Developing a strong bond with your child, especially during the teenage years, can help teens form the values they will live by while also reducing engagement in risky behaviors.  Talk with your teen about developing their own values that will help them make positive choices throughout their lives.    

 

Try to have regular conversations about positive values with your teen.  Here are 12 tips from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on how to begin those conversations:  

 

• Nurture a warm relationship. Teens tend to be more willing to accept and make parental values of their own when they feel close to their parents.

 

• Show and tell what matters. A key to your influence on teens’ values is that they understand what really matters to you.

 

• Promote open communication. Teens are more likely to take on their parents’ values when they have open, frequent, and honest communication with each other.

 

• Pay attention to their world and interests. When you show interest in the things that matter to adolescents, you show them that you care about their choices and activities.

 

• Give your teen choices and appropriate independence. Believing that they have power in their own lives and can influence others can help adolescents develop their own values.

 

• Provide information, guidelines, and structures. In addition to giving teens opportunities to make their own choices, it is just as important to set clear and fair expectations and consequences. 

 

• Learn from your teen. Through their experiences, they may develop values and beliefs that enrich your life and help you see the world and other people in new ways.

 

• Make sure your values are in sync with the other parent (when applicable). Shared values between parents increase the likelihood that their teens will accept their value priorities.

 

• Cultivate skills to put values into practice. In order to develop values, teens need skills to help them be confident in standing up for what they believe and to take actions based on their values.

 

• Provide experiences that reinforce positive values and commitments. If caring for others is important, give young people opportunities to care for others.

 

• View mistakes as teachable moments. In each case, remember to keep your relationship with your teen as a priority, and find ways for both of you to learn from the mistakes.

 

• Recognize the limits. Even though you can and do influence your teens’ values, you don’t control them.

 

Parents are the most powerful influence in a child’s life.  Talk early and often about the risks, set clear rules against drug use and other risky behaviors, and enforce reasonable consequences for breaking the rules.  Learn more about the tips above at www.sherburnesupcoalition.org/talk-early-talk-often. 

 

The Sherburne County Substance Use Prevention Coalition is a community-focused organization on a mission to prevent substance use among our youth by promoting safe and healthy choices.