Why Your Teenager Needs You to Teach in a Different Way

By Christi Davis

When our children are little, they are naturally open to our teaching. They need us for everything! We teach them how to go potty, how to read, how to speak kindly and how to pray. And for the most part, they listen and learn. Ah, the good old days when it was easy to know how to help them!

Then something happens when they become teenagers. They develop this maddening streak of independence! They no longer want our help or advice as often, even when it’s clear they still need it! They may roll their eyes when we are telling them something really important. They may sleep through family scripture study or argue with our very reasonable family rules. They may be highly emotional and unkind to siblings.

Often our motherly instinct kicks in and tells us that what this teenager needs is some correction. We are, after all, training them to be responsible adults, and responsible adults do not behave like this! We may feel an urgency to teach and correct as much as we can before they go out into the real world.

The problem with that approach is that they more we try to teach and correct, the more our teenagers try to push away from us. At best, they zone out and perceive our teaching as lecturing and nagging. At worst, they purposely avoid us and do exactly the opposite of what we want them to do.

Like it or not, this is all normal and developmentally appropriate behavior. It is healthy for them to want to govern themselves and to question the adults in their lives.

And yet we still have much to offer them, and want to be a trusted resource and influence in their lives.

The secret is to change our approach. When they no longer want to listen to our words, we need to find a new way to guide them. We need to stop trying to tell them what to do and become a trusted support system as they begin to practice being their own person.

Let’s use as an example from the day my teenager came home and told me his coach was so stupid. He got yelled at when he didn’t deserve it and didn’t get as much play time in the game as he thought he should have. My natural instinct was to help him be more logical and self-aware. To question if maybe the coach could have a good reason for what he said. Or to help him be more compassionate- maybe the coach was just having a rough day.

It was clear to me, however, that this boy was in no mood to be self-aware or compassionate. Trying to teach those things in that moment would have just made him think I didn’t understand, and that he shouldn’t even try to talk to me about things like this. It would have created distance in our relationship.

What he needed in that moment was for me to teach compassion by MODELING compassion. I didn’t have to use words to say it. I could show him what compassion was. Instead of questioning his story, I let him be mad. I invited him to tell me all about it and empathized with what he was feeling. When he realized I understood, he started to calm down.

I asked him what he planned to do about it, and if there was anything I could do to help. By not rushing in to teach or to try to solve his problem, I was sending the message that I trusted him to be in charge of his own life. I knew he could figure this out. I’m always there for support, but I can help teach self-awareness and personal accountability by giving him space to solve his own problems.

President Dallin H. Oaks has said “The most powerful teaching of children is by the example of their parents.” (General Conference, October 2012, “Protect the Children.”) More than our words, our children need our examples. They need us to model the behaviors we hope they will learn.

This is especially true for our teenagers. By now they have heard our opinions on most things. They know what we think, and they grow weary of our voices repeating the same things over and over. But they continue to watch us. They notice when we practice what we preach. Who we are speaks much louder than what we say at this point.

If you are struggling to get through to your teenager, I invite you to try something new. Try teaching less with your words. Focus your energy on modeling the things you want them to learn. Don’t talk about kindness. Show kindness. Don’t tell them how to solve their problems. Show confidence in them by letting them figure it out. Don’t just tell them about faith, show them that you have faith in the atonement by allowing them to make mistakes.

We never stop teaching, we just change our approach. They will give us clues when they are done listening to our words. When they don’t want us to tell them anymore. Then they are ready to practice what they have learned. They will mess up and learn hard lessons. That’s part of the plan. We can best influence them by our faithful example.

Get Issue 08 delivered straight to your mailbox by ordering an ad-free print or digital copy!