As a kid, I remember spending the night with a friend and waking up after a nightmare, alone and terrified. I wanted to call my mom, but I wasn’t sure it would be okay, and I didn’t want to be made fun of for leaving in the middle of the night.
When I was a teenager, I remember getting myself into less than ideal situations with no clear understanding of how to get myself out. In the days before cell phones, I would have had to use a landline phone to call my mom. That was taboo for any teenager to do, so I didn’t.
When I had kids myself, I never wanted them to feel trapped in a situation. Before the first kid went to their first sleepover, we made a plan.
If they felt uncomfortable for any reason, they could say that they had a stomach ache and that “my mom said I need to call her if that happens.” It didn’t happen that time or the next. But, several overnighters later, I got the call that Kid A had a stomach ache.
I went to pick her up. It seems nothing bad had happened. No bullying, teasing or feeling uncomfortable. She had just had enough and wanted to be at home. Soon, my other kids were getting old enough for sleepovers and other trips away from home. Each had an extraction plan if they wanted to come home.
Teaching Children to Listen to Their Intuition
It always mattered to me that my children learn to listen and respect their intuition. I know from being a kid myself that it is often much easier to discern that you feel uncomfortable than it is to determine why you feel that way.
The “why” is not as important as learning to extract yourself from situations that make you feel uncomfortable. You can always work on the “why” later.
We had long talks about intuition or listening to those gut feelings. Together, we role-played different scenarios for getting themselves out of any situation that made them feel uncomfortable.
I am sure at this point, someone reading this is thinking, “but they need to learn to do that without calling mom every time they feel the slightest bit uncomfortable.” Why? It wasn’t just mom, but they also knew they could call Dad, Grandma, or older siblings. All of the trusted adults in their lives were looped in about the “extraction plan.”
They were in no danger of running out of trusted adults. Why would they need to learn to tough it out in uncomfortable situations or get themselves out of situations when they might face adults who wanted to coerce them into staying or kids who would tease them for doing what I had taught them to do?
From the moment our children are born, we do our best to keep them safe. Having a code or extraction plan allows them to call on their parents for help without facing a social backlash they may not be prepared to handle.
Give Your Teenager a Secret Code
As they became teenagers, we revamped the “extraction plan” to include a secret code. The code was a phrase they could say or text that would let me know they were facing a decision to go somewhere or do something and wanted me to be the bad guy and say no.
I have no problem with being the bad guy in situations like that. Sure, my 16-year old would boldly refuse to go to a party where there were older kids and alcohol in a perfect world.
In reality, she probably would, unless the person asking her to go was someone she really liked. Then, she would feel pressured not to disappoint the person she’s with, and that is why we have the code.
So, say the code is “my stupid phone.” In the above situation, she might text me that “my stupid phone keeps shutting off again, but J invited me to go to the mall.”
As per our agreement, I will say no and give a reason. “No, you never cleaned your room up. It is time to come home,” or “no, we have to get up early, so I am coming to pick you up.”
Whether by text or phone call, I can then expect to get pushback in the form of an angry tone or annoyed emojis. After all, some part of them wants to go, but they need me to be the bad guy bent on ruining their lives, or at least their plans for the evening.
I don’t pressure them to tell me the “real” reason they enacted the code. Sometimes they do, but other times, I am met with the standard teenage wall of silence. A typical answer is, “I just didn’t feel like it.”
My kids are older now and a little more open about things that happened during their adolescence. Now that I know how many times the code or extraction plan was used to avoid truly harrowing escapades, I am more thankful than ever that we had the plans in place.
In his early 20s, my oldest son called me one evening to say that he was heading out with friends and staying with B. I said, “okay.”
His immediate response was, “You’re really going to be like that? I am an adult and can go wherever I want.”
I found a smile creeping across my face as I said, “no, I need you here to help me in the morning.” There was more grumbling from his end, but the conversation ended with “fine. I will be home soon.” I won’t go into the details of the situation he was getting himself out of, but suffice it to say, the original plan wasn’t a good idea for him.
The secret code works. Whether your little one is worried about spending the night with Grandma or your teen is looking for a way out of a potentially dangerous situation, as a parent, help them develop a plan before the situation arises.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash
