Ask a bunch of teenagers what rules they would give their parents for raising them, and you’d probably expect carte blanche.
And in some cases, of course, you’d be right.
But teacher Mary Simmons discovered that, when you add it all up, the foremost thing teens ask from their parents isn’t a blank check, or even love. It’s discipline.
The Bothell High School English teacher this year compiled five years’ worth of student responses into “Discipline Me Right: Tips From Teens for Parents.”
The book explores the language teens use to convey what they feel is important to good parenting, then gives mothers and fathers a way to translate that feedback.
It’s based on a class assignment Simmons gives her senior English class each year as they study the Judith Guest novel “Ordinary People,” which has a parenting theme. (The book also was made into an Academy Award-winning 1980 movie directed by Robert Redford.)
After reading the novel, Simmons asks her students to come up with “10 commandments for parents” either on their own or in small groups. The task puts a fun twist on learning while getting kids to think deeper.
Simmons saved their responses — thousands of them — and eventually typed and tallied them, grouping like commandments. What came from that work was an ordered and ranked list, with what she calls “discipline me right” as the first commandment.
The assignment is based on one Simmons was given herself at Western Washington University, where she was taking teacher certification courses about 12 years ago. But the outcome is far different.
“Being adults, I think we had very different perspectives,” Simmons said. “We said ‘love me’ and all this stuff. My teenagers, it was a whole different thing.… ‘Love me’ was No. 8. It was really shocking, really interesting.”
Focus on discipline-related rules likely comes with the territory of being in high school.
“It’s their stage in life,” Simmons said.
But it’s more than that.
“I think they also have their finger on the pulse of what’s really important,” she said.
Kids crave freedom, but they also crave responsible adults in their lives, Simmons said.
It’s all about trust, said Colby Burk, 18, a student in Simmons’ senior English class this year who will get the “10 commandments” assignment during spring semester.
“(Parents) have to understand that they raised them the way they wanted to raise them, and hopefully they’re making decisions based on that upbringing,” Burk said.
Parents need to let their kids “know their own boundaries, giving them room to make their own decisions.”
Burk says he has that kind of trust with his own parents, and admires them for it.
“We’ve always talked and everything about what I’ve done wrong and, if they needed to discipline me, it was the right kind,” he said.
A teenager’s inside tip? Taking away the cell phone delivers a message way better than screaming.
Every year, the class lesson reveals different responses.
There are the few kids who fall off chairs laughing as they craft biblical-style mitzvahs for mom and dad.
“Thou shall not force hygiene” and, perhaps inadvertently, “Thou shalt forgive and forget thy children,” to name just two of the funnier examples from the appendix in Simmons’ book.
Then, too, there are kids speaking from experience with bad parenting, urging parents not to fight them on inconsequential issues or use yelling and violence to assert authority. Most often, students draw lessons from the book and from their own good experiences.
“Advise, don’t criticize.”
“Hold me responsible for my actions.”
“Try to remember what it was like being a teenager.”
Said Simmons: “They’re also commending their parents a lot of time for doing a good job.”
As a profession, teachers often see the worst outcomes of parents who refuse to discipline their children well, Simmons said. “We’re seeing more and more parents who tend to spoil, coddle and enable.”
That said, she is quick to add that most of the students she’s had at Bothell High School have been great. “I have to compliment our parents, for the most part.”
Like a parent, Simmons takes what students say and does some adult translating along the way.
Some kids’ rules ordered parents to forget grounding and to pay their speeding tickets.
The message for parents? “Kids don’t always want what’s good for them,” Simmons writes.
The book is published by Cedar Fort, a Utah company that historically caters to Latter-day Saints believers. Simmons notes that she is not Mormon nor a churchgoer, but the company’s parenting advice niche appealed.
Simmons wrote the book with input from her father, Bert Simmons of Oregon, who owns a school consulting business on student discipline issues.
The pair give advice on how to be positive and assertive parents who live by the creed: “As a parent I cannot allow my child to do anything that is not in his or her best interest, or mine.”
Simmons draws from other popular names along the way, from Haim Ginott (“Between Parent and Teenager,” 1969) to Jean Twenge (“Generation Me,” 2006).
A lot of the book’s practical parenting tips and scenarios come in appendices, such as coming up with a home and school plan.
But the book’s real contribution to the surplus of parenting advice out there is the voices of Simmons’ students.
“They’ve been through 17 or 18 years of it themselves,” Simmons said. “They know what their parents have done. … They understand what they need.”
10 commandments for parents
These are the top 10 “commandments” students in Mary Simmons’ English classes came up with for parents, based on her compilation of thousands of responses over five years. Simmons’ book focuses on the first commandment.
1. Discipline me right.
2. Provide for me well.
3. Allow me freedom.
4. Be a role model.
5. Be there.
6. Respect my individuality.
7. Respect my privacy.
8. Love me.
9. Don’t embarrass me.
10. Have reasonable expectations.
Learn more
“Discipline Me Right: Tips from Teens for Parents,” by Mary Simmons with Bert Simmons; list price, $10.99. Available at area bookstores and online.
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