Parents of Tweens — Be a better listener and you’ll help your tween make better choices

“When you are in your teenage years you are consciously experiencing everything for the first time, so adolescent stories are all beginnings. There are never any endings.”

~ Aidan Chambers

It’s easy to think our tween’s choices are silly.

And forget that they made a choice using the tools they had — namely, limited real-world experience and a young worldview.

How can we, as parents, validate their experience and expand their worldview without crushing their spirit even when they’ve made a foolish choice?

If we make our homes a safe place to build a library of experiences and a place to learn from the experiences of others, our tweens will quickly develop a healthy set of critical thinking skills.

Listening with curiosity is the tricky part.

For our kids to learn from our experiences, we need to first listen to theirs.

And when we’re tempted to fly off the handle because we feel they did something stupid, we need to stop and listen instead.

It’s our listening that makes our home a safe place to grow.

When we listen for intent, we’ll hear how our tweens try to make good choices. Often, they’ve got a good reason for doing what they did — and it makes sense when viewed through the lens of their world experience.

With us as their champions pointing out where their critical thinking was spot on and allowing them to borrow our experiences where they faltered, they’ll soon be making better decisions more often.

Read this post and more on my Typeshare Social Blog