Do You Know How To Negotiate With Your Teenage Son?

Adolescence is a stage characterized as rebellious. Children go through a series of hormonal changes, in addition to carrying out an intense search for their own identity. All this causes them to desire independence, to believe that their parents do not understand them and that they can control their life. For this reason, at this very delicate stage it is necessary to know how to negotiate with your adolescent son.

Negotiating with your teenager will not only lead to fewer headaches, but it will also help make him feel treated like an adult. This will encourage you to comply with the agreements you agree to, to speak and resolve difficult situations that arise. But most of all, this will help you feel loved.

At times, adolescents tend to withdraw and, since we do not know how to approach them, they end up feeling very alone, with parents who do not understand them and in whom they cannot trust. Therefore, negotiating can significantly improve such a circumstance.

Negotiating with your teenager adds values

All parents know how important it is to transmit values ​​from an early age. Healthy values ​​that allow the youngest to guide their behavior and make the right decisions for them. However, we don’t always know how to do this properly. Negotiating with your teenager is one of them. But what does this way of acting teach young people and yourself?

• Improve emotional management : negotiating with your teenager will allow him to learn how to do it. You will find that it is very difficult to reach an agreement when one of the parties is being controlled by anger, anger, frustration or sadness.

• Brings Confidence and Consistency : Inconsistency in family relationships can trigger emotional outbursts in your teen. Negotiating will help all of you to trust each other and be consistent with what you say, think, and do.
• Helps to express feelings : to negotiate with your adolescent you must speak honestly, expressing how each of the members feels and providing possible solutions to a conflict. This will help your adolescent express his feelings and say what he thinks without assuming that we will not understand him.

Everyone knows that it is necessary for there to be agreements, limits and certain norms that speed up marking and avoid conflicts within the framework of coexistence. As with our partner we can have the rule of not entering with dirty shoes stepping on the carpets, we must also have them with our children.

Reach agreements on the time of arrival at home if you go out with friends or on certain prohibited activities inside the home or outside the home (smoking, drinking alcohol, staying with friends to sleep …). For each family the agreements will be different. The ideal is to negotiate it, see the points of view of the different members and reach certain agreements that everyone considers fair.

Mistakes We Make When Negotiating With Teens

Negotiating with your teenager is not as easy as it may sound. But this difficulty sometimes does not come from the children, but yourself as the parent. The belief that what you say goes to mass, exercising an almost dictatorial authority at home, not taking into account the opinions of your adolescent son… All this can sabotage a negotiation even before it begins.

That is why it is necessary that you treat your adolescent as a person who is maturing, growing and learning. He is no longer a small child, he is a person with opinions and capable of pointing out many of the mistakes that he makes and makes. It is true that it will never be and should never be a symmetric relationship, but ideally this asymmetry will diminish over the years. In this sense, listening to your children can allow you to learn a lot about yourself.

To negotiate with your adolescent you have to eliminate certain “distortions”. One of them, for example, is “I am your father so whatever I say is done.” This in a negotiation is terrible: it imposes a principle of authority that prevents any dialogue. When parents abuse this formula, it is normal for the child to stop expressing what he thinks. He will act trying to keep his parents from finding out or he will directly bend to the wishes of the parents, but he will hardly lend himself to argumentation when he knows that he has no chance of being satisfied with the result of this dialogue.

You also have to avoid manipulation attempts and inconsistencies. If you agree to something, it is not possible for you to break it and justify it under “it’s that at this point I’m not going to change what I’ve been doing for so many years” or “I can do whatever I want and you can’t.” These situations will increase anger, anger, and will make your teenager withdraw further from you.

The consequence of making certain mistakes when negotiating with your child is that the relationship with him will deteriorate, there will be no harmony or possibility of growth. In this sense, remember that we can all learn from everyone. As a parent, you are a guide and you do not have to impose something authoritatively expecting your child to do so, just because. Why not discuss it and negotiate it? This will not cause you to lose respect or the relationship to become symmetrical.

We have to bear in mind that our children are people with feelings, that in adolescence they begin to build their identity and define their values. They can think for themselves, they have certain opinions on different issues, and we must advance respect for this as they grow older. Think that if we learn to negotiate wisely, the relationship we maintain with our children, the one that matters so much to us, will benefit.