The Appeal Process
Rightly managing or mismanaging parental authority will have a decisive impact on the emotional mood of your home. Since, as parents, you will still be using your authority for the next several years, and since others will have authority over your middle-years child, it is also important that you create a safe zone for your kids when it comes to the timing of your instructions. Here we will introduce one more “authority” application called the Appeal Process.
To appeal to authority is to acknowledge another’s rule in our lives. To be in a position of leadership and to hear an appeal is to accept human imperfection. We all make errors in judgment. Yes, we desire that our children submit to our leadership without grumbling, murmuring, or disputing. However, submission is a difficult task for all of us. In parenting, we must be especially sensitive to this fact throughout the training process, or we risk exasperating our children.
A parent who instructs their preteen to turn off the movie five minutes before its conclusion, or to put away a game when it is nearly over can be a source of unnecessary frustrations. “Unnecessary” is the operative word, and refers to either the timing of Mom and Dad’s instruction, or the appropriateness of the instruction giving the context of the moment.
That begs the question: How can parents maintain reasonable order in the home without frustrating or exasperating their children? The answer is found in the Appeal Process—giving a child who has received an instruction the chance to provide new information that might cause a parent to rethink the instruction.
For example, Caleb was watching an auto racing competition that had only a few laps left in the race. Mom, unaware of this fact, instructs Caleb to turn off the television and wash up for dinner. In this case, her frame of reference was dinner. Caleb’s frame of reference was the race, which was only minutes from completion.
Should Caleb comply by leaving the program, but be frustrated? Or should he ignore his mother in order to satisfy his desire to watch the conclusion of the race? Either way, Caleb would be exasperated. The Appeal Process bridges the two extremes, preventing both disobedience and exasperation.
When and How
To activate an appeal, the preadolescent, not the parent, must initiate the process by providing new information. The parent’s part is to hear the new information and, if appropriate, reconsider the instructions. An appeal is not always granted. There may be new information, but it may not be relevant. “Yes,” “No,” and “Maybe,” are all possible responses to an appeal. But the child’s perspective will have been considered, and that is usually all he wants.
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