3 Tips to Improve Your Parent-Teen Relationship
If you're worried about raising a child with a personality disorder such as a sociopath or narcissist, keep reading. One way to avoid this is by focusing on the relationship with your teen and less on the teen.
Instead of focusing on your teen and trying to make your teen a certain way. The key is to focus on your relationship. Tend to the relationship between you and your teen because that will be a template for your child to take outside of the family and have healthy relationships.
The three things to look for in nurturing a healthy relationship with your teen is:
- Decrease any acting out behavior
You want your teen and you to put words to all your emotions. Instead of shouting, Say to your teen, “It sounds like you’re upset about something, can you please say it more calmly so I can hear you and maybe help you?” But if you also are a shouter, you’re going to have to go back to your teen and say, “I’m sorry I shouted, what I should’ve said is I’m angry you left a mess in the kitchen.”
2. Autonomy
You want to respect each other's autonomy, that’s a healthy relationship. If your child has an idea or a solution, let them have it. Unless it’s going to cause damage to life or limb or a legal issue, zip it. You may think it’s a bad idea, but to keep their autonomy in place, let them have it, let them make their own mistakes. Same with you, you got to be honest about your life and what you want, don’t be your child’s puppet. If you have something you want to do, you may not be able to do what they want at that time. Be honest about it.
3. Empathy
You both want to have empathy. You want to foster empathy in them and display empathy yourself. If they have a feeling about something, don’t talk them out of it, don’t say it’s ridiculous; let them have that feeling. Same with you, if you have a feeling, express it. So many people say they can’t show sadness around their children and that’s crazy. Sadness is normal, and you want them to know it’s normal. You can show it and say, “ I’ll be better soon, but right now, I am sad over (fill in the blank).”
Use these three tips to tend to your relationship with your teen. By following these three tips, you are providing your teen with a template going forward.
If you have any trouble with this, you can give me a call at (757)340-8800 or schedule a 15-minute consultation.