Posted on June 19 2011 by Charles Thompson

Sharing interests can help fathers build bridges with teenagers

Teenagers may try to push away from the family, but one author is telling dads not to let them get too far.

Teens go through a well-documented and even healthy developmental stage to try to seek more independence. But parents often react by stepping back and becoming less involved in their children’s lives.

The most important advice Tom Sturges, author of “Grow the Tree You Got & 99 Other Ideas for Raising Amazing Adolescents and Teenagers,” believes he gives parents is to offer their children “Rule 5″: “Call me, no questions asked, you are forgiven in advance.”

Fear of punishment, he says, can lead teenagers to not call their parents when they find themselves in trouble.

“Sooner or later, everyone is going to end up in a room they shouldn’t be in, and God forbid they fibbed to get to that room or misled you and didn’t tell you,” he says. “More important than anything else is that they get out of that room.”

His son Thomas has used Rule 5 twice. The first time he was 17 years old and at a party he shouldn’t have gone to. When Sturges arrived to pick his son up, there was alcohol and many teens but no adults in sight. Shrubbery had been uprooted and there was a car in the front yard. When his son got in the car and tried to explain, he simply said, “I don’t care. You followed the rule. You called me.”

They went out for waffles and the incident showed Thomas that he could trust his father, no matter what he had done wrong. Rule 5, Sturges says, proves to children that their safety is more important to their parents than whatever mistake they might have made.

That is a big mistake, according to Tom Sturges, author of the recently released book, “Grow the Tree You Got & 99 Other Ideas for Raising Amazing Adolescents and Teenagers” (Tarcher). He believes it is especially important for fathers to be involved in their teenagers’ lives.

“I think there is a balance,” says Sturges, who works in the music publishing industry and is the father of two sons. “There is a fine line between giving your children a little bit of room but also making sure they have lots of you.”

Sturges’ own father, writer and director Preston Sturges, died when he was still a boy, and his teenage years were tumultuous. When his sons were born, he was determined to be the best father he could possibly be.

That job was a lot easier when the boys were young and he was still living with their mother. Even though Sturges had worked hard to create what he calls “bridges” with his children, oldest son Thomas decided, when he turned 12, that he didn’t want his dad to be his best pal anymore. Sturges realized the divorce had cost him his best bridge — living together — and he set out to erect new bridges.

He recommends that fathers find at least seven ways to interact with their children in activities that are positive and fun for both. Those could be rooting for a sports team or going to the movies together. Activities that support religious and cultural identity are also great places to bond.

The most important aspect of these activities is that they put you in the same room with your teenager doing something together. If your daughter loves animals, you could volunteer together at a local animal shelter. If your son discovers a love of classic rock thanks to “Guitar Hero,” take him to a rock show.

That’s exactly what East Orleans dad Jim Birchfield did with his son, Jonathan, last summer. They attended a Stone Temple Pilots concert and he says the experience was transforming.

“Going to the concert together changed a lot about our relationship,” he says. “It was a rite-of-passage sort of thing.”

Birchfield was in a band in his 20s but his son didn’t show any interest in music until middle school. Jonathan is now finishing his freshman year of high school and, in addition to playing guitar with his friends, he and his father love to jam together in the basement.

“We just sit down and play different progressions,” Birchfield says. “I show him the basics, like how to play a certain key. It turns into a little jam and we create these little songs or riffs.”

Birchfield’s parenting style is in sharp contrast to the way he was raised, and is reflective of what he now sees would have been helpful to him as a teenager. His father traveled a lot for business and he says his parents were caught up in their own social lives and sort of “checked out” of his teenage life. At the time, he enjoyed the freedom, but now he believes he would have benefited from more guidance during those crucial years.

“I was part of that generation raised by their moms because dads were gone a lot,” he says. “I said I’d rather be around, especially during this period of the teenage years and high school.”

Sturges believes that one of the greatest responsibilities a parent has is to help children discover who and what they are supposed to be. That means a father sometimes has to put aside his own expectations, discover what personal vision of the future the teenager has, and then nurture that dream.

Sports, for example, have been very important to the family of Brewster psychologist Pat Gubbins. His three older daughters were heavily involved in athletics and captains of their teams. But his son, who is just turning 12, decided to give up sports. Gubbins’ usual advice to parents would be “don’t let them quit without a fight,” but he realized his son was more interested in acting. Now Gubbins and his wife volunteer at a local theater and Gubbins even auditioned with his son for the Adam Sandler movie slated to be filmed on the Cape this summer.

He was, simply, there.

“In terms of following the kids’ ideas or passions, sometimes just being that warm body is enough,” he says. “If you’re going to coach soccer, you don’t have to be this World Cup-class player. You just have to show up. Like for the Adam Sandler movie — I have no acting experience but I’m willing to be the warm body, and to support him and listen when he tells me how neat it is.”

In “Grow the Tree You Got,” Sturges stresses that even though fathers may find it easier to bond over shared interests with sons, they also play a critical role in the lives of their teenage daughters. He doesn’t have daughters himself, but he has worked with many teenage girls through his charity, Witness to a Dream Foundation, which helps inner-city kids in Los Angeles get through high school and into college.

Building bridges with daughters is key, but “how a father treats his daughter is what she will think love is,” he says. “The rest of her life is tied to her relationship with him, so fathers should be loving, kind, generous, understanding, close and truthful.”

The father-daughter relationship helps a daughter learn what true love actually looks like and if the daughter is consistently treated with respect by her father, she will expect the same from future partners.

Birchfield says he has noticed he acts slightly differently around his younger daughter and is a bit more careful about what he says: “I feel that I have to be some sort of male role model for her so that when she goes out into the world she’ll have some kind of reference as to what a decent man might be like.”

Fathers also can model for daughters or sons, Gubbins says, by keeping their own sense of integrity and identity.

“I feel we owe it to our kids to be the best we can be, to have meaningful lives, to try to make a difference, to combat injustice, to leave the world a better place,” he says. “Kids learn by example and imitation, so I think that one of the best ways to be a good dad is to first be a good man. Modeling what we would hope for our sons and daughters is extremely important. We can’t ask them to be good people and good citizens if we don’t show them by our actions.”

Similar Posts:

Share

Leave a Reply