How to talk with teenagers

There is no laid down rule regarding how to achieve a successful relationship with your teen or how best to discuss issues with them, especially with issues that raise concerns over their habits and ways. But there are basic principles to abide by if you want to raise a teen that will grow into an adult you will be proud of. A major principle is your conversation/communication style with them.

Parents today face very real and sometimes frightening concerns about their children’s lives. As they get older, your kids have their own interests, problems, even their own language.

In every relationship as in one with a teenager, communication is the number one way of keeping your teenager happy and healthy. Talking to them will open doors to strengthen your relationship.

Parents have the goal, to successfully parent their teens into happy and healthy adults. Effective communication is the most important parenting skill you will require to do this. If you can effectively communicate with your teen, you can move mountains.

Michael Riera, author of the book, Staying Connected to Your Teenager, advises the direct/strategic approach.

The strategic approach that worked so well when your teenager was a child not only falls flat during adolescence but often makes matters worse, whether or not it was an innocent comment or represented some ulterior motive of yours. As the parent of a teenager, it’s necessary, at times, to use the direct approach, but it’s just as necessary to develop skills in the more indirect methods.

Riera explains that sometimes your teenager needs you to take the direct route, usually in the areas of limits, guidelines, and expectations. Times like these, he says, require clear communication and conciseness; they leave no room for doubt or misunderstanding. You also need courage, because during moments like these you are firmly ensconced in the role of parent. These are lonely times.

Citing this example, ‘No, you can’t go to a party without an adult present. I don’t care if everyone else is. You are not to go to that party tonight, clear?’ the author stresses that teenagers need clarity around these kinds of issues to supplement his courage and assuage his doubt. “But as far as these communications lead to an immediate and observable change in behavior, well, they probably won’t.”

Although the direct approach is important, it’s also isolating for you as a parent, and too much of this approach risks a permanent disconnect between you and your teenager. Therefore, for your sanity, the well-being of your teenager, and the connection between you both, you need to supplement the direct approach liberally with lots of indirect communications.

Another thing is, considering the hyper self-consciousness and inherent defensiveness of most teenagers, it only makes sense that you will seldom have those long, open, and frank talks you have always wished for. Teens are not likely to stay still long enough for parents to build up the necessary momentum for long, heart-to-heart talks. You need to keep the talks short and get comfortable letting the loose ends dangle for a bit.

A contributor to the book shares a related experience. I’ve struggled to persuade my sixteen-year-old son to be more open with me for the past two years, but it’s been a total failure. Even when he wants to talk with me, or even if he is in the midst of sharing something with me, it’s as if he had given himself a limit of five minutes. It’s as if he had set an alarm clock, and after five minutes he stops—sometimes in mid-sentence. Finally, after two years of this, I’ve figured out what to do: Just as he is approaching the five-minute mark, I break off the conversation, either by changing the subject, turning my attention elsewhere, or, as rude as it sounds, just not responding. It’s strange, I admit, but at the same time it’s incredibly liberating too. It reminds me of the way he talked with me when he was five years old, only now I’m acting the part of the five-year-old. The best part is that, after I have done this a few times, he has taken to pursuing me to finish the conversations—just as I did when he was a child.

Reira further states that, parents are free to luxuriate in their fantasies about one-hour conversations with their teenager, but before they actually approach him/her, “do a reality check and shift your expectations from a single, one-hour exchange into eight six- or seven-minute conversations. If the responses are with a few sentences, ask a question or make a comment that broadens the context. She then turns her attention to the cute boy driving by in a pickup truck. This is your signal that you’ve reached a resting place, which is different from the end of the conversation. Then the next evening, when you are both bringing your dirty dinner plates to the kitchen, you can continue the conversation, picking up almost as if no time has passed between the two talks.”

For this indirect, elongated approach to in-depth conversations to work, Reira states that it’s vital that parents end each segment having touched upon the teenager’s curiosity. You want to end your conversation on a note that starts an internal dialogue with him/her. Then, later that day or sometime in the next few days, you pick up where you left off because you know that her inner dialogue has carried her farther down the path and that she is now more articulate about the subject as it relates to her than she was the day before.

The beauty of this approach he says is that “while you help her process whatever is troubling her, you stop short of taking over her struggles; and this is exactly what all teenagers need from their parents if they are to grow up into responsible young adults. Best of all, once your teenager realizes you are there for her and not trying to micromanage her life, she’ll begin to initiate some of these conversations.”

Take your time. Adolescence lasts for long time, so there is no rush to get in every point you want to make in every conversation. Think of it this way: Your teenager is very much like a sponge, and you need to make sure not to soak her with more attention, concern, and suggestions than she can absorb.

When you hone down your expectations to shorter conversations, you set yourself up for pleasant surprises: unexpected moments of sentiment and sharing. He urges parents not to take personally much of their kids’ behavior, because most of their moodiness and inconsistency stems from normal development during adolescence.

Once teens open up and are vulnerable, you realize that this is an exception to the rule, not the new norm i.e., tomorrow they’ll behave as if nothing had happened. Appreciate that they are not behaving this way because the shared intimate moment with you was unimportant; quite the contrary, they are defending themselves to protect their growing sense of independence. They got too close and felt as if they might lose themselves. Reira warns that parents should expect the distance; “it’s actually a sign of how important and tender the moment was for your teenager.”