clease forgive me, I clicked on the wrong the article so my response was all wrong and I hope you will delete it. I do agree with your article, though. It can be difficult to communicate to teens. In society we push them to independent adults by the time they are fifteen or sixteen and moving from adolescence into the teen years is scary and they feel unsure and may even feel insecure with the socio-emotional changes that come with that step.
I had taken what I learned from my own parents and incorporated those things into my own parenting style and my second husband followed me. We always told the three they could talk to us about any subject or what issues they might have with peers, their belief systems on anything under the sun and although we may not agree with their social mores, etc. we wouldn’t yell at them either. So it was easier for them to come to us than with a lot of children and teens. In fact my oldest daughter’s best friend she had since second grade told Melinda that she was lucky as a teen because the teen could never talk to her parents about matters of faith, politics, or any social doctrines related to the two.
Listening to discussions teen have with peers in the yard, while they’re sitting around the living room or in a family room, can sometimes help give parents an idea of topics children are listening to or things they may be interested. The same can happen at sporting events after a game, after a club teens are in like Thespians, rocketry, Science, photography, etc. Kids talk about what happens in context of events or activities that have taken place.
Parents can casually ask a general question about something a teen revealed, or ask why they joined a particular club, etc. This can be a good way to break the ice and create an opening to talk about their hobbies and interests. a way to create a separate parent teen event or activity, and a way to get to known their teen on the teens level.
Me and my husband learned when my son was fourteen that he hated playing baseball or any sport, that he joined the teams because ‘he assumed we would want him to like a couple of his other team mates did. He loved computers, gaming, etc. and even today at twenty-nine my son calls himself a self proclaimed computer nerd and uses the name tech-tard. And it is nice to be able to have him get on an site where he can fix my computer issues from Kansas City, MO where he lives and works, five hours away from me. And that he wanted to be in marching band in high school as opposed to staying baseball and basketball.
My youngest daughter has always been a very independent thinker, self directed, and with her own ideas on faith, politics, and the place of social issues in politics which she don’t think belong in any party platform, for instance. And although she and her friends did some things to prove their point one election year that could have gotten them arrested for writing on yard signs for vandalism, beyond telling them the risks they were taking, I didn’t say a thing. But I could take to her about thespians, the violin, her love of her brother and her reactions to his getting bullied in elementary and middle school into high school, her friends problems and worries, economics and anything else.
Opening the lines of communications childhood into adolescence, and then into the teen years can make it easier to make and sustain those connections and discussion throughout their lives. Sometimes it is not always easy. But is nearly always doable.
