How Can I Get My Child To Open Up To Me?

Posted by Brad Reedy, Ph.D., Owner & Clinical Director on September 30, 2015

During my son’s time in Wilderness Therapy, my wife and I were asked to come for a day visit. The goal was nebulous, but I assumed it was simply to have some time to connect and to possibly provide his therapist with some information for future family therapy work. We made our trip out to the field area—only getting lost twice—and finally arrived at the boy's group. Our reunion was tender and tearful. The simple way we used to describe the therapy to our youngest child, Isabella, was that Jake “was in the mountains, learning how to be happy.” It had been 8 weeks since we had last seen Jake, and after hugs and greetings, we sat down to learn about how and what he was doing. Although I had served hundreds of families as a Wilderness Therapist, I had never quite experienced the kind of joy I felt from seeing all this new growth and insight in my son.

I was there as a father, not as a therapist. This was first brought to my attention when, upon my arrival at the remote group location, I was asked by the staff to surrender my car keys—a safety protocol we follow when parents arrive in the field. I was tempted to remind them that I ran this program and was capable of maintaining control of my keys as I had done each week for the previous ten years. Instead, I smiled and tried to accept my role as a student, and not a teacher. In the afternoon, we sat in on an impact letter group (a time where the student reads the first letters from his parents about why they sent him to the program), and I found myself playing “therapist” instead of father. That proclivity for me to be a therapist instead of a dad was an obvious weakness in my parenting approach. This highlights the value of learning to get outside help no matter what your background, education, or experience may be.

The next day, the staff led Jake and me in an experiential activity. Jake had initially struggled to learn the bow drill fire, but had recently mastered the technique and was excited about his accomplishment. The exercise this day was for Jake to blindfold me and instruct me how to make a fire using this newly mastered technique. What was unique for me was that I had already grasped this particular skill years ago during my Wilderness Therapy Training. I was competitive and would play games with my students and staff, and we would often see who could make a fire first. So when Jake blindfolded me and began to slowly explain the technique, I grew impatient and just started grabbing the tools and getting to work. Soon, Jake became silent as I forged ahead and began spinning my bow. It turned out, however, that I was not successful that day at making a fire. I blamed it on a faulty set of tools or some other fluke.

In the family therapy session that followed, when Jake’s therapist asked why it was so hard to open up and talk with me, tears began to form in his eyes. “Because he is better at it,” he replied. “Talking with my dad is like playing one-on-one with Kobe Bryant. He will always win. He will always be right.” My heart broke at hearing this viewpoint from my son. Even now as I write this, my eyes well up with tears at the thought of how little space I left for my son to share his thoughts and feelings. “It’s like the bow drill exercise you guys did together earlier,” his therapist observed. “Your dad goes ahead without you, and eventually you just get silent.”

The first thing we can do to encourage our children to talk more and to open up to us is to shut our mouths and talk less. We need to give them more space to express themselves and to be heard. One therapist told me years ago that the image of the perfect parent is one with their mouth taped shut. The developing child’s brain as they come into adulthood is full of new ideas and feelings, and that child becomes intimidated when attempting to engage with a parent who they think has all the answers. Even if you are not a therapist, you may believe yourself ready to provide your children with answers, wisdom, and stories from your life that demonstrate that you have a storehouse of all of the answers in life. This teacher-student dynamic is not very rewarding or encouraging for a child who is just beginning to understand life and who is struggling to be articulate.

When a child succumbs to peer pressure and makes a poor choice in order to “fit in,” don’t launch into a lecture about how “you will never feel good about yourself by putting so much stock into how others feel about you” or saying “they aren’t your real friends if they don't just accept you how you are.” First, try to recognize your own current, unresolved issues with peer pressure. Who among us does not struggle with how others see us? Do we freely admit our faults with those at church, work, or in our social lives without fearing the judgment of others? Don’t be ashamed to share these issues with your children. Whether it’s something as simple as buying a trendy new shirt, driving a certain car, wearing makeup to go out, or hiding that you get your wardrobe from the thrift store, I ask parents to share their unresolved issues with their children. And guess what happens? Children begin to access their own wisdom and to give advice to the parents. They feel that you understand them and that you are connecting with them, and from that place, they are more likely to address their own problems with the lasting effect that comes from self-forgiveness.

Asking questions of our children is not enough. We need to learn how to empty our minds and give space to them. Judgments, rebuttals, pep talks, and corrections from us give them the idea that they need to shut up and listen to us. I am the guiltiest of this mistake, and I have a plethora of information at the ready when my children start talking. Many parents challenge me with the question, “But if they are wrong about an idea or a conclusion, isn’t it my job to correct them? Isn’t my silence an endorsement of what they are saying?” In the beginning, this departure from the back and forth may seem to suggest to both the speaker and the listener that there is an implicit agreement. But through the art of listening, we can create a culture in our families and in our relationships where listening without judgment is the norm, and our loved ones begin to understand that we are just listening and neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

Part of allowing space for your children includes the permission for them to talk less, to talk slowly, and to make small strides in their communication without being punished by a barrage of pointed questions. Our patience will demonstrate to them that we are neither judging them nor personalizing the situation by making it about us. Asking a teenager to sit down for a talk, often has the immediate effect of the glazing over of eyes and a staring off into the distance while they wait for us to stop the lecture so they can move on to something more enjoyable, like pulling weeds. Sometimes, making a point or sharing a feeling can be expressed without requiring anything at all from our children. This discussion does not need a back-and-forth, with you expecting them to participate. It can be a series of very short conversations, each about five minutes long, where you talk about your thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. Don't necessarily ask for or expect them to respond, and be willing to end the discussion without getting the satisfaction of closure or consensus.

Aside from the “don't talk and don't judge” warning, I have a couple of other active suggestions that I have found facilitate communication with our children. My first suggestion is to talk while doing something else—I like to call this the “grocery store lecture.” Dinner, chores, and shopping are all great backdrops for a seemingly off-the-cuff conversation. In any of these situations, the child’s focus will not be on the parent, and thus they become more disarmed and more open. This is one of the therapeutic features of experiential and equine therapies. If you are riding bareback on a horse or making a fire at a campsite, your conscious mind is less likely to have free resources to defend against threats or intrusions. One of the reasons that family therapists encourage such rituals is because it provides a scenario where conversations and relationships can be fostered without putting the pressure akin to a spotlight or a microscope on our children when they talk.

Something else I suggest is to be the first one to stop a discussion or conversation. We are usually prone to talk or lecture; often repeating ourselves until we feel some sort of satisfaction or we hear what we want to hear from our children. Reflective listening can shorten this process by us knowing that our children have heard what we have to say, and we don’t need to fulfill our need to keep talking. We can simply have a very short talk—one to two minutes—and then be the first one to walk out of the room or to change the subject. Initially, this method of communication will feel unsettling and unfinished, but this will help to teach our children that every discussion doesn't “last forever.”

Be patient. Accept bits and pieces as good enough. This kind of patience communicates that you are a receptive listener and that you are not ready to pounce on your child when they fall short of providing everything you want to hear. This patience may take days, weeks, or even years, but we are in this with them for the long haul, and our eagerness to reach the finish line is intimidating to our children—it feels like pressure on them. Part of that patience comes from an awareness of the developmental difference between the adolescent brain and the adult psyche. Remember that they are not little adults. They are a qualitatively different being, and our awareness of that fact will steer us away from feelings of frustration at their seeming “unwillingness” to talk to us. Bronson and Merryman¹ remind us that teens see that part of separating from parents comes from being able to hide a part of themselves from us.

Lastly, the final suggestion that I have to enhance communication with your children is to discourage their escape routes. What I mean by that is that if we see maladaptive behavior as an expression of unfelt emotions then using behavioral consequences for negative behavior funnels the manifestation of their feelings towards a more overt expression of their emotions. We close escape routes so the expression of the feelings comes out another way, ideally by using their feeling words. This blocking of negative outlets does not allow for energy to be released. Like a pressure valve, children too must expel unwanted feelings, and in doing so, may sometimes act out. Sarcasm, drugs, and self-mutilation are all examples of that process, and by showing the consequences of those behaviors, we encourage our children to talk about what they are feeling. Sometimes, the door we have to walk through with them leads to anger, and oftentimes that anger is at us. One parent told me how upset she was that her son didn't trust her, and he told her as much. I asked her how she responded, and she described being upset with him and trying to convince him that she was trustworthy. I gave her an alternative. “How about thanking him for sharing that with you? Isn’t he telling you that he doesn't trust you a sign of that very trust he proposed he doesn’t have for you?” She was shocked to see how she missed that part of it. Rather than connecting to what he was telling her, she personalized it, made it about her, and defended it, and in doing so, she proved her son’s point. If we debate the validity of our children’s anger, we send the message of “don't feel that and don't say that.” While you have to decide what your own line is, I allow for my children to express their anger at me in outbursts and mean statements. But my kids are not very demonstrative. There are children I have worked with who have consistent outbursts that include chronic swearing and name-calling. In those cases, or in a case where you are uncomfortable with profanity, you need to let your children know how you are to be addressed. Saying that something is true is not an excuse for verbal abuse towards another. If I am angry—okay. But punching you in the nose and justifying that by saying it was an honest action is not a valid excuse. Feelings are feelings, but behavior is another thing, even verbal behavior.

In the end, the only thing that we as parents can do is to give our children more room to talk and to invite communication by showcasing healthy listening skills. Our impulse to force our children to communicate will likely lead to a more rigid, fearful, and terse response and to do the exact opposite of what we were hoping for. Hear what they are not saying. Hear what their behavior tells you. Part of that message is that they need some distance from you. This is developmentally appropriate. And our angst and anxiety about that distance feel smothering, needy, and burdensome to them. If feels this way because it is this way. I had a friend call me to talk about his late teen, early adult children, and how they seemed ungrateful and self-absorbed. After recounting this to me, we both realized that he was describing normal developmental behavior for that age, “So you are telling me that your teenagers are not full of gratitude and are self-absorbed?” We chuckled but also concluded that he was asking for something from them, gratitude, and attention that he had to find for himself.

Alice Miller², author of the landmark book, The Drama of the Gifted Child, warns against this: avoid asking our children to give us what our parents could not. It is not our children’s job to provide us unconditional love and acceptance. Parents complain their teen doesn't show the love and affection that they did in previous years, “they have moved away from me and seem to hate me.” Providing us with a sense of security in the context of unconditional love and acceptance was our parent’s job. And it was difficult for them and they fell short. But we cannot solve that problem by asking our children to do it for us. And if we do ask them to do it for us, we pass on this legacy to them.

We are in this with our children for the rest of our lives, and we would do well to be patient, refrain from judgment, and to learn to wait for them to come to us. Stay with them as long as you can. And what I mean by that is that you learn to take care of yourself so they don't have to. And you do your work and learn to listen and see them instead of them becoming eclipsed by your own childhood wounds.

¹ Bronson & Merryman, 2009

² Miller, 1997