningroom table.  When they got them back was completely up to them.  They could have them back as early as tonight, or as late as never.  Again, it was completely, up to them.  All they had to do, was clean their room. 

There was no dawdling, no arguing, no goofing off, just the sound of a room being cleaned. We may be up to something here!  I had no headache, no high blood pressure, it was a quiet night, a good night! 

Simple reasoning.  Who knew it worked so well on two teenage girls?  I'll be very happy if this tactic works for the next 8 months. 

Have you done something completely different and off the wall to get your children to clean up their rooms?  Leave a comment and let us know about it.