Disclosure: I received complimentary products to facilitate this post. All opinions are my own.
If you're a parent of a young child, it's important to lay the foundation for having a good dialogue with your kids later. You can do this by really listening to them, engaging them in conversation at their level, and making it a fun, pleasant experience for them.
Even with a solid foundation, though, parents may find that their teenager's only responses are "fine" or "whatever" - or even a complete lack of verbal responses, with shrugs, nods, and eye rolls. Then what?
Get Your Teenager Talking: Everything You Need to Spark Meaningful Conversations isn't going to be a fix for deeply rooted relationship problems. However, it can help inspire true conversations where there isn't any. With 180 starters, every parent is bound to find something that will work, even if not all of the prompts will. I'd like to share a few tips from the book, but I encourage you to check it out for more.
Don't ask yes or no questions. It's just inviting a one-word response.
Don't ask dull questions. If you're bored asking, they'll be bored answering.
Notice what your kids are into, and ask about that.
The starters in the book aren't just a one-sentence discussion. It's even more helpful, because each topic has several follow-up suggestions, additions to the original question, and hints on the insight you'll get from the answers. It's an easy way to make it less a single Q&A and more a true conversation.
No comments:
Post a Comment