ASAP is Cincinnati’s premiere outpatient treatment center for teenagers and their families struggling with substance use.

Create Connections with your Teen

In today’s busy world, it can be difficult to connect to each other. Families are constantly rushing between school, work, activities, and errands. As a result, some families have trouble even sitting down to eat together. Parents and teens are frequently checking their smart phones. Given all the obstacles, connection is less likely to happen naturally. Still, it is vitally important to create connections with your teen. Work within your schedule to minimize stress, and start small. You don’t need to develop stronger bonds in one day, but over time using these strategies (or others you like) will help.

Process Feelings

Kenneth Barish, Ph.D. is concerned about the way some children process their feelings. He recognizes that in all families there are moments of anger or misunderstanding. For most children, they can recover and move on. However, some children have trouble putting these hurt feelings aside and need help to go through a process of repair. He recommends taking ten minutes a day to talk about the day and explore any disappointments and frustrations that happened. This is especially important when an interaction with a parent caused the negative feelings. Showing children that hurt feelings and negative emotions are not permanent allows them to better regulate their feelings while giving parents and children time to connect.

Create Positive Interactions

Laura Markham, Ph.D. is also interested with creating connections between parents and teens. She recommends making sure the “goodwill balance” between family members remains positive. Specifically, for every negative interaction you have, there should be five positive interactions to maintain a healthy balance. These can be good conversations, time spent together, hugs, watching television with your child, watching or playing sports together, playing a game with your child, or any other positive interaction. However, parents should not count gifts as interactions.

Be an EPIC Parent

Tim Elmore, Founder and President of Growing Leaders, focuses on EPIC parenting. He notes that most of the conversations families have today are transactional as opposed to transformational. He recommends using these techniques:

E: Experiential—Create environments and experiences that offer life lessons rather than lecturing

P: Participatory—Allow your teens to participate in helping make the family work. They feel more valued when they contribute to the family (even if they complain about it).

I: Image Rich—Use images to help your child see the world the way you see it. Attach your lessons to visuals. Elmore has created a curriculum “Habitude” available through his website.

C: Connected—Help your child connect to problem solving. They can watch the news and brainstorm how to solve a problem, or look at the weekly activity schedule and figure out the car pools with you.

Solve the Dinner Problem

Eating dinner together helps to bring families together physically and emotionally. With the busy schedules that exist today, eating dinner together may take some creativity and planning ahead.

  • Look for at least one night each week that works for all members of your family.
  • Keep all meal times technology free.
  • Find a different time. If dinner doesn’t work, perhaps breakfast or brunch on the weekend will.
  • Get everyone involved. Even young children can help set the table or prepare part of the meal.
  • Sit and visit until everyone is finished eating.
  • Ask each person about his or her day. Knowing more about both the highlights and lowlights help bring families together. Additionally, learning about the difficulties adults face and how to work through them allows children to learn to process disappointments and difficulties.
  • Conversation starters can turn talking into a game.
  • Get to know your slow cooker, choose one day a month to stock up on freezer meals, or find other simple recipes. Can you prepare food on a lighter day of the week or the night before to reduce the chance that it gets too crazy to make dinner?
  • If finances allow, meet out for dinner at a centrally located restaurant.

Create Connections

There are many different ways to create connections with your teen. Above all, the important thing is to find a way that works for your family and spend time together.