Although young children usually exchange thoughts and feelings quite easily, adolescents are not often so communicative. Failure to communicate is just as much about one person’s failure to listen as another’s inability to talk. How many battles between parents and children arise because neither side has made the effort to understand?
- Learn to listen. This means giving your full attention. Turn off the television. Put down the newspaper. Nothing is more infuriating than trying to talk to someone whose attention is somewhere else.
- Be ready to respond. Kids don’t always choose the most convenient moment, but you may not get a second chance.
- Ask for their advice or opinion sometimes, and show that you listen to and respect what they have to say, and find their ideas interesting, even if you don’t agree.
- Don’t feel that you must always try to protect them by not talking about family crises or difficult decisions. Teenagers are not stupid; often they sense that things are not, and it may lessen family tension if the problem is brought out into the open.
- Talk about feelings as well as facts – your own as well as theirs. If you reveal who you really are, they will trust you and let you see who they are.
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