How do you keep the channels of communication open if they close them when you enforce boundaries?

[dameofdilemma]

Every time we try to enforce a boundary (eg homework, chores etc) by limiting screen/phone time (as there's nothing else to take away really), dd refuses to speak to us for days. Its like she's trying to punish us.

We keep being told the most important thing with teens is to keep the channels of communication open, find opportunities to do activities with them where they'll 'naturally' open up.
Dd can easily go for a week literally not speaking a word to us. We can make her go for a walk/activity, make her sit at the table for family meals etc but we can't make her talk to us.

With her friends she's the life and soul. With us - the silent treatment.

Its stressful and upsetting. We try just ignoring it but then we're not 'keeping the channels of communication open'...

How old is she?
Enforcing boundaries sounds like it might be the problem.

How old?

Enforcing is probably the root of some issues.

Part of development is supporting young people to make decisions. If you use punishment, confiscation, enforcement I would wonder how you might respond if your employer did this.

Collaboration, trust and agreed consequences might be a way forward. Asking if it is worth falling out and incrementally losing contact which will mean less contact when she is an adult.

She is not a small child and you need to change your approach to match the stage she is at now.

Maybe enforcing is the wrong word. We tried to be clear about consequences (eg loss of screen time).
I'm not sure what the difference is between enforcing and setting consequences?
Dd wouldn't agree to the consequences as she wouldn't agree to the boundaries (eg wants to be on her phone after school and not do homework).

Also not sure what we do about boundaries - if we let DD not do homework, not take the right things to school etc - the consequence is detention and falling behind in school work.
Do we let that happen? Is that what the school expects from parents? (genuine question).

Dd is 11 - which I know will sound young but she hit puberty at 9 (periods) and her personality has changed hugely over the last two years. She has little in common with many of our friends 11 yr olds and is more like a teen - both in terms of wanting (and being given) independence and in pushing boundaries (think skipping after school club to go to a cafe aged ten.....and hacking into our laptop to take parental controls off apps).

We are struggling to keep up as I feel what most parents go through over 11-13, we've had to get to grips with over less than a year.

Fill your house with other people. My teens have both been fans of giving us the silent treatment. It's amazing how quickly they get over themselves if they have a friend round chatting politely at dinner time. They can't get away with behaving like idiots in front of other people!

if we let DD not do homework, not take the right things to school etc - the consequence is detention and falling behind in school work.
Do we let that happen?

Yes

Is that what the school expects from parents? (genuine question).

I don't know about your specific school, but that is what teens need to do - start making decision / choices for themselves.

She may be punishing you.

If what she perceives is that you are deciding on arbitrary rules and punishing her if she breaks them then it is quite possible she has decided to punish you if you upset her.

The best way to break that cycle is to have a conversation along the lines of
(Eg she wants to use her phone after school, you want her homework done).

You: DD, I think that now is a good time to have a conversation about homework and phone use. As your parents we want to make sure that your homework gets done every night, because it's important for your future that you do well in school. What do you think is working well about the way things are at the moment?

(This gives her chance to say positive things if there are any)

Then ask her what changes she would make.

Then, and this is the key bit, whatever she suggests, trial it for a week. If it doesn't work and she doesn't do the homework, she'll get detention. She won't fall massively behind in a week.

Check in with her each day - what homework have you got? Do you need any help?

Then at the end of the week, review the situation with her.

If she's been on her phone constantly and not done any homework then you can say that it isn't working and suggest for example she can use her phone until dinner time and then it goes in a box and she does homework,

If she is doing her homework - no problem!

I have an 11 going on 16 year old son - it’s definitely a big change since a year ago! Someone said 11 is the new 13 🤷🏻‍♀️. I find giving him responsibility for things helps - the more grown up I treat him, the more grown up he acts (in a good way) if that makes sense.

I’d just let her know that managing homework around screen time etc is now her responsibility. I check DS’s homework app but don’t specify when he has to do any of it, just remind him “oh, did I see you have homework due tomorrow? Need any help?”. Help just involves him bouncing ideas around really or me just being on hand. I’d go down the route of letting her have a detention or two if it comes to that. I think schools are keen for teen dc to manage their own lives so I wouldn’t worry from that pov.

Thanks all - I think we will have to let her get into trouble at school and hope that she learns from it.

We have really tried talking to her (rather than just telling her), asking her views and suggestions etc. Nothing has worked. She won't compromise at all.
She has also lied to us (eg said there was no homework when we can see online there is etc).

I have a good friend who is a secondary school teacher and she said it's difficult - yes they want the teens to be able to have self motivation and organisation and self discipline but it's also a risky strategy to leave them to it. Yes they can get detentions (or hand in poor quality, minimum effort work etc) but some teens don't care about that.
By the time many of them wake up to the consequences it's too late, they've fallen far behind.

What makes me sad is she was great at primary school, really liked it, did really well without us intervening, she was very self motivated. And it's all gone.

I have 2 DDs aged 14 and 13. I have never pushed them to do homework. They need to do it for themselves or face the natural consequence from school. I will help if needed but even in primary school I always said it wasn’t my homework to remember or do. As for the silent treatment, my DD14 can ignore one of us for weeks if we have done something wrong in her eyes. It is really hard when you have to live with someone behaving like that.

Some very good advice on this thread.

When ds wasn't applying himself in his exam years we talked about study technics, found youtube videos on how to study, how he thought it would be best to organise his time to get in study and still do things he enjoyed, talked about the opportunities good grades could give him, talked about where he was struggling, looked at uni prospectuses to see what he needed to do and talked about alternatives like apprenticeships and college and what he would like to aim for. How his choices might change as the year progressed and keeping studying would keep doors open for him. that it was his life that he would be changing not ours. Talked about it without pressuring

Don't think we once threatened to take his console away.

That is how we kept communicate going.

I think you need to back away from enforcing and consequences and develop a more collaborative, supportive approach. I would have had a terrible relationship with my DCs if I enforced screen time - to an extent, you have to accept this is part of teen life now. We watched endless TV as a teen, they watch their phones. It's just a different type of entertainment. The only rule I had at that age was that phones are not allowed in bedrooms overnight , but now my DCs are 15 and 17, I don't have any rules on phones- they have to manage it themselves. Thankfully the school don't allow phone use on-site at all during the day, which has helped enormously