The method is simple and is designed for the basic task of getting your child to follow a direction you’ve given them, either to do something or stop doing something. When your child learns to follow your directions without arguing, the rest comes pretty easy.

It’s a simple strategy. All you do is this: Tell your child to do something, or to stop doing something (i.e. stop playing catch with my expensive glass vase). If they comply within about 5 to 10 seconds–great. But if they don’t comply, then you look at them, say “that’s one” in a stern voice while holding up one finger (generally your index finger, not the driving finger). If they comply after this–great. If they don’t comply after about ten seconds, then you hold up two fingers and say, “that’s two”. Again, if they comply–great. If they don’t comply after about ten seconds, then you say, “that’s three; take five”.. This means you got to three and they need to take a five minute time out in their room, or in a quiet corner if you are out in public.

Where most parents fall flat is that they are hoping they won’t get to three so they don’t actually have to put their child in time out. This may be because they don’t want to cause a scene in public. Perhaps they are just too nice and don’t want to punish their kids. So for this to work, you have to have the mindset of wanting to get to three so you can put them in timeout. This helps avoid the common mistake of going, “that’s 1, that’s 2, that’s 2 1/2, 2 3/4…..” and never getting to 3.

If you falter, your child learns they don’t have to listen to you when you count to three. But if you make a point to do the counting, and nothing but counting until either the child complies, or you get to three, they learn quickly that you mean business.

There are a lot of parenting strategies that are easy to use and simple to understand. For the 1-2-3 Magic parenting strategy, there are some other nuances that are helpful to learn, such as what to do once your child is in time out. If you”re interested in learning more, give me a call.

Gary Watson is a Solution Focused Therapist in Grand Rapids Michigan.  He provides counseling for couples, counseling for teenagers, and adults.  He provides counseling for anxiety, depression, stress, college and work stress, and relationship problems.  For more information, please visit the website at www.turnaboutcounseling.com.

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This is a Love and Logic strategy I incorporate in counseling for teenagers and helping parents use discipline for teenagers. If you’re not familiar with Love and Logic, do a google search and you’ll find tons of books and videos available. Teenagers have a tendency to screw up and do things they shouldn’t or fail to do things they should be doing. One thing parents tend to do to fix this is give the teenager a 20 minute lecture on how the world works and how they are going to ruin their lives if they keep going down this path.

Unfortunately, these lectures don’t usually work. The good news is that your kids already know almost exactly what you’re going to say. This means you’ve already gotten through to them; your voice is already in their head.

A Better Way to Approach Discipline for Teenagers

So how do you get teens to do the right thing if lecturing doesn’t work. The Love and Logic approach is to stop talking and let natural or logical consequences do the teaching. For example, lecturing them about homework may just cause them to shut down (usually combined with eye rolling and heavy sighing). So try this instead. Let them know their ability to earn privileges depends on whether they earn those privileges by working to earn them. This is different from telling them they don’t get something because they did something wrong. So they might earn the use of their iPhone on a daily basis by making sure they have no missing assignments.

Love and Logic Strategies

Love and Logic suggests we have to let our kids own their own problems and learn from experiencing reasonable consequences. And if they create a problem that affects us, we get to solve the problem in a way that works well for us, but not necessarily well for them. So for example, if you have to worry about their missing assignments and lose sleep due to worrying about whether they will graduate, that’s a problem you get to solve. When your teen asks you to drive them somewhere, you might respond with, “I’d really love to drive you, but I’m so exhausted from worrying about your grades I just don’t have the energy to drive you anywhere right now. But as soon as I’m not so tired from all this worry I’m sure I”ll have the energy to start driving you around again”.

Providing discipline for teenagers this way helps them develop better decision making skills.

So, try to stop nagging and lecturing and take the Love and Logic approach. Don’t try to solve all your teen’s problems for them. Let them suffer with their bad decisions as long as the consequences are reasonable. They’ll learn to make better decisions for themselves and gain more confidence and maturity in the process.

Gary Watson is a Solution Focused Therapist in Grand Rapids Michigan.  He provides counseling for couples, counseling for teenagers, and adults.  He provides counseling for anxiety, depression, stress, college and work stress, and relationship problems.  For more information, please visit the website at www.turnaboutcounseling.com.

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As a therapist who works with lots of teenagers, I often talking about successful parenting skills. I often caution parents about not letting their kids spend too much time playing video games or playing on iPhones. However, over the past couple of years, it seems just as important to remind parents about their own screen addictions.

I often go to the coffee shop to take a break and do some work on the computer. More and more often these days, I see a parent come in alone with a toddler or infant and sit for a long time, ignoring their child as they focus on their smart phones. I always want to tell them to interact with their child.

Nothing is more important than interacting with your child as this age. Does it take effort? Of course. Is it worth it? Absolutely. We don’t know what the effects on kids will be whose parents are there physically, but not emotionally. However, you can bet it won’t be good. While it’s tempting to think you’ll just be on your phone for a minute while your child is occupied with something else, it usually tends to be more than just a minute.

Successful parenting–raising mentally healthy kids who are responsible, socially adept, and who will become successful adults–takes time and effort. Kids whose parents have put in the effort to interact with them are later rewarded with older children who are intelligent, interesting, socially successful, and positive. They often have better relationships with their children as they grow up.

In my counseling practice, I’ve provided counseling for teenagers who feel their parents lack interest in their lives. These teenagers feel their parents left them to figure things out for themselves and they resent their parents. This tends to be the time when grades slip, or the teenagers get into trouble at school or their neighborhood.

To save yourself the misery of having this situation happen to your family, invest in your children while they are young. Put the phone away and play with your kids.

Gary Watson is a counselor in Grand Rapids, Michigan who specializes in working with teenagers, college students, and young adults. He also provides marriage counseling. Gary uses a solution focused approach to counseling with all clients. To learn more about Solution Focused Counseling, go to the Solution Focused Brief Counseling Association website. To learn more about Gary Watson, please visit his website at www.turnaboutcounseling.com.

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