My bride and I have been mar­ried for 21 years, and she is my best friend and life part­ner.  We have four teenagers, ages 19, 17, 15 and 6. My 6 year-old is being raised a bit dif­fer­ent than our first three were: she is grow­ing up in a house full of teenagers.  This means we’ve replaced Bar­ney and Veg­gie Tales with Napoleon Dyna­mite and Nacho Libre.

We are so very grate­ful for the dynam­ics in our home.  Our three teens are truly each other’s best friends, and they all run in one big pack of kids who range in age from 14 to 20.  As a result, our house has become base camp for many of our kids’ friends.

Over the years, Sheri and I have been asked numer­ous times about how we talk to teenagers.  Now, I want to give one dis­claimer right from the start:  we DON’T have it all fig­ured out.  But what we do have are some incred­i­ble kids who are pretty open and com­fort­able talk­ing to us about every­thing from their dreams and fears to the entire range of peer pressures.

We have also taught teenagers in Sun­day school for many years, and have enjoyed walk­ing by their sides dur­ing these years.  Many of these kids have shared how hard it is for them to really talk with their par­ents.  And many par­ents have said to us, “we just don’t know how to speak teenager.”

If you are a par­ent who is learn­ing to speak to your teens, or you want to be pre­pared when your young­sters become teens, my hope is that the fol­low­ing tips will help you.

Tip 1:  Show them you will love them no mat­ter what they do or say.  Your kids have to know that there is noth­ing they can do that will cause you to stop lov­ing them. This gets com­mu­ni­cated con­tin­u­ally over time by your words and actions.

Tip 2:  Be con­sis­tent.  Your kids need to know who is com­ing home at the end of the day.  Many kids find it dif­fi­cult to have real trans­par­ent and mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions if you are moody, silent or hot tem­pered.  Don’t make them guess whether they’ll be talk­ing to Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde.

Tip 3:  If you have younger kids, start hav­ing open and trans­par­ent con­ver­sa­tions with them now. If you don’t talk to them about real and mean­ing­ful things when they are younger, they won’t know how to talk to you about them when they are older.

Tip 4:  Be real with them.  Too many par­ents fail to tell their kids about their own mis­takes.  This causes their chil­dren to believe that their par­ents are per­fect, and would never under­stand what they are deal­ing with.  Don’t buy the lie that if you tell them you stole, lied, par­tied, etc… that they will imi­tate your mis­takes.  The key is to let them know how you suf­fered con­se­quences as a result, and that you want them to avoid these pains.  Be dis­cern­ing in how and when you tell them about your own chal­lenges as kids, but do tell them.

Tip 5:  Have no fear.  Just enter in and ask your kids what you want to ask them.  Don’t be afraid that they will not want to answer.  Ask them very spe­cific open-ended ques­tions.  Then be present and lis­ten.  Work to under­stand what they are going through and DON’T react and come down on them if you don’t like the answers.  Then work to iden­tify the under­ly­ing heart issues before try­ing to just change a behav­ior you might not like.

Tip 6:  Be proac­tive and inten­tional with talk­ing to, tex­ting, email­ing and dat­ing them.  Sched­ule daily talk time with them.  Be relent­less in reach­ing out and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with them.  I am not sug­gest­ing that you smother them or hold them back.  I am say­ing that you need to pur­sue them if you are find­ing com­mu­ni­cat­ing with them a chal­lenge.  Dat­ing our kids on a reg­u­lar basis when they were younger paved the way for com­fort­able one-on-one time with open dia­log as they became teens.

I think the Nike mantra is appro­pri­ate for all of us par­ents of teens with the desire to engage in real and mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion with them:  Just do it!

Related posts:

1. Stop Using Email!
2. Play­ing Like a Kid, Long After Recess

Tags: Communication, Parenting, Teenagers

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 9:37 am and is filed under Self-Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.