How to Get Your Teen to Listen: Building Stronger Connections
Getting your teen to listen starts with building a closer, more trusting connection. Adolescence is a time of rapid growth and change, which can be both exciting and challenging—not just for teens, but also for parents.
During these years, teens experience significant emotional, cognitive, and social changes. As they seek independence, experiment with identity, and navigate peer relationships, parents often need to adjust their parenting strategies. These changes can leave some parents feeling disconnected, frustrated, or unsure how to communicate effectively.
Many parents report feeling stressed, helpless, or overwhelmed, especially when traditional methods of guidance or discipline seem less effective. The good news is that there are evidence-based strategies that can strengthen your bond, improve communication, and help your teen feel heard and supported.
In this article, we will explore the key components of building a strong connection with your teen, offering practical tips to help parents foster understanding, cooperation, and mutual respect during these formative years.
The Benefits of Closer Connections
There are many benefits to strengthening the parent-teen relationship. A study by McAdams and colleagues in 2016 found that a close and affectionate parent-teen relationship was related to self-worth, emotional well-being, emotional intelligence, and positive social relationships (McAdams et al., 2016).
Also, developing this stronger connection can help teens better trust their parent’s availability and authority. Closer connections can also enhance inhibitory controls, encourage more independent decision-making, strengthen their ability to see others’ perspectives, and improve communication skills (Kobak et al., 2017). After seeing all these benefits, it is no wonder many parents are eager to learn skills to develop better relationships with their teens.
The Teen Brain
Something super important to understand when trying to connect to your teen is the significant changes going on, not only in their body with puberty but also in their brain. During adolescence, the brain undergoes two significant changes, and this involves the reward-seeking and self-regulating brain regions becoming unbalanced (Kobak et al., 2017).
Knowing what we know about teenagers, you would be right to assume that the reward-seeking region is eager to seek out activities that will fulfill their need for rewards. Increases in reward-seeking occur as the reward-seeking region is very sensitive to the hormones involved in puberty. On the other hand, the ability of teens to self-regulate and control their impulses is limited. This is because the brain region that carries out these functions is still developing gradually into early adulthood.
As you can imagine, this need to seek rewards and the inability to self-regulate fully can lead to many risky behaviours and activities. Watching their adolescent engage in risky behaviours is highly stressful and challenging for parents.
The Challenge
Parents can be challenged by their teens’ propensity to engage in risky behaviours. Adolescents still require supervision and guidance because their brains are not fully developed yet. As a result, they may not always make the best choices. However, at the same time, there is a desire and need for teens to be independent and make some decisions on their own.
This dilemma means there is a delicate balance between being an involved or responsible parent and, at the same time, not being too involved. The task is to gauge what your teen realistically needs. As your teen ages, it makes sense to gradually reward them with more and more independence, as they are learning from more life experience and their brain is developing more.
While navigating this challenge, it is important for parents not to be too controlling. Parental over-control has been associated with increased risky behaviours and greater anxiety in adolescents (Miller et al., 2017). At the same time, parental control, when done with a careful ‘gauging’ of what the teen needs to be safe, has been shown to protect teens from adverse outcomes.
In essence, this creates a need to ‘dance’ and find a rhythm between allowing your teen freedom and knowing when to step in (Kobak et al., 2017). For example, when your teen engages in risky and problematic behaviours, it may be time to step in and exert more control. At the same time, if your teen shows positive decision-making and responsibility, implementing more supervision may be counter-productive.
Sensitive Attunement
What is sensitive attunement, you may ask? Well, try to think back to your teenage hood. Did your parents get you? Like, really get and understand you? This can be a really hard thing to achieve as a parent, but it is so important.
Sensitive attunement allows the parent to adjust and remain open to change in response to the teen’s needs (Kobak et al., 2017). This requires the parent to adapt and accommodate often. You may think, okay, that makes sense, but how do I achieve this?
Here are 3 broad initiatives that are essential to attunement:
1. Positive Engagement
Positive engagement involves creating a mutual and positive feeling of respect. This sets a tone for the relationship and allows the teen to view the parent as an available resource for advice, guidance, and comfort.
Positive engagement includes aspects of affection, positive family relationships, and self-worth. It is essential to model respectful attitudes, even in the face of challenging behaviour. It may also be important to pause and step back before responding.
2. Monitoring and Supervising
As stated earlier, monitoring allows for accurate knowledge of the teen’s behaviour, allowing the parent to make well-attuned decisions where they can effectively balance guidance with independence. Remember that careful dance between supervision and space.
3. Open Communication
Open communication involves the parent’s ability to observe and sensitively respond to the teen’s verbal and non-verbal cues. This involves adequate listening skills where the parent can attend, listen, empathize and respond.
Remember that your teen is having a difficult time in this period of brain development and life. Remember that their stressors may seem minuscule, but that is because you have had so much more life experience than them.
Another key aspect is the cooperative negotiation of independence-related conflicts. Listening to your teen’s side of the argument and making them feel like their values and opinions are being heard can lead to a much more collaborative and cooperative relationship.
A final note
Remember, parents, don’t be too hard on yourself. You would not want your teen to be hard on their selves, so do not model that for them. You will be your best parent when you are supporting yourself as well. Be sure to model a willingness to acknowledge mistakes while being compassionate and flexible. Parenting can never be perfect, but there is such a thing as ‘the good enough parent.’
References
Kobak, R., Abbott, C., Zisk, A., & Bounoua, N. (2017). Adapting to the changing needs of adolescents: Parenting practices and challenges to sensitive attunement. Current Opinion in Psychology, 15, 137–142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.02.018
McAdams, T. A., Rijsdijk, F. V., Narusyte, J., Ganiban, J. M., Reiss, D., Spotts, E., Neiderhiser, J. M., Lichtenstein, P., & Eley, T. C. (2016). Associations between the parent-child relationship and adolescent self-worth: A genetically informed study of twin parents and their adolescent children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 58(1), 46–54. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12600
Miller, K. F., Borelli, J. L., & Margolin, G. (2017). Parent–child attunement moderates the prospective link between parental Overcontrol and adolescent adjustment. Family Process, 57(3), 679–693. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12330
By Jena Hattle Mpsy
Edited by Dr. Jennifer Barbera C. Psych.
