Have you ever watched your teenager make a mistake (that youve made yourself) after youve warned them at least a thousand times? Is there anything more frustrating as a parent?

Well, this is somewhat typical in most normal households across America. We (parents) screw up, tell our children about it, and what do they do? They go out and repeat the same mistake. It makes you question your own gene pool.

In actuality, the problem isnt with the teenager (at least not all of it), the problem is in our approach to teaching our teenager the lesson we want them to learn. In a sense, we act just as crazy sometimes; we teach them using the same strategies that didnt work a month or year ago. We should be asking ourselves, when will we learn from our past mistakes?

Heres a better approach that Ive experimented with few times with my own students. Its a modified version of the Socratic method. You simply lead your teenager to a predetermined answer that they come up with on their own. Thats it. I know it sounds easy, but it takes quite a bit of practice. Allow me to demonstrate.
A parent of one of my students confided in me that her son was hanging around a dangerous group of boys in the neighborhood. She believed his friends were possibly into drugs, gang violence, and other criminal activity. With no father figure in the home, she thought maybe I could get through to him.

I asked her, What have you said to him? She replied, Ive told him at least a hundred times that his friends are up to no good, and theyre going to eventually get him into trouble and jeopardize his future. She continued, as she cried, I told him that I made the same mistake when I was his age, and he didnt want to go through the pain I did. I just cant get him to listen.

A lot of us can relate to this mothers frustration. We want so much for our children to avoid the mistakes we made. We cant understand why they cant understand our concern, and we become frustrated and sometimes even angry.

Well, I agreed to meet with her son after class. But I decided to use a different approach. I figured the old approach wasnt working, so what did I have to lose? After a little small talk, I simply asked a couple of simple questions, Who are your three closest friends? After he gave their names (all part of the group his mom disliked), I asked him a second question, If you died tonight, and you had children, would you want any of those friends raising your son or daughter?

After an extremely long pause, I let him off the hook by saying, You dont have to give me the answer, but I do want you to ask yourself another question. If you wouldnt let them raise your children in the future, then why are spending most of your time with them today? That was the end of our discussion.

This little episode may or may not have put him on the right track, but it did one thing his mother was unable to do C get through to him. He now had to make his own decision based on his own reality, not his mother or his teacher C and then accept responsibility for the consequences of that decision.

And thats all you can really do for teenagersget them to think for themselves. If you did a good job teaching your children in the early years, the growing process (including the mistakes) is a lot easier to accept.

The key to getting through to your teenager is to say less, and ask more in order to get them to do more thinking. The more you say, the less theyll think. And the less they think, the more mistakes theyre inclined to make. So, take your own advice, learn from your past mistakes by adopting a new approach.