I've been asked which Unison Parenting chapter was the hardest to write. The first chapter in the Teen section is Collaborative Parenting, and it was definitely the most difficult to assemble.
The premise of Collaborative Parenting is that when you have those four high school years to grow a child into an adult, you can collaborate with the teen in a new way. It doesn’t have to be contentious; there is another way built on teamwork and mutual respect.
The basics of the concept are not hard to understand. However, the practice is more difficult. Some techniques in that chapter come from research into interpersonal communications. Some, which I used as a parent, actually come from human resource management in the business realm, techniques that allow you to analyze the child’s readiness to move to new stages of growth.
These techniques can be a little complicated. So the challenge was to make them as simple, understandable, and executable as possible. Hopefully I succeeded so that others can put these useful techniques into practice.
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