to think some people on here have no idea what 16-18 year olds are actually like?

[Twile]

I’ve noticed that some posters on here seem to have no idea what parenting an older teenager is actually like.

Someone will post about their 16-18 year old being completely out of control - staying out all night, drinking, vaping, refusing school or college, being verbally abusive, getting involved with unsuitable partners or simply refusing to follow any rules.

Without fail, there are replies saying things like:

“Just stop them going.”
“Take their phone off them.”
“Ground them.”
“You’re the parent - just say no.”
“I’d never allow that”

It makes me wonder whether these people have actually parented an older teen.

A 16-18-year-old is not the same as a 10-year-old. They’re often physically bigger than you, legally have increasing autonomy, can leave the house if they choose, earn their own money and in many cases simply refuse to comply. You can’t physically force them to stay indoors, attend college, end a relationship or make sensible choices. And nor should you.

Of course boundaries still matter, and parenting doesn’t stop at 16. But the strategies change. You’re often relying on influence rather than control, and sometimes you’re choosing the least bad option rather than the ideal one.

I agree, OP. And I'll add, even if you have parented teens you will still only have experience of those teens. So many smug mums around who assume it was all wonderful parenting and no luck that got them their shiny, happy children.

My eldest was that A grade child who never missed a day of school and went on to uni. My youngest has had significant problems her entire life, was a school refuser and is now a NEET.

Im done with being given patronising advice by people who have no idea. I'm trying to train myself not to see my child as a parenting failure, but as the child who challenged me to raise my game. She and I both have had a really difficult time getting her through her challenges and I'm proud of the kind, graceful and sound young adult she is becoming. If one more person asks if I've tried taking her phone away from her...

What was your reason for it? I'd be concerned about a child going off to uni who couldn't be trusted with electronics upstairs.

That is exactly the kind of simplistic, contemptuous response I mean.

Providing only food and a roof is not some gold-standard parenting strategy. Cutting off clothes, transport, a phone and every ordinary part of teenage life may punish them, but it does not necessarily make them safer, more responsible or more cooperative. In some cases, it simply pushes them further towards risky friends, unsuitable adults, sofa-surfing or complete disengagement from the family.

A phone is also not merely a luxury when it may be needed for college, work, travel and basic safety. Nor is paying for essentials the same as “enabling brats”.

You have parented five teenagers who apparently responded to financial consequences. That is your experience. It does not prove that every struggling parent has handed control to their child or that every difficult 16-year-old can be brought into line by removing money.

Saying “it’s too late” is both smug and useless. Teenagers are still developing, families can change and parents may be dealing with mental illness, neurodivergence, addiction, trauma, exploitation or other issues that are not solved by cancelling a phone contract.

Boundaries and consequences matter. Treating a troubled teenager with nothing beyond the legal minimum and contemptuously calling them a brat is not the same thing as effective parenting.

I have a 16 year old and a 13 year old and there is certain behaviour I’d probably give that advice for. There are things I simply wouldn’t tolerate and I give my dc respect so expect it back. It seems to work- they are delights who still choose to spend time with me regularly

So some of us have older teens that earn thier own money and can afford a nice lifestyle. My son earned 500-800 a month during A levels and for almost a year now has worked full time. He is yet to turn 19.

I really couldnt use things like not paying for clothes or a night out or a phone to get compliance.

Don't earn any money? Why not? They might get benefits too. This is exactly what the OP is saying advice that may suit a younger child.

Well said

A controlled proportionate smack is still very much legal in England.

We've had a big debate on the Indian style of parenting. Let me go to the east Asian countries now. Rates of teen ASB and juvenile delinquency are significantly higher in Western countries than in East Asian countries. Drug taking as well is massively lower there and is also lower than their white peers if raised in the west. I wonder what that is. Also we all know how well they do educationally thanks to strict and robust parenting.

It's very effective if implemented. Western liberal/soft parenting isn't.

Your argument for “effective Indian parenting” was dismantled so now you have simply moved on to East Asians in the hope that a different ethnic stereotype will rescue the same weak argument.

This is cultural determinism masquerading as analysis. You have taken two enormous and internally diverse categories, “Western countries” and “East Asian countries”, picked a few outcomes you like, and simply announced that strict parenting must be the cause.

“Significantly higher” according to which genuinely comparable data? Which countries, years, age groups and offences? Crime figures are shaped by different laws, definitions, reporting practices, policing methods and justice systems. Lower recorded juvenile crime does not automatically mean less actual offending, and it certainly does not prove that parental strictness caused the difference.

The same applies to drugs. Lower reported use may reflect real differences, but it can also reflect availability, severe criminal penalties, stigma and a greater reluctance to admit illegal behaviour. You cannot simply treat self reported drug statistics as a parenting league table.

No, “we all know” that East Asian educational achievement is thanks to strict parenting. We know nothing of the sort. Educational outcomes are also shaped by school systems, curriculum, private tutoring, peer culture, selection effects, migration patterns and enormous family investment in education. You are once again taking a complicated outcome and assigning all the credit to the one factor that suits your argument.

You also conveniently ignore the possible cost of highly pressurised systems, including anxiety, fear of failure, perfectionism, shame and children who learn to hide difficulties rather than seek help. High exam results do not automatically prove that the parenting was healthy or that every method used to obtain them was justified.

Asian young people raised in Western countries may retain protective family and community norms, but that can include parental involvement, close supervision, educational expectations, strong family ties and community cohesion. None of that proves that authoritarianism, intimidation or physical punishment is the magic ingredient.

You keep collapsing every positive feature of parenting into the word “strict”, then crediting strictness for every favourable statistic while ignoring every other explanation and every possible negative consequence.

That is not evidence. It is the same failed argument with a different ethnic group substituted in. Some East Asian young people have desirable outcomes, East Asian parents are stereotyped as strict, therefore strictness must have caused those outcomes. You could use that childish logic to “prove” almost any prejudice you already wanted to believe.

I think you are being a bit unreasonable OP because when you ask a question in an online forum you are bound to get a mixture of responses, some of which you can then choose to ignore. On parenting teens, people will comment based on their own lives, be this how they parent/parented their own teens, how they were parented themselves and behaved as teens or what they think they will do when their own teens are grown.

I do agree though that those who have never parented teens are much less well placed to advise than anyone who has but this can be taken into account when deciding what you think of their advice. I was certainly one of those parents who wanted their child to have wooden toys and no guns but by the time he was in primary school (certainly juniors) he had a lot of plastic shit and a weapons drawer because by then I didn't think he would turn into a serial killer because he was allowed to have nerf guns and the plastic shit was more affordable and made him happy! He still had wooden toys as well - musical instruments and a marble run were very popular.

Back in the day when commenting about breastfeeding after 6 months, there were always lots of posts saying there is no need for that and if your 2 year old didn't sleep through the night you'd get smug fuckers saying theirs slept through from 6 weeks, implying you are being too soft or doing something wrong. You just have to take the stuff you don't agree with with a pinch of salt.

I had a school refuser at secondary. In year 8 for weeks we got up every day and he was ill with abdo pain/upset stomach. Once I stopped trying to get him to go, he improved but he still struggled to fully engage with the out of school tuition provided by the LA. I have seen many posts (as others have mentioned) where parents who have no clue how it is to have a child refuse say you just tell them they have to go, or 'I would make them go'. Others say if they still refuse, you must turn off the wifi, they must stay in bed and do nothing all day, they must not watch tv or play a game or speak to their friends. I always felt this was rubbish and treated it as such but it can be frustrating to read.

I did not threaten DS or ban things. I encouraged him to get up and do things and speak to his friends as there is learning in everything and social isolation would not have helped. I wanted him to feel supported and not feel ill and so I supported him.

By year 10, I decided to home educate him through his gcses. This was the turning point. His health issues went away and he wanted to see his friends more. He was able to join clubs and went on to sit gcses and got onto his chosen college course where he never had a day off sick. He is 19 now, has found his people, is living away at uni and doing great. We have a lovely relationship. We talk a lot and discuss all sorts. We listen to each other's point of view. He is respectful and, although we can argue (mostly lighthearted), we never fight. How much of this is parenting, his friend's influence, luck or just who is, who knows.

That is not an argument. It is a slogan built on stereotypes.

You have simply defined every successful Indian family as proof that strict parenting works, then treated every unsuccessful outcome as an exception, poor implementation or somebody else’s problem. That makes your claim impossible to disprove because any failure can be blamed on the parenting not being “properly implemented”.

You are also confusing obedience with effectiveness. A child who is quiet, frightened, academically successful or careful not to get caught may look well behaved, but that does not prove they are emotionally healthy, honest, independent or capable of making sound decisions without parental control.

Plenty of Indian parents are warm, flexible and responsive. Plenty of Western parents are firm, consistent and demanding. Reducing millions of families to “strict Indians” and “soft Westerners” is intellectually lazy.

Liberal parenting does not mean having no boundaries. Good parenting can be affectionate and still firm. It can involve consequences, supervision, expectations and accountability without intimidation, humiliation or physical punishment.

Your claim also relies on survivorship bias. You point to adults who say strict parenting made them successful while ignoring those who became secretive, anxious, estranged, traumatised or skilled at living double lives.

Strict parenting can produce compliance while the parent holds power. Effective parenting should produce judgement, empathy, self control and trust when the parent is not present. Those are not the same thing.

Saying “it works if implemented” proves nothing. Almost any failed ideology can protect itself with that excuse.

I didnt say for compliance, just seems very strange to me that teenagers who disrespect their parents are given money, phones lifts and expensive clothes. Seems very enabling to me.
If my children are rude disrespectful and defiant why would I reward that behaviour with stuff. Are you saying that if your child wanted to go out you said no and they went anyway and told you to fuck off you would reward them by topping up the revoulute, leaving them on your uber buying them a new outfit and gifting the the latest I phone for christmas. Bonkers. I was pointing out that many teenagers have no consequences for bad behaviour and I personally wouldnt fund or reward that behaviour. All the above are privileges not rights.
Most teenagers are rebellious and think they know everything. The OP said her teenagers are bigger than her so they are either being physically threatening or using their larger physic to defy her if you are scared of disaplining a teenager you have lost control.

So why can it be one teenager out of 3 or 4 that's like this when the others are perfectly behaved, having the same parents and upbringng

'Normal' means regular, usual or typical? Just because something happened in your house, doesn't make it normal. It isn't if most families do something different. Surely most families allow their over 16's free access to their phones while parents of under 16's have everything in place from rules about no phones or tech upstairs, screen time limits, age restrictions, curfews or total freedom.

I was quite relaxed about tech compared to some and my DS seems to have turned out ok. I think at some point, you have to start teaching your children to have some self restraint if you just have strict rules that never change right up to the point they leave home, this has just as much potential to backfire as it does if you don't have any rules at all.

All this stuff about ‘the teens I know are been parented and it works’

It only works because the teen is happy to be parented. If they didn’t, I suspect you’d have a very different view.

But also it’s not always a reflection on how good a parent the poster has been. Many things happen in life that we have no control over - from a divorce, a parent that becomes abusive or simply ill, the child being bullied, child being groomed etc etc….
And that is often enough to fuck things up and ‘make’ the teen ‘unmanageable’.
And no you can’t just send them for some counselling. Again they need to buy into it.

It only works because the teen is happy to be parented.

yeah right 😂

It's also very true that the "trouble" kids are anything BUT parented despite the claim the parents make. Others hold their tongue because it's nobody's business how people manage, but it's pretty obvious what the problems are.

As already said, you can tell in Primary who will have all kind of troubles with their kids.

Rubbish. My kids and many others I know that have had difficult teenage years were angels at school.

@OvernightOats101 that's what you call confirmation bias!

You can get a job at 16 sometimes even a paper round younger than that. Personally I disappointed my normal parents by getting pregnant at 15, I actually had a really expensive phone at that age and not because my parents bought it but my boyfriend (same age as me not a creep) gave me his old one.

Also really off the rails boys can be getting money selling drugs or other crime.

Honestly the “parents must be giving them money and should stop” argument is so dumb do you not remember being a teen yourself?

Stupid indeed and very naive and useless! 🙄
If they have no experience or knowledge of that type of (not unusual IMO) teenage behaviour then they have totally lost the moral highground with regard to giving ANY sort of advice to anyone!! 😡

yes, I remember being a teen. I was busy studying, active in multiple extracurriculars, and had a part-time job. I had goals and doing everything I could to get into the best university possible.

That is how most teenagers I know are today as well.

obviously there are troubled teens who need intervention. That doesn’t mean the behavior is normal.

i Did not say the behaviour was normal. I was responding to someone blaming the parents for a 16 year old having money which seeing as you had a job at that age will agree is silly. Between jobs, paper rounds, generous friends and in really off the rails cases selling drugs.

I actually haven’t even got teenage children yet but remember what I was like as a teen. Normal parents with normal boundaries and rules and I still got pregnant at 15. Meanwhile I know people who were raised by alcoholics and parents that had absolutely no discipline or structure and still turned out normal and were well behaved as teenagers.

It is surely obvious to anyone that how your child behaves at 16-18 is largely luck. Not that it stops the smug parents who lucked out with a couple of well behaved teenagers from bragging and taking credit for their almost adult child’s behaviour

The point is we are talking about 16-18 year olds. They don't need their 'revoulute' topping up or being 'on your uber' as they can earn their own money and get benefits. As someone who has apparently had teenagers it is odd you don't realise this. This is exactly what the OP is saying about people give advice for a yonger child. Giving out advice for a 16-18 yo and assuming they don't have their own money is advice for a younger teenager.

So if you had a job you understand why advice assuming 16-18 year old don't have their own money is ridiculous. My eldest has much more disposable income than me. They're the one treating me to a takeaway, not the other way around!