How can I communicate better with my child?

By: Wanjohi P. Mugambi

Worth Noting:

• Listen. “You need to spend a lot of time not talking,” suggests a middle school teacher. To listen means to avoid interrupting and it means to pay close attention. This is best done in a quiet place with no distractions. It’s hard to listen carefully if you’re also trying to cook dinner or watch television
• Create opportunities to talk. To communicate with your child you need to make yourself available. Young adolescents resist “scheduled” talks; they don’t open up when you tell them to, but when they want to. Some teens like to talk when they first get home from school.

Young adolescents often aren’t great communicators, particularly with their parents and other adults who love them. “They don’t necessarily want to tell you what they did at school today.”

Many psychologists have found, however, that when parents know where their children are and what they are doing (and when the adolescent knows the parent knows, what psychologists call monitoring), adolescents are at a lower risk for a range of bad experiences, including drug, alcohol and tobacco use; sexual behavior and pregnancy; and delinquency and violence. The key, according to psychologists, is to be inquisitive but not interfering, working to respect your child’s privacy as you establish trust and closeness. It’s easiest to communicate with a young teen if you established this habit when your child was little. As school counselor explains, “You don’t suddenly dive in during the seventh grade and say, ‘So what did you do with your friends on Friday night?’” But it’s not impossible to improve communication when your child reaches early adolescence. Here are some tips:

★ Realize that no recipe exists for successful communication. What works for getting one child to talk about what’s important doesn’t always work with another one. One middle school teacher and mother of two says her daughter is open and talkative; her son is quieter. But because her son likes to listen to music, to write and to read, this mother often goes with him to a local bookstore. Here, in a place where he’s comfortable, the son describes stories and book characters as a link to what he is thinking and feeling. By listening to music with him and proofreading his writing when he’s willing to let her this mother encourages her son to open up.

★ Listen. “You need to spend a lot of time not talking,” suggests a middle school teacher. To listen means to avoid interrupting and it means to pay close attention. This is best done in a quiet place with no distractions. It’s hard to listen carefully if you’re also trying to cook dinner or watch television. Often just talking with your child about a problem or an issue helps to clarify things. Sometimes the less you offer advice, the more your young teen may ask you for it. Listening can also be the best way to uncover a more serious problem that requires your attention.

★ Create opportunities to talk. To communicate with your child you need to make yourself available. Young adolescents resist “scheduled” talks; they don’t open up when you tell them to, but when they want to. Some teens like to talk when they first get home from school. Others may like to talk at the dinner table or at bedtime. Some parents talk with their children in the car, preferably when the radio, tapes and CDs aren’t playing. “I take my daughter to a mall—not the closer one, but the cooler one that is an hour and a half away,” says a middle school teacher and mother. Many of the best conversations grow out of shared activities. “Parents try to grab odd moments and have this deep communication with their child,” notes a teacher. “Then they are frustrated because it doesn’t happen.”

★ Talk over differences. Communication breaks down for some parents because they find it hard to manage differences with their child. It’s often easiest to limit these differences when you have put in place clear expectations. If your 13-year-old daughter knows she’s to be home by 9:30 p.m.—and if she knows the consequences for not meeting this curfew—the likelihood that she will be home on time increases.

Differences of opinion are easier to manage when we recognize that these differences can provide important opportunities for us to rethink the limits and to negotiate new ones, a skill that is valuable for your child to develop. For example, when your daughter is 14, setting a later curfew for some occasions may be fine. Such negotiations are possible because of your child’s growing cognitive skills and ability to reason and consider many possibilities and views. Because she can consider that her curfew should be later on the weekend than on school nights, your insistence that “it doesn’t matter” will only create a conflict. When differences arise, telling your child your concerns firmly but calmly can prevent differences from becoming battles. Explaining why your child made or wants to make a poor choice is more constructive: “Dropping out of your algebra class will cut off lots of choices for you in the future. Some colleges won’t admit you without two years of algebra, plus geometry and some trigonometry. Let’s get you some help with algebra.”

★ Avoid over-reacting. Responding too strongly can lead to yelling and screaming and it can shut down conversation. “Try to keep anxiety and emotions out of the conversation—then kids will open up,” advises eighth-grade teacher.  Instead of getting riled up, she says, “It’s better to ask, ‘What do you think about what you did? Let’s talk about this.’” Middle school teacher  adds, “Kids are more likely to be open if they look at you as somebody who is not going to spread their secrets or get extremely upset if they confess something to you. If your kid says, ‘I’ve got to tell you something. Friday night I tried beer,’ and you go off the deep end, your kid won’t tell you again.”

At a time when they are already judging themselves critically, adolescents make themselves vulnerable when they open up to parents. We know that the best way to encourage a behavior is to reward it. If you are critical when your teenager talks to you, what he sees is that his openness gets punished rather than rewarded Talk about things that are important to your young teen. Different youngsters like to talk about different things. Some of the things they talk about may not seem important to you, but, as school counselor explains, “With kids, sometimes it’s like a different culture. You need to try to understand this, to put yourself in their place and time.” She cautions against pretending to be excited about something that bores you. By asking questions and listening, however, you can show your child that you respect his feelings and opinions.