4 Key Factors to Negotiate Rules with your Kids: The Right Way

Setting up the right Internet rules is never easy when we talk about Teenagers, most of all when the Teenagers are your sons and daughters.

There are so many variables that we feel unable to manage all of them.

This is why we need to focus on few but strong key factors.

Connection

Eye contact is mandatory when it’s time to raise a children.
Through the eye contact with the adult the children is able to look at himself (because he sees the “reflection” in the parents eyes) and start to perceive his own identity: what the child will see in his/her parents eyes will influence how they will see themselves.
What happens when the parents aren’t able to offer that eye contact to their sons, because they never learned to really contact the world?

Respect

Remember the Web and its tools are the World our teens will live in, so if you lack respect about them then you lack respect about your sons future.
As we saw the online activity is part of our teenagers, it’s part of their Identity, so if you respect their online activity then they feel respected as human beings.

Trust

Respecting their virtual spaces, the contract, helping them to let them feel and manage their emotions, imply a reciprocal trust.
Your sons will never trust you if you don’t trust them for first.
Obviously you don’t have to collude.
It’s a role game: you rerally trust them and in the meantime you keep in mind the asymmetry required in order the educational process to be successful.

Dealing with Emotions

You aren’t able to teach your sons how to manage their emotions if you aren’t able to manage yours for first.
Our teens feel when you’re telling them a tale not corresponding with the reality.
Always be genuine with your feelings and your emotions.

Maybe you are still working at it (nobody’s perfect), but your kids are able to feel your commitment.

Originally published at www.digitalparentingtips.com on April 8, 2016.