Communicating with teens

Teenage communication challenges

1. Hyper-rationality - Teen brains change to give them an increased reward drive. This helps encourage them to take risks, explore their adult capabilities and try new things. 
   
   You will know you have been impacted by hyperrationality when it seems like you teen has meticulously planned to do something that was very risky or against the rules. It will feel perplexing to you because it will seem like they were fully aware of the risks but chose to ignore them. In actual fact they were aware of the risks, acknowledged them but then their brain places increased weight on the potential positive outcomes. This blinds our teens' decision making.
   
   This situation is best supported by anticipating potential events (like a party) or reviewing ones which have occurred. Creating a safe space for your teen to reflect on or hear the impact on others and themselves helps them learn to view negative outcomes more appropriately.
   
   
2. Picking holes in arguments - Teens will seek to justify their actions as part of their hyper-rationality. This will include challenging your logic in weird and wonderful ways. It might also seem like they are avoiding engaging in a discussion with you.
   
   There are a mix of factors at play here, partly that positive outcome bias, partly testing negotiating and partly testing their adult limits. It will often feel like they are focussed solely on getting the immediate outcome they want at any cost.
   
   In these situations you are unlikely to win an argument because they will simply change the playing field each time you do. Instead be clear about what you need from them, stick to your guns and ensure they know what you will do if you don’t get it.
   
   
3. Heightened emotions - Contrary to popular belief, the teen grumps are not caused by hormones alone. teen brains change to increase the intensity of the emotions they feel. This is to drive them to create adult social groups and seek new situations to practice adult decision making.
   
   It does of course mean that teens can find discussions with us adults extremely tricky as they are clouded by their feelings.
   
   Keeping calm is a key tactic in emotionally charged situations with teens. Helping them identify their emotion can be crucial to helping them calm down as it gives a reason to their feeling. See our next section on emotion coaching to help with this.

Become the coach

Emotion coaching is a technique which helps our teens (and us) use our emotions to identify our needs, soothing us and then take action which leaves us feeling much better. As a parent you are in a crucial position to teach these skills.

There are 4 steps to emotion coaching:

1. Help them identify their emotions. “I think you are angry because you are pacing up and down, have I got that right?
2. Validate their emotion. “That makes sense because I would feel like that as well if that had happened to me”.
3. Set the boundaries for solving this problem together. “So how can we make sure that you get a bit of that while still making sure that we follow our rules?”
4. Help them to come up with the solution. For techniques on how to do this see the next section on great communication techniques.

You can see the power of the process in soothing our teens' heightened emotions, making them feel heard and then together finding a reasonable solution. It is a scientifically proven technique which aids the development of good adult emotional reasoning skills. I have found it very helpful in improving conversations and reducing stress.