Talking to your teenage daughter is not always easy. They often prefer friends over their parents, so building a trusting relationship where they want to talk to you is key.
Discovering how to talk to your teenage daughter can be very rewarding though possibly difficult to start. Try these tips to build a relationship where your daughter wants to talk to you about her life.
Consider Your Reaction When Your Daughter Comes to You to Talk:
How do you react when your daughter comes to talk to you about a difficult topic? Do you lead with grace and understanding or are you emotional and angry? Learning to talk to your daughter often starts with yourself. Does your daughter face the possibility of a lecture, yelling, or punishment if she comes to you or does she feel safe knowing her mother will be understanding? This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a time for punishment, but would suffering the natural consequences of her actions and learning experiences from her mother suit her better in the long run? Learn to keep your emotions in check when your daughter comes to talk to you and listen before reacting. Consider if your daughter is telling you about a mistake that she can learn from that warrants a loving, understanding response from you.
Go to Your Daughter in Her Own Environment:
We don’t want our daughters to only want to talk to us during difficult situations. The goal would be to talk to your daughter about fun things too! When she comes home and locks herself in her room for the night, take time to go up to her. Take her favorite snacks and meet her in her comfortable spot. Lean into what interest her in conversation. Don’t expect to talk about school or a sport/activity all the time. Ask your daughter to share her favorite music or teach you about a band that she loves. Allow her to vent about the stress she’s under. Let her direct the conversation and refrain from giving advice if it is not necessary. That often translates to being lectured to by teenagers.
Make Yourself Open to Talk to Your Daughter:
Moms are undoubtedly the busiest people on the planet. Our stress raises with every event added to our calendar and our daughters can feel that. Whenever possible, shield your daughter from the stress you are experiencing especially if it is in response to her schedule or activities. Daughters internalize their mother’s stress making it difficult to want to have other conversations. Try refraining from spending every car ride talking about the next event on your schedule. Or dinner conversations being about how stressed you are or using it as time to plan what’s coming next. Be intentional every day about leaving room for your daughter to talk to you, preferably not right after complaining about stress or your busy schedule. Reserve the first car ride after school, or dinner time, or the first 15 minutes after work for an agenda-free conversation with your daughter.
You might have some work to do in the area of talking to your teenage daughter, or you might be able to jump right into these tips. Either way, the effort put into learning how to talk to your teenage daughter to have a stronger trusting relationship with her will always be worth it.
For more ideas on how to connect with your daughter, check these 3 practical steps on how to connect with your daughter!
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