When it comes to talking to teens, wouldn't it be nice, asked A. Lynn Scoresby, if you could just send messages into their brains by osmosis? Unfortunately, you can't. You have to communicate, and the stakes of failing to communicate are high.
"Huge importance is attached to the process of communication. It's how we impart character development, learning and achievement," said Scoresby, who is president of Knowledge Gain Learning Systems.
When it comes to the family, an important thing to remember about communication, he said, "is that it is not possible to not communicate. Anything you say or do — or don't say or do — has significance."
In families, there are three primary topics of conversation: tasks and work, relationships and rules.
There are also six forms of communication: information, regulate, organize, discovery, interpersonal and intrapersonal.
What do you talk about the most? Many families spend too much time talking about work and rules and
not enough talking about relationships, said Scoresby. Too many parents spend too much time informing, regulating and organizing and not enough time with intrapersonal communication.
And that's especially problematic with teens. "Teens are all about emotion. Many problems are related to the absence of emotional communication."
Anxious parents create rules, he said. But the problem with rules is not only that you have to enforce them, but that teens, especially, resist them. "We used to tell our children, 'The more you talk to me, the fewer rules there will be.' After all, do you really want rules, or do you want relationships? You need some rules, of course. But you need a good relationship more. Too often, we talk about the rules. We don't ask what our children are thinking."
Asking "What is that like for you?" or "How do you feel about that?" helps kids validate their emotions. "Validation is extremely important. If they don't get it from you, they will look elsewhere."