As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you play a vital role in your child’s/teen’s success. There are intentional ways to grow a healthy parent-child/teen relationship while building essential listening skills in your child/teen.

Your child’s/teen’s success depends upon their ability to listen and understand what you and others are communicating. Listening skills can support your child’s/teen’s ability to engage in healthy relationships, focus, and learn. For example, children/teens must listen to their teacher if they follow directions and successfully navigate expectations at school. Not surprisingly, better listening skills are associated with school success.

Children/Teens ages 11-14 are carving out their identity, and their measuring stick is often their peers’ opinions and approval. They come to better understand themselves through interactions with you, their teachers, and their peers. This is a critical time to teach and practice listening skills.

However, everyone encounters difficulties in listening. With screens, such as mobile devices, captivating children and teens for hours each day, it's easy to overlook opportunities to engage with your child or teen and practice listening skills. Effective listening involves utilizing crucial skills such as impulse control, focused attention, empathy, and both nonverbal and verbal communication.

For parents or those in a parenting role, the key to many challenges, like building essential listening skills, is finding ways to communicate to meet your and your child’s/teen’s needs. The steps below include specific and practical strategies to prepare you for growing this vital skill.

Whether your eleven-year-old continues to play video games when you’ve told them screen time is over, or your fourteen-year-old daydreams during the teacher’s instructions and does not know how to do their homework, establishing regular ways to practice listening skills can prepare your child/teen for family, school, and life success.

Today, in the short term, teaching skills to listen can create

● greater opportunities for connection, cooperation, and enjoyment

● trust in each other that you have the competence to manage your relationships and responsibilities

● a sense of well-being and motivation to engage

● language and literacy fluency

Tomorrow, in the long term, working on effective listening skills with your child/teen

● develops a sense of safety, security, and a belief in self

● builds skills in self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making

● deepens family trust and intimacy

This five-step process helps you and your child/teen cultivate effective listening skills, a critical life skill. The same process can also address other parenting issues (learn more about it)[1] .

Tip: These steps are best done when you and your child/teen are not tired or in a rush.

Tip: Intentional communication[2] and healthy parenting relationships[3] will support these steps.

You can get your child/teen thinking about listening skills by asking open-ended questions. You’ll help prompt your child’s/teen’s thinking. You’ll also better understand their thoughts,...

As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you play a vital role in your child’s/teen’s success. There are intentional ways to grow a healthy parent-child relationship. Teaching your child/teen to repair harm is an excellent opportunity.

Your support in growing the skill of repairing harm can help your child/teen develop social awareness -- “the ability to understand the perspectives of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and contexts.”^1 They’ll develop relationship skills as they learn how to mend hurt feelings in friendships or with coaches, teachers, and caregivers. They’ll also exercise responsible decision making, or “the ability to make caring and constructive choices about personal behavior and social interactions across diverse situations,” learning that their choices cause a reaction or outcome which can harm others or themselves.”^1 These skills grow your child’s/teen’s sense of responsibility, while improving your relationship.

Some parents and those in a parenting role feel that if they do not impose punishments, their child/teen will not understand that their behavior is inappropriate. When a child/teen is punished, they often feel scared, humiliated, and hurt. This overwhelming fear or hurt impacts their relationship with you while failing to teach them the appropriate constructive behavior and build a skill. Your child/teen will likely miss the lesson you want to emphasize and feel unsafe.

Punishment often leads to more poor choices. A vicious cycle begins in which a child/teen feels bad about themselves and repeats the behaviors that are expected of a “bad child.” Parents and those in a parenting role need to learn to actively support their child/teen in repairing harm to interrupt this cycle.

Children/teens ages 11-14 will naturally make mistakes, test limits, and break rules. And when they do, they only consider their impulses and desires and not how they might impact you or others. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for decision making and reasoning, fully develops once your child/teen is in their mid-twenties, so it is natural for children/teens to forget to pause before acting. Children/Teens require support and follow-through from parents and those in a parenting role to make things better. They need to understand that they always have another chance to repair harm. This skill is developed over time and requires a lot of practice.

Research confirms that children/teens are developing higher-order thinking skills like consequential thinking and linking cause to effect.^2 This directly impacts their school success and ability to take responsibility for their actions as they grow. Children/Teens need the guidance and support of caring adults to learn these skills.

Guidance on repairing harm can be challenging for many parents and those in a parenting role.^3 Instead of a quick, reflexive response like yelling, scolding, or punishing, repairing harm takes time, follow-through, and thoughtful consideration. Yet, it can become the most powerful teaching opportunity for your child/teen as they learn to take responsibility for their actions and understand how their choices impact others. As you utilize these teachable moments, your relationship with your child/teen will be enriched. The steps below include specific, practical strategies along with effective conversation starters.

When your eleven-year-old hides a failed test, your thirteen-year-old lies about going to a friend’s house without parental supervision, or your fourteen-year-old verbally fights with a neighbor, these situations are opportunities to provide guidance for repairing harm.

Today, in the short term, guidance for repairing harm can create

● a sense of confidence that you can help your child/teen heal hurt...

As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you play a vital role in your child’s/teen’s success. There are intentional ways to grow a healthy parent-child/teen relationship and ensure that your child/teen develops a healthy relationship with technology.

Technology use has become essential to your child’s/teen’s life and learning in school. It has the potential to play a role in:

● social and emotional development[1]

● language development

● academic learning

● connection to friends, family, and others

● empathy and understanding of others

● imagination

● ability to choose healthy behaviors (preventing high-risk behaviors and unhealthy choices)

Children/teens ages 11-14 are at the very beginning of their teen years and experiencing dramatic shifts with their bodies and emotions, entering puberty full force by age 11. Additionally, they’ll experiment with and learn social skills through forging and prioritizing friendships and peer opinions. They will create more independent relationships with teachers, coaches, and you while beginning or deepening their involvement in extracurricular activities like sports, music, or others.

Yet, technology can pose challenges. Most parents say parenting is more challenging than twenty years ago, and most point to technology as the primary reason.^1 71% of parents with children under 12 said they worry that their children spend too much time on screens. The same number of parents said they fear smartphones could harm their children/teens. Let’s take a deeper look at the screen time habits of this age group:^2

- 11-12-year-olds are on screens an average of five and a half hours per day, and 13-14-year-olds are on screens an average of eight and a half hours per day. Most of this screen time is spent on online video viewing accounts (with a smaller amount viewing YouTube);*

- Boys tend to be on screens longer than girls. ^2

- 38% of 11 and 12-year-olds are on social media.

Children and teens are highly stimulated by technology, and this is often where they connect with friends, so it can become a source of conflict when they need to disconnect and can take away time from family being together and growing intimate connections. Indeed, addiction can be a real threat as those jolts of happy hormones (dopamine) are fueled; infinite scrolling is the norm on social media, and games are programmed to keep them perpetually engaged. Daily, devices can take time away from other critical pursuits for their physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development, such as reading, playing outdoors, unstructured creative time, friend time, homework, and more. The kinds of content that a child/teen can view or stumble into online can range from mildly irritating to disturbing and dangerous, whether it involves repeated consumer messages, cartoon violence, graphic violence, or even pornography. Additionally, children and teens can encounter social aggression and bullying online and through social media, which can hurt uniquely since they can be more publicly exposed than most in-person incidents.

We know that growing a healthy relationship with technology requires regular conversations and a commitment from the whole family to become intentional about their use of technology, including appropriate boundaries and safety practices. Approach this topic with empathy and recognize that the devices and apps are designed to make the...