Mom, I Get It Now

Elisalynn asks:

My 16 year old daughter wants her boyfriend to sleep over, and we are okay with it as long as he sleeps in the guest room because he lives 2 hours away. But she wants him to sleep in her room and insists they have a virtuous relationship. I want to keep it that way, by having him sleep in the guest room. She tells us that she will just go sleep at his house if he is not allowed to sleep in her room. How do we enforce our house rules since she is only 16?

The answer to this one is simple. You parent. This is your daughter, not your friend. It's not your job to make sure she's always happy and never disagrees with you on anything. It is your job to make sure she grows up knowing there are certain expectations she needs to meet and that she can't always get what she wants.

When she's an adult she won't be able to tell her boss that if he doesn't give her a raise she'll just stop doing her work. Because she'll get fired. Because her actions will have consequences.

Does she have consequences now? It doesn't sound like she does. You have good reason to believe (because she told you) that if she spends the night at her boyfriend's house she won't be following your rules. So you don't let her spend the night at her boyfriend's house. And you don't believe her when she tells you her plans changed and she's just staying at her friend Beth's house, either.

Only you know what kind of punishment will hit hardest for your daughter. Maybe it's spending every Friday for the next month babysitting her little brother. Maybe it's taking away the car. Whatever it is, you need to make sure she knows without a doubt that by defying you, she's choosing that punishment.


(We'll ignore the part about the 16 year old being a in a long-distance relationship. Shouldn't she be hanging out with boys from her own school, or at least her own town?)