Life as a teenager isn’t always easy. Between the pressure of schoolwork, obligations at home, navigating social challenges, and developing your sense of identity in the world, stress during adolescence can quickly feel like it’s too much to bear.
Keeping open communication with parents is one of the best tools you can use to help manage these stressful situations. While it can be difficult to share difficult or sensitive issues at first, your parents’ input can help you navigate these challenges and build the resiliency needed to thrive.
Project Eden offers counseling for youth and families. Discover more about Project Eden at Horizon.
How Open Communication with Parents Helps
Developing healthy communication skills with your parents can provide you with a stable source of support to help you through any challenge you might face. Your parents and family members will be with you through every new challenge, each step of your journey, and well into your adulthood.
Cultivating effective communication skills with them now can have lasting benefits, even if the idea of being open and transparent with your parents can be a nerve-wracking endeavor.
Cultivating Trust and Understanding
Open and honest communication is the essential building block of trust and understanding between you and your parents. If you want your parents to understand your challenges, you need to be able to communicate openly and honestly with them.
Doing so also helps your parents build trust in you, and lets you build trust that your parents will support you through your challenges.
Supporting Emotional Wellbeing
There are countless situations during your teenage years that can lead to intense and uncomfortable emotions. Whether that’s ending a relationship, getting bullied, or experiencing rage or aggression – these situations can quickly build up to overwhelm you with stress.
By learning to communicate effectively about your emotions, you can find substantial relief. Sometimes simply talking through your emotions and challenges with your parents can alleviate their intensity.
Getting Practical Guidance
Whatever challenge you may be going through, there’s a good chance your parents have gone through similar situations and came out the other side. Their lived experience can help you develop a new problem-solving approach, expose you to a different way of thinking about your challenges, or provide reassurance that you’ll be able to overcome whatever difficulty you face.
Tips to Improve Communication Skills
Starting to have open and honest conversations with your parents can be difficult. A few simple communication strategies can help you get the ball rolling:
Start Small
If sharing your deepest thoughts and emotions with your parents makes you feel uncomfortable, starting by opening up about smaller topics can help you build the confidence to go deeper.
For example, you might test the waters of open communication by asking for your parents’ opinion on less personal topics, sharing simple emotions, or sharing more details about your life than you typically would.
Understand Parents Perspectives
When you go to your parents for support, try to practice active listening when they provide you with feedback or guidance. Respectful communication goes two ways, and showing your parents that you are taking their feedback to heart can help open the door to more productive conversations in the future.
Remember that your parents may not be going through the same things that you are now, but that they’ve been teenagers at one point as well. Their perspective as adults may not always fit with your experience as a teen, but it could still be valuable information to help you in overcoming challenging times.
Share Honestly
Providing your parents with accurate information about your difficulties is the best way to get useful support. Even if it can be difficult to do so, be as honest as you can when communicating with your parents so that they have the information they need to support you through any difficulties you experience.
Don’t be Afraid to Reach Out for Help
If communicating with your parents is simply too difficult, consider reaching out to a school counselor or other family member for support. These can be difficult conversations – and having a mediator can make the process of building open and honest communication much easier.
Once you’ve developed healthy communication skills and have learned to talk with your parents openly, you’ve created a strong foundation of familial support that can last a lifetime.
Find better ways to get along with family and friends. Ask about Individual Counseling from Project Eden at Horizon Services.
