To Foster Good Communication with Teens

parents & teens

To foster open communication throughout a child's difficult teen years, parents can use these helpful tips: Try to listen more often than you talk to give your teen space to open up. Spend time in quiet places with your teen. Share activities together that parent & teen can do side-by-side. Make meal time pleasant, not a time for grilling your teen. Have private parent/teen pow-wows for discussing the big issues: peers, sex, grades, and more serious subjects.

Instructions

Step1

stop lecturing Stop talking, lecturing and nagging and listen to your teen. A lifestyle of mutual respect starts when both parent & teen respect what the other is saying and really listens. Ask questions after they've finished their thought. Teens are talked at all day at school by adults and out in the world they have no vote, voice or real power. Parents who listen to their teens are like cool water to someone dying of thirst in the desert.

Step2

biking Spend time together. Choose any of the following activities to do side-by-side with your teen: exercise like biking or swimming; cooking a meal or baking a cake, go fishing or boating; hike a nature trail or go snowshoeing; write songs or sing duets; work on a very large jigsaw puzzle or build model planes together; shoot hoops or hit a golf-ball range. Any non-competitive leisure activity will do. Conversation will flow during such activities.

Step3

walks Choose quiet places to spend time with your teen with no pressure to talk and your teen with open up to you. Let your teen speak to you while the two of you skip rocks on a still pond, walk in the park and take a car trip. Offer no advice or criticism, just be there.

Step4

share meals Eat as many meals together as a family as possible. Refrain from discussing poor grades or big issues at the table. Meal time should be pleasant. Have a family meeting or parent-child private pow-wow to talk about the serious stuff.

Step5

be aware of dangers Because a teen is talking openly and more often, as a parent, you'll be aware and proactive about drugs, bad peers and trouble at school. It really does make a difference and the relationship can continue to be strong as your teen grows up into an adult. The teen years don't actually last forever ;)

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