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forwardslash  ·  3202 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How to Raise a Creative Child. Step One: Back Off

    The one I remember is 'don't ask questions'. Seems counter-intuitive. Don't ask questions! But at 16, if your kid wants to talk to you about his day, about girls/boys, about his friends, he will. If he doesn't, he won't. Let your teenager start the conversations, or else he will associate being around you with being forced to air subjects he'd rather not, and eventually he'll stop talking to you altogether. My relationship with my parents is trash, and this is part of why. It's great advice.

That does sound like good advice. Something I learned in premartial counselling that I would have loved to have known growing up was different ways of dealing with conflict. In particular, we talked about 'hedgehogs' and 'rhinos': hedgehogs curl up when there's a problem to be addressed and rhinos charge in (generalities, I know). My mom was a major rhino and if she though anything was the matter she would barge in and try and deal with it right then and there. This meant that there was no place in my house safe from confrontation that I could just decompress.