by Lilian Mary

Created on: February 08, 2010   Last Updated: February 10, 2010

As a mom to one teen, one pre-teen, and an eight year old that thinks he’s a teen, I wonder what happened to discipline for children on a weekly basis. I swore I would not be like my mom using threats of wooden spoons or dad's belt. I wanted to be different.

Parents can connect with their kids or at least try to connect with their kids on many different levels, but when it comes to discipline do we really connect with our kids at this key character building point. The miss also lies in the belief that my child could not possibly be participating in the antics that others are involved in. You just didn’t raise them that way, right?

Do we really use the appropriate discipline style and is it effective?

Many parents may have been missing key opportunities in the heat of anger, frustration, and sheer inability to wrap their heads around their young teen’s current offense to really give some good life lesson advice and redirection.

Some jump to extreme consequences and others to a short summary lacking real content to even be called a lecture and send the teen on their way giving them a pat on the back. All parents have been guilty of one or the other or even both. This realization came while listening to groups of parents talking about their teenage daughters and their older siblings and how fast they grow.

Thinking that this would be a great place to seek advice and gage her own parenting style with her teen daughter. The new teen mother spoke up; first she shared in the fondness of how the girls grow up so quickly and she could not imagine sending one of her kids off to college yet.

She continued with a short story of how she found out her daughters uncontrollable phone usage while researching another matter on their cell phone bill. She shared that she talked with her daughter about all night texting, even on school nights.

Her daughter swore that everyone else’s mom let them use their phones when they wanted, they don’t care. She explained that after this enlightenment her daughter’s phone now remains in mom and dad’s room to charge from 8pm to 6am on week days and 9pm and 6am on weekends.

The new teen mom braced for the ridicule she thought she would surely face based on her daughters account of her friend’s moms rules.

The mother’s initial response was shock with comments of “What did your daughter do?”, and “Is she still talking to you?”  This took her aback; she could not

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