Why is it so hard to connect with teens? Parents want to know!

Parents think I have a special skill, a secret password.

What I have is a passion for listening, making every teen I talk with feel heard.

I show them respect. I accord their feelings the high esteem they deserve.

I recognize them as trying hard, believing they feel unheard and frustrated by you, their parents.

Michelle Garcia Winner, developer of the Social Thinking © approach, reminds us that understanding someone else’s perspective is a learned behavior and not everyone can master it. That is true of us as parents, as well as our developing teens.

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What is active listening?

Active listening is an unusual phrase! What does it mean? It means listening without planning what you are going to say next. Listening in a way that helps you understand the full meaning of what the other person is saying. Listening well enough so that you can repeat back accurately what the other person has said. 

While most often applied in marriage therapy, active listening is crucial in parent-teen relationships. When a teen feels heard by a parent, something miraculous happens: anger subsides, resistance lessens, compromise becomes possible. When a parent feels heard by their teen, nagging is reduced, anger diminishes, and conversations happen. 

The Speaker-Listener Technique: In a series of books about marriage and communication, my colleagues, Howard Markman, Scott Stanley, and I developed a set of rules for clear and calm communication called the Speaker-Listener Technique. Here is a brief overview of this technique.

 Rules for the Speaker

• Speak for yourself. Don’t mindread, that is, assume you know what the other person is thinking.
• Keep statements short - 1 or 2 sentences.
• Stop to let the listener paraphrase, that is, repeat what you heard in your own words.

Rules for the Listener

• Paraphrase what you hear.
• Focus on the speaker’s message. Don’t think of your answer.

Rules for both

• The speaker has the floor. Anything can be used as the floor – a tissue box, a TV remote, even a pen. The person holding this object is the speaker.
• The speaker keeps the floor while the listener paraphrases . Switch every two or three comment/paraphrase exchanges.

By practicing these simple-to-read, but often difficult-to-implement, rules, you and what your teen has to say, and discover that your teen may be more willing to listen to you, if they feel respected when they are speaking. We will talk more about this technique in H is for Healthy Communication, but let’s focus now on the listening component.

Do you truly listen to your teen?

When you have a conversation with your teen, how much time do you spend listening? Could you leave the room, and tell someone else in detail what your child’s real, deep-down feelings and concerns are? I know that you can explain the problems from your point of view – they don’t do their homework, they talk back, they don’t clean their room. But what is the problem from their point of view? That is the point of active listening – to learn the problem from their point of view.

Lesson Activity

Schedule 10 minutes a couple of times a week to practice the Speaker-Listener technique with your teen, with your partner and as a family. Choose an easy topic to start - maybe pretend you are choosing a gift, deciding where to go on vacation, or have $400 to spend. Only once you have practiced a couple of times should you try it with a more difficult topic.