Learn to Communicate with Your Teen

Anthropology is the study of human beings: their race, physical character, social relations, and culture. In this regard, if you've ever spent time with an anthropologist who was wearing her anthropology hat, you know how fascinating and interesting you feel when her focus is on you. That is, she will ask you all sorts of questions you have never before considered but that are essential to how you live your life and what you believe. They are the kinds of questions that linger for days and weeks, so that the next time you bump into this person—in line at the grocery store, at a soccer game, at church—you're liable to blurt out what's been mulling in the back of your head since the last time you spoke. You know, I've been thinking about what you asked the last time we spoke, and . . .

In this regard, parents of teenagers have a lot to learn from anthropologists. In essence, we need to learn to ask better and different questions. Many of the questions we ask our kids are polite ways of asking for reports or executive summaries. How was school? Did you finish your English paper on time? How did you do on the chemistry test? Did you win the basketball game? How much did you play? How many points did you score? If your teenager is like most teenagers, then 90 percent of the time all you'll get is a one word response to any of these queries: Good. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Some. A few. Remember, from a teenager's perspective, the less information they impart to their parents, the better. When in doubt, they stay vague, especially when it's the stuff of parental evaluations. And, perhaps surprisingly, most teenagers realize that this extends not only to incriminating information but also to flattering facts, too. That is, they know that if they respond only in specifics when it makes them look good, you will notice this and push them even more to reveal the details when they are vague. So in the interests of self-preservation, privacy, and independence, most teenagers opt for ambiguity with their parents.

For parents, this means we need to ask better and different questions, and thinking more along the lines of an anthropologist is a good start. If you want to encourage your teenager to think, possibly even to respond, you need to think more about process and less about outcome. Business is based on outcome. Education is based on process, and when it comes to the connection between you and your teenager, education is the best game in town. If you take another look at the typical parent questions from the preceding paragraph, you will take only a moment to realize that they are all outcome-based questions that require nothing more than a one-sentence response at best. And for reasons noted already, you may not even get that. Although nothing is wrong with these questions (and please understand that I'm not suggesting we not hold kids to certain goals, achievements, and the like), they will seldom start the kinds of conversations you need to have with your teenager if you are going to have a strong connection to each other. Let's take some time, then, to look at how these process questions work across a range of activities and interests: academics, sports, performances, school applications.