Life and styleHow to talk so teens will listen
Adolescence doesn't have to be hell for parents or teenagers, say bestselling authors Elaine Mazlish and Adele Faber. The key? Knowing how to talk so they listen, and listen so they talk'At 12, my daughter would come home from a party and say, 'Mum, Louisa was smoking, isn't that terrible!' But by 13 she'd changed. She took up with these very wild twin girls, who smoked dope and hitched rides at night. They were very persuasive. My daughter started smoking and almost immediately we weren't a big part of the picture anymore," says Elaine Mazlish, co-author with Adele Faber of How to Talk So Teens Will Listen, and Listen So Teens Will Talk, published here this summer. "The wild twins were taking over and I was afraid for my daughter's safety."
Already famous for their bestselling book How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk, the pair found that they were getting more and more letters from distressed parents of teenagers. "It gets harder as kids get older and it is even more difficult today than it was when we were raising kids," says Faber, a mother of three and grandmother of seven.
Faber was born into a family of Russian immigrants. Her parents barely spoke English and came from a background of deprivation and hunger. While hugely proud of their American-educated children, they were far too busy clothing and feeding them and keeping them safe (no roller skates, no bikes) to be much concerned with their internal life. Faber says: "I had a huge hunger for somebody to listen to me, to hear me."
When she became a mother herself, she says, she realised, "My parents just wanted to ensure that I never suffered the deprivation they had suffered. And I wanted to ensure that my children never suffered the [emotional] deprivation I suffered as a well-fed, well-cared-for American child."
Which is why she is so passionate about her work, particularly one of the core skills she and Mazlish teach: how to really listen. This is vital in the teenage years when children are moving out into the world and the influence of family is declining. If we want to know what is going on in our children's lives and to continue to pass on our values, we have to keep the communication channels open - and that is what the simple (though not necessarily easy) skills taught in this book (and the pair's earlier books) aim to help us to do.
Mazlish had a quite different upbringing from Faber. The only child of attentive parents and resident grandparents, she says, "I had truly the happiest childhood. I was never alone. I was never hit, rarely kept in. It was very respectful." As a result when she had her own three children she felt she knew naturally how to be a good parent: "I didn't need parenting experts!"
Faber, however, had been a teacher for some years before having her own kids and had always felt that there was something missing from her (generally very successful) communication with children. So when the child psychologist Haim Ginott ran a course in her area, she went along - and dragged her reluctant friend Mazlish with her.
"Did I need these skills?" says Mazlish, "Of course I did - especially with a lippy 13-year-old. Let's face it, these skills are not natural ... If someone is expressing something you really don't like, the natural thing is to push it away. For instance your child is upset. She says she hates her new haircut. The natural thing to do is to say 'It's fine, come on, let's do something else.' It is not natural to say 'You're really upset about that haircut.'" But that is exactly what Faber and Mazlish believe we should say.
"Feelings are never right or wrong," says Faber, "they just are. Only actions need to be limited. Feelings should always be accepted." So if your teenager is in a state, don't jump in with judgement, solution or even comfort, the authors say: show you are really listening ("ah"/"I see") and perhaps acknowledge how they feel ("he really hurt you") and wait. If he or she feels genuinely understood, the chances are your teenager will find their own solution - as they need to learn to do as they become adults.
One story in the book (which relies on true stories, though with changed names and circumstances) shows what can happen if you manage to bite your tongue: Jim's son has a part-time job and returns one Saturday in a foul mood, cursing his boss. He slams his backpack down and says that the boss had asked him the week before if he could do overtime this weekend and he'd replied, "Maybe". Arriving at work this Saturday willing to do the extra hours, he found that the boss had given the work to someone else.
Jim's natural reaction is to tell him to stop swearing and grow up: "What did you expect? How's a man supposed to run a business with an employee who says 'maybe' he'll work?!" Instead the conversation goes like this:
Jim: "Uh-huh."
Son (still angry): "I've got a life besides this job you know!"
Jim thinks: "This isn't working" - but manages to say nothing.
After a while his son suddenly says, "I guess ... I should've called him when I got home and not left him hanging."
"When my first daughter was a teenager she used to make me so angry," says Mazlish, "She was very unreliable where time was concerned. She was supposed to be home and she wasn't, and she used to be so rude. She'd call me names and it was very hard not to call her names back. I had to learn to express myself with anger without insult." Most of the skills she teaches, Mazlish says, she now does without thinking, but this one she still has to work on consciously.
"You can only be a little bit nicer than you feel," says Faber, "or you may blow." So parents need to express their emotions without damaging their teenager's (often fragile) self-esteem. Instead of "You are so rude. When will you ever learn? ... And you think I'm going to help you now?!" You might say: "When you speak to me like that it makes me so angry I find it impossible to be helpful. I expect you to rephrase that."
The cartoons in the book, the authors admit, are simplistic: "Most issues are not resolved in four panels!" Change does take time, but it is remarkable how quickly it begins if you can make these skills your own. "These are not techniques to manipulate behaviour," the authors stress, "they are skills to create a positive emotional environment." One in which everyone feels they can express themselves and know they will be heard - an atmosphere of mutual respect that is particularly important at a time when children are trying to turn into adults.
If you can create such a family from the early years, you may escape the later traumas. "I don't want to sound smug," says Faber, "my kids didn't have a teenage explosion and I really enjoyed their teens." But both authors insist, "It is never, never too late to start ... We know lots of parents of teenagers and even twentysomethings who have turned their relationships around."
So what if your teenager is out of line? Punishment is not the answer. It interferes with your teenager taking responsibility, says Mazlish. Having been shouted at and punished, they are so full of resentment that they can't think about what they have done and why it matters.
"When our daughter came in late," says Mazlish, "I didn't yell, 'That's it, you're grounded.' I said, 'When you're not back, Dad and I get very worried.'" Of course, you can't go on saying that. If the behaviour continues it's time for problem solving - sitting down together and finding ways to meet as many of both parties needs as possible (teenagers will take account of parents' views when they know their own are being considered) and if that still fails - action.
In the case of the stop-out teenager, you might explain that you have had too many late nights worrying about her, so this weekend you need a break - so she will need to be at home. Beyond that, she has to find a way to avoid you having to worry and then she can go out again. This may sound like grounding, but it is different because it is not imposed from above in the same way, says Mazlish, "It is more like standing next to the child and expecting better of them."
Some parents may be impatient with all the discussion of how to handle minor infractions rather than getting straight to the big teenage issues (sex, drugs etc) but Mazlish says, "We deliberately put that off until the final chapter, because how we deal with the small stuff determines our ability to deal with the big stuff. If a teenager thinks he'll be shouted at, punished or lectured, he isn't going to tell you anything. He needs to feel safe to talk. Then you will get the chance to make your influence felt."
So what of Mazlish's 13-year-old daughter with the wild friends? She was tempted to ban her from seeing them and keep her in at weekends, but that would probably have led to lying and a breakdown of trust.
"So we did the opposite," Mazlish says, "We invited the twins over to dinner every Saturday night. We stocked the fridge and if the three of them wanted to go somewhere my husband would drive them. We didn't go out at the weekend for a year." By then, their daughter had moved on to other (safer) friends - and she stayed on the rails.
And it wasn't just Mazlish's family who benefited. A couple of decades later, Mazlish had just finished a parenting lecture when "a young woman came up to me. It was one of the twins, now the mother of four boys, and she told me how much it had meant to her to spend those evenings in our home."
· How to Talk So Teens Will Listen and Listen So Teens Will Talk, by Elaine Mazlish and Adele Faber is published by Piccadilly Press at £10.99
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