Parents often complain that they lose influence over their children when they enter adolescence. The offspring abandon their studies, find themselves in a dubious company, react rudely to the slightest remark. How to get through to them? How to convey family rules, principles and values? In order to return parental authority, it is necessary to follow the rules of feedback, reminds psychologist Marina Melia.
Restore broken contact
If the communication channel is destroyed, the wires are broken and the current does not flow, all our efforts are wasted. How to restore it?
1. Attract attention
No matter how strange it may sound, we must attract the attention of a teenager, moreover, positive and benevolent. It is important to evoke his smile, a kind, warm look, a normal response to our words. Of course, an offended facial expression and claims will not help here.
Let us remember how we looked at the child when he was small, how we rejoiced at him. We need to return to that forgotten state and let the teenager feel how happy we are that we have him. It is important to show that we accept him as he presents himself to the world, without judging or criticizing. No matter how independently he behaves, it is important for him to know that he is loved, appreciated, that he is missed. If we convince the child of this, he will slowly begin to thaw.
2. Create rituals
When the child was small, we asked how he spent the day, read him fairy tales, kissed him before going to bed. What now? We stopped regularly greeting each other in the morning, wishing each other good night, gathering on Sundays for a family dinner. In other words, we forgot about the rituals.
The usual phrase «Good morning!» — although fragile, but the contact, the starting point from which you can start a conversation. Another good ritual is Sunday lunches or dinners. No matter how our relationship develops, on a certain day we get together. This is a kind of «lifeline», which you can cling to and «pull out», it would seem, a hopeless situation.
3. Atkurti fizinį kontaktą
By reaching adolescence, some children become ruffy, demand that they are not touched in the literal sense, declare that they «do not need these veal tendernesses.» Everyone’s need for physical contact is different, but often the child avoids exactly what he needs most. Meanwhile, touch is a great way to relieve tension and defuse the situation. Touching the hand, ruffling the hair, kicking playfully — all this allows us to express our love for the child.
Klausyk ir išgirsk
To find a common language with a child, we need to learn to listen and hear him. This is where active listening techniques come in handy.
1. Silent listening
We need to learn to be «mindful of silence.» Even if it seems to us that the child is saying «nonsense», we do not interrupt and with our whole appearance — posture, facial expressions, gestures — we make it clear that he is not talking in vain. We do not interfere with the child’s reasoning, on the contrary, we create free space for self-expression. We do not evaluate, we do not extort, we do not advise, but only listen. And we do not impose a more important, from our point of view, topic of conversation. We give him the opportunity to talk about what really interests him, makes him doubt, worries, makes him happy.
2. Veidrodis
A difficult, but very effective technique is to “echo”, to mirror the child’s posture, speech, gestures, facial expressions, intonations, semantic stresses, pauses. As a result, a psychological community arises that helps us catch his “wave”, adapt, switch to his language.
Mirroring is not mimicking or imitation, but active observation, sharpness. The point of mirroring is not to ingratiate yourself with the child, but to understand him better.
3. Clarification of meaning
Overwhelming, intense feelings explode and disorganize the entire inner world of a teenager. They are not always clear to him, and it is important to help him express them. To do this, you can use a paraphrase: we voice his thoughts, and he gets the opportunity to hear himself from the outside, and therefore, to realize and evaluate his own position.
As the teenager’s confidence grows in our sincere desire to listen to him, the barrier between us gradually collapses. He begins to trust us with his feelings and thoughts.
Feedback rules
When working with parents, I encourage them to follow a few rules for effective feedback. They allow you to express your remark in such a way as to achieve the desired result and at the same time not spoil, but even improve relations with the child.
1. Susikoncentruokite į tai, kas svarbu
We want the child to be good in everything. Therefore, when we express dissatisfaction, comments regarding grades, hair color, torn jeans, friends, musical preferences fly into the same boiler. It is no longer possible to separate the wheat from the chaff.
We must try during the conversation to focus on only one, the most important topic now. For example, a child took money for an English tutor, but did not go to class, deceiving his parents. This is a serious offense, and we are talking about it — this is the rule of effective communication.
2. Point to specific actions
If a child has done something, in our opinion, unacceptable, it is not worth saying that he does not understand anything, does not know how, is not adapted, inadequate, that he has a stupid character. Our words should assess a specific act, action, and not a person. It is important to speak concisely and to the point, neither exaggerating nor understating.
3. Consider the possibility of change
We are often annoyed in a child by something that, in principle, he cannot change. Let’s say the son is very shy. We are offended that he is lost against the background of more active children, and we begin to pull him, “cheer up” with remarks in the hope that this will “turn him on”. We demand to be «ahead on a dashing horse» in those areas where he is clearly weak. Children often do not meet our expectations, but as a rule, the problem is not in children, but in the expectations themselves. Try to soberly assess the situation, change your attitude and learn to see the child’s strengths.
4. Speak for yourself
Many parents, fearing to ruin their relationship with their child, try to make a remark “indirectly”: “The teacher thinks that you behaved incorrectly when you left the excursion alone without warning anyone.” We must speak on our own, express our own opinion, using the pronoun «I», — this is how we show that it is not someone, but we are dissatisfied: «It just pissed me off that you did not warn anyone.»
5. Pick a time to chat
Do not waste time, you need to respond to the annoying factor as quickly as possible. When we say to our daughter: “Two weeks ago you took my blouse, got it dirty and left it,” we look vindictive. She no longer remembers it. The conversation should start right away or not start at all.
There is no one shot against misunderstanding and relationship difficulties, but we can regularly give «vitamins» — do something daily, moving towards each other. If we are able to listen to the child and properly build a conversation, our communication will not develop into a conflict. On the contrary, it will be a productive interaction, the purpose of which is to work together to change the situation for the better and strengthen relations.
Source: Marina Melia’s book “Let go of the child! Simple rules of wise parents” (Eksmo, 2019).