Colman Noctor: How to offer support to your teenager without piling on the pressure

Communicating with teenagers is challenging, but slight shifts in approach can make a big difference

Teenagers often feel over-controlled or hemmed in by parental expectations and can resist being ‘told’ to do something.

Communicating with teenagers can feel like navigating a minefield — one wrong word and the conversation shuts down. In a recent email, a parent requested some ‘practical tips’ on communicating with teenagers. The reader, who was struggling with their teenager, asked ‘Tell me what to say’.

The first thing to keep in mind is to ‘listen more and fix less’. This approach may seem counterintuitive to parents because, given our wealth of life experience, we often have an inbuilt urge to ‘fix’ our children’s problems. We can sometimes see helping our children learn from the mistakes and experiences we've made as fundamental to our parenting role. However, one of the most common mistakes parents make is trying to solve their teen’s problems instead of simply listening.