In an effort to help her, we took her out of public school and put her into Catholic school through the eighth grade. We didn’t allow her to hang out with kids from the old school. We even went as far as moving to another part of town. But despite heavy day-today teacher and parent involvement and holding her accountable for her behavior, her grades continued to deteriorate. She began to call her old friends and occasionally meet with them. She became very disrespectful toward her mother. We tried all forms of giving and taking away privileges for behavior without any effect. We finally sent her to Outward Bound with a group of kids sponsored by a local church.
During this time my wife and I wrote a marriage mission statement. We spent about an hour a day listening to each other, and we got serious about our personal mission statements. We kept coming back to the principle of choice and to the core values we would live by—come what may with our daughter.
When she refused to go to private school for high school, we moved from Texas to New Jersey, where we had relatives. We moved from a suburb community to a five-acre country environment in a wealthy part of the state with excellent public schools and very few drug problems. She began the ninth grade there and almost immediately had problems at school. Under pressure from others that we “weren’t doing enough,” we tried various forms of “tough love” with no positive effect. Our daughter began to cut herself and threatened to run away and commit suicide.
The school recommended that she join a group with the school counselor, where she immediately found friends who were drinking, using pot, and being sexually promiscuous. She became destructive at times, and my wife was afraid for her own safety. We put her in therapy, but with no positive effect.
During the tenth grade she began to fail everything. She refused further therapy and was kicked out of the counseling group at school. She began staying away from home with boyfriends. My wife and I felt we had exhausted all reasonable ideas. We were not willing to let her run away or to call the police on her, but we felt we had tried everything else.
At that point we decided to put our faith in principles instead of in all the popular advice we were receiving. We continued to have our daily talks, and even though I traveled a lot, we never missed a day. We began to separate our problems from those of our daughter and to believe that we were making more of a difference than we could see.
We focused on working from the inside out. We got very serious about being trustworthy. No matter what our daughter’s behavior was, we never used it as an excuse to break our word. We focused on building trust in every interaction with her. We demonstrated our unconditional love for her while expressing explicitly what behavior was against our values and what the consequences would be.
We were scrupulous about keeping all consequences in our Circle of Influence. If she ran away, we would not try to find her, but we would go and get her when she called. We would express our love and concern and listen to understand, but we would not disrupt our plans or lives or hide what she was doing from our relatives. We would not trust her unconditionally. We explained to her that she—like us—had to earn trust.
We treated her as a proactive person. We affirmed her talents and allowed her levels of initiative to be equal to her trustworthiness in that area.
We developed a family mission statement even though she did not participate. We included only what we knew she also believed in. We constantly looked at our formal and informal systems of rewards, decision making, and information exchange. At her request we put her in ALC (Alternative Learning Center) classes at school and had weekly meetings with her and key school personnel to just talk.
During the eleventh grade she slowly began to respond, but she continued to use pot and LSD with her friends. She began to respect our not allowing drugs or smoking on the property. She was just passing at school, but life at home was improving dramatically.
Over the next year our relationships strengthened immensely. We gained a deeper understanding of one another and began to have family dinners together. Her “friends” began coming over to our house to hang out, and we were always present when they were around. Drugs remained part of her life, though we continued to express our disapproval and not trust her in any areas where drugs could be a factor.
She became pregnant, and although we did not approve, we allowed her to make her own decision to have an abortion. We continued to affirm her potential and express our unconditional love, and we were always there for her when she needed us—in stark contrast to her “friends.”
At the beginning of the twelfth grade she had a bad experience with drugs and immediately called her mom, who took her to the hospital. She suddenly stopped all drugs and alcohol, and began to improve her performance at school.
A year later, relationships at home exceeded our wildest expectations. She began to want to demonstrate how responsible she was. She went back for an extra half year to finish high school and got all A’s for the first time since grade school. She got a part-time job and began paying her own way as much as she could. She asked if she could live at home for two more years to go to community college and qualify to attend the university.
My wife and I know that there are no guarantees, but we feel that by aligning our lives with correct principles, we dramatically increased our chances for success with this daughter. The 7 Habits gave us a framework to look for principles in our situation and the confidence that, regardless of how things turned out, we could sleep at night and live with ourselves. Most unexpectedly, we both grew personally and changed as much as our daughter, if not more.
“Growing” children and relationships and all the good things we want in our families takes time. And sometimes, the forces that would throw us off course are powerful and strong—even within the family itself.
I’ve had some parents—particularly in blended families—tell me that their efforts to create a family mission statement have met with resistance from teenage children. There are some who say, “We didn’t choose this family. This wasn’t our idea. Why should we choose to cooperate?”
To these parents—and to any who meet with resistance—I would say this: One of your greatest strengths will be in having your personal mission statement and your marriage mission statement firmly in place. These teenagers may feel traumatized and insecure in their own lives and in the family. They may be bouncing off the walls. You have the potential of being the only really solid thing in their lives. If you have your direction and principles clear, and you consistently respond to them based on that direction and those principles, they will gradually come to feel the sense of that unchanging core. You will feel the strength of it also as you interact with them in principle-centered ways through the storm.
I would also say: Don’t give up on a family mission statement. Do what work you can as a family. Do what you can, one-on-one, with these resistant children. Love them unconditionally. Make continual deposits into their Emotional Bank Accounts. Continue to work with your other children as well. You may even have to come up with some kind of statement that reflects the hearts and minds of those who will cooperate and just keep reaching out to the others in unconditional love.
Over time, the hearts of these resistant children may soften. It may be hard to imagine now, but I have seen it happen, time and time again. As you keep your vision clear, as you act based on principles and love unconditionally, children slowly begin to develop trust in that principle-centeredness and unconditional love.
Almost always, the strength of the destination and the compass will pull you through—as long as you have the patience and the faith to hold fast to what you know and stay the course.
SHARING THIS CHAPTER WITH ADULTS AND TEENS
All Things Are Created Twice
Discuss this statement: “Because all things are created twice, if you don’t take charge of the first creation, someone or something else will.” Ask: In what ways are we taking charge of the first creation?
Discuss examples of the first and second creations (making blueprint plans before building, creating flight plans before making a flight). In everyday life, what mental creation is required: At work? At school? At home? In sports? Gardening? Cooking?