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Girls Gone Wild
Get Your Preteen Off the Fast Track
By Kelly Burgess
When Jenna entered middle school, clothes quickly became the least of Gibson's worries. Jenna dropped the "nice" friends that she'd played with since her toddler play group days and started hanging out with a group of kids with a bad reputation. Gibson fears that she's tried, or would be willing to try, drugs or alcohol, and that she might start experimenting sexually.
Based on her experience with her older children, Gibson thinks there is something emotionally wrong with Jenna that is worsening as she enters adolescence. The family has an appointment with a counselor in order to salvage their relationship. Sells says teens with particularly bad behavioral problems may have conditions that call for professional help, such as Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). In these cases, counseling is a remedy for parents to seek as soon as possible.
Often, defiance, disrespect and rule-breaking are behaviors that are normal processes of puberty, but if left unchecked they can turn into bigger problems. The way to deal with those cases is by taking a stance as early as possible and sticking to it. "It may be tough to start having behavioral problems with your preteen, but it's actually great when you catch it that early because it's not as hard to get things back on track," says Sells. "If you let things go until they're teenagers, it becomes much more difficult to deal with."
What Sells does with parents who come to him for counseling is to have them go over a blueprint of what a behavioral contract should be and build a contract with their child that clearly spells out objectionable behavior. For example, vague statements, such as "Stop being so disrespectful," need to be changed to very specific instances of disrespect so that the child has no doubt about what is meant by the word. The contract should also have built-in rewards and punishments.