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Your weekly pānui for tips, tricks, and strategies to deepen your connection with your tween, teen, or adolescent.

Kia ora Reader

Research studies have found that every negative interaction has a weight of a five in our brains, while every positive interaction has a weight of a one in our brains. It's a leftover bias from our evolution that ensured we remembered the danger and difficult times simply so we could survive. In modern day life, we continue to have a bias towards an emotional weighting on the negative.

Think about your recent interactions with your young person:

• When their report arrived, did you comment on their low marks first, or their high marks? If you did comment on their high marks, did you also deliver a lecture on their low marks?
• Make a big deal over the time they arrived home before their agreed time, or make a big deal about the time they arrived home after their agreed time?
• Say “thank you” when they carried out their household contribution without being reminded, or yell/remind/hassle them to do the household contribution?

Chances are you’ve got a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach because you’ve had a very human reaction to your young person! There is always more emotional intensity around our stuff ups, mistakes and failures than there is around our successes.

James Clear has a quote that says, “Make a mistake? Release the guilt, remember the lesson.” I love this quote because it reminds me that I too am a human doing my human best. When I stuff up I’m far more likely to notice and attempt to repair the situation if I’m being kind to myself - as opposed to beating myself up.

Take a moment to think about your childhood. The odds are in our favour that our parents left us alone when we were playing, being helpful and co-operating … then pounced on us when we were too noisy, being annoying or got into trouble. And at school, most of us still remember red pen marks on our work rather than green pen ticks by the things we got right!

We might not have liked this, yet it was all we knew. Unless we have intentionally worked through the changes we’d like to make once we were parents there’s a high likelihood that we’ve overlooked this sneaky little pattern.

Heads up, now we know different we can do different! It’s a 5 to 1 ratio that can be turned around the moment you choose it.

Think of your positive comments as ‘money in the bank’ building up for when you need to make a withdrawal. Every now and then you will slip up and come out with something negative. If you’ve got a decent amount of positives stored up you will be in the position of being able to guide your young person, not push them down.

Even better though, the simple act of acknowledging and rewarding our young people’s successes causes their self worth to grow. A rangatahi with high self worth is a rangatahi who will show up in the world as a resilient, strong and compassionate person.

And we can definitely use more of them, right?

Kia pai tō wiki ... have a great week

Melanie

PS: teentallk is a structured course that covers sneaky little subconscious behaviours as well as the more overt changes in the way we listen and frame our requests to make our needs known. You can find out more about teentalk here and work with me to change your parenting communication.

PPS: every client I’ve taken through teentalk has also reported changes in the way they also communicate with their spouse, their employer and their parents … BONUS!!!

Melanie Medland is a communication coach, an author, and a course creator.​

More at www.beautifulconversations.co.nz​

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