Humor, The Teen Ice-breaker
By the time you’re the parent of a teen, your teen knows you well. Maybe not perfectly well, but they have a good idea about how you will react in certain situations. They may avoid telling you things because they don’t want to experience your reaction. This can be a big obstacle when trying to connect with your teen.
What can you do?
Shake things up! Like George Costanza in the Seinfeld sitcom who did the opposite of everything he normally would do for one day (and had uncharacteristic great success by the way), you should consider what you would normally do that bothers your teen and do the opposite instead even if it feels, well, uncomfortable.
If you can really have fun with this you will throw your teen off guard and in doing so create an opportunity for a clean slate, a new start. This is a way to let your teen know that you can teach an old dog new tricks and this old dog just tricked you back into liking them enough to share your life with them again.
The more fun you can have with this, the better. Pink hair, funny sounds, performing the part of a rap song that answers their question instead of a straight forward yes or no are all ways to get your teen to raise their brow and think “what’s up with you?”
Keep ‘em guessing, it’s worth it if it gets you back into their lives.
Related posts:
