What Parents can do Today to Improve the Relationship with a Teen Child
Every parent knows that teens have many unique personality quirks that make this stage of development challenging. Mood swings, anxiety, oversleeping, and anti-social behavior with family members just to name a few.
All these things can make a parent’s relationship with a teen stressful. To the point where a parent and teen may only talk to each other when they have to, not because they want to. This isn’t healthy. Parents must do their best to keep their relationship with their team at least cordial if not friendly.
While this may seem unrealistic, I do have a suggestion to build rapport with teens to make this a reality. Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham “compared how often parents and teens discussed strengths and weaknesses alongside how well the two communicate, how much the teen discloses to the parent, and how close the parent and teen were.”
The research found that:
the frequency of communication about strengths have unique and meaningful contributions to relationship quality, general communication and disclosure.
Talk with Teens About their Strengths Not Weaknesses
In other words, the more parents talk with their teens about their strengths the better the kids will view their relationship with their parents. In addition, the research also finds that balancing feedback to discuss both strengths and weaknesses is not as effective as just discussing strengths. This is because teens remember talking about their weaknesses far more often.
Don’t interpret this to mean that you should not ever provide constructive criticism to a teen. I think the better interpretation is to not wait to provide feedback to your child only when something goes wrong or right. Instead, make strengths-based conversations part of your routine.
So, if you want to immediately improve your relationship with a teenage child all you need is time. Make time to:
- Periodically have a long talk with them about their strengths.
- Provide unsolicited positive feedback on a regular basis.