Have your rules changed during the pandemic? Up until now
bedtimes became haphazard. Now with schooling coming closer, how do you change
the rules mid-stream?
READ MORE: Laughter still the best medicine
Here are her tips for handling conflict with your teenager.
1. Take a problem-solving approach. This is not a win or
lose situation. Frame the conflict as an effort to solve a problem together,
enabling both you and your teen to look beyond the immediate disagreement.
Studies show that teens who learn to address conflict as a problem to be
solved, rather than a battle to be won or lost, tend to be happier later in
life and have better relationships.
2. Make space. Take a breather before responding. Between
your teen's provocation and your first response, there's a space that you can
enlarge and inhabit. Use the time to get yourself centered, calm, and directed
toward that problem-solving effort. If you allow the space to be too small, you
are more likely to be reactive and tense, determined to win or else hastening
to cave in to opposition. If you're in a rush to respond, you lose an
opportunity to create understanding and open up to solutions.
3. Be humble enough to backtrack. Rethink the issue to
see if you created the right solution. We all make mistakes. As a human being,
there's a chance you'll fail to enlarge that initial space and will react in
the heat of the moment. Catch yourself quickly, admit your fault, and
apologize. Then restart the discussion from the beginning. If both you and your
teen grow heated, don't give up. Ask for a timeout to calm down, and then try
again.
It takes persistence, patience, and willingness to look at a
variety of options to find a solution. But by practicing these skills, you'll
maintain a healthy parent-child relationship, and your teen will learn and
grow.