Hi – Sue Blaney here with your Parenting Tip from Parenting Teens Info.com

My tip this week is Bite your tongue.

Carrie Ann found herself in an interesting situation with her two kids last week. Michael is in 8th grade, and he and his younger sister Anna were in the car with their mom. It came up in conversation that a neighborhood girl had been passing around a cigarette at the bus stop earlier that day. Frankly, Carrie Ann was shocked, and nearly stopped the car. She said her typical response would have been to launch into a lecture.

Smoking is one of those hot-button issues that gets Carrie Ann going… she holds a high value on a healthy lifestyle, and considers it part of her job to teach her kids about this topic. She told me that she thought to herself “I should be lecturing them now… this is one of those teachable moments…” but instead, she tried a different strategy. She has been listening to my audio program on improving communication with your teens and she had my words ringing in her ears… “Listen, listen, listen!” So she bit her tongue. Instead of lecturing, she listened to what her kids had to say about the topic. And what a revelation it was! She heard her son express that smoking is disgusting to him… and she didn’t have to say a word.

When Carrie Ann probed, she asked her son “How did it make you feel when those girls were passing around the cigarette?” That’s a great open-ended question, and it did exactly what it’s supposed to do. Her son opened up more, sharing his point of view about all the many reasons smoking is unpleasant and undesirable. Carrie Ann was delighted to hear him say this. She said to me “Now I know my son really is hearing what I have to say!”

You can’t listen when you are speaking, so biting your tongue can be a helpful thing to keep in mind when you want to communicate well with your kids. That and the strategic use of an open-ended question yielded a far more valuable conversation than any lecture could ever do.

Thanks for subscribing to my Two-Minute Tips for Parenting Teens ……. til next week, I’m Sue Blaney.