Today about TEENAGERS and how to COMMUNICATE with them.

Salam Alaikum sisters. Hope you all doing well today.🌸

Today about TEENAGERS and how to COMMUNICATE with them.

Communication with a teenager might be challenging for the parents, because they more tender to close, push away and not to talk at all and if you are talking you might see and feel they aren’t listening, hearing and not showing a sign of participation in your talk. Sometimes simply saying “I don’t know”, “ I don’t care”. Btw these words not having a direct meaning, so don’t take it personally.

It’s irritating parents, making them loose temper and use more punishments, bribe, rewards and manipulate to shape the teenager’s behaviour. Often home becomes a battlefield where child and parents fighting with each other each day.
So for what fighting teenagers? And here we should look at the natural children development age 8-16 years old ( picture with a natural child development I attached below again). Why I say to look from 8 years old , because each child develops differently as we all are different and unique. And body changes might not be visible at 10 years old, but hormones changing already and brains already started to crop old neurones connections and create a new ones. Neuroscientists saying - teens waking up with a “new”brains each morning.
I’m saying if you child suddenly starting to like coffee or some other food what hated - “Most welcome to teenagers age”😄

So teenagers start to fight for their AUTONOMY and INDEPENDENCE first. It’s time to discover themselves and they are having many questions in their heads. They starting to see body changes. It is important for them TO FIND IDENTITY, both gender and social, what matters, what is right and what is not, what is normal and what is not, what is socially acceptable and not. They competing, friends becoming more important than parents, like to risk and becoming argumentative. Social relations have greatly expanded due to media and teenagers discovering everything new in social world. Relationships, romance, dating become more sensitive topics, especially in muslim families.
But everything IS OK AND NORMAL.
Good news for parents- it will end around 16 years old😊

As I can’t write you full lectures here will give you information in bits and will mention the main points:

- [ ] If you want to stay connected with your child, RULE No.1 - no matter what CHOOSE RELATION WITH YOUR CHILD in the first place.
Example I’m feeling disappointed about my child’s behaviour, maybe became angry, stressed but I’m not disrupting relation and disconnecting from him, I’m not saying I won’t give you food, or get lost from my house. Consciously I’m in relation and choosing relation. So here I need to turn to myself and ask myself why I felt like that? What I’m feeling? How do I know how it should be? What skills my child lacking and how I should help him to gain these skills? Do PAUSE and when I relax and feel all emotions, some other time I talk about my feelings with my son. People should be ready to listen. About when is the best time to talk I’ll be mentioning later.

2. If your child talking rude, misbehaving you need to TALK ONLY ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS AND DON’T PUT on the child BLAMES that is because of him/ her you are feeling so, or that he/ she made you feel like that. REMEMBER NOT ANYONE IN YOUR LIFE IS RESPONSIBLE OF YOUR FEELINGS. Not children, not your spouse, not parents, in laws or other people on the street.
It’s all your feelings and only you feeling how you understood situation, it’s all about your attitude and inner beliefs. So do PAUSE. Don’t go to arguments or try to defeat your child or other people. Just step back. You are not loosing or giving up on your opinion.

3. If you don’t know how to start talking particular about sensitive topics like sex, ask around: “ My friends cousins daughter… “. Ask more open questions and what teenager knows about topic, event ext. : example “I read article today that nowadays teenagers smoking electronic cigarettes even at school. What do you think about smoking?” Tell a story about other teenagers and ask your child what he thinks about it, how he would have acted in such situations. With a teenager it should be a DIALOGUE NOT A LECTURE.

4. Teenagers mood swinging often because of hormonal changes and fluctuations + if they just came from school usually they are hungry, upset and tired so don’t pressurise them to talk, to do homework ect. Rather meet with honest words : “ Salam Alaikum, it’s nice to see you, I was missing you”. Offer drink, give sniak, invite for tea.

5. Will be periods when your child won’t engage and talk at all, will be when comes and wants to connect. One min. their mood might be joyful another angry and bitter. Each time when any age child coming to you to ask, show or just being around- HE/SHE NEEDS ATTENTION AND CONNECTION. Be conscious about it and once you notice that behaviour of the child give attention and love. Once you consciously or subconsciously push away your children, next time they won’t come and teenagers after some pushes you away and not to engage at all. So be cautious about it.

6. Teenagers age is a time when FATHER SHOULD FULLY ENGAGE with a child. About fathers role I will tell you more in separate message.

7. It’s very good to watch movie together, especially if it’s about teenagers. Discuss about movie. And ask open questions, example “What would you do if you was trapped in that situation?”. Don’t laugh or try to improve, rather carefully listen and ask more.
8. At teenagers age parents should involve to children activities what child likes to do. So do it together, engage, show interest.

9. Also know what games online he/ she is playing, what are his/ her best friend’s names, how many girls, boys in the class, who is class leader, keep in touch with his/ her friends and their parents.

10. Teenagers age requires friendly relation with a child but still you are a parent not a buddy to the child and you need to set up appropriate RULES and BOUNDARIES for the teenager. Obviously rules what you set for little age aren’t suitable anymore. So you should rethink and set boundaries and rules what are more adaptable for teenager’s age. And remember to keep rules and boundaries in place it’s parents responsibility.

I will be continuing next time about how to comunicate with a teenager and how much are important trust and responsibilities.
Please ask questions and just apply this information in your relation with teenagers/ all children and other people. Through communication with children we are learning a lot. They are our teachers as well. ❤️