How to Talk to Your Teen (So They'll Actually Talk Back)

My eldest son Luke is a fantastic young man: kind-mannered, well-spoken and hard-working. But since he turned 13, he’s also become more argumentative, moody and distant.He still needs my help with his math homework, but now he doesn’t want it. He’ll also melt down at the slightest provocation, and any word I utter in response—whether to empathize with him or offer him some perspective—lands with a thud. His preferred tactic is to mumble as he stomps out of the room.

In other words, he became a teenager. There is nothing unusual about any of this behaviour, yet as a parent I was unprepared. The teenage years are parenthood’s real test: a blast furnace of emotion, instability, questioning and self-doubt, of endless trial and error and frustration as you seek to establish your identity. This is me I’m talking about now, not Luke.

I thought I’d already laid an unshakable foundation that would allow Luke and I to coast through to his adulthood. These days I laugh at myself for ever thinking that I could skip the hard part of parenthood. But I’m here at the hard part now, and with adolescence bearing down fast on his 12-year-old twin brothers, I’m here to stay.

Luke turned 15 this year, and so, a couple of years into this adventure, I’ve figured out a few things to help keep us connected—things that, as it turns out, make a lot of sense to the experts, and that apply as much to teenage girls as to boys.

Press Pause on Your Agenda

There comes a time when teens might not want to be around their parents much anymore. As parents, we sometimes respect that shift by keeping our distance, giving them space and transitioning toward an as-needed model of interaction. While this seems like the right approach, it can quickly turn sour because it means you only engage with your teenager when you need something from them, such as to get a chore done. Once they clue in to that, you’re sunk, because they might seek to pre-empt the conversation.

The solution is to open the interaction by talking about what’s on their mind, not what’s on yours. “Take the first five minutes of the interaction and connect with your teenager on whatever it is they are doing in that moment,” says Edmonton-based psychologist Amanda Stillar, who works with teens and their families. This can mean stretching your own enthusiasm for things that make no sense to parents, such as watching YouTube videos of other people’s kids playing video games. But the effort pays off. “If you demonstrate an active interest, the connection will help open them up to receive what you are bringing to them.”

And if what they’re doing in that moment is having another mood swing, Dr. Stillar’s advice still applies: take an active interest and show some understanding. “Express empathy by saying, ‘I get how you feel because…’ and then fill in the blank,” Dr. Stillar says. Doing so helps you bridge the distance between your state of mind and your teen’s—a concrete step toward empathy.

Build Safe Spaces for Chit-chat

Just as you need to get a handle on how you approach your teen, you’ve also got to make it easier for them to approach you. Parents lean heavily on family mealtimes and car rides as moments to get their teenagers talking. But when we try too hard, the car and the dinner table can turn into traps: there’s no escape from them when parents, wittingly or not, turn a conversation into an inquisition or a lecture.

“You have to make those spaces safe for conversations,” explains Cynthia Chan Reynolds, a school psychologist in Peterborough, Ont., and a parent to two teens. “We don’t always get the information we are looking for, but we can’t force it out of them. Intonation and timing are really important for parents.”

I’ve found it helps to set up what I call “parenting office hours.” I always work in the dining room in the afternoon before supper. If something happens during Luke’s school day, he knows where to find me if he wants to talk. The key, from my end, is to set my work aside and shift my attention to him when he comes. Unlike the car or the dinner table, he controls the timing and the length of those interactions, which goes a long way towards making those moments safe.

Mind Your Own Moods

This past spring, we signed Luke up for a week-long program at our local rowing club. Then, three days before the first session, Luke tried to renege on the agreement, confronting me with his demands as I was finishing up a difficult workday. My first response was to force him to honour his side of the bargain. The more we dug in our heels, the more emotional Luke became. It turns out the biggest roadblock was my reaction, not his.

Dr. Dzung Vo, a Vancouver-based pediatrician and author of The Mindful Teen, has for years been a proponent of using the practice of mindfulness to help teens better understand and manage their own emotions. He describes it as “being present in the moment, with an open heart, and without judgment.” 

It can be a lot harder than it sounds, however. Parents of teens, after all, are managing their own basket of stressful distractions: mid-career roadblocks, marriage blahs or elder care, for instance. “Mindfulness can help parents with their own emotional regulation,” says Dr. Vo, “so they can stay open and loving in the face of blame and raised voices.” And mindfulness is like any skill: the more you practise, the better you get at it.

Once I recognized my feelings for what they were, I was better able to manage them. That allowed Luke and me to get to the bottom of his own hesitation, which, it turned out, was understandably rooted in post-lockdown social anxiety. Eventually, he tried rowing and loved it, and the experience was all the more rewarding for him because he overcame his own anxiety to do it. But had I not sorted myself out first, I might never have got him there.