The Teenage Whisperer

#3 Rule of mutual learning

This may come as a shock, but you don’t know everything. It will undoubtedly come as a shock to most teens that they don’t know everything too. How many times have we heard the old rhetorical when speaking to teens about something that they don’t want to talk about, “What do you know?”.

Yes as an adult you generally have the trump card on knowledge through life experience by virtue of your years but the amount of candles on your birthday cake does not mean you are the authority on every aspect of life ( even if you may be the authority on how to put out a small fire). So when engaging in a conversation with a teenager enter it in the expectation that you might learn something from them. This is the breeding ground of genuine respect- it shows you value their input and they are more likely to value yours. This is worth its weight in gold when you are trying to change someone’s behaviour for the better.