Mark,

We prescribe to your teen maintenance program and we (my husband and I) feel things have improved...everyone knows the rules, no more screaming matches, no more guessing at the consequences. However, I would appreciate your opinion on one issue.

Last Saturday was my daughters 17th birthday and my husband and I agreed to let our daughter have a small party at our home under our rules. I managed the birthday crowd from 30 feet away. Roughly 15 kids arrived and were great until they left at 11pm.

Our daughter and her two girl friends who planned to spend the night were in the guest house. When I went to check on the girls the doors to the guest house were locked. After some banging by me, the doors were open and the 3 gals looked too casual. When I opened the guest closet and found a male friend of theirs standing there, I drove him home. Apparently, he came back to our guest home drunk or under the influence of something (we have a gate, so he must have jumped the gate or more likely, the girls let him in (roughly 2am) and punched multiply holes in our plantation shutters and a whole in our flat screen plasma TV.

When I told my husband this, he just gave a brief "hu" almost a chuckle. He and my daughter are close... My concern is that my husband and I are not on a united front and my daughter knows this, so she "plays" to dad. What can I do to get my husband on a united front with me so he is not enabling my daughter?

Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks, yet again, Mark.

D.

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Hi D.,

A weaker plan supported by both parents is much better than a stronger plan supported by only one. Having said that, I’ll simply share a recent success story from a wife in the same dilemma (i.e., husband didn’t really get with the program, and in some cases worked against the wife):

Hi Mark,
I don’t know if you remember me or not. We spoke last week on the phone re: my husband not wanting to do the program because he thinks it’s too easy on our daughter (he believes she should be grounded the entire grading period for making mostly F’s on her last report card). Anyway, he and I were not on the same page, and this was creating some real problems …he refused to read the eBook. So I got the CDs and played them every time we were in the car together (which is a lot). I had a captive audience – LOL :).

Anyway, since he’s been force-fed some of the strategies (as well as the reasoning behind them) he’s been a bit more open to going along with me. Our daughter’s behaviour is slowly improving as a result. Although we have much work to do, she has great difficulty playing one parent against the other now.

Just wanted to give you an update,

J.W.

Is this something you think might work D__? If so, you can get the audio CDs of the program by clicking here. If not, we can talk about another plan.

Mark