How to Talk to Your Teenager Without Ending in a Fight

Everyone knows that the teenage years are a time of turbulence. Many parents interpret their teens behavior as out of control because it's then that parental help is perceived as interfering, concern as babying, and advise as bossing. Dilemmas for parents--
How to help when assistance is resented?
How to counsel when guidance is rejected?
How to communicate with your teen when attention is taken as attack?

What's really going on is your teen is trying to remake his or her childhood personality into a grown-up one with an individual identity; establish new identifications with their peers; and adjust to the many physical changes they are experiencing. This process takes time and is a great deal of trial and error. It also requires that your teen distance themself from you, the parent.

Here are some helpful guidelines:

1. Accept the teen's need for rebellion during this phase of development;
2. Relax in the face of the inevitable;
3. Expect irritating behavior that flies in the face of everything you hold dear.

Understand that it is normal for your teenager to behave in an inconsistent and unpredictable manner. Hating one's parents one minute and desperately seeking a heart-to-heart talk the next; trying out new personality types and behavior patterns, then discarding them; worrying about society and the cosmos one minute then becoming overcome with personal agonies and uncertainties the next minute is the journey your teen must make to enter into adulthood. You are the guide.

It is not helpful to ask “What’s the matter with you?”, “Why can’t you get along?”, “What’s suddenly gooten into you?”. Your teen doesn’t want instant understanding. Don’t pretend to know how they feel. Your teen can’t believe you, the parent, was ever a teenager or felt the same way they are feeling now.

The most important single rule when talking with your teen is this: Do Not Deny Their Feelings, Preceptions, or Experiences.

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