Die Art und Weise, wie Teenager die Warnungen ihrer Eltern erhalten, hängt weniger von der Botschaft ab und mehr, ob ihre Eltern wirklich ihre eigenen Werte leben. Wenn Eltern ihre Werte im täglichen Leben konsequent modellieren, werden ihre Warnungen eher von Teenagern als Anleitung anstelle von Kontrolle wahrgenommen.
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I’ve linked to the press release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10964-025-02196-7
From the linked article:
**When parents model their values consistently in daily life, their warnings are more likely to be perceived by their teenagers as guidance instead of control.**
New research shows that teens heed warnings more when parents model their values and show understanding.
Adolescence is a period when some teenagers begin experimenting with risky or rule-breaking behaviors such as skipping school, drinking, lying, or staying out past their curfew. When parents find out, their natural response is often to warn their child: Continue with the behavior and you’ll incur stricter rules, less freedom, and the loss of privileges.
On the surface, this response seems a reasonable attempt to deter further misbehaving. But how do teens actually experience these warnings—and why do some comply while others become even more defiant?
A team of US and Israeli researchers—among them University of Rochester psychologist Judith Smetana—set out to find answers. The resulting study, published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, concludes that **the way teenagers receive their parents’ warnings depends less on the message itself and more on whether they see their parents as genuinely living up their own purported values**.
If parents model their values consistently in everyday life and appear satisfied and vital while acting on their values, their warnings are more likely to be perceived by their teenagers as caring guidance. If not, teens often experience the warnings as an attempt to control them, which can spark defiance. But the researchers also discovered that while authentic parental values reduced defiance, they did not, by themselves, lead teens to stop their risky behaviors. The warnings proved most effective when parents took the time to understand their teens’ perspectives.
Oh really? So it doesn’t work to tell your child to get off their phone more often if you are glued to yours? Or to do their homework if you complain about your job everyday? Who’d have thought?
Children are always the first to be able to see their own parents‘ hypocrisy.
„Do as I say, not as I do“ doesn’t often go down well
The most interesting finding in this study to me is that warnings proved to be insignificant in changing behavior even when received as guidance rather than control. Instead parental perspective taking was the only significant variable when it came to behavior change. It’s face valid, but still feels like a pretty important takeaway. Rather than warning kids away from behaviors it’s likely a better strategy to spend time getting to understand and empathize with their reasoning for engaging in the behavior.
Teenagers, can’t teach values to them, can’t not teach values to them.