Communicating with Teens in Writing

Notes (and E-mail)
In even the most harmonious of families there are those inevitable times when the lines of communication break down between you and your teenager. It is part and parcel of raising a teenager. When this happens, more than ever, we need to rise to the task at hand and stay the adult. That is, if we're not careful during these moments, we will behave like our teenager's equal by engaging him in debate and tit-for-tat dialogues:

—Your room is a disaster! How can you find anything in here?

—It's not a problem for me, I know where everything is.

—Well, I want you to pick up this mess before you go to bed tonight.

—Why?

—Why?!

—Yeah, why? If it's not a problem for me why should it bother you?

—Because I'm your mother! And you need to learn to clean up after yourself. That's why.

—I know how to clean up after myself. I just like my room this way. I mean, there's no fungi growing or insects crawling around. Yeah, it's messy, but it's not dirty, so why should it bother you?

—Young man, this is no way to talk to your mother! . . .

Catch your breath. I'm not saying that teenagers shouldn't have to keep their rooms neat; well, not entirely. I am saying, however, that engaging them as equals (especially when we are the ones who have regressed back to our adolescent years) is not very effective.

Think back for a moment to when your oldest child was around two years old. This was the first time, during some moment of frustration with your child, that you could hear your parents' words coming out of your mouth. Words and phrases that you swore you would never use with your kids. Young man, I'm your mother and you need to do what I say without question. Young lady, when I say come down for dinner, I mean right now, not in five minutes. It's quite a shock the first time that happens, and for some parents it even precipitates an identity crisis that lands them in therapy. For most parents, though, it's simply a wake-up call that demands more monitoring of the feelings and thoughts that course through our brains and the words that come out of our mouths. And for an intrepid few, it's a sign for a long overdue acknowledgement of the job their own parents did with them.

Years later, however, when you have a teenager in your home, you once again experience your parents' words and phrases coming out of your mouth, only this time it's different and your attitude has changed. Instead of feeling horror at this recognition, you find yourself agreeing with what your parents said to you years ago. But retroactively shifting allegiances to how your parents were during your own adolescence is reacting to your teenager's behavior as if you were still a teenager, not as your child's mother or father.

Still, though, even the most conscious parents will have many of these cross-generational interchanges with their teenagers. They are part of the landscape. Fortunately, so is the written word. And notes and short letters from parents to teenagers are the natural redeemers of these train-wreck conversations—when we've said something we can't take back and we sort of meant at the time, but with a little perspective realize that we deeply regret our overreaction. Notes help to reestablish order and tranquility in the parent-teenager relationship. More than anything, they invite connection:

Dear Ray,
These last few weeks have been rough between us. I've said some things I regret, and I hope you feel similarly about some of what you've said. I feel bad about this, but I'm not sure what else to do. I'm human and sometimes I just react instead of thinking things through more thoroughly. It's a difficult time, one that I hope in a couple of months we can look back on in astonishment. But for now, this is what we have to deal with.

But the reason I'm writing you this note is not to state the obvious; quite the opposite, to state what isn't so obvious. Despite what you might think and despite how you might interpret our recent interactions, I want to be crystal clear about one point: I love you. I never want you to lose sight of that fact. Sure, you're stubborn and self-righteous these days (a lot like me), but no matter what, I love you and am proud of the young man you are becoming. And I don't want you ever to doubt that one important point. It's just that right now, and I'm being frank, I'm having trouble liking you, but that has nothing to do with how much I love you and always will. I have no doubt that we'll get through this, but just don't forget how much I love you.

Love,
Dad

The father that relayed this story to me also mentioned how terrific he felt after writing the note late one evening and slipping it under his son's door early the next morning. He felt that he had communicated something important to his son. He felt that he was a good dad. He was sure it would have the intended impact on Ray, so he was caught off guard by his son's response later that morning at the breakfast table: Nothing. Ray didn't mention the note. Instead, he just slurped his cereal, grunted a "good morning," and read the newspaper. And he didn't mention the note later that day, either—on the car ride home from play practice, at dinner, or before going to bed.

For the next week, Ray said nothing, and his father didn't know how to bring it up. Then one morning, out of the blue, Ray's father heard the whoosh of a postcard sliding under his door. The handwriting was Ray's, but the post card had only two words written on it: Me, too.

Needless to say, breakfast that morning was like breakfast every other morning: Ray just slurped his cereal, grunted a "good morning," and read the newspaper. Neither of them spoke of the first note or the subsequent postcard, but the father did say there was more patience between the two of them and a whole lot more felt optimism about the future.