Parenting Teens – How to Have a Good Relationship with Your Teenager

Do you feel like you can’t have a civil conversation with your teen? Does it feel like your teenager just doesn’t care? Don’t give up hope of having a close bond with your teenage child. It’s never too late to repair a broken relationship.

Parenting teens can be difficult, and often times stressful. The transition between childhood and adulthood can be a challenging process for both teenagers as well as their parents.

The Challenges Teens Face

Even though teens are usually portrayed as carefree individuals, they are actually faced with multiple life challenges. Not only do they have to deal with their school work, and the pressures of high school social life, they also have to learn how to become independent quickly.

When you add in extra-curricular sports or clubs, after school jobs, and everyday challenges it’s not hard to see why teenagers can become stressed. Without the proper support and encouragement teens could end up facing more serious problems such as alcohol and drug dependency or depression.

The Stress of Parenting Teens

Parents have the difficulty of trying to adapt to their child growing up and enforcing rules to sometimes rebellious teens while still managing their own lives. Some parents have difficulty getting their teen to open up to them, to be truthful, or to communicate what going on in their lives.

How to Strengthen Your Relationship with Your Teen

Even though it seems like teenagers need their parents less it’s crucial that teens receive parental support through the tough teen years. Teens and parents need to work at maintaining a close relationship.

Here are several things that parents can do to help strengthen their relationship with their teen.

Getting Your Teen to Open Up

Talk to your teenager about the things that they are interested in. You could talk about current events, music, movies, MySpace, their favorite celebrities or fashion trends or just about life in general. You might not be excited about your teens favorite TV shows but by listening to them talk about what’s important to them you’re showing that you care.

When attempting to open up the line of communication between you and your teen don’t argue, debate, or lecture. This is not the time to complain that your teen never helps out around the house, or ask why they are failing math. Having non-judgmental, relaxed and friendly conversations with your teen will encourage trust.

Once trust is gained it’s likely that your teen will tell you what’s going on in their lives. If your teenager feels fee to express their opinion without getting lectured or yelled at they will be much more likely to confide in you.

Stay Active

Do something fun with your teen; it’s much easier to communicate when you’re in a fun, friendly environment. Play video games together, go on a drive, a hike, or find an activity that the two of you can enjoy together. You don’t have to spend money to have fun, something as simple as choosing a favorite TV show and sharing a bowl of popcorn can bring you and your teen closer.

Team Work

Start a project together. Working side by side with someone on a common goal can quickly create a bond. Clean out the attic or garage, paint and decorate a room, work on the car, or start a craft project. Working together will not only strengthen your relationship with your teen but you’ll be making memories that will last a lifetime.

Sharing Meals

It's sad that in today's hectic society so many families have given up sitting down and eating meals together. Eating meals together may not be convenient but sharing meals gives you a chance to catch up on what’s going on in each other's lives.

If you find the task of daily sit down dinners overwhelming that make a point of designating certain days a week when your family will sit down and eat together.

If the evening is a hectic time than you plan sit down breakfasts or lunches instead. You could also try making a special weekend morning breakfast together once a week. Creating a new fun meal ritual will help your relationship to grow and the two of you will have something to look forward to.

Give It Some Time

If you aren’t used to hanging out with your teenager in a relaxed way then it might take some time for the two of you to become comfortable with one another. Just keep working on opening the lines of communication and give it some time, it will be worth the wait.