HEALTH PLUS:Maybe it's time to talk about how you talk to your teenage children, writes MAIRE MURRAY
CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN parents and young people are often distinguished by their brevity. They can end before they have begun. They may consist of a few predictable sentence exchanges. These may foreclose conversation. Alternatively, conversations may become contentious unnecessarily. And the sad thing about poor communication is that the worse it gets, the worse it gets: it does not get better when it is bad.
If a pattern of communication that is frustrating to everyone has arisen, then a new pattern is required. This means new questions, new ways of asking them, new contexts in which they are asked, a different tone of voice when asking questions or a new receptiveness to answers received.
The timing of conversations is important: that conversations are begun when there is time to listen to what the young person has to say. And listening is the key to parent-child conversations. Because if we believe we know the answers before we have heard them, then the questions are perfunctory, communication is thwarted and conversation in the sense of meaningful exchange is over before it has begun.
Central to developing new, more positive patterns of communication is that the questions asked are not closed questions, that is that they are not questions to which there is only a “yes” or “no” answer, because questions requiring a yes or no answer or a single word response can be experienced as intrusive or disinterested.
The problem with closed questions is that they receive closed answers. They do not invite elaboration unless the respondent wishes to provide it. And while the questions may be well intentioned, they do not encourage discussions in which young people may feel comfortable speaking about what is important to them.
Of course, the classic closed questions are those that adults direct at children whom they do not know well. What age are you? What class are you in? What school do you go to? If ever there were conversation stoppers these questions serve that purpose, which is why children provide polite answers, knowing that the questioner does not know how to talk to children and is not comfortable in their presence.
In a different way, conversations between parents and teenagers can also often take a predictably pedantic course because the questions asked prohibit discussion. Think of the difference between being asked, “Are you okay?”(fine) or “What’s wrong?” (nothing) or even worse “What’s wrong with you?” (exit teenager), and someone saying that they have noticed you are looking a bit fed up, that they are concerned about you and if you would like to talk about it they would like to listen.
Invitations to conversation are important to young people. Even when invitations are not immediately accepted they are always appreciated. Knowing that when they want to talk, there is a parent who is ready to listen, is enormously reassuring. Knowing that their feelings have been noticed, even if offers to talk about them are initially rejected, often means the young person will talk about those feelings later when they are ready to do so.
Conversations between parents and teenagers are not singular events. They occur in the context of parent-teenager relationships: in their capacity to talk to and listen to each other and their determination to find a way to do so.
Paradoxically, the key to talking to teenagers is not to talk but to listen. It is to listen without interruption. It is to listen and allow a silence without filling it with solutions, because from that silence – if the silence is tolerated instead of rushing in with remedies – the young person may find the courage to say more.
And young people need to have positive conversations with their parents. They need opportunities to express what they think, say how they feel and articulate their concerns. They need to describe their hopes, tell their fears, share their achievements, explain their worries, and have someone to listen to them when things go wrong, when things go right, when they are hurt and when they are trying to make sense of their world.
When parent-child communication has been poor, then the next conversation needs to be about communication itself. And what better question to begin that conversation with than, “Do you think that I listen to you enough when we talk?” Because to talk about how we talk, when we talk, how we listen, when to ask questions and when to be silent is a new conversation that rarely goes wrong.
mmurray@irishtimes.com
- Clinical psychologist and author Marie Murray is director of the UCD Student Counselling Services. Her most recent book, Living Our Times, is now out in paperback and published by Gill and Macmillan