Kerry here! š
This is Part 2 of my series on “What to do when you don’t know what to do” about your teens’ behaviors.
When I discovered that my rule-following oldest son who was a junior in high school was lying about sleepovers, my first instinct was to ground him. Take away his phone. Make him pay.
But then I asked myself: What would punishment actually teach him? Probably just to get sneakier next time. And honestly, he was already pretty good at it, much to my surprise.
What I really wanted was for Keaton to practice honesty and good judgment. So instead of punishing him, I decided to outsmart him – which, given his track record, felt like a long shot.
Here’s what he and his friends were doing:
They’d call home late on weekend nights asking to sleep over at a friend’s house. Meanwhile, they’d created a circular alibi system: Keaton told me he was at Michael’s. Michael told his mom he was at Alex’s. Alex told his mom he was at another friend’s. Round and round it went.
The truth? They were having unsupervised sleepovers at whoever’s house was parentless that night! Then they’d stay out past curfew and get into shenanigans that would have kept us parents up at night if we had known. The kids with phone trackers would park their car at whatever house they’d claimed to be at. One even left his phone with a friend and snuck over to his girlfriend’s house.
And there we parents were, tucked into bed, imagining our boys were safely playing Monopoly and eating popcorn in someone’s basement. So naive of us, but these were all our firstborns, so what did we know?
My solution? Build a parent network.
I only knew one parent in their friend group, so I called her and said, “I think our sons are lying to us about sleepovers.” She knew a couple other parents and they knew a few more, so we worked together to get everyone connected. It felt risky reaching out through the chain – essentially organizing a “our kids are scamming us” intervention with people I’d never met.
Our cover got blown when one mom who didn’t speak English asked her son to translate the meeting invitation. Whoops! But you know what? That made it even better. For the first time in a while, they were the ones wringing their hands, wondering what the parents were up to. The tables had turned, and I was absolutely delighted! š¤£
At our parent meeting, we got to know each other and discovered we all shared the same values: we didn’t like being played, especially when it gave our sons opportunities for risky behavior. We swapped contact info and made a pact: if any boy said he was sleeping at someone’s house, we’d each verify with that parent directly. Even better, we ended up genuinely liking each other and feeling like we had a community looking out for all our kids.
I also instituted a new rule for all my boys: if they wanted to sleep over somewhere, they needed my permission before 10pm AND they had to get the hosting parent on the phone with me to confirm. No texting (I’d been scammed that way beforeā¦ but that’s a story for another Sunday).
Between parents confirming stories with each other and requiring phone confirmation, we effectively shut down that particular variety of deception and robbed these underage boys of the opportunity to roam freely and mischievously into the wee hours of the night.
Here’s what I love about this approach:
I didn’t go into punitive mode. I wasn’t even madā¦ once I had a plan. Instead, I was smiling – and THAT makes a teenager twitchy in all the right ways. š
Instead of teaching our boys to be sneakier, the other parents and I created a system that made honesty the easier path. I gave him credit for being clever (because honestly, that alibi circle was impressive), told him I loved him too much not to outwit him, and watched him practice telling the truth because suddenly, lying didn’t work anymore.
When we punish kids for breaking our trust, we often just motivate them to get better at deception. But when we build systems that make good choices easier and celebrate our kids’ intelligence (even when they use it against us), we create opportunities for them to practice the behaviors we actually want to see.
Plus, it’s way more fun to be playful than punitive, and it doesn’t hurt the parent-child relationship. And your kids will remember that, too. So while it felt risky to reach out to parents I didn’t know, it ended up feeling great that we were all looking out for each other’s kid’s well-being.
P.S. 28 years ago yesterday, I deliveredĀ my little 10 pound Valentine’s Day baby named Palmer. It’s been a wild ride, with the sweetest of times and the most challenging of times. Wherever you are in your journey of nurturing the young people in your life, we wish you well and honor how much time, love, and care you pour into them.
