Improving Communication Through Parent - Child Contracts

by Teresa McEntire | More from this Blogger

15 Apr 2006 12:00 PM

Cohesi is Latin "for to adhere" or "stick together" and that is exactly what the site www.cohesi.com is helping families do. The three guiding principles behind Cohesi are: "keep communication open; embrace changes; and treat everyone equal."

Families today face a wide variety of challenges like Internet use, nutrition, school performance and violence, recreational activities, and parents who are often both working. "Families now have prefixes like 'blended', 'single', 'adopted', 'interracial' and 'non-traditional'."

According to Anna Leung, age 42, and creator of the site, "Cohesi is the glue that binds family together; it is where you define the meaning of family and adjust the strength of the glue. Cohesi is a set of web tools developed to help families strengthen relationships through communication."

Cohesi.com was launched on May 17, 2005 to help families improve relationships through the use of contracts. Anna, an IT professional, began using contracts with her son when he entered middle school. The software available was confusing and complicated. So she searched for something that would make writing and managing a contract between parent and child easier. She couldn't find it. As a result Cohesi was born.

But why create a contract? Anna explains, "Creating such contracts has helped my son and I communicate what and why things are important to us as individuals and as a team... It eliminates a lot of arguments."

Her son Jonathan agrees, "There's less stress now for me and everyone in my family. It just makes things easier."

At the site parents can create a contract that they can use between them and their child. Anna believes that created consequences must me more than "If you do ___ then you will be ___", because teens need to be part of the consequence process. Writing a contract helps teens and parents create rules and consequences that both parties can live with. This helps foster open communication between parents and teens and eliminates power struggles since both parties know what is expected of them.

For example in Anna and her son's contract he "agrees to keep up with his grades, good nutrition, curfews, limits electronic game time, and recreational internet use; and I agree to respect his privacy, choice of sport activity, clothing, music, and friends; all under conditions that are detailed, flexible, and livable for both of us." Contracts have consequences that go both ways; both the parent and the child are responsible to see that the contract is upheld.

Cohesi's services are FREE. Anna believes in Cohesi so passionately that she can't bear the thought of someone not being able to use the services because of financial reasons. She "give[s] because the more families stick together; the better the world is for [her] kid and his kid(s)." I couldn't agree with her more.

Learn more about Teresa McEntire

Teresa McEntire grew up in Utah the oldest of four children. She currently lives in Kuna, Idaho, near Boise. She and her husband Gene have been married for almost ten years.

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