The "Sense" In Adolescence, Getting Along With Your Teenager

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One of the most difficult relationships we have in life is the one we have with our children. They won't open up to us or we “just don’t understand” how they are feeling.

The latter statement especially applies when they are teenagers, and you might think that banging your head against a wall will achieve more on occasion. Really, trying to get along with your children is one thing, and developing a real relationship is another thing completely. Let’s look at it in more detail.

Seeing It From Their Perspective…There is nothing worse than when your parents tried to “connect” with you on things that you loved when you were younger. Why? Because it was your thing, and you didn’t want your parents hijacking it! While you may want to spend more time with them in one way or another, if they don’t want to let you in, then you can't force them. That won't achieve anything. Instead, look at it from their point of view, and realize that on occasion you’ll need to back away. Pick your battles.

Don’t Force It

If you can't understand their taste in music or movies, how are you going to be able to bond? You're much better finding a bit of common ground, no matter how tenuous, and working on that instead. If you both like baseball but don’t like the same teams, something a lot more interesting has been created, conflict.

Not extreme conflict, but more interesting ones, like debates and opposing views. At least you are opening up yourselves to discussion and are actually having a conversation. And from there, that’s where you can extend an olive branch, Ticket Liquidator's MLB tickets go on sale soon, and you can actually go somewhere at the same time with your child!

There is no point in forcing yourself to like what your son or daughter enjoys because it will be for the most part completely alien to you. Instead, just find common interests that you can exploit to get more involved in your child’s life.

Get The Competition Going

There was nothing more satisfying than beating your dad at sports or outsmarting your mom at chess. Not only were you outsmarting your parents or actually being good at something, but you were also outsmarting an adult!

As a parent, competition might be the thing to get them to engage with you. That old cliché of the father and son doing that whole “put up your dukes” repartee doesn’t always resemble a father v son potential bloodbath; it can simply be the only way to communicate with each other.

Instead, you can channel this into safer pursuits, such as health and fitness, or play soccer in the field. It doesn’t even have to be a sport, even playing games on the Xbox, crosswords, whatever the interests are in your family.

If you instigate some healthy competition, it’s not just a bonding exercise being disguised as something else; it’s good for developing resilience, brainpower and a whole host of benefits.