Use Contracts to Stop Having to Nag

Do you need to prepare yourself before you reminding your teen of chores to avoid a fight or complaining or nagging? Teens can be a handful. It really isn’t their fault. Healthy teens are supposed to push for autonomy and freedom but good healthy parenting is supposed to impose restraints in the interest of safety and responsibility. Coming to a compromise might help in stopping the nagging and complaining.

I have helped several families write contracts to stop the nagging from parents and stop the complaining from teens. It doesn’t matter what name you call them (freedoms contracts, family contracts, parent-teen contracts), they provide a framework that specifically states what the parent does for the teen, what is expected from the teen and what happens if those expectations are or are not  met. For the contract to work, everyone’s participation is needed.

Most contracts have three parts:

• Expectations/responsibilities
• Privileges   
• Consequences

Expectations/responsibilities:

Parents are required to clothe, feed and shelter their children. I think we can agree most parents are willing to do much more to produce happy, healthy and productive members of families and communities. This part of the contact is where you list items like loving your teen for who they are, providing a safe, respectful and comfortable place to talk, or making yourself available when they ask for your help.

Teens want to the privileges that come with adulthood but rarely the responsibilities but it is our job as good parents to teach them that there are no free rides in this world. Be specific about the behavior you expect (i.e. honesty, no cell phone use while driving, etc) and the actions your teen is responsible for doing (i.e. cleaning her own bathroom weekly, cooking dinner on Wednesday nights, effort toward school work). There are be an emphasis on effort over actual grades.

Privileges

Your teen will have no problem coming up with what he wants as a privilege. This part is where you decide what the privileges will be. These privileges need to be things you are will do, pay for or allow. Examples may include: time out with friends, use of the family car, computer use, music lessons, etc. Privileges can be anything extra to the parents expectation/responsibility section.

It should be made clear to your teen that they will have bargaining power for privileges when they have proof from performance and not promises for performance in the future.

Consequences

This section is not going to be your teens favorite section. Parents must be willing to follow through on the consequences the contract. If you can’t or won’t, don’t include it. No empty threats. The punishment must fit the crime. Being grounded for two weeks from going out with friends because he was five minutes late or forgot to empty the kitchen trash is not an example of a punishment that fits the crime.

For a template, you can alter for your family, click here. The intention is for you to edit it to meet your family’s needs.

For families with divorced parents, the benefit of the teen needs to be put before differences you may have with each other, put them aside so that identical contracts exist for both homes.