Connecting with Your Children

Connecting with your children means connecting through family activities, family meals, family conversations and family traditions whether it be connecting one-on-one with an individual child or with the entire family. Connecting means taking time to share your thoughts with them and listening to their thoughts in ways that tell them that you are interested in them and that you love them.

As parents, we need to strategize ways to stay connected with our adolescents and teens, because even though they don’t think they need us anymore, they do. Research consistently shows that the most protective factor for teens is having parent connections and parent involvement. Teens need to know that they are part of a family, whether that family is a single parent family, two-parent family or an extended family.

Staying connected includes having ongoing conversations about tough topics which is essential to helping our children make the right choices, which, in turn, will help keep them safe. But connecting does more than just keep adolescents and teens out of danger; it makes them happier and healthier. “It is not your teen’s job to say what connections and guidance he or she needs. Teens often seem to be asking for no connection and no guidance at all. But that is not what they really need or want” (Quote by Dr. David Walsh).

Parents often shy away from connecting with teens because teens send plenty of signals to back off. One way to connect with your children is to ask them about what they think. Kids may avoid questions about what they are up to and about how they feel, but seem to respond if an adult sincerely wants to know what they think. Those questions can open up conversations that can lead to better connections.