I originally wrote this post two years ago with 3 conversation starters, but I want to revisit and add a couple of conversations that I believe will be helpful. So buckle up, school is here!
It is that back-to-school time of the year again!
I can hear the cheers and tears from the Teen Life office. Whether you are looking forward to getting back to a routine, wondering how your baby has grown into a high school senior, or are trying to figure out how your youth ministry is going to hold up against football season – you have a role to play in this upcoming school year!
Before teenagers start back at their middle or high schools, or the graduates leave home to start their college adventures, take time to have bold, encouraging conversations! You have an opportunity to help students set goals and think about where they want to be at the end of this 2018-2019 school year.
By having healthy conversations (check out this blog post), this school year can get off to a great start from the very first day! Here are some goals to help teenagers think about as they start school:
Grades
Grades are important. They help you graduate high school and get scholarships for college. They are a reflection of what you have learned and how hard you have worked at a particular subject.
However, grades don’t define your student or their worth. Students will put pressure on themselves about what kind of grades they should be making before you say a word. Instead of starting out the school year with a lecture about responsibility, finishing homework before video games, or the consequences for poor test grades, ask your student these questions:
What do you want your grades to look like at the end of this school year?
If you improved your grades and school work from last year, what would that look like?
How can I help you succeed this school year?
If you allow them to set their own goals, they will take more ownership in their school work. Instead of working toward your expectation, they will be stepping up to the standards they set for themselves – what better lesson could you teach a teenager? Help them set realistic goals and hold them accountable throughout the year with {friendly} reminders. Don’t expect your B student to make a 4.0 this school year, but encourage them to improve and continue to grow!
Friends
As you know, friends and peers have a huge influence during teenage years. They can impact grades, decisions, activities and attitude. While they are old enough to choose their own friends, as the adult, it is okay for you guide them in these choices. When it comes to friendships they have at school, start a conversation by asking these questions:
What relationship last year provided the most encouragement?
How do your friendships impact your performance at school or in extracurriculars?
Are their any relationships that provided drama or stress? What can you do to make that relationship healthier?
They probably aren’t going to react well if you ban them from hanging out with their best friend. But maybe you can open up the door for healthy conversation if you ask them to share first. Teenagers are smarter than we often give them credit for! If they are in an unhealthy relationship, let them talk through what that looks like and what they could do to either get rid of the friendship or set up healthier boundaries.
Extracurriculars
It seems like today’s teenagers are busier than ever. Not only are they expected to go to school during the week and church on the weekends, but they also have to be involved in multiple extracurriculars, join school clubs and complete crazy amounts of service hours.
That is what colleges expect, right?
Extracurriculars are good and character building, but it is important for students to set goals not only on how to better themselves through these activities, but also how to find margin and rest in the midst of their busy schedules. Especially if you are talking to a teenager who is involved in multiple sports, activities or volunteer opportunities, encourage them to set healthy goals by asking these questions:
How many extracurriculars do you think you’ll have time for with school and other responsibilities?
How can you improve and use these experiences to help you in the future?
What can you do to make time for rest, friends and fun?
Have them prioritize their activities – there may be some new opportunities that arise this year, but if it passes what they can handle, it is not worth taking it on. They are teenagers, but they are still allowed to have fun! Please don’t allow your teenager to live like an adult. Help them take advantage of the freedom and fun that comes with adolescence. If they feel like they need to give up an activity to better balance their time, help them make the decision that is best for them (even if it means giving up that sport you love).
Physical, Mental, & Spiritual Health
Coming off the last conversation, it is so important for teenagers to take care of themselves! While culture is talking more about mental health, we cannot ignore it in our homes, churches or schools!
Please make sure you are having these conversations with your teen. Are they aware of signs of depression or suicide in themselves or friends? Are they motivated to improve in any of these areas? This conversation could be touchy or emotional, and is really three conversations, but don’t shy away from it! Start with these questions:
Do you feel like you have someone you can talk to about health? Especially mental and spiritual health? Who is that person?
What would you do if a friend came to you with a health concern?
What could you do this school year to improve in each of these areas? How could we help you accomplish your goals?
Be willing to ask your teen about the current state of their physical, mental, and spiritual health. Do they want to change anything? How can you help? Can you get them a gym membership or cook healthier meals? Could you help them seek the guidance of a counselor? Does one of their friends need a trusted adult to talk to? Can you start a family Bible Study? Consider what they need for themselves and from you.
Boundaries
Teenagers are trying to find identity and values at this phase of life. As the adults in their lives, it is our job to guide and teach while also giving them a safe space to try and sometimes fail. Teens won’t be perfect – I wasn’t at that age and definitely still make plenty of mistakes! However, we can help them set some boundaries in place to protect and direct as they gain the confidence and understand they need to truly succeed.
Maybe boundaries look like a curfew, or a time restraint on social media or Netflix. Maybe they want to limit how often they hang out with a certain friend or which event they want to avoid. Let them start the conversation and try not to jump in at the beginning with what you think is best. Here are a few questions to get this final conversation started:
What personal boundaries would help you succeed this school year?
How likely are you to say, “No!” when someone crosses your boundaries?
How do you think the boundaries we have set could be helpful? Are their any boundaries you have concerns about?
The beginning of school is a great time to talk about boundaries and expectations for the school year. Some rules will change over the years, and some will stay consistent. Some teenagers will even have intelligent boundaries that they want to set for themselves – give them that opportunity!
You have the power and the opportunity to help teenagers see their future and set goals to reach it. Ask good questions, listen with empathy and work together to set realistic goals that will allow them to not only enjoy but also take advantage of their teenage years. These are great conversations to have at the beginning of school, but we also encourage you to revisit these topics – ask how they are doing with their goals and if anything has changed. This is just a starting place!!
Are you willing to have these conversations? Share what goals the teenagers you talk to set! How will you help hold them accountable?
Karlie Duke was in one of Teen Life’s original support groups and now is our Marketing & Development Director. She is passionate about encouraging students to live better stories.
Talking to teens about love and relationships is awkward. They have questions, they say inappropriate things to test boundaries, they may have more experience than they should, they may witness unhealthy relationships at home, they may not even know what they are feeling. Relationships in the teenage years are difficult, and they need trusted adults to help them navigate how to have a healthy relationship. Teens who have relationships in high school are beginning to build the foundation for which they will base future relationships, so we need to do our best to set them up for success by remembering how emotional teens are and how hard learning to be in a relationship was for all of us.
Adults forget (or suppress) what it was like to be a hormonal teenager.
Let’s face it, hormones are a real struggle. They literally change a teen overnight and daily thereafter. There is a heightened sense of being on an emotional roller coaster, seemingly without end. As adults, we suppress the memories of those out of control feelings and place pressure on teens to feel differently when they begin talking about relationships. Our teenagers are in a constant state of change, and we need to give space for them to feel what they are feeling when they feel something. Teens trust adults who are willing to hear them out and listen to their reasonings for their relationships. We should assist teens in navigating their feelings and help them understand the many aspects that come with being in a healthy relationship.
Relationships are hard. No matter the age.
Since I have journeyed into young adulthood, I have found it so incredibly easy to pretend like I know how to have a completely healthy and ‘normal’ relationship. Here’s the thing though: that is so not true. Adults (me included) like to pretend that things are better and perfect, but this lie can be so damaging when talking to teens. Teens are more responsive when they hear that an adult they respect has struggled or still struggles with creating healthy relationships. By admitting that relationships are difficult no matter how old we get, teens are able to make more informed decisions for their own lives. They can learn from our mistakes and our successes. Most of the teens we work with are coming from homes that do not have a model of what a healthy relationship looks like which can lead them to making some risky choices. Trusted adults should be the ones who model what is healthy and then allow teens to ask questions about relationships (with no judgement), no matter how awkward they may be.
As adults, I believe it is important to be open and honest about how hard relationships are. Teens feel so out of place as they attempt to define who they are and the best way to support them through figuring out relationships is to simply give them space to ask questions. We can also ask these questions of them:
What do you like about the person you are with?
Do you have boundaries that have been shared?
What are some things you like to do together?
What do you expect out of your relationship?
Shelbie Fowler is currently a volunteer for Teen Life and has her Masters in Family Studies. She is passionate about being an advocate for family life education in order to grow families stronger.
Middle school and high school years are hard. They are full of uncertainty – about where to sit at lunch, why their bodies are changing, who likes them, and how to navigate these awkward teen years. And what about parenting?! It is full of questioning your own parenting tactics and their success on top of wondering if you can trust anything that is coming from that child’s mouth. Take all of these insecurities, add a jaded filter, and you have a complete and utter mess.
What do I mean by a jaded filter? Everyone comes into a situation with a set perspective (or filter). We refer to rose colored glasses. We ask if people see the glass as half empty or half full. We bring our backgrounds, ideas, past experiences, optimism, pessimism, trust issues, and more into every single conversation.
And that can change everything.
Recently, our staff went to a full-day training where the speaker showed this YouTube video. Hopefully you have seen The Sound of Music and won’t get the wrong idea after watching this video, but take a look at the power of perspective and background:
If you have seen The Sound of Music, you know that it is the opposite of a horror movie. But when you change the background music and take scenes out of context, it can take a completely different tone.
The same is true of our conversations. If we have in our mind that a conversation is going to be negative, we will see it through that light. If we pull every bad interaction out of context, we will only see that relationship through that lens. But our filters also have the power to improve situations – like if we assumed the best before starting a discussion. Or remembering all the good things that our teenagers have done instead of focusing on the bad.
This is a small shift, but it is crucial to our relationships, especially if we want to be good listeners. Here are a few tips on how to change our conversation filters:
Discover your current filter. First, you have to be honest and confront your own perspective. Before we can change our filter, we have to face the current one. Take a few minutes to think about past conversations. Identify what has affected your conversations, interactions and relationships. These questions are a good place to start:
Are you putting unfair expectations on a conversation? Where do these expectations come from?
Is there an unrelated, bad experience from earlier in the day that could affect a confrontation with your teen?
Address your teen’s filter. Just like you are coming into the conversation with a filter, so is your teenager. Maybe something happened last week that has made them angry at you. Maybe something happened at school to put them on the defensive. Maybe a different adult relationship has made them distrustful. In order to have a neutral discussion, you also have to address their filter. Ask them similar questions as the ones above. Clear the air and be ready to listen in order to find out about their perspective.
Reset both filters. Now that you are aware that you both have filters, the trick is to reset and change your filter to be less biased and more productive. We have to consciously set aside our filters to be open to the conversation in front of us. We also have to help teenagers set aside their filters as well. Try some of these tactics before your next conversation:
Be open and address that there could be something that is affecting the conversation.
Apologize if there is something that happened earlier to impact their filter.
Ask how your teen’s day has been before you jump into a conversation.
Ask, “What would it take to go into a conversation without any preconceived notions, ideas or judgements?”
Remember the things you love about each other before starting the discussion – focus on the good memories!
Let’s change our filters and have positive conversations with teens – no more horror filters, disrespect filters, anger filters, or disappointment filters. Each interaction can be a fresh start and a learning experience. How have you seen filters impact your own conversations? What others tactics can we use to change our filters? Share your ideas!!
Karlie Duke was in one of Teen Life’s original support groups and now is our Communications Director. She is passionate about encouraging students to live better stories.
Teenagers are pushed to face their fears and overcome them all the time. They fear failure, rejection, stress, the unknown, and so many other things. As adults, our job is to help them give voice to their fear and then figure out how they can find courage in the face of difficult times. But what happens when fear is deadly, random, and unpredictable? How do we respond to the understandable fear after a school shooting?
Fear cannot be ignored.
We see fear of bullies, failing a test, heights, being left, parent’s divorcing, humiliation, missing the shot, letting people down, getting sick. And now teenagers have to add the fear of getting attacked at school? We have to add the fear of our children not coming home at the end of the day?
It isn’t fair. It doesn’t make sense. But it is real and it is something that needs to be addressed.
While we do not have any answers for the tragedies that are taking place all over our country, here are a few ways that we can help combat fear.
Be ready for the crisis.
It is easy to react after a tragedy occurs. Once something horrible happens, we look for answers and start having conversations. But what if we had already started these conversations? What if the ground work was already laid so that when something horrible happened, we were prepared?
It is important to talk to teenagers and kids about what is going on – in their school, city and country. They know something is wrong. They can read adults, and most have access to social media or the internet where they are probably getting more details than you would see on the evening news. We can’t avoid fear and difficult situations that happen across the country. So we need to start having conversations today. Develop a relationship with your student where you can have difficult conversations all the time. That will make these hard topics more manageable.
Here are a few tips to being ready for conversations:
Be shock proof: Remain calm when talking to your teens. Be genuine, but don’t let your own fear color the conversation.
Ask good questions: Resist the urge to lecture, but instead ask questions about what they have heard and how they are feeling.
Keep it appropriate: Conversations are important, but only if they are helpful. Don’t scare or over-share if your kids aren’t ready for it.
Be part of the solution: Get involved. Use the resources of schools and organizations, but don’t put all the responsibility on others.
Know your resources.
Speaking of being ready for a crisis…this is crucial! When something happens, you don’t have to walk through it by yourself – utilize the resources in your community, school and church. Maybe a resource is as simple as having another trusted adult on call if your teen would rather talk to someone outside of your house. Or be prepared if your child wants to talk to a counselor (whether it be their school counselor or another professional). Ask your church and school what resources are available – is there a series coming up that will address things like school shootings? Are support groups available on their campus? Is there an article or podcast that gives a different perspective?
There are so many resources available, and it will be incredibly helpful if you already know where to look first. Here are a few places we recommend:
Youth Specialties Blog: While these blogs are aimed at youth workers, they are a great resources to parents as well!
Teen Life: I may be a little biased, but Teen Life offers lots of great resources from our blog and podcast to Support Groups on school campuses.
Google: Earlier this week, someone asked us for an online resource after the Parkland shooting and by searching “how to have conversation with child about school shooting,” I found several great options!
Preventative Resources: Use resources like Michele Borba’sbook or blog to talk about healthy things kids need to focus on. Start with this blog post!
Local Resources: Know what organizations are in your area! The Warm Place and Real Help For Real Life are two in Fort Worth but do some research around you.
Believe your kids.
It is so important to believe your kids, especially in times of fear and trial. I think sometimes we dismiss students as being dramatic or exaggerating. While teens can be dramatic, and they can exaggerate some details, is it worth not believing them if they are being completely truthful?
In the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, several students said that they weren’t surprised by the identity of the shooter. They had always joked that he would shoot the school. How terrible is that? Not only that they perceived the danger, but that they either didn’t share their concerns with adults or those adults didn’t take them seriously.
We have to give our teens the benefit of the doubt. If they express worry about a classmate or friend (whether that worry is about violence or suicide or depression), we need to listen. Validate what they are seeing, teach them how to get help and how to find resources for their peers.
Fear is all around us, and it is not something that is going away, especially with the digital world we live in today. Your teenagers are more aware of what is going on around the world than we ever were. They probably knew about the Florida school shooting before you did. Instead of hiding from fear, let’s learn how to cope, have positive conversations, and find helpful resources.
What are some resources you have found in times of tragedy? How have you helped teens combat fear?
Karlie Duke was in one of Teen Life’s original support groups and now is our Communications Director. She is passionate about encouraging students to live better stories.
I have worked with teenagers now for over a decade. In that time, there have been significant changes in environment, social interaction, and educational expectations, but one thing has remained. Teenagers generally don’t feel they can talk to their parents.
I’m coming from a place where I sit in groups with teenagers who are strangers to me and within 30 minutes of talking to them can get them to share who the most important person in their life is and why. I’m writing this not as the parent of a teen but as someone who works with teens, so this is also for any youth worker that wants their conversation to get better. I’m hopeful that this helps you, and I’m also hopeful it helps me as I start to create an environment for conversation with my elementary school kids that will carry into their teen years – because we all know if I wait, it’ll only get harder.
In fact, today I was sitting in a group that has been meeting sporadically for about 12 weeks. One of the students brought up the difficulty she is having talking to her dad. There are lots of things involved with this situation, but I believe if her dad read these tips, he could learn so much more about his own daughter.
With that in mind here are the tips I have found to be helpful, and I hope you can apply to your relationship with your teen as well.
Talk less.
As a parent, it is difficult not to fill the silence. Resist this urge. In our training for group facilitators, we teach that counting to at least 10 (counting to 30 is better) when silence begins can help us wait long enough before assuming the other person is done talking. With kids, they are often just processing out loud, something most adults have decided needs to be internally. For them, it is normal to say out loud what they are thinking because they are trying it out. Let them. The fact is, they will become uncomfortable too and will likely say something else to fill the silence.
Really listen.
Deciding at the beginning of a conversation this is about them, puts you in a position of listening rather then looking for what is wrong and correcting, or even worse, that there is a problem when none actually exists. Listen just to hear, listen to learn, listen to be able to repeat back. Make an intentional decision to not be thinking about how to answer or how to tell them what they should be thinking or doing instead. There is a stage of life for that, but it should mainly apply to kids under 9 years old.
Ask great questions.
You can decide to do the others, but asking good questions is a skill – asking questions that invite more information, that don’t put them on the defensive and that show empathy are key and vital to getting the most out of your teen. Here are some suggestions to get you thinking:
What bothered you about feeling that way?
Have you ever thought that before?
What do you think will happen if you do that?
How do you think this might affect your future (or those around you)?
These are just some ideas to get you thinking, but the point here is to ask open-ended, inviting questions without making assumptions or projecting your bias onto the student you are working with.
Don’t correct unless safety is a concern.
This is so hard because we as parents tend to think that this is our full time job, or maybe that’s just me. It is easy to feel that if we don’t correct or advise in a situation with a kid, we are depriving them of a learning opportunity or wasting a teachable moment. What if the teachable moment happened without us saying anything? As I mentioned above, at this age, kids are trying things out. Allowing this in a safe way actually helps them learn better.
Here’s how I would suggest using this…
Simply decide to allow a whole conversation to happen without correcting, unless it is something dangerous. It will be hard, but do it. Decide to do this on a regular basis, but you have to realize how often that makes sense – once a week, twice a month, 5 days a week. Whatever it is, allow your conversation to be driven by your child or the teen you’re working with without any advice or correcting on your part (don’t worry too much, the odds of having the same conversation again are good). The value you will gain by doing this will open doors you never knew existed as they feel more comfortable sharing because they won’t feel so judged.
Create a safe environment.
One of the best things I have ever heard was a story about a father who told his kids that the old truck sitting out by the barn that didn’t run was a “safe zone.” It was the one place they could have conversations and tell him anything without any punishment. Consequences sometimes are unavoidable but he committed to no punishment. They knew that anytime they needed to tell something they feared they would be grounded for or worse, their cell phone would get taken away, they could tell him in that old truck.
You can do this too. Declare a safe zone in or around your house. At our house, right now, it is simply that my kids can tell me, “I need to tell you something but I don’t want to get in trouble for it.” I have given them permission to share anything because I would rather be in the loop than be seen as the enemy when it comes to decisions that affect character and life lessons my kids experience.
Reassure them about everything.
This is an extension of the listening tip. If you really are listening, you will hear opportunities to come back to and reassure them that you are there for them. A simple recognition of their interest or a question about a relationship they told you about can help them know that you truly care. This isn’t about you, so you can’t measure this based on how many times you think is enough. You have to keep reassuring until they tell you to stop or until that season has passed and it is no longer an issue.
If you work with teens, knowing how to get more out of conversations is vital to their success. Maybe you have some better ideas. Take a minute to share them below. We love hearing from you and learning together.
Ricky Lewis is our Executive Director and has been with us since the beginning. As a father of 4, he seeks to help parents and their kids Live Life Better.
