When I was a teenager, my mom heard about this method of dealing with rebelliousness, called “tough love.” Her interpretation of “tough love” was to lock me out of the house if I came home even a minute after my curfew, and to sit on my bed shaking me so that I couldn’t sleep during the day. I don’t know how big it is anymore, but I have a feeling that the idea may persist under different guises. I can say, from personal experience, that this kind of thing doesn’t work. Rather than taming my “rebellious” ways (which consisted, by the way, of staying out past midnight, drinking occasionally, and not going to college right away), I just spent a lot of nights sleeping in my car or a hotel.

From what I understand of “tough love,” the basis is a good one: that even if you don’t understand or support your child’s actions, you still love your child. However, parents can take this thought two different ways. More conscientious parents will use it to intervene when their child is headed down a dangerous path, as their interpretation runs along the lines of, “I love you, but not what you’re doing to yourself, because I know it’s bad for you; therefore I need to intervene out of love for you.” However, parents that aren’t comfortable intervening or aren’t sure how may interpret “tough love” a little differently, by claiming they love the child, but setting boundaries that protect themselves rather than the child, and otherwise ignoring the problem.

With all this in mind, I think that the term “tough love” is rather misleading, as it tends to make parents focus on the “tough” part instead of the “love” part. Instead of parenting your child using “tough love” as an approach, I believe that you should parent solely out of love. Love doesn’t mean letting your child run all over you any more than it means allowing them to hurt themselves. Furthermore, using “tough love” can add fuel to your child’s rebellion, whereas intervening out of love will leave the lasting impression that you genuinely care about your child, their well-being, and their future.