Healthy Communication Style

• Andrew

  I feel that communication style is very important to build up a good relationship between teens and their parents. If a kid has some problems and needs someone to talk to, but the problem are very personal, he or she is usually afraid to let their parents to know about that, so they just talk to their friends, and their parents will think: why didn't my kid talk to us, and just talk to their friends? Therefore, they need to change their communication style. For example; when the kid tries to tell his/her parents about what happened to him/her, and tries to be honest, parents should try to understand what their kid feels, and don't punish them when they did something wrong. Try to find some way to let your kid feel comfortable talking with you, and this is a good style for communicating with each other.

• Jason

  I think communication is important because without it you can't build trust and you can't give positive encouragement. But with communication you can also break trust. So you have to be careful on how you approach starting a conversation and how you speak throughout the whole conversation. Parents should be aware of their child's behavior so that if they were to have a conversation, the parents would know how it would be like. For example, if the teen seems down or in a bad mood and the parent starts a conversation, the teen might be rude throughout most of the conversation. If the parent was aware that the teen was in a bad mood, then the parent would understand why the teen was rude. And would easily forgive the teen. Parents should also understand that if a teen doesn't seem like he/she wants to talk, then they should just keep their questions or comments for later. For teens, when you get into an argument with your parents, stay calm. By staying calm you give your parents no reason to yell, and they too will be calm (eventually). Blaming one another won't solve the problem. If an argument gets out of control, end it, and wait until both the parent and teen has calmed down. Then it's OK to continue communicating.

• Warren

They hear us and we hear them, but usually we don't listen to each other. It's not because we are both bad at listening. We just need to find the right time to talk to each other. Parents as well as youth don't care what the other is saying if one is already preoccupied with another task.

With me, I know when my parents are ready to listen. When they are eating dinner, relaxing on the couch, or watching what I consider boring TV shows, I talk to them. They listen to me and give me very small feedback that consists of five words at most. I know when's not a good time to talk to them. When they watch TV shows they like, watch the NEWS, or do important work, I leave them alone. Everyone needs his or her quiet-time.

My parents pick somewhat bad times to talk to me. I assume my parents are incompetent with my time and schedule, which is probably why they pick the bad times. It's no wonder they always try to talk to me when I give my full, undivided attention to TV; I just can't pay attention to them and the TV at the same time. The right thing to do is to shut of the TV and communicate with them, but I choose not to.

When I don't feel like talking, I try to avoid words like "whatever, yeah-yeah, or so". I find those particular words incredibly rude.

• Ben

  If you want to talk to your kid about your problems or their problems, you've got to know the right time to talk to them. Teens these days are more disrespectful to their parents; they won't listen, they talk back, and they even yell at their parents, too. When the parents talk a lot, kids think that they are too annoying, so they just ignore them. It's just not like the old days any more. Back in the days, if a parent tells their kid to do something, they do it immediately, and the most important thing was that they respect their parents.

  Now there is such bad communication going on! Why is it happening now? I believe that parents don't know how or when is a good time to talk to their kids. I know that when you see your kids very down you eventually want to know what happened, or you want to make them feel better by talking to them and helping them solve their problems. That is what parents should do, but have you ever thought about your kids actually wanting to be alone, not talking to anyone. Why don't you try to think back when you were a teenager. When you were down, did you want to talk to your parents about it? If you can't feel the same way we do now, then that is just too bad, because now most teenagers are like that. If you keep on asking them questions, they just think that you are very annoying. So you just make it worse.

  I know how the teenagers feel, because it happened to me, it happened to my friends, and it also happened to my coworkers too. We all agreed that parents should talk to us at the right time.