Raising Teens Who Actually Want to Talk to You: 8 Principles for Extraordinary Connection

Raising Teens Who Actually Want to Talk to You: 8 Principles for Extraordinary Connection

[00:00:00] What if I told you that teenagers aren't the monster? Everybody warned you about ba, but maybe your approach is, imagine your teen laughing with you at the dinner table instead of storming off. Everyone says, just wait till the teen years, your life is over. Well, here's the truth. Those teen years can actually be the best yet if you flip the script on how you show up.

Proof. Well, guys, I spent 20 years running youth groups where even the angriest 50-year-old opened up to me because I lived by eight principles. I had one girl actually threaten me with a knife because I hardlined on some rules she didn't like. Well, eventually I became like a surrogate father for her, and she was active at everything we did and loved being part of it and changed radically because.

She found a safe place to be with people who cared about her. Actually, you see, parenting teenagers can actually be some of the greatest years you get if you know the secret of how to keep [00:01:00] communication lines open with your teenagers. In today's episode, we're diving into eight principles. I can't hold up eight fingers on the video.

I'm not that coordinated today. We're dividing, diving into eight principles to live by as a parent that will keep your kids engaged and talking with you so that you can have a thriving relationship with 'em. Now, I hope you caught those words because that's the key. You catch that guys, what you say is a minuscule part of this entire approach because it's a minuscule amount.

What actually makes parenting teens work? Teens see how you live. They see who you are. They see the good, they see the bad. So. That needs to speak volumes about who you are to make your teens willing to engage and listen. And that starts with number one, is to never stop evolving. You see, if you adopt a growth mindset and a growth lifestyle and work on being better at multiple things in your [00:02:00] life, like leveling up your health, your parenting skills, your jobs, then it's gonna open some doors for your teenager to communicate with you.

Now, how does that actually look in the real world? Make healthy choices. Work out, eat, read books on parenting. You wanna freak your kids out, read books on parenting in front of your kids, right? Read books that teach you new ideas and skills. Listen to podcasts, lectures, YouTube videos, whatever your medium is.

Audio books that help you improve at your job, your skills, your parenting, whatever normalized, learning and evolving in your life at home. The lifestyle you share with your teenagers at home? Why does it actually work? Well, when you model ongoing growth, even admitting to the fact that you don't have it all figured out, you're giving permission for your teen to learn, fail and stretch during some of the most turbulent times in their life.

It turns you from the perfect parent with all figured out, [00:03:00] which teens often feel like they have to try and live up to. To the parent that understands imperfect journeys and understands that failures are not final, therefore making failures less scary and mistakes don't feel like they're the end. By setting that example that you are constantly growing and changing and learning and not always having it right, it opens up the teens to being imperfect.

That's okay, which is really important in a time period when they're less than perfect. But the secret they don't understand is we're less than perfect to as parents, and we just often try and hide it. Now, gent, that's just the first step in this process, and this is not for half ass parents. So if you wanna half ass your parenting, go ahead and click off the show.

I understand this isn't for you, but number two is a real game changer. And it's really gonna drive this forward for you in your relationship with your team. But first, gonna jump to a quick word from our [00:04:00] sponsors over at MyPillow.

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Now let's get back to the show, 'cause you don't wanna talk about MyPillow, you wanna talk about talking to your teens and guys, I promise, after the show, we're gonna tune up your relationship with your teens so much you won't believe the difference. Let's get back to it. The Driven to Thrive broadcast purpose, growth, and lasting impact for men, helping men go from living to thriving.

Purpose-filled intentional lives. Guys, welcome to the Driven Thrive podcast, purpose, growth, and lasting impact for men. I'm your host, Brent Dallen. If we haven't met yet, it's nice to meet you. We help men go from living to thriving purpose-filled intentional lives [00:06:00] here. Now, right back at IT guys. Number two.

Principle number two, that will flip every conversation you have with your kids is extreme ownership. Now, let me give you some context. Maybe you're not a big YouTube person, maybe you are. But if you've been around YouTube, you may have heard of former Navy Seal, Jocko Willink and his philosophy of extreme ownership.

In fact, him and one of his friends wrote a book on it called Extreme Ownership. I highly recommend the book. I enjoyed it a lot. But the simple version is this, I am responsible. I have total responsibility for everything, whether I did it or not. It didn't work. I missed something failed. I did something wrong, kid got a bad grade.

What did I not do as a parent to set them up for better success? Now, while there are a few things in life, totally outside of your control, you still have ownership of how you respond and react to those things. Which puts you in control. [00:07:00] So you still have ownership. So how do you execute this? The execution on this is super civil.

Every issue, problem, outcome, misstep. The first question is always in what way? Could have I have impacted that outcome differently? Could I have planned better taught, better instructed, clearer or better, provided a better space or environment, encouraged someone more, equipped them better, set better boundaries to encourage a positive outcome, been more present.

What could have I done better to change that result when your automatic reaction is, I am the responsibility in this role, and what should I have done differently? You empower yourself to impact things in a positive way. For example, my oldest got behind on her schoolwork. My wife homeschools our kids normally, but her schedule has had her outta the house more this year.

And I work for home and yeah, I'm busy, but I could have stepped up more. [00:08:00] I could have been more involved when I saw my wife was gonna be out a little bit more, instead of leaving my kids to do more of on their own. I could have done a lot to impact that outcome. So while my daughter definitely has some responsibility in getting behind.

I as her parent, share that responsibility because it's my job as her parent to make sure that she's equipped, empowered, and. Given every opportunity to excel. That's part of my job as a parent, right? That is how extreme ownership works. Now, why this is so effective is it is actually a deep psychological hack owning every choice, misstep and word that you've ever uttered builds massive credibility in the eyes of your teenager.

When your teen sees that you take full responsibility. You're fixing what you can, then they're going to lean in because that motivates people and inspires people. Knowing that you don't blame [00:09:00] makes you even more approachable. It also teaches them to do the same thing in the way they act and the way they live their life.

They will have moments where they come to you with the answers for their own issues quite frequently because they've learned from you this new way to look at things instead of going. This went wrong, this is wrong. Or this, they come at you and go, you know, dad, I, I did this and I realize I made a mistake.

I, I think I should have done this, this, and this. Right now, now we're partnering and now we're enabling them to make better choices and make more progress forward and own their own lives. Which for teenagers is something that feels like is missing one of the biggest struggles teenagers have. Is feeling like they have any control in their life at all.

And as teenagers, they have a limited control in their life. As a parent, you can help them with that by teaching them these principles, [00:10:00] by living these principles so they can see how to live that ownership hack transformed family values for me. Now, next, let's zero into the conversation itself. See, we're gonna look at how.

Matching eye level pos posture actually doubles your impact with something I like to call. Number three, eye-to-eye. Heart. Heart. And this is literally what it sounds like match the physical positioning in a way that gets you into the eye level with your teenager. From the day my children were born, I've always moved them or myself to an eye to eye position when I communicated with them, like I'm the actual, not, not like passing in the living room, but actual communication.

Sometimes that meant me getting down on the floor and sitting with them or laying on the floor with them. Sometimes that meant me picking them up and when they were younger and setting them on the counter so they were at my eye [00:11:00] level or the washing machine or wherever we were. Right. Putting them eye to eye makes the conversation a conversation, not a lecture.

You see, by matching your pro posture, leveling that gaze and opening up your stance, you break down the lecture mode barrier, which shuts kids down. It's a nonverbal handshake that says, I'm with you. I'm not at you. See teens are really prone to disengaged and becoming defensive because they often felt talked at instead of talked with.

The majority of adults in their world are some kind of authority figure, right? They're parents. They're parents of friends, they're teachers, instructors. The majority of adults that kids interact with in their younger years are all some kind of authority figure. Authority figures instructing teens [00:12:00] is generally talking at them or to them, but it's not talking with them.

And while yes, you are their parent and you hold some authority, that doesn't mean you have to actually physically, physically posture yourself in that way. If you think about it in your own life, you're gonna find out that you actually feel this way very strongly. Whether you realize it or not, you feel very differently when you're eye to eye with somebody as opposed to somebody talking down to you, right?

That physical positioning somehow in our brains, that physical positioning makes a huge difference when we get eye to eye as opposed to looking down at somebody. You also are gonna know that you don't like being talked at. Don't talk down to me. None of us like that. Not a human being in the world likes that, but it happens a lot.

So since you already know as an adult that you don't like being talked at, [00:13:00] make it priority to talk with your kids or you can. Keep doing the hard way and keep your physical posture in a I'm in charge dominance position and you're gonna keep talking to brick walls, which really probably hasn't worked so far and that's why you're here today.

It's like talking to a brick wall. Now you're talking to your teens and we're gonna go to the next step and be interested in them as well. And I feel like I really shouldn't have to bring this up. After 20 plus years of working with young people and having my own kids, I have found that that's not my experience.

I've met a lot of parents who don't seem to be truly interested in their kids, which is odd to me. So now that you're talking to them, let's get interested in our kids. That's number four. You see, you're raising unique individuals with their own thoughts, feelings, ideas, and opinions. While some of those are probably gonna annoy you from [00:14:00] time to time, this is actually one of the fun things about parenting, is watching who they become.

And as they get older and start approaching those teen years, you are going to have a lot more of them having their own unique thoughts, feelings, ideas, and opinions than you did in their younger years. And that's why it becomes so challenging is they're trying to figure out what they think and believe and wanna do and right.

That's where we get that conflict coming into this relationship. Some parents don't know what to talk to their kids about. I heard that from a lot of parents when I was working as a youth minister, is they just don't know how to have a conversation with their kids. Part of that is we're not good at asking open-ended questions.

We ask a lot of closed questions. How was your day? Fine. What did you do at school today? Stuff, right? Tired of long, more answers. So let me help you out with this. I recently did an episode with retired Secret Service agent, Brad Beeler, who's an expert on building rapport with [00:15:00] people and communication.

With that episode, I actually made a free download with 10 questions on how to and how to use those questions to start deeper conversations. So go download it and they'll work with teens. Absolutely. Not just with adults. I, before I recorded this episode, I went and made sure that those questions are going to work for you, so I'll have a link in the description and I absolutely recommend if you don't know quite how to talk to your teenagers or what to talk about.

These are 10 questions with instructions. It's simple, and I promise it's gonna open up that communication more. Communication is a two-way street. And as parents, we forget our kids have their own interests, thoughts, ideas, and, and sometimes we just don't know how to talk to them without feeling like we need to instruct them or teach them something or telling them what to do.

But [00:16:00] be curious about your kids and listen. When they talk, curiosity about their passions, their playlists, their problems, flips the script. You're no longer the dispenser of orders. You are a partner in the conversation. Now let me elaborate on this. 'cause like I said, this has not been my experience. So last year I was doing a Rockmart Challenge fundraiser with my oldest daughter.

She's gotten into a specific anime over the last couple years that she absolutely loves. And during a three day segment of this. Month long fundraiser we were working on together. We had to walk X amount of miles with a rucksack on over the course of one month. Right? Wasn't super stretch, but it was a fun project to do together.

During those several miles, we'd walk two to four miles together almost every day to hit the mileage marker. We had a three day. Chunk where we were doing our daily mileage and basically she told me all about [00:17:00] her favorite anime, my huro for three days more than once. She actually tried to peel out of the conversation.

She was sure, I didn't really want to know, like I'm not into that, but I kept asking questions and getting her to explain things. Guys, it was a little over five hours, a pure Lis bliss just to listen to her talk about something. She was really passionate about at the time, like she really loved the storyline and the characters, and I heard all about them and knew everything there was to know about my hero academia during the course of this three days of her just telling me about it.

Now, honestly, I still don't give a rip about my hero academia, but I loved to watch and listen to my daughter come alive and have her talk to me and share this passion with me. It was so amazing. Even though I don't enjoy the anime, it was amazing because I enjoyed hearing her talk about it and share this interest and [00:18:00] passion with me.

Now guys, you've set the tone for growth and personal responsibility. We're talking with them eye to eye, and guess what? They're actually pretty interesting turns out. So that's an incredible start. That all needs a solid foundation to set on, which where we get into number five is you have to give respect and have boundaries.

Treat everyone from your kids and spouse to the waitress at the diner, to the busboy who cleans up everything, whoever treat them all with respect and set clear boundaries about how you will be treated with respect. I think the saying, treat everyone with respect until they give you a reason not to, is a value.

I tried to look up who actually said that, and no one has any clue who actually originated that saying, but treating everyone with respect says more about you, and it says good things about you. However, be quick to protect your boundaries about how you're treated as [00:19:00] well. Now. Why is this actually important?

Respect isn't optional. It's the currency of trust. When team seeing you, treating them with respect and treating everybody else with respect, with kindness and consistency, they internalize the rules and boundaries as fair. Because of the way you're treating people, they know how they're gonna be treated by you and how you, they should treat others as well and how they should expect to be treated.

Respect and boundaries are the first piece of a three part framework that puts together this foundation for the final piece, which is the co de gras. It's the important end to this, but we have to get through. Number six, the rules matter. Lemme give some clear context to this. What are the clear cut rules of life with you?

What are the absolute non-negotiable rules that your kids must abide by in their house? In your house? Do they know? Does [00:20:00] everybody in the home know without question what the rules are and are they being applied to everybody, including you? Evenly consequences need to apply equally across the kingdom of your family.

Contrary to what will be verbalized when you bring this up, clear, fair, and consistent rules. Are another word or another form of the word boundaries different than the one we used before. They're the security blanket in the chaos of adolescents. Now, I'm not making that up guys. I know a lot of kids don't like roles, but true story, I once worked with the church youth group of what was mostly fringe kids.

If you're not familiar with the term fringe kids, they're the, what we would call at-risk kids in society. They're a young group as well. Most of 'em were between 12 and 15. After I left, I stayed in touch with 'em via social media, uh, at least with the majority of them, with the consent of their parents, of course.

And because I just, [00:21:00] I keep track, I care about these kids. I've invested my life into helping them. And so two years after I left, one of the girls that had come into the group when she was very young, called me. She was now living with her dad, which was a mild improvement for her because her mom was. Well, I, I won't say mean things on the air, but it was not a good situation and her dad was only a mild improvement, which was horrible.

But she spent 20 minutes telling me all the bad things she had done. Like she just unloaded like it was a confessional. And it took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on, why she was dumping this on me. I didn't mind. What was I, I, I was trying to figure out what the goal was and it took me a few minutes to get it because she finally was like, well, aren't you gonna yell or something?[00:22:00] 

Guys? It still breaks my heart to think about it. She wanted somebody to love and care for her enough to yell at her for making bad choices. Sadly where she was, she had shelter and food, but she had an absentee, absentee father who let her run completely wild and unchecked. He didn't care what she did, but we had always had rules when she was with our youth group.

The rules were clear. All the kids knew what they were to be able to participate, to be included, to be part of the group, and they were all held to the same accountability. She knew my rules for them were made out of love. Not to limit her, but to protect her and make sure that everybody was cared for and protected and safe, and we were doing things together and she was so hungry for someone to love her enough to lay down the law and tell her she was being stupid, that she spent 20 minutes just trying to convince me she'd done such horrible things that I should yell [00:23:00] at her because she knew I cared.

Guys, it's really, it, it, it really breaks my heart to this day still. But kids crave the safety of clear rules and boundaries in their lives, even when they pretend they don't, because the inconsistency in their world is crazy. You remember what it was like to be a teenager. Life is crazy as a teenager.

That consistent rules is security in an utterly crazy rule for them. Crazy world for them. The final leg that holds the most important principle in this entire list besides right, we started with boundaries and respect, moved on to setting clear rules is transparency, context, guys, really. The real you.

That's what we're looking for. Flaws, doubts, and all. I, I use the tur word transparency. I don't know if that's [00:24:00] a church word or a youth worker word. I know it's come along in pop culture, but just so there's no question show the real you all of it flaws, the doubts, everything, rather than the untouchable adult who's got it all figured out.

Let them see you are not perfect. Hopefully this has already started to show up as you're starting to embody these other principles we're talking about that growth we talked about at the beginning opens the door for this to be possible because they know you're constantly growing and, and improving and changing, but what you see should be exactly what you get.

Well, what you see you is what you get. Let them see you struggle. Let them see you fix it. Let them see you recover from it. Rebuild, stand back up. When you get knocked down, why it is important. Your teens see you every single day and you can't treat them like they're dumb. I am not stupid, [00:25:00] and like they don't see it.

So being authentic is the only way. To maintain that trust because they're seeing it whether you realize it or not. So when you're authentic about it, when you're transparent, it keeps the walls down and the invitations open because you're not lying to them. You're not putting on a false pretense and making them think you're perfect or trying to.

Which they know is a lie. It also teaches them how to deal with things that they encounter. If they can see, you have to recover. If they can see, you have to problem solve It teaches them to do the same thing. And if you take a look at who you are and ask yourself, will you be proud of your kids growing up to become you now, if the answer's no, own it.

Start fixing it and show them how, and you were teaching them something incredibly valuable. Now, these three things together are really important because you've set a tone for growth and personal [00:26:00] responsibility. We're talking in eye to eye and they're actually pretty interesting. Who knew, right? That all sets up on this trifecta foundation of respect, boundaries, fair rules, and transparency, which is critical for you to adapt.

This final principle for you to be number eight, their safe harbor. You need all these things we've already talked about, and it's critical that you become their safe harbor. This was something that most men over the age of 30 are not as familiar with because we were raised in different times with different generations and different ideals and values, but it's something I've had to learn as an adult because the younger generations.

Have a different outlook and expectation and experiencing the world in a different way than we did growing up. Your child should always feel safe talking to you, not only physically, but emotionally and mentally as well. For them to feel safe, you have to make them emotionally and mentally safe, not [00:27:00] just physically safe.

That translates to strong emotional control on your part. Be slow to anger, slow to react, and slow to let emotions override your wise counsel. Your kids are gonna break some rules. They're gonna make mistakes, they're gonna screw up, but they should always feel like they can come to you about it. So whether you embrace stoic teachings on emotional control, or you go the biblical route with be slow to anger.

And so the other teachings of the Bible. You need to have that strong emotional control. Your kids will know there are consequences 'cause you've set CL clear rules and boundaries, but they should also be based. Those consequences have to be based on pre-established parameters, by those boundaries and rules, and never out of anger.

No knee jerk reactions. It's okay to postpone sentencing. For lack of better term are the consequences while you regroup and get your emotions under control. Woo. [00:28:00] Slow. Being slow to anger, slow to react, and creating that calm space primes them to unload their worries. It says here, you can be fully yourself even when things get a little bit miss messy.

Now let's, let's give a practical application. Consider this, okay? Think of this scenario. You got two options. Your child does something really stupid or dangerous and gets hurt or is in real trouble, like real trouble. This is a likely scenario for any kid. Option one, they're absolutely terrified of your explosive reactions and you're overtop responses, and they have no idea the consequences, but they're scared so they hide it so that experimentation becomes a habit.

They were scared to ask for help or the injury gets worse, or God forbid, the police show up at your doorstep or some girl's Dad shows up at your front door. That's option one. Woo. Option two. You have to embrace these eight principles and foster an amazing relationship with your team. They know there's gonna be consequences, but they already have a [00:29:00] pretty good idea of what they are because they know the clear cut rules and boundaries.

But Dad is calm, has clear boundaries, rules, and knows that he's made mistakes. They're not the end of the world and these aren't gonna be in their world. The teen knows unconditional love and safety. If you're in your relationship, so they tell you the truth, own their mistake, ask for help, and you move forward in a positive direction.

Those are the choices you have as a parent because the first scenario of they're gonna do something stupid is likely embrace these eight principles to guide who you are. I promise your team will want to talk with you. They're gonna want to engage with you. Their friends are gonna want to engage with you because you're gonna be a rare thing as an adult.

An adult who listens, respects and cares about them without question. While having clear boundaries is a white whale, it's a unicorn, guys. Now I'm loving watching my kids move into this stage of being teens. I've been looking forward to it their whole lives. Try to live by these principles for [00:30:00] other people's kids have made me a highly effective youth minister over the years of my ministry.

Later on now, it's gonna be useful to help as I raise my kids through their teenage years as well, and I'm banking on it with these coming years of my daughters. Your teenager wants you to be this kind of parent. They love you. They want you to lean the way and be engaged with them. And it'll be hard, but it'll be absolutely amazing.

If your relationships are not where you want 'em to be, I want you to know I got your back. Relationships take a lot of work and can fall on the back burner pretty easily as you empire build in your life, and men often suffer from the damage to relationships while they're trying to provide and do everything they're expected to do.

Reach out, schedule your free discovery. Call over purpose driven men.com to learn the skills you need to connect deeply like these with the people who matter, bro. And you do all this for, remember, never stop evolving. Extreme ownership, eye to eye, curious listening, respect boundaries, clear rules, transparency, and [00:31:00] safe harbor.

If you're tired of slam doors and one slam doors in your house, and one word answers. Live these principles and watch your team, not just listen, but lean in. Next week I'll walk you through exactly how to deescalate situations with your spouse very quickly in under a couple minutes, so be sure to hit the subscribe button and keep thriving and be better tomorrow because what you do today, we'll see you on the next one.

The Driven to Thrive broadcast purpose, growth, and lasting impact for men, helping men go from living to thriving. Purpose-filled intentional lives.