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Home › Articles › Discipline and Communication › Are You Listening to Me?

Are You Listening to Me?

Communicating with Your Teen

By Donna Smith

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Raising a teenager in this day and age is a scary proposition. But if you have someone between the ages of 13 and 19 living in your house, you don't really have a choice. We all want our kids to like us. We know they love us, but liking us is another thing entirely. We want them to talk to us and to actually listen when we talk to them. So how canyou make this happen?

Quality Time
How can you have a good relationship with your teenager? What's the secret? Many parents get so caught up in making sure their teen is on the right path and doing the right thing that they forget to connect by spending quality time with them. Nothing takes the place of getting involved and interested in your child's life. We often think of quality time for very young children, but this term still applies when they are teenagers.

"Teens today need more quality as well as quantity time," says Dr. Larry Jenson, Ph.D., who has taught parenting development courses and workshops for more than 34 years. "Many experts document this need, but it seems that many believe that since teens are more self sufficient they require less maintenance, supervision or monitoring. Not so. In fact the best predictor of positive outcomes for teens raised in high-risk neighborhoods is maternal supervision."

Peg*, mother of 15-year-old Chessy, finds time to spend with her daughter. "It's very important to her," Chessy says. "She likes it when we can go to dinner, just the two of us, or lunch or shopping. We usually try to seize the opportunity when my younger one has a sleepover. Sometimes we'll go see a PG-13 movie that's not appropriate for her younger sister."

Kathy*, mother of 17-year-old Brandon and 15-year-old Tiffany, makes sure all her kids have time alone with her. "Once a month, I separately take each of my three kids and let them pick what they want to do, and we go do it," Kathy says. "We have a ball doing this! It gives you time with each one of them and you really get to know them a lot better. We also do things together as a family quite a bit."

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