Developing communication skills and strategies is of course useful when talking to one’s teenager. They include active listening, avoiding being reactionary, controlling your emotions, asking open-ended questions, and the like. However, the effectiveness of these skills and strategies is often limited because we get caught up in the messiness of the conversation and lose sight of the big picture. This is where the principles for communicating with your teenager are especially useful.
A guiding principle is “an idea that influences you very much when making a decision or considering a matter”. For example, let’s say that you are talking to your son about his math’s test results and you are attempting to apply active listening. However, he keeps repeating that he doesn’t know why he did so poorly. You feel your blood pressure rising but want to persevere with this active listening. You’ve read the posts on Communicating with your high school child (1/2) and (2/2) and you like the idea of “no failure, only feedback” so you listen some more. Yet nothing. Okay, so this where you need the guiding principles.
PRINCIPLES FOR COMMUNICATING WITH YOUR TEENAGER
The five principles for communicating with your teenager include: know your outcome; take action; use sensory acuity; exercise behavioural flexibility; and adopt a growth mindset. Let’s look at what they mean, and in the next post, we will look at how parents can apply them when they talk to their children.
KNOW YOUR OUTCOME
Most of us enter a conversation without much thought about what we want to achieve, and that is fine if we are happy to get what we get. However, if we have not been satisfied with our outcomes and want to improve our results, it makes sense to know your outcome. What are you focusing on? What are you aiming to achieve? Now, it could be a life-changing goal, or it could be an everyday type of outcome. The principle works just a well. It gives you purpose. It gives you direction.
In his book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, Dr Stephen Covey labels the second habit as Begin with the End in Mind, which is a similar idea as to know your outcome. It helps set focus and direction. The door to focused action opens.
TAKE ACTION
Taking action is about shifting your outcome from being stuck in a dream or on a wish list. Of course, if one could work out a few action strategies that would be great. Often though, inertia prevails. Often, we second guess our strategy. What if it doesn’t work? I need to think about this some more. I’m not sure that this will work. And, on and on. So, what is a way out of inertia?
Accept that you intended action/strategy is not perfect and be curious about what parts work and what doesn’t. Use your sensory acuity to take in feedback. This will help you decide what worked and what didn’t.
USE SENSORY ACUITY
Sensory acuity is about using your senses (sight, hearing, etc.) to be informed about what is working and what is not. This is great, isn’t it? What works goes into your toolbox of skills to be used again and what did not work is put done to experience. Often, people keep repeating the same action even if it does not work. Really, they need to exercise behavioural flexibility, don’t they?
EXERCISE BEHAVIOURAL FLEXIBILITY
After taking action, if one is not achieving one’s outcome, then one should exercise behavioural flexibility and keep changing the action. The feedback (using sensor acuity) is so valuable. It allows one to modify one’s behaviour until one hits the target! This will help to develop a growth mindset.
ADOPT A GROWTH MINDSET
The final principle is to adopt a growth mindset. It is a way of accepting that learning how to communicate effectively takes time. Lessons are learned about what works and what doesn’t in a particular context. Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, Carol Dweck in her book, “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” states that: The growth mindset allows people to value what they’re doing regardless of the outcome. They’re tackling problems, charting new courses, working on important issues. So, the take-home message is that is no failure, only feedback.
PRINCIPLES FOR COMMUNICATING WITH YOUR TEENAGER (2/2)
In the next post, we will apply the 5 principles for communicating with your teenager in a scenario where a parent communicates with her upset teenager.
