DISCLAIMER: I am not a counselor or doctor! I am a mom with 2 teenagers. At the writing of this post, I have a 17 year old going on 36 and a 15 year old who should be a lawyer. These are my opinions from my experiences. Consult your counselor or doctor if your situation is or becomes dangerous!
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Teens can be tough to communicate with.
Some more than others.
It can be a frustrating time for the entire family.
How do you communicate with your teen? Here are 8 simple tips that worked with our teens, even when they were angry.
8 Tips For Better Teen Communication:
1. Feed Your Teen (and Yourself!)
Teens are hungry all the time!
If your teen is cranky, or “hangry” (as my hubby likes to call me), then before you do ANYTHING, get them some food, and YOU some food! You will be able to communicate with your teen so much more effectively if they are FED.
Any food will do.
Have some food ready, a snack of chicken or a sandwich, veggies with dip, or fruit and some nuts.
So many teens get “over hungry” to the point of not eating to be stubborn.
Just get some food into them WITHOUT talking to them.
Stay under their radar and just get them eating. Don’t make eye contact.
Don’t smile or scowl. Don’t huff or puff. Just try to stay as neutral as possible.
My favorite way to do this is to get them in the car and drive to get them some food in a drive-thru. Which brings me to our next tip.
2. Go For A Drive To Communicate Better With Your Teen
Driving together with your teen is the perfect place to have conversations.
You aren’t looking each other, which makes the space quite safe for both of you.
Plus, the movement of the driving seems to help ease tension; it also takes away any awkward silence.
Try to have your teen in the front passenger seat while you are driving.
Go through a Starbucks or Chick-fil-A drive-thru and get some food, even if they say they aren’t hungry. Just order something you know they have ordered before.
If you aren’t familiar with fast food (bless you), be prepared with some familiar snacks; peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, trail mix, cheese sticks, etc.
Offer your teen some food, and just set it down on the center console.
Even if my kids are fuming angry when we leave in the car, after having some food, they always become easier to talk to.
Taking a drive has been such a successful way to communicate with our teens for us that it’s code for us now. When my kids say, “Wanna take a drive with me?”, this means: “I need to talk to you.”
Then, we go get some food and I drive around the city, sometimes for 30-50 minutes, not saying a word. Just being with them for the good of your relationship makes huge difference. When you take this time to JUST BE WITH THEM, not saying a word, but just BEING PRESENT with them that helps. No judgement. No response, just your time.
3. Write To Your Teen (Especially When You Are Angry)
There are those days where I was so angry or I knew my teens were beyond angry, where talking was NOT AN OPTION.
Even walking near them, or in the same room could start an argument.
So, I started writing to them how I was feeling. I’ve done this with both kids. I took a spiral notebook and started writing why I was upset, how I felt disrespected or how they didn’t follow what our families rules were, etc.
This always calmed me down, and I was really able to get down in writing the feelings I probably would not have been able to say without getting emotionally charged.
Then, I take the spiral notebook with a pen, walk near them, and lay it as close to them as possible, without any eye contact, and say, “I wrote you something”, then immediately leave the room, and often leave the house.
Whether they read it or not, I can’t control. But I felt better for having written my feelings out, and now the ball is in their court.
Each time, within the next few hours, the same spiral notebook would show up on my pillow, next to my bed, or on my laptop. And, they had written back to me.
This type of communication has worked great for us, and we still use it. I also communicate this way with my husband. When talking will just create more trouble than it will solve, writing it down makes it easier to say what you need to say and to listen to what they need to say.
4. Let Your Teen Laugh At You
When we can laugh at ourselves, our mistakes, or our idiosyncrasies and “isms”, it makes life so much more fun!
Teens have a hard time staying positive about themselves, just like us adults. So, we think it’s better to add laughter, lightness & silliness into their lives.
Here are some great articles about the IMPORTANCE OF LAUGHTER:
Laughter Is The Best Medicine, Help Guide
Stress Relief From Laughter? It’s No Joke, Mayo Clinic
7 Scientific Reasons Why We Should Laugh More, Life Hack
When we are too serious with ourselves, our teens can be UNFORGIVING OF THEMSELVES.
So, laugh at each other.
It needs to go both ways, and don’t be mean. Laugh WITH them, not at them.
This starts with US laughing at ourselves, and allowing others to laugh at us.
Communicating with teens can happen a bit easier if the “air” isn’t too serious.
5. Listen First & Don’t React
If what they have to say is very serious to them, it takes longer for them to start talking.
The longer they wait, the more serious the subject is to THEM.
I say “how serious the subject is to THEM” because the same subject could be very simple and seem SILLY to you. That is why you listen and have no response.
None. Nothing positive. Nothing negative.
This has been the most important lesson I’ve learned as a parent of teens: When they are upset and intense or dramatic, DON’T REACT!
As new parents to teens, it seems like our first response is to match their level of drama. The poor first born will get the weirdest responses from their parents—because we just don’t know how to respond yet.
Our kid yells like they just cut their finger off and our immediate response is to stop the bleeding and find a hospital. When in reality, they are literally screaming about a mere paper cut.
Instead of finding a hospital, listen, absorb, but don’t react. Even if they tell you something VERY SERIOUS, learn not to react.
When my older and wiser mom friend told me this concept of NOT REACTING, I tried it right away.
To my stunning surprise, MY SILENCE & NON-REACTION worked like a hypnotic calming force.
I felt like it was a joke, like someone had prepped my kids to respond like this.
My daughter cried and yelled about how awful everything is, all her classes, all her teachers, all her friends, every single atom in the universe is awful and clearly against her, to which my normal response was to talk her down.
We were driving and I had sunglasses on, so I could hide my rolling eyes, but instead of saying ANYTHING AT ALL, I just stared forward and kept driving without reacting.
To my surprise, she was quiet for a full minute—which seemed like 15 minutes—then she took a very deep breath, sighed and smiled.
“Wanna go home and watch a movie together?”
And that was it.
Drama over.
She even leaned towards me, and grabbed my hand.
She just needed to say it out loud, to have someone hear what she had been mulling over & over in her own thoughts, and not to have someone agree or disagree. The stress dissipates and the reality that she is ok seeps in.
6. Touch Is Important For Teens
Humans need touch, especially in the younger years. There are some wonderful articles about the study of how touch makes big differences in our perception of being loved.
And, it’s our job to show them what SAFE TOUCH looks & feels like.
Related Articles:
The Power of Touch, Psychology Today
Holding Your Baby Close: The Importance of Touch in Infancy and Beyond, The Green Child Magazine
Hands On Research: The Science Of Touch, Berkeley EDU
Teens are smelly, but they still need gentle, loving affection
It’s such a weird time in their lives with all the changes they are going through! We laugh about it later, but its truly amazing what their bodies are experiencing all at the same time!!
Many families shy away from touching each other and make boundaries very iron clad.
Iron clad boundaries around touch are hugely important. But so is kind, gentle touch from your family. It’s also important, within these iron clad boundaries around touch, to learn how to snuggle, hug, wrestle appropriately.
A touch on the shoulder, rub on the back; a simple hug or long high five, these can all be extremely important for any teen AND parent.
Teens still love to cuddle. Try this as much as you can, when appropriate. I still jump on them and then snuggle for a few minutes. This always disperses tension!
You can also give them a massage! Even just their neck, or their feet, back or hands!
Kind, gentle touch can close huge communication chasms with your kids, even when they seem too far to gap. Try a quick touch on their shoulder to start, and hopefully you’ll be cuddling on the couch, watch a fun comedy in no time.
If they jump away, have patience, and again, try not to take this personally.
Put in the time to start slowly and work your way from a shoulder touch to a hug.
For me, as a massage therapist as their mom, I put a lot of thought into touch, and try to touch them each day to show them love with gentle touch without words.
Then, on those days where I feel too angry, sad or scared to talk to them, I can still touch their back or shoulder and this can disperse some intense anger or tension without a single word being spoken.
If you haven’t tried touch yet, I highly recommend you give it a try, slowly, if you are having a hard time communicating with your teen.
7. Try Not To Take Your Teen’s Moods Personally
When your teen glares at you after you ask how their day was, asks why you have to be so judgmental, slams the door and huffs away from you as if you are the most embarrassing, smelly piece of rotting cheese they could possibly ever be bothered to be around—it’s amazing that there are not more teens up for adoption.
A universal theme across all races, all religions, all continents is the mood swings of a teen
The next minute, the same teen who couldn’t stand to be in the same space as you comes skipping into the room, singing, smiling, wanting to snuggle, and you feel like you have whiplash.
The truth is that they don’t even remember the venom with which they just spit at you 90 seconds earlier.
My same older, wiser Mom friend told me to see them like the hungry Betty White in the Snickers commercials, where they are a totally different person until they eat.
Their bad behavior is not aimed at you. It’s just aimed
The better I’ve gotten at not taking their dramatic words personally, the quicker those dramatic words dissolve into nothingness.
It’s easier said than done, especially when you want to give them back to their maker!
Dissolving teen drama takes practice & anticipation!!!
When you KNOW IT’S COMING, it’s much easier NOT to respond.
8. Spend Quality Time With Your Teen
This should be obvious, but even though it’s easy to say and easy to write, it’s not always easy to do.
It’s proven over and over how spending time with your child throughout their life is like adding deposits into a bank. The earlier you start, the more savings you have.
The more time you spend with your child when they are young, the more likely they are to spend time with you as they turn the terrible corner into adolescence.
If you have not been able to spend time with your child for whatever reason, it is NEVER too late to start!
Just remember to start slow… like with a movie, then movie and ice cream, then lunch and a movie, etc.
How you spend time with your child makes a difference! There are productive ways and NON-productive ways of spending time with your child and/or teenager.
To communicate with your teen, EASE into spending time with them, and EASE into the conversation.
For Best Results: Let Your TEEN START The Conversation
Productive ways include listening, eating, encouraging, complimenting, offering, and laughing.
NON-productive ways can include scolding, judging, taking, discouraging, yelling-or raising your voice.
The positive responses take practice, especially if you were not raised with those behaviors around you.
We typically respond to our kids the way we were treated by our parents/guardians. So, ask yourself: do you have a close, loving, safe relationship with your parents/guardians??
You get to choose what type of relationship you want with your kids.
If you want to be close to them, then you’ll need to put in some time.
Conclusion: How to Communicate With Your Teen in 8 Simple Tips
It can be very difficult and frustrating to communicate with your teenager. They are growing into an adult and their entire being is changing on a moment by moment basis.
I’m in the middle of the teen years with my kids right now, and it is not an easy time. Just remember when you were a teen! Were you easy to deal with?
A few strategies that have worked for us:
-Feed teens before we try to communicate
-Talk while driving with your teen for better results
-Spend intensional time with your teen
-Become a master of listening & a master of not reacting
-Let our teens laugh at us, and laugh together
-Learn to not take our teen’s mood swings as a personal attack
-Remember the power of gentle, kind touch for teens
-Write to teens if we are feeling especially angry
What has worked for you and your teens? What is the best advice you have heard by an older, wiser friend???
Good luck! ?
