How to Communicate Effectively With a Teen

Video Transcript

"Hello, I'd like to share with you some tips on how to communicate effectively with your teen. It's always a difficult time, the teen years, lots of complex things going on. But I would like to share that with you. It's Doctor Felicia, and please keep in mind that one of the cues or main important thing about communicating with your teen is to keep the basic facts and your basic traits simple, whether it's empathy, how to listen, and also understand and be flexible with things you might hear back from them. It's important to add, as a parent, you don't let your ego get involved so that if you did make a mistake, it's important that you apologize. You don't want your child to feel threatened by you because there's no way they're going to open up and communicate on trust issues if there is no trust. So you want to keep yourself available to your child, you want to be open and flexible, understanding, and by all means if you have to discipline them, make sure it's consistent over time. Because if one week you're punishing them for a month, and the next week you let them out of the punishment and say, "Sorry, go ahead." Then they're never going to have respect for your word or punishment if one is necessary. The other thing you want to do is, if you get really irate because something they said or did made you very angry, you want to back off a little bit, count to ten, get your own temper under control, wait a few seconds before you respond. And, if necessary, you may have to back off and wait ten minutes, or ever more if you have to, to make a decision about what the punishment will be. It's not unusual for a parent to have to discuss this with anther adult and say, "OKay, am I being too strict or am I being too lenient?" So you want to get feedback for yourself if you're in doubt of what this punishment calls for or if what your action calls for. And, by all means, when that's over make sure that your sitting down to dinner with your child because it's a good place for bonding. Very often when parent and children are at odds it's good to prepare their favorite foods because its a subliminal way of letting them know that you still care and they're very important to you even when there's tension in the house. So, you have different methods of interacting and responding but your child is watching you the whole time. And remember, what you model for them in behavior is what you're going to see back. So, if you're shouting, screaming, yelling in their face. Chances are, by teen years, they're going to be shouting, yelling, and shouting back. It just becomes a bad habit, a bad way of communicating. So, by all means, try to diffuse the tension, relax and calm, and discuss things rationally, and that teaches your child to do the same. Good luck the teen years are tough ones. So, hang in there. God bless. Doctor Felicia."