Communication With Adolescents? Communication With Everybody.

Got to do a talk with the aforementioned Judy McGehee MA, LMFT (www.mcgeheepartners.org) tonight at the "Parent Summit" organized by the Glendora School District. There were breakout sessions with different professionals and agencies providing talks on different topics. Dr. Mary Suzuki (wife of Dr. Dan Suzuki) began the session with Captain Rob Castro of Glendora PD, who discussed a previous summit focusing on adolescents and use of pharmaceuticals (illicitly).

Judy and I did a talk entitled "How to Talk so Your Kids Will Listen, How to Listen so Your Kids Will Talk". As we discussed in our PowerPoint presentation, it became pretty clear that this was a misnomer- not only because it has more to do with relationships with kids, and further, much of the skills we discussed were relevant for most relationships in general.

During her talk, Judy identified the importance of being interested in your kids, not letting technology like cell phones and iPods get in the way of communication, ideas about developmental stages, roadblocks to communication and more. The parents and professionals who attended asked her a lot of questions about different types of age-appropriate communication, problem-solving specific issues and etc.

My talk endeavored a practical approach that highlighted suggestions to put me out of a job (one of my personal goals), principled ideas for use in communication, and some adolescent/child specific tools. We also discussed problem-solving issues like when/when not to intervene between siblings, children (who were sometimes adults in the examples) "stonewalling", giving short and/or avoidant responses, even what might be described as resentful feelings prompting one or another to not talk all together. The details of these are of course beyond a blog.

That said though, will copy/paste some of the suggestions I had here. Any questions, ideas, encouragements etc are welcome. Again, would offer that many of these are useful in communicating with all types of people, in all different types of relationships. Here's the abbreviated list:

• Don't yell.
• Don’t be critical and/or judgmental.
• Don’t try to change others’ mind or behavior.
• Don’t interrupt.
• Don’t only have feelings of fear or anger, or not have feelings at all.
• Be graceful with the feelings you do have.
• Don’t interrogate. *only be a parent* (meaning, resist the temptation to be a police officer, financial adviser, career counselor, etc)
• Don’t interrupt.
• Don’t say one thing, then do another.
• If someone says something you don’t understand, ask them to explain it.
• If someone starts yelling, speak quietly.
• Avoid power struggles.
(Here is where some of the adolescent specific ideas began)
• It might be a good answer to them.
• Don’t be afraid of technology. Learn to text. Email.
• Ask their opinion.
• Tell them you love them, and what you like about them.
• Learn their language. You don’t have to use it. (www.urbandictionary.com)
• Use the “rule of five”, particularly in crisis. Five words a sentence, five letters a word.
• Find a way to be interested in them- what they think, what they like and care about, and why.

This is certainly not an exhaustive list. It also doesn't address some of the principles that might otherwise be employed, doesn't give some answers in context, and doesn't explain why some of these tools might be important. Those ideas, as a rule, have to be discussed, processed. They also don't address specifics about working through problems or issues. Most of these things are best done with a professional, over time. Hope some of these can be helpful.