Tag Archive for: Communicating with your child

Effective Communication with Your Teen

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By Staci Chambers, MSW, LSW – January 23, 2024 –

For parents and caregivers, it’s often challenging to find a balance between keeping the door open for communication with our children and being overbearing. Fostering a compassionate, protective, and comfortable relationship with our kids is the key to maintaining that positive bond that allows us to communicate effectively with them. 

The following are some tips to help establish this type of relationship with your adolescent or teen.

Providing love and support establishes the foundation of a healthy relationship with your child to keep the lines of communication open. As we all know, ways of showing love and support vary from person to person. However, consistent expressions of love, care, and concern demonstrate a deep bond and unconditional love toward your child.

Taking interest in their activities can help the bond with your child grow. Taking time to truly check in with your child about their latest goals, accomplishments and their personal interests is a way to show care and connection.

Consistent communication is quite possibly the most imperative component of connecting with your child. Opening doors for communication with frequent check-ins as part of your daily routine can help encourage the line of communication to remain open. Consider finding time in your family’s daily schedule to engage in these conversations to stay up to date with your child.

Dinner time, car rides to and from school, a phone call when they get home from school, etc. are examples of easy ways to consistently check in and have these conversations with your children.

A willingness to be open with your child about your strengths and challenges can also help establish a level of comfort with communication. Helping our children learn alongside us can be beneficial for both parent and child.

Maintaining clear rules and boundaries with your child can help set them up for success. Allowing them to take part in establishing some of these expectations and answering questions about why certain rules are set in place helps encourage children to follow established rules.

Give grace when grace is needed. Understand that children are going to make mistakes and staying consistent in your responses and follow through can be key. Non-judgmental and minimal reactive responses can help encourage your child to be more open and willing to share. Responses that communicate support and willingness to help resolve an issue encourage children to open up more to their parents with positives and when challenges arise.

Finding ways to effectively support, encourage, and protect our children will always be a challenging task for parents. Understanding that there is no “one size fits all” approach to parenting is key.

Taking the time to communicate regularly and understand your child for who they are is the best way to work towards protecting your child. Utilizing outside resources may also be necessary and helpful to protect your child. Be open to suggestions from professionals in the community and schools to help improve your communication with your child.

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Establishing Communication with Your Child from an Early Age

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By Kacie Shipman, MSW, LSW – July 3, 2024 –

It’s important to teach your child to communicate well from an early age. Getting your children to share their thoughts or feelings with you can sometimes feel like an impossible task. Often, as children age and their peers become an increasingly important part of their lives, they spend more time communicating with friends than their parents/caregivers.

As a school social worker, when working with teens and encouraging them to share with their parents, we discuss the barriers to being more open. First, students tend to share that their parents or caregivers are too busy to listen. The definition of busy can vary. I encourage children to think of times where they might interact with their parents, such as on a car ride home from school or practice.

Set aside a time where the distractions are limited and give kids an open opportunity by verbally reminding them you always have time for conversation. This is a good way to open a discussion. Sharing during car rides or dinner prep might be situations where they don’t feel pressured to make eye contact. 

Most children are concerned about the reaction they will receive when they share their feelings. Establish a plan where the child lets you know they have something on their hearts that needs specific, uninterrupted time for conversation. One way could be to leave a note or send a text that they would like to talk. This is a time where siblings or other household members understand that interruptions should be limited. Your child will feel valued by the specific time set aside.

During this time, provide them with the opportunity to share fully before expressing your thoughts or feelings. It’s a good idea to take an hour or wait until the next evening to give yourself time to reflect and regulate before responding.

Letting your child know that you won’t react in a big way can help decrease initial hesitation to talk about a difficult feeling or situation. If your child is concerned that what they share will bring about conflict or punishment, their hesitancy may override their desire to have you help them problem-solve or provide a supportive listening ear.

Share with your child that it is okay to reflect on your feelings and not make quick statements from an initial reaction. This will help in all of their relationships. Relationships suffer when things are said in haste or when we are dysregulated by the intensity of the discussion that may have caught us off guard.

Using statements to reflect how you are feeling by using “I” can help tremendously in making difficult conversations productive. An example of using an “I statement” with your child could be, “I felt a lot of fear and concern when your curfew passed last night and I wasn’t sure where you were.” Walls of defense go up when we hear “you” to start a conversation. When walls are up, the conversation tends to be defensive rather than on finding to a solution.

Being vulnerable and showing concern and fear rather than anger can also help keep your child’s walls of defense down. Overall, teaching and modeling positive healthy communication styles for your child teaches them lifelong skills. Positive communication skills will help your child in many aspects of both their private and professional lives.

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