Top 7 Tips To Improve Communication With Your Teenager
Compared with childhood, communication between parents and children becomes more difficult during the teenager, even in families with good relationships. The greater difficulty in communication is due to the appearance of a series of barriers for which both parents and children are responsible. Parents need to learn some of tips to improve a good communication with their teenager.
On the one hand, the adolescent’s reservations about talking to his parents are due to his need to maintain privacy about his matters. In addition, the desire to maintain more balanced and egalitarian relationships since they are growing. It will lead them to discuss their parents’ ideas, interrupt them more often, and disagree with them.
Parents will want to maintain the same relationship with their children during childhood. That is, communicative exchanges are more based on lecturing or giving orders than on a real communication process in which listening plays a role as important as the expression of ideas itself.
In addition, and too often, messages from parents are loaded with criticism and continuous references to the mistakes made by their children. The main aspect to avoid is to achieve more positive communication.
And although there are many topics that interest and concern adolescents, it is precisely these topics that are important for family communication. Here are more focused on issues such as household chores, the academic world, or the way of dressing of the young person. These issues often end up in discussions and conflicts.
Parents should know some tips to improve an effort to encourage communication with their teenager child. Although boys and girls could talk to them spontaneously during childhood, during adolescence, parents must make more of an effort to maintain good communication with them. It is still essential to create a climate of support and trust that facilitates security and the psychological and social adjustment of the growing child.
Tips To Improve Communication With Your Teenager
1. Listen To What They Say And Let Them Finish
Letting your child speak, to say what they think or feel, is very beneficial for the family’s proper functioning and well-being. If you don’t let them finish what they want to tell you and you interrupt them because you think that you know what they are going to say, you’ll never know what ideas they have or how they feel.
2. Do Not Criticize, Judge, And Blame
You are not a judge. If you dedicate yourself to punishing their behavior constantly, you are putting a barrier between you and your child. If they are angry and yell at you, you can correct their behavior gently.
3. Do Not Give Lessons
We tend to tell our children what to do. It is much more beneficial to teach them to look for solutions than to explain each possibility’s pros and cons.
4. Give Importance To What They Tell
Sometimes we see them worried about a matter of no importance to us, and we can think it’s just nonsense. Please give them the importance and value of a child counts on you to talk about their things. If you do not give importance to what they want to tell you, they will probably stop talking to you about the things that matter to them in the future.
5. Teach Them To Communicate Their Feelings
We all have to learn to express our feelings; parents can and should help their children do so. It is not enough to ask them what they have done but how they have felt. You can also help them understand their feelings and ask what they feel.
6. Control Your Impulses
They may tell you they have done things you do not like, for example, missed an hour of class because they did not want to go. In these cases, do not get carried away by nerves; if they react impulsively and you don’t reason with them, next time, they may not trust you and won’t tell you. Avoid yelling, threatening, or ordering them what they have to do. When they are calmer, talk to them and explain what you don’t like.
7. They Are No Longer A Child
Don’t forget, they are becoming an adult. If you treat them like your little child, they will feel ashamed. Avoid criticizing them, giving them lessons, or invading their personal space, especially with friends.
