Parent Wellbeing

Effective Communication and Teenagers

It’s often said that communication is the key to a healthy relationship. While it might sound like tired advice, it’s a skill worth learning that will help us do better in all our relationships. As your child grows up, the way you communicate with them will need to change to reflect the new boundaries in your relationship created by their increasing independence. 

Discovering these new and different approaches to communicating effectively with one another will be a learning experience for you both. Effective communication with your teenager can help you both feel happier and more connected in your relationship, and more confident about having difficult conversations and resolving conflicts.

Effective communication can help if:

• you feel disconnected from your child
• you and your child don’t speak 
• you want to encourage your child to talk about what’s going on for them
• you want to improve your relationship with your child.

What is effective communication?

You and your child are communicating effectively when: 

• you both feel able to talk freely about your feelings, and you feel heard and understood. 
• you talk about all the little stuff, and you feel comfortable talking about the tough stuff when you need to
• you have a close and easy way of sharing things, and you both know you won’t be judged because you love and care about each other.

Communicating with teens can sometimes be difficult, in busy households, it’s easy to overlook making time and space in your day to have a really good talk with your child and find out what’s going on in their life. 

When your child no longer depends on you as much as they once did, it’s harder to know everything that’s going on in their lives as the communication between parents and teenagers seems to decrease. They are more independent, and so you have to make time to check in with them to find out how they’re going.

Why is effective communication important?

Your relationship is changing, and you have to be flexible and able to change with your child. But don’t ever think that they need you any less as a good sounding board. During adolescence, they need you just as much as they ever did. The best way to support them is by making sure they’ll come to you with any problems they’re having, and that’s why effective communication is so important.

What can help in communicating effectively with your child?

Here are some tips that can help you have positive and constructive conversations with your child: 

• Being genuinely interested and curious about what your child is telling you.
• Giving them your undivided attention.
• Show empathy – put yourself in your child’s shoes.
• Avoid just giving them instructions or unsolicited advice.
• Choose a quiet space without distractions for important conversations.

Barriers to effective communication

Try to minimise the following, which act as barriers to effective communication.

• Interruptions and distractions, which can make it seem like you’re not interested in what your child is saying.
• Jumping in with advice, rather than listening to what your child has to say.
• Judging what your child has to say and not validating their point of view.
• Interrogating your child by firing questions at them.

Active listening is an important skill in any relationship and is all about building rapport, understanding and trust. When you actively listen to your child, you will hear what they are actually saying, not what you think they are saying.

When you are having a conversation with your child, encourage them to open up and talk by asking questions such as:

• 'How did that make you feel?'
• 'It sounds as if you were (angry/ frustrated/ excited), were you?'

Let them know that you understand by summarising the situation as you’ve heard it. This also takes the emotion out of the situation and allows them to see the facts.

• 'So let me see if I’ve got this right. You …Is that how it happened?'

Your child isn’t always looking for you to fix a situation or solve a problem for them. Avoid jumping in with advice, such as: ‘Well, just do this or that.’ Instead, help them move towards finding a resolution themselves by asking: 'What do you think is best thing to do now?'

Later, ask them how the situation played out. In this way, they’ll learn about how to process situations for themselves.

There is always more than one way to work through things. Having these sorts of conversations helps your child explore how they manage their relationships and gives them clues about how to communicate well with others.

Resources & Support Services

The Wellbeing Team have compiled a range of resources and support services for students and families to access via Compass under Community (the two people) – School Documentation – For Students/For Parents – Wellbeing Resources.

Parent Support Services

Parentline: 13 22 89

If you would like further ongoing support, it is recommended that you make an appointment with your family General Practitioner (G.P.) where you can discuss the concerns that you may behaving. The G.P. will then be able to make the appropriate referral for ongoing support as required.

Student Wellbeing Team

Email: wellbeing@wantirnacollege.vic.edu.au

Guiseppe Relia – Wellbeing Coordinator 

Talea-Jane Simpson – School Counsellor

Lea Marrison - Mental Health Practitioner

Tajinder Wulff - Mental Health Practitioner