How to Respond to ‘You Can’t Tell Me What to Do!’ Sit down together and talk about your rules, expectations, and potential consequences. If your 18 or older child is living in your house, they need to abide by your rules or face the consequences. You may have other rules to add to this list. Teens often challenge your rules by threatening you with leaving, trying to get you to give in to their demands. If they come back at you with “Okay, I’ll move out then,” you may just need to let that comment slide. However, the rule in this house is that you stay in school and graduate from high school or get a full-time job and pay rent. I can’t force you to go, and I can’t stop you from quitting. If you believe your child should finish high school, tell them: You can’t force your child to go to school, and you can’t stop them from quitting once they’re 18. If they don’t want to go to school, they’ll say, “I’m almost 18-you can’t make me.” Or, “As soon as I turn 18, I’m going to quit, and you can’t stop me.”īoth of those statements are true. That “ thinking error” shows up in many ways, often around issues of school or good grades. Teens have an error in their thinking when they believe that turning 18 suddenly means they can do whatever they want. Parents Get to Enforce the Rules in Their Home Indeed, many older children begin to treat their parents’ home as though it were a hotel. In the Empowering Parents three-part series on adult children, James Lehman describes how many parents get sucked into feeling like they owe their child a place to live or food to eat.
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