REBUILDING TRUST

In the course of raising teenagers there are times that they will lose your trust. (For the record, there are also times when you will lose their trust.) But, back to the issue at hand. When you teen has made a decision that caused you to lose trust there needs to be a plan to earn back the trust. I hear teens tell me that a parent has told them "I will never be able to trust you again." If you will think about this as your teenager making an inappropriate choice it will be easier to begin to rebuild the trust. I do this sort of like doing a contract for behavior. Look at what was the poor decision, what were the consequences, what needs to be done differently in the future. This is not something you have to do by yourself. This should be a discussion between parent(s) and teen. Together you can develop the steps to rebuilding the trust. For example, I tell teens that broke trust by drinking, to obviously not drink but if they mess up to go home and tell their parents that they had a beer. There will be s consequence for drinking but it will be less because they owned up to the mistake. If they drink, don't tell and get caught the trust meter goes back to the beginning. Give this a try. If you get stuck make a comment and we will look at the issues you are having. Thanks Sherri