For too many parents the process of their children going from daddy’s little girl or mummy’s special boy to an angry teenager is a real nightmare.  Are you experiencing the change from a child’s fun conversation to a disturbing grunt from your teenager?

Parents get caught in this negative vicious cycle. It does not, as many would believe, always begin in the teenage years. It can happen at any time but acceleration is normal in the teenage years.

Parents tend to forget that children have their own problems. School playgrounds and the overall school environment are not always happy safe places.

When we think back on our own childhood many of us can remember quite traumatic and upsetting events that occurred at school. The school playground of today is more intense.  A place where bullying, both verbal and physical has increased.  Bullying doesn’t stop at school. With the Internet, email and smsing bullying continues at home and on weekends.

Children can have conflicts with teachers, other significant people in their lives, and with their friends that can be quite nasty and very upsetting.

There are a myriad of reasons why children become angry, hurt, or insecure.  In our time poor society we don’t always take the time nor have the knowledge to really listen to our kids.

Talking is not necessarily communicating. Parents believe that if they talk with their child than they are communicating. This is not necessarily the case.

Are you constantly repeating your instructions to your children?

Children tend listen to the first few words that are spoken and then switch off. For example, if you say to your child, ‘you are grounded because…’ the first three words are most likely to be only the ones that are heard – the rest are more likely for your benefit. Communication with children should be brief and positive.

Those first words in a conversation are very precious, choose them wisely.

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a branch of psychology. Practitioners will tell you that the human brain cannot process negative language. If I were to ask you to close your eyes and not think about a pink elephant, (please take a moment and give it a try), you would find it impossible to comply, especially if I kept repeating this request. The same applies to a child or anyone else for that matter. ‘Don’t run across the road’ is processed in the brain as ‘run across the road’, exactly the opposite to your intended instruction. The way to get children to hear is to state the sentence in a positive way. “Look both ways and when clear of cars then walk across the road” is more likely to get the message across.

We all wear masks.  Adults wear a mask at work then a different mask at a party and another when being a parent or sports coach. Children are no different. They wear a mask at school to try to conform to their peers.  

It is important when you are trying to communicate with your child that you allow them to take their mask off first.  This takes a little time; questions such as, ‘how was school today?’ are likely to be met with one word answers or a grunt from many young people, especially boys. If your child comes home angry from school the best thing that you can do is to encourage them to work off some of the anger through physical activity. A calmer person without a mask is more likely to communicate the real source of the anger to you.
 
Ian Lillico a high school principal from Western Australia travelled the globe studying the needs of boys. In his findings for the Churchill Fellowship in 2000, one of the 52 recommendations is that boys do better if you talk with them when they are actively engaged in an activity. He encourages people to actively spend time doing things with boys and they will be more likely to open up and tell you what is going on in their lives or what is troubling them.

“A parent recently experienced a close and loving relationship with her son fall apart.  Both were confused about how to communicate with each other and therefore a negative downward spiral in their relationship occurred.  The teenager felt that his mother wasn’t listening and the mother felt that her son wasn’t listening.

The mother decided to spend a whole day with him doing fun and interesting things.  During the day he opened up and told her he wasn’t very happy at school.  They spent time talking about his options and together they negotiated the best outcomes. The last time I asked the parent about her son she said with a huge smile on her face, ‘I have my boy back!”

Boys and girls have different communication styles and needs. Most girls talk more readily about what is important to them more than boys do. Even as adults men tend to talk with their mates about sport and less about personal issues compared to females.

To complicate matters further, we all access and process information differently. In NLP this is called the Representation System. Every one has a primary and many have a secondary representational system and we use these systems at varying times. Some of us are very visual.  Visual people need to see things to understand. Language such as ‘I see it clearly’, ‘I get the picture’  may give you an idea of this kind of person.

Kinesthetic people access information through their feelings and by doing things, these people may say ‘that feels right’ or ‘I have this gut feeling’ ‘I get the drift’ or ‘lay your cards on the table’.

Then there are the Auditory people who may say ‘it is as clear as a bell’ ‘clearly expressed’ or ‘I hear you’. These people often talk to themselves internally to process information. While Auditory Digital people, will say things like, ‘give me some time to process that’.  These people can appear not to be listening but they hear you perfectly. Sometimes all you need to do is plant the seed of an idea and they will begin to think about it. 

If you are an auditory person who likes to express yourself through words and you are talking to a kinesthetic child who wants activity then they will feel frustrated and think that you are ‘nagging’ them and keeping them from doing what they want to do.

Parents just need to change some of their language to match that of their child to improve the communication process.

There is a very simple quiz that parents can take to find out what they child’s primary representational system is. To get a copy of this short quiz email me; coby@renewallifesolutions.com.au.

And by far the best way for a parent to effectively communicate with their child is to give plenty of one-on-one time