Here’s A Whole New Way To Talk To Your Teens This Year

This may not sound like breaking news, but how we talk to our teens directly influences what they hear. Consider a 2015 study published in a well-respected neuroscience journal: A group of researchers selected a group of adolescents and their parents, then separated the pairs to record the moms offering neutral statements, praise, and criticism. They then put the kids—ages nine to seventeen—into a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine to see which parts of their brains engaged and which tuned out. When the kids heard their moms criticizing them, the problem-solving parts of their brain basically shut down.

Did the mom’s very helpful advice prompt the adolescents to think about their frequent shortcomings and consider ways to improve their behavior? No. It basically pissed them off, shut them down, and set them up to check out of what was being said.

We spent three years researching why so many kids hate school for our book The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better and what parents can do to turn things around. We developed four modes of learning to help parents understand what’s happening in those cryptic minds when they say they don’t care and it’s all a waste of time. A key insight we found is that we need a whole new way to talk to teens, conveying more respect and less you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me (even when we are feeling this).

The reason? Discussion is to adolescence what cuddles are to infants: necessary for brain growth. How you talk to them literally helps build their brains.

So how can you have a discussion with a teen who would rather eat nails than talk to you?

One key way to actually get through to them is to change the way you have conversations. Remember: they won’t take your advice if they are not listening.

Less instructional, more conversational

Teens crave respect but also need support. We need to move from giving instructions such as “just get your homework done…” to be more conversational.

Research shows that when teachers use tactics like perspective-taking (“I hear you saying you hate this topic” versus “just do it”); seeking feedback (“what’s working for you in chemistry and what’s not?”) offering choices (“how would you like to get your homework done”) and more invitational language (“might you” vs “you have to”) kids achieve more, are happier and are kinder. This holds even more so for parents.

Less advice, more asking questions

Parents offer advice for so many reasons. We want to seem like we have the answer; we want to help; we want to rescue them from the hard work of struggling to get to an answer; we actually know the answer and they don’t. But remember back to being 16. How good did your parents’ advice seem back then? Also: if you always come up with the answer, they never learn to struggle to get to an answer.

Try open ended questions: Why do you think that? What other way could you do it? What are some ways others might do that?

Less getting them where you want them, more meet them where they are

Commenting on an influencer’s makeup or diving into the depths of Zelda Breath of the Wild may seem like a colossal waste of your time. But if it is your kid’s interest, try understanding why. Get into their worlds inside of school and out. Not in a helicopter surveillance way but in a genuinely-interested kind of way.

If you set all their goals, they will never learn to set one for themselves.

Less focus on the problem, more focus on person

Avoid the character assassination statements, however frustrated you may be. “You never stick to anything” leaves them little room to turn things around and almost gives them permission to keep doing what they are doing.

Try; “I notice you seem stuck on getting started. What might help you?” Less: you are a bad student and more what do you need to succeed as a student? An online tutor? Help getting started or organized? A buddy to keep you accountable?

Many readers might roll their eyes and think “I am not letting my kid get away with being lazy.” But we’d ask you, when has nagging and cornering motivated you? Teen brains are motivated to contribute and explore. We sometimes need to help them find ways to do that through inquiry and not instruction. Remember: we’re not there forever to hand out all that sage advice, so better to help them to become good decision makers than to make all those decisions for them.

Jenny Anderson is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in some of the world’s leading publications, including The New York Times, where she was on staff for 10 years, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, The Atlantic and Quartz. Rebecca Winthrop is the director of the Center for Universal Education at Brookings and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. They are co-authors of The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better and Live Better, which was published by Crown in January 2025.