Author Insight: Ellen Pober Rittberg

Tell our readers a little about you.

I am the mother of three children now grown all born within three years of each other. I am a parenting writer and attorney who represented children in court for 13 years. My essays and features have been published in the NY Times, NY Daily News, Newsday and other large urban dailies. My print writing and a live cable TV show I hosted for several years won several awards.

Tell us a little about your family and your experience parenting teens.

My kids were normal teenagers. They lied to me, were sneaky and once, despite extensive planning to avoid same, they threw a party while I was visiting the oldest child in college. They were good students but lazy about doing homework and one of them sometimes was disrespectful to teachers. Which I put a stop to. I soon learned to be a firm but loving parent, who initiated consequences for bad behavior which worked most of the time. I share my secrets in my book.

Love the title of your book, 35 Things Your Teen Won’t Tell You So I Will. What led you to write this book and who did you have in mind when you wrote it?

Thanks, I kinda like the title myself. I wrote this book because I could have used this book. I learned along the way, and made some mistakes which could have been avoided. And, because I was an attorney for teens at the same time my teens were in their own teenagerdom, I had occasion to observe many families, talk to the experts (educators, psychologists, psychiatrists and the like) and ask all the questions I needed to know. Plus, I wanted to write a funny helpful book because parenting teens can sometimes be very stressful and at times make a parent feel like a dismal failure. I do some cheerleading in the book to parents. I want them to succeed in the task and I have the answers they need. I’ve been in the trenches.

Parenting can be tough, especially nowadays. But things get especially tricky when our kids become teens. What is it that makes parenting a teen so challenging?

The developmental phase they are in makes it hard. They think they’re smart and savvy and adult-like. But their judgement is impaired, and they are all immature and impulsive. They don’t think things out. They act first, and ask questions later, so to speak. Their minds are not fully formed. That’s where we must step in. We must keep on them, and out-stealth them and catch them in their lies and bad behavior before the fact.

You remind parents that all teens have an agenda, even the good ones. Explain to parents why their sweet-faced teen in likely no exception.

Teens’ friends are far more important to them than their parents. They crave the approval of their peers, and their peers, even the “good kids” do bad and sneaky and dangerous things. As I say in my book, while sometimes your teen might not do some bad thing because he or she knows you wouldn’t approve, don’t count on that to happen with any regularity.

What are some of the biggest mistakes that parents of teens make?

They give their teens too much freedom, they have unreasonable expectations regarding their judgement (they think their teens are going to be sensible all the time or most of the time.) They don’t put in rules in their household. (I have a chapter on house rules, which I think are a must). They don’t give their kids chores. They don’t have appropriate consequences when their teens do bad things or flout a rule.

Your position is that the family isn’t a democracy and parents should take the role of “enlightened despot” rather than trying to be their children’s best friend. Explain.

The biggest mistake a parent can make is to act like a peer of their child. Children need reliable, responsible, mature parents, not adults who want to look and act like overgrown teens. Teens aren’t our social equals. They shouldn’t be given an equal voice in the household. An enlightened despot knows she knows best or better than the teen and makes no bones about who is in control. If you don’t have the final word — and I’m against extensively debating your teens when they want to do something the parent doesn’t approve of — you do yourself and your teen a large disservice.

If parents haven’t set clear boundaries and they’ve made some of the mistakes you talk about in your book, is it too late to try to correct those behaviors once our children are teenagers?

Great questions. I do a lot of speaking to groups and one woman asked me the other night after I laid out my philosophy and how to implement it. “My teen is 17. Is it too late?” I say it is never too late. If you haven’t put these things in place from Day One — Day one being when your tween becomes a teen — don’t worry. Put those rules in place. Enforce that curfew. Help your teen get a job if he has lots of down time. I walk the parents through the process. Lord knows, I didn’t do all the things from Day One. Some of them I did. Others I learned along the way. But it’s important to get them in place, the earlier the better.

To learn more visit Ellen online at EllenPoberRittberg.com or connect with her on Twitter @Ellen_Rittberg.