3 Back-to-School Rules Parents of Teens Should Break

Back-to-school season can turn moms into managers really fast.

Check the grades.

Ask about the missing assignment.

Remind him about homework.

Tell him to get off his phone.

Ask if he studied.

Ask again.

Before you know it, you’re carrying more responsibility for school than your teenager is.

And I think that’s a problem.

One of the biggest back-to-school rules I think parents should break is this:

Good parents make sure their teens succeed in school.

Of course you want your son to do well.

You can encourage him. You can give him a place to study. You can help when he asks. You can provide resources and hold reasonable boundaries.

But you can’t care about school for him.

You can’t remember everything for him.

And you can’t make him get good grades.

That’s his job.

This can be hard because it’s easy to make your teen’s success mean something about you.

He gets straight A’s and you think, Maybe I’m doing this parenting thing right.

He starts failing math and suddenly you’re wondering, Where did I go wrong?

But your teen’s report card is not your parenting report card.

Sometimes helping your teenager grow means stepping back enough to let him carry some responsibility.

Maybe you see a missing assignment and instead of jumping in with five reminders, you simply say:

“I noticed you have a missing assignment. Are you aware of it?”

Then:

“What’s your plan?”

That small shift changes who owns the problem.

And that matters.

Because someday your son will be 22. Then 32. Then 42.

You probably don’t want to be managing his life then.

So at some point, he needs the chance to practice managing it now.

And that may even mean letting him fail sometimes.

That’s just one of the three back-to-school rules I think parents should break.

In this episode, I also talk about why school might not be the most important thing in your teen’s life—and why your teenager might not be the person who needs the biggest back-to-school reset.

Listen to the full episode to hear all three rules.