Using a Parenting Coach to Have Open and Honest Conversations So You Can Keep Your Children Healthy and Safe
I recently got a new client and I am so proud of her. Her son is 15, has nice friends and is doing well academically. So, why would she come to me for parenting coaching? Because she is a pro-active parent who is frustrated by her son’s lack of communication. She is able to acknowledge all the ways her kid is thriving; at the same time, she is worried about the once very-close relationship between the two of them getting damaged in these teenage years. She also knows that the greatest buffer against exposure to drugs, alcohol and too-mature sexuality is having regular deep conversations on a range of topics. She came to me to learn how to do that.
Lack of Communication with a Teen Increases Parental Anxiety
Unlike with our little kids where we are physically with our kids much of the day (or getting daily communications from their care givers), the older our kids get, the more time they are spending on their own. While that is necessary for their development, it is hard on us as parents. When we don’t hear what is going on in their lives and in their heads, our imagination fills in the kind of “trouble” they could be getting into. Are they being offered drugs at school? Is there alcohol at the parties they are attending? Are they being pressured to sext or to send a topless pic to someone online? These kind of questions plague us, making it hard for us to send our teens out the door with equanimity.
When we are afraid for our kids, we often parent more harshly than we need to. If you have had lots of conversations with your teens about how they will resist peer pressure when they face it or what their plan is for when they are at a party that gets out of hand, then we don’t have to grill them about where they are going, with whom and when. If they come in later than agreed upon, we can ask them about it calmy rather than jumping down their throat about how we can’t trust them and how they are being disrespectful.
Lack of Communication with a Teen Makes Parents Sad and Starts Them Agonizing About Losing Their Kids to Adulthood
With adults and ever more so as teens get older, we feel close through our conversations. Although there is still connection in doing activities together or even hanging out in the same space, much of the closeness comes from sharing our thoughts and feelings, our hopes and dreams with each other. When our kids aren’t talking to us, we feel like they are drifting away. We imagine that this is what it is going to feel like to have a relationship with our children as adults. We fear we are losing them.
That might be true, but it doesn’t have to be. If parents can stay calm and grounded, confident that at the other side of the teen years, their children will continue to reach out to them for friendship and advice, they will avoid scaring their kids away.
Developmentally, It Is a Teen’s Job to Pull Away.
When parents clamp down on their teens, they increase the risk of pushing their children towards dangerous behavior.
One mistake parents make is that they take their child’s pulling away personally. They are not remembering that first and foremost a teen has to pull away from his parent in order to hear his own voice. The first ten years of life is about parents imprinting their values, beliefs and standards on their kids. Parents of little kids provide structure, guidance and teaching about how to show up in the world—in short, about how to be.
Parenting from age 11 to age 20 is about keeping your child safe while give them lots of space to answer the question “Who am I?” for themselves. Once parents have front-loaded their teaching, they need to trust that their child has absorbed and learned it. Teens need lots of space to “try on different hats.” By “different hats” I mean they need to wear different clothing, hang out with different people, and explore different religions or political parties. They need to consider different expressions of gender and ask they question of whom they are sexually attracted to.
Teens who do not get some opportunities to try on different hats rebel—either outwardly with disrespect and defiance or inwardly with anxiety, depression and self-doubt.
Open—non-threatening—Conversations Give Teens a Safe Landing Spot and Lead to Safer Teen Choices
Teens still want to hear their parents’ opinions about sex and drugs. As long as teens don’t feel judged or that it is their parents’ way or the highway, conversations about different aspects of sex, sexuality, drug and alcohol use, and mental health issues including suicide act as preventative measures. A 2009 study called Parents Matter: The Role of Parents In Teens’ Decisions About Sex concluded that teens who have open and honest conversations with their parents about sex are more likely to delay sexual activity, have fewer partners, and use condoms and other contraceptives. Two other studies suggest that “greater frequency and quality of general parent-child communication are negatively associated with adolescent substance use” (Kafka & London, 1991; Stoker & Swadi, 1990). In other words, when parents talk to their kids about the effects of drug use, children are less likely to use drugs.
Parenting Coaches Teach Concrete Steps for Parents to Create Open Exchanges with Their Teens
Most parents understand that they should be communicating daily with their kids about topics other than whether their homework is done or reminding them to pick up their wet towels off the floor. When I have my clients self-report, however, only parents with deliberate routines feel confident that they have engaged regularly with their kids on topics like what’s going on with their friend group, how they are feeling about their teachers and what they are learning about school, the content of what they are watching and listening to throughout the day or even broader questions like their hopes and dreams.
Structures and routines are key. Here are a few that my coaching clients have found to greatly improve their relationships with their children.
Family meals.
If you have been making excuses about why you can’t get the whole family to the dinner table regularly, please read up on the many benefits to the health and wellness of your kids.
It may mean that you have to limit some of your kids’ activities. It may mean making the extra effort to not schedule the piano lesson or the math tutelage during the dinner hour. It may mean doing family breakfasts rather than dinner. I work with one family with parents working from home who find that everyone having a snack together right when their kids get home from school is more doable than gathering at dinner time.
If you are finding it hard to get your kids to have substantive conversations about things, set an expectation of the whole family answering a daily question in 2-3 complete sentences. Use an internet search for ideas from the silly (Would you rather eat fried ants or fried worms?) to the sublime (What is your purpose in living?). Not only does this teach children how to be good conversationalists, it helps them academically by setting a standard for what is a “complete answer.”
2. Family Meetings
Family meetings are one of my top three parenting skills to teach. They provide a weekly structure for families to come together, to acknowledge or celebrate each other, to brainstorm ways to make family life smoother, and they give parents and children alike a formal space to bring up concerns or requests.
Having a clear structure for talking about charged topics provides safety. One of my recommendations is to limit how much time you talk about a particular topic. On the one hand, a time limit makes coming up with final solutions a slower process. On the other hand, while family members get a chance to express their views, no one is able to go on a long rant about a particular problem. Also, leaving the problem solving to the following week both gives people a chance to cool down and it give people a chance to come up with creative workable solutions.
If you haven’t implemented family meetings, my Family Meeting ebook outlines a structure that hundreds of families have found helpful.
3. No Electronics in the Car
Many parents report that the car is the place where their kids open up about potentially controversial issues. Perhaps teens know that with the task of driving in front of them, parents are less likely to over react, so it feels safer to bring up a problem with a teacher or concern about a party they want to go to.
When we allow kids to be on their phones or tablets in the car, we lose a huge opportunity for open discussion. Usually it take going through some small talk before kids open up, but set the expectation that you are going to talk, and even your non-talkers are more likely to develop the gift of the gab.
Again, this might be a place where you have a stack of questions for them to choose from ready to go. Particularly for those times you have just one child in the car, you might set the expectation that you are going to spend, say, 10 minutes every Tuesday after soccer doing Teen Talks. Invite your kids to bring questions or you bring a new topic every week. Be ready to talk about vaping, tobacco use, weed, fentanyl, sex, sexting, porn, relationships, friendships, sexual identity, gender identity, bullying, and suicide, plus whatever other concerns are present in your family.
Even given a structure, do you fear talking to your kids about heavy issues?
That’s where a parenting coach can definitely come in. I have helped hundreds of parents master the words to say, the time to say them, and the tone needed to have the greatest impact at helping you feel more bonded to your teen and your teen most likely to open up.
I’d love to help you with that!
To get started, sign up for a complimentary Getting to Know You call, and we’ll see if we are a good fit for each other.