Teen expert Vicki Courtney saw the power of establishing clear expectations when her kids started using the Internet.  Setting the ground rules, she told them, “Now that you’re going online, it’s not a matter of if you’ll be made uncomfortable, it’s when.  I know you can accidentally stumble onto bad sites, and I know that bad people can contact you.  If a porn ad pops up, or if someone contacts you and makes you feel uncomfortable, let me know so I can figure out how it happened  I promise I will not take your Internet away.”

Some time later, her daughter was contacted by someone who seemed threatening.  When she approached Vicki to talk about it, the first thing she said was, “Uh, Mom, remember when you said you wouldn’t take my Internet away?”

As Vicki told us, “We have the freedom to discuss these things now because my kids know I’m not going to ban the Internet because of something they couldn’t help, or because they made a mistake.”

And since gaining freedom is a huge incentive, you might want to help your child realize that he’ll have more freedom if he shows he can handle it—and that purposeful deception is the quickest way to lose it.

4. Equip them to cope wisely with their growing freedoms. 
We’ve seen that seven out of ten kids will do what they want to do, no matter what we say.  Even the fear of their parents’ finding out doesn’t compel them to stop their behavior, only to hide it.  (Scary!)  So we need to help our teens want to do the right things and not want the wrong ones.  Beyond consistent, fervent prayer—which we advocate wholeheartedly—here are a few suggestions for pointing them in the right direction.

Help your kids learn to think through their decisions—and see where they might have been wrong.
As we’ll detail in another chapter, the kids said they have to understand the reasons for the rules—embracing the rules for themselves and not thinking of them as being externally imposed.  In addition, since the frontal lobe of your child’s brain is probably underdeveloped, she may need you to act as an “external frontal lobe” to help her think through consequences.  (“If you go to the mall, what does that mean for how much time you’ll have to do your homework?”)  Similarly, your child could easily be deluding herself about whether a choice she already made was actually a bad one or whether it involved deception.

Although it may seem that she should already know what’s right, give her some guidance anyway.  Even mature teenagers may need an adult’s help from time to time to look back on a given choice and recognize where their train of thought derailed.  The kids suggested asking good questions (“Did you think of which kids might turn up at the party?”) instead of giving a lecture, so that your child can work through the issue and draw a conclusion for herself.