Roxane Lehmann, Ph.D.

Modern Family: Season 5, Episode 3, Larry’s Wife

Claire and Phil Aren’t Paying Attention

The Framework

“Control” is what knotted the plotlines together tonight on Modern Family. After agreeing to let Cam plan their wedding, Mitch has trouble letting go of control. Look no further than the fake cat funeral to see why. As Cam admits: This was supposed to be a small service. But I don’t winnow down. I overdo. Meanwhile at the Pritchett’s, Gloria is worrying that a family curse has put baby Joe under the devil’s control. And over at the Dunphy household things are getting out of control.
Phil: I’ve been on something of a hot streak at work. I’ve tapped into a rich vein of new clients: recently divorced moms. You might say I hit the single mother lode.

With Phil on his hot streak and Claire preoccupied with her new job, Luke has been hosting poker games in the basement, and his luck seems to have gone cold. As he laments: We lost everything down there.

Flipping the Frame: My Notes

Claire and Phil seem oblivious to the money (among other things) changing hands in their basement. But so what? What’s the big deal if kids get together and gamble – especially if it’s in your or a neighbor’s basement?

Parents’ answers to this question vary. Some parents are all for teen gambling – even citing benefits such as social interaction, practice with math and number skills, and learning to consider risks. Other parents are wary, but condone it – explaining that they can’t stop their kids, that it means they know where their kids are, and that the standard $10 buy-in is less than their teen would spend going to a movie. Yet other parents frown on their kids getting involved in any type of gambling. Pointing to the research on the impulsivity of the developing teen brain, they worry that their kids will keep playing even when losing a great deal or that gambling now may set their kids up for lifelong trouble.

So what’s a mom to do?

Regardless of which parent camp you’re in, your best bet is to negotiate with your teen. As strange as it sounds, negotiating makes it more likely that your teen will honor the limits you set – whatever they are.

Stay with me now. This doesn’t mean your kid gets to do whatever they want. On the contrary, kids need limits regardless of their age. And kids of all ages seem to be programmed to test those limits.

When kids are young, our limits are a lot like walls. As long as we’re sturdy, they’re not going to walk all over us. But as our kids get bigger, stronger, and smarter, our sturdy presence is not enough. Because our limits become more like lines. It’s our job to draw those lines so that our teens know what is acceptable and what is out of bounds. But our teens have to decide whether or not to step over those lines. To keep our teens healthy and safe requires their cooperation. And we can go a long way in gaining our teens’ cooperation when it comes to gambling (and everything else) by being willing to negotiate with them.

Negotiating doesn’t mean giving into your teen. It doesn’t even mean always giving ground. Instead to negotiate means:
– Engaging your teen in open-minded discussions.
– Listening to them without interruption and respecting their right to have an opinion different than yours no matter how crazy their idea is.
– Letting your teen know what your concerns, values, and boundaries are.
– Being flexible and saying “yes” if your teen fully addresses your concerns so that you can say “yes” and still be a responsible parent.
– And it means holding the line and explaining why you can’t give an inch (and what it would take for you to reevaluate the situation down the road) as objectively and respectfully as possible when you have to say “no.”

BottomLine

Haley: Thanks for winning my computer back.
Luke: And getting me all my money.
Alex: Yeah. If only I’d stopped there. But I had to go back down. I got greedy, and I was careless.
Haley: There’s a story about that I remember from school. Icarus flew too close to his son; I think their wings bumped; one of them fell. I think they might have been ducks. Anyway, the lesson is you have to pay attention.

Teens aren’t the only ones who have to pay attention when gambling. In fact, teen social gambling is only a big problem if we parents are not paying attention.

Paying attention starts with drawing the line between what is acceptable and what is not for your teen. If you consider any form of gambling out of bounds, you need to say so. If you’re willing to condone some social gambling, then you need to be clear about what is acceptable – when, where, with whom, how, and how much. And you need to keep tabs on what they’re doing and step in if you see that the pot is getting too big, the kids are starting to write IOUs to each other, or they’re starting to collateral their personal belongings.

And you need to monitor your teen’s behavior to make sure that their low-stakes gambling isn’t turning into a high-stakes problem. This means keeping an eye out for troubling signs like these:
– Borrowing from family and friends and not repaying
– Missing personal belongings
– Spending lots of time at online gaming sites
– Being overly concerned with sports scores
– Having unexplained debts or large amounts of cash
– Having unexplained absences from school or falling grades
– Withdrawing from activities, friends, and family
– Being distracted, moody, or anxious

Claire. Phil. Pay attention!

Your Parenting Experiences

Poker parties may not be quite as popular as they were a few years back. But now that football season has started, many kids are getting involved in fantasy football. And if money starts changing hands, the fun turns into gambling.

Does your teen have a fantasy football team? Is money changing hands? If so, what do you consider acceptable?

Sources: Teens + Gambling = Trouble http://today.uchc.edu/headlines/2005/jun05/teengambling.html

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Grandma Gracie’s Theory About Rules

Season 4, Episode 24

The Framework

Tonight on Modern Family’s season finale the three households travel to a retirement village in Florida to mourn the death of Phil’s mother. The episode, though, is as much about rules and rule breaking as it is about saying goodbye to Gracie. In fact, it turns out Gracie had her own theory about rules.

Upon their arrival the family is greeted by a bossy security guard who warns, “We run a tight ship here at Leisure Park,” and rides around on a Segway enforcing pointless rules. She lights into Phil for having breadcrumbs in his pocket (how did she know?) because there’s no duck feeding allowed, and Haley and Alex get kicked out of an empty pool because it’s for residence only. The girls respond in character: Alex as a rule follower; Haley not so much.

Cam charms a bunch of mahjong-playing senior women and then calls one of them out for taking the winning tile out of her pocket and another for swiping a whole plate of cookies into her purse. He’s right; they’re wrong. But what’s the point of stirring things up among the players? Just stir the punch, Cam.

Meanwhile Alex is miffed to find that Grandma Gracie, who she felt so close to, left her only an old lighter. Later, though, after finding the note and learning the meaning behind the gift, she uses the lighter to set-off fireworks at the funeral. She’s sure her grandmother would approve – even if it does break with traditional memorial service protocol.

Flipping the Frame: My Notes

Almost all of us break rules sometimes. Teens are especially prone to doing so. In the past we blamed teen rule breaking on peer pressure and rebellion – wanting to do things their parents don’t do just because they don’t do them. We now know that rapid changes taking place inside the teen brain also play a big role.

One way to think about the brain is to think of it as a balance between two different systems: an emotional pleasure seeking system that pushes us to seek rewards and go for excitement and novelty and a rational system that plans ahead and puts the brakes on impulses. These two systems are changing during adolescence, and the changes are uneven. While the rational system (in charge of braking) takes its time to mature, the emotional system gets a kick-start in early adolescence and goes into overdrive. Researchers have likened this to having an unskilled, thrill seeking driver at the wheel of a car with a high-powered engine and brakes that barely work.

This means that one of the most protective things we can do for our teens is to help with the braking action. But because our teens are making more and more decisions without our supervision, we cannot be their protector as we were when they were younger. Instead we provide protection by clearly drawing lines between right and wrong so our teens will know where the boundaries are.

It’s up to our teens, though, to decide whether or not to stay on the right side of the line. So we need to win our teens’ cooperation if our rules are to offer any protection. And we have the best chance of selling our teens on the rules if we keep things simple.

We need a few simple rules about the things we’re most concerned about – each with a purpose that’s easy for us to explain and for our teens to understand. Here are three rules that fit the bill:

• Be safe. Most teens underestimate bad consequences. Their still developing brains are like a magnet for trouble. So Be safe is about helping our teens stay away from things that could hurt them – things like smoking, drinking, drugs, driving while under the influence or riding with someone who is, getting arrested, and unsafe sex.

• Be respectful. We often find ourselves arguing with our teens, and one of our biggest areas of disagreement is respect. So be respectful is about helping our teens act respectfully towards other people, other people’s property, and to themselves. This rule addresses concerns such as acting rude, avoiding schoolwork, breaking curfew, neglecting home chores, lying, arguing with siblings or us, cheating, and stealing.

• Be in contact. There are now things our teens would rather we not know. Because they fear that we’ll interfere with their fun. And because they want to protect us from what they think is needless worry. So be in contact is about helping weed out our teens’ bad decisions and reinforce their good ones. This rule is about our teens keeping us informed about who they’re with, what they’re doing, where they are, and where they’re going – especially if their plans change. And it’s about our teens letting us know when something unexpected happens and how they plan to deal with it.

Any issue can be matched to one or more of these three ways to be. Plus these rules give us a ready reason when they ask why: Because you need to be safe. You need to be respectful. You need to be in contact. Over time, we’ll float more information about each of these rules by them – always keeping our messages simple and brief.

Resources: “7 Things Your Teenager Won’t Tell You” by J. M. Lippincott & R. M. Deutsch

The BottomLine

Grandma Gracie (in note left for Alex): Alex, who I love so dearly, who’s probably too much like me for her own good, don’t be afraid to break the rules.

At the end of the day our teens must decide for themselves how to act. Whether we like it or not, it will always be our teen’s choice whether or not to abide by our rules. And, frankly, most teens are more like Haley than Alex; they’re not afraid to break the rules – particularly rules that don’t make sense.

So we should expect our teens to test our limits. But we can help tip the balance back in the right direction by making and enforcing rules that our teens can understand and respect. We can link our discussions and actions back to three simple rules: Be safe. Be respectful. Be in contact.

Flipping the Frame: Your Parenting Experiences

• What are your rules for your teen? Has your teen tested the limits you’ve set? What do the discussions with your teen about rules sound like?

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