How to Talk to Teens: A Christian Guide to Listening First, Speaking Last

Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone (Colossians 4:6 NIV).

Mankind was created for fellowship, for relationships.

But our level of relationship is directly connected to our ability to foster good communication. Communication is everything. And praise God, it is a learned skill! Paul lays out a few of the necessary elements of communication in Colossians when he says, “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone” (Colossians 4:6 NIV). Families need to learn to speak to one another in grace. Words have power. As parents, we are to model gracious words to our children. We are to speak life over them and learn to listen to them. Listening is more than just hearing. Listening involves understanding. Without it, we cannot know how to answer in truth.

The elements of communication—talking and listening— build relationship between the communicators. But another element is needed for our communication to be effective, and that is feedback. I know it sounds elementary, but we can’t communicate without talking. Notice I said talking, not lecturing. Good parents talk with their children. They have dialogue. Monologues, or one-sided talking with no expectation of a response, are not part of effective communication. Neither is shouting, arguing, or verbal attacks. As parents, we can’t take the easy route and fall into the habit of monologue-correcting or teaching our child. We need to talk with our children, not at them.

Parents, this may be news to you, but we are the adults in the relationship with our children. We are responsible for controlling the tone, attitude, and level of conversation our family engages in. We are the models. Our example will either raise our child’s communication skills to become mature, civil conversation participants or trap them into immaturity.

Listening is another component to good communication. As a whole, our culture does not know how to listen. James 1:19-20 (NLT) says, “Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires.” As parents, we need to be quick to listen. We need to learn our child’s verbal and non-verbal language and give them the opportunity to use it.

Unfortunately, most parents, especially dads, have a tendency to interrupt their children’s stories and try to fix whatever issue they are dealing with. I learned the hard way that often our kids aren’t asking us to fix their problems. They just need someone to process them with; they need us to understand.

During adolescence, my girls taught me to “nod my head and act spiritual.” They would start telling me about their day, and I would want to interrupt. “You know, if you hadn’t done that or said this, the issue wouldn’t have happened in the first place. But since you did, here’s how to fix it.” Then I’d get the look. Every guy knows what I’m talking about—that piercing look only women have. And when you see it, you know you’re in trouble.

My girls would look at me and say, “Dad, can I just finish the story?” They didn’t want my advice. They wanted my understanding. They wanted relationship. The good news is my understanding did not mean I had to agree with or like what they told me. I just had to nod my head and act spiritual.

The other thing I had to learn as I communicated with my children was to shut down the temptation to top their story. They might be telling me about something bad that happened at school and I would want to interrupt with something bad from my day, just to help them put their “pain” into perspective. Maybe your parents did this. Maybe they said things like, “Well, when I was young, I had to walk to school in the snow. Uphill. Both ways. With no shoes on.” We all need to get over that. Story comparison is not part of effective communication. We must learn to listen, to lean in and hear what our children are really saying. That’s what scripture is talking about when it admonishes us to be quick to listen and slow to speak (James 1:19).

The best way I know to do this is to get feedback. I know feedback can feel awkward and uncomfortable at first, but you’d be surprised how many things we miss without this skill. Jesus often told His listeners, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says.” Everyone has ears, but not everyone hears what is being said. In other words, we have to choose to listen and seek to understand.

Our brains are amazing. They hear and see and feel everything. But they can also wipe out unimportant stimuli. Without that ability, we’d go crazy. Have you ever been at a restaurant when a conversation at the table next to you suddenly catches your attention? The people at that table were probably talking the whole time, but until you chose to hear, you didn’t hear.

What about right now? If you stopped reading for a second and chose to hear what was going on around you, what sounds would you hear? This choice, this decision to hear, is vital to our communication patterns. But how do we know others have chosen to hear? Feedback. Without receiving feedback, we can’t know if what we’ve said is heard and understood by whomever we’re speaking to. And without giving feedback, we can’t know if what we’ve heard is what was actually intended.

I remember leaving the house in a hurry once years ago. I hollered at my oldest son as I walked out the door. “Jeremy, make sure you cut the grass!”

“Sure, Dad.”

But when I came home, the grass was not cut. And I was not a happy camper. “Son, why is the grass not cut?”

“I don’t know, Dad.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” “I don’t know.”

“I told you to cut the grass, Jeremy, and you said, ‘Sure, Dad.’ So, why isn’t it cut?”

“Oh…I thought you said never smoke grass. Sorry, Dad.”

It’s funny now, but I wasn’t really thrilled then. Had I stopped to get feedback, this episode wouldn’t have happened. If Jeremy had responded with, “Sure, Dad. I remember what you taught me. I’ll never smoke grass.” I would have said, “I appreciate that, but you misheard me. I want you to cut the grass.” See? Feedback.

But remember, this feedback thing goes both ways. We need

to get feedback when we instruct our children, and we need to give feedback when they communicate with us to make sure we are all hearing correctly and understanding what is being said. If you haven’t already set up a feedback loop with your family, start one today. Feedback is simple. It reiterates what was said, what was heard, and what was meant. Feedback asks questions to gain clarity and is the first step toward resolving miscommunication.

“Okay. But how does that help when my kids won’t talk to me?” Initiate conversation. Don’t wait for or expect your children to start this process. Go the extra mile. Our kids are still developing their communication skills, and as they are learning, they can sometimes digress. When they’re young, it takes almost no effort to get our children to spend time with us and talk to us. As teenagers, a lot more is happening under the surface. It feels easier for them to hide in their phones or video games than to do the hard work of processing their thoughts and feelings.

But stay engaged. Spend time with them. Keep pressing. Keep pushing. Keep asking questions (Proverbs 20:5 NLT). Keep pursuing the things they enjoy. Choose strategic moments to talk with your kids and give them the opportunity to communicate. Pick them up from school. Take them out on dates. Hunting was always where my kids and I bonded. It’s amazing what they would talk to me about while we were sitting in a deer stand. So keep talking with your kids and give them time to talk with you.

There is no substitute for time. Spend time together as a family. Eat meals together as often as possible. Go to church together. Take vacations together. Have fun as a family and talk. Talk to your kids about their favorite band, their best friend, their favorite sports team(s). Then tell them about yours. Ask your kids about their favorite TV show or movie, their favorite place to eat out, their least favorite class at school. Talking with your kids about the things they are passionate about opens those doors of communication and makes it easier for them to talk about deeper things, like what scares them or what they’re struggling with.

No matter what you talk to your children about, empathize with them. Put yourself in their place. Remember what it was like to face the pressures of school, the temptation to conform, the drama of friendship. Remember the anxiety you felt when trying to figure out what to do after graduation? And remember, they do not have the life experience you do. They haven’t learned how to draw on the power of God like you have, so empathize with them. Don’t dump on them when they are hurting or stressed. Listen to them. Pray with them. And help them separate their actions or feelings from their identity.

To do that, you have to be able to separate your own performance, as a parent or otherwise, from your identity. If you get defensive or feel discouraged when someone corrects or critiques you on the job or at home, you have not yet learned to separate your identity from your performance. Many believers do not know how to do this. When they make a mistake, they think they are a mistake. When they fail, they think they are a failure. That is not true. Quit doing that. You are a child of God. If, in a weakness, you have failed—repent. That’s not who you are anymore. In Christ, you are righteous and truly holy (Ephesians 4:24).You are not a failure, you are now an overcomer in Christ. Act like who you are. Separate your actions from your identity and begin to see yourself as God sees you.

I taught my kids that they were a ten in Christ. They were the head, not the tail; above, not beneath (Deuteronomy 28:13). I taught them that they had the power to change the world. Even when they messed up, I told them, “I love you unconditionally. I’ll never quit loving you. I’ll never give up on you. I’m committed to your good. What you did was unacceptable, but that doesn’t change who you are.” I helped them separate who they were from what they did.

You, too, are a ten in the eyes of God. That doesn’t mean you won’t mess up. Sometimes, we all do a piece of stupid, yet God loves us. He doesn’t give up on us. We’re His kids and as long as we stay humble—believing what He says above what we feel— we’ll keep growing in our knowing of who we are in Christ and our flesh will conform to that image (Romans 8:29). It’s a process. But God sees the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10). Just because we’re still in the process doesn’t mean we aren’t valuable to and loved by Him.