Conversations with Your Kids
How to Talk to Your Children about Important Issues
Having hard conversations with your kids is of tantamount importance. Here are some tips to help you out.
Inappropriate television scenes, pictures, language, and more surround children every day. How do you raise your children to know what is appropriate and protect them when it is impossible to prevent these things from entering your home? Kids absorb everything they see and hear, including those things that you would rather them overlook, so you need to sharpen your observation skills, and get ready for some open conversations.
First and most importantly, no matter how much you feel like you will mess up the conversation, the bottom line is the conversation needs to happen.
When pop culture icons like Miley Cyrus, who your kids look up to and idolize, has pictures hit the media that are inappropriate, unless you want your children to think that’s OK, a conversation needs to happen. When a kid takes a gun to school and kills himself and other classmates, a conversation needs to happen. These news events provide a good platform for starting an important conversation that will help to convey your values and beliefs to your children.
Conversations also need to happen regardless of what is going on in the news. All children need to have conversations with their parents about drugs, sex, violence, relationships and peer pressure.
Honesty is the Best Policy
Kids today see and hear an amazing amount of negative and inappropriate things. If you as the parent do not answer your children’s questions openly and honestly, you are telling them to not come to you with questions. Children are quick to catch on to the fact that you are uncomfortable with a topic, or that you didn’t tell them the truth about something, and they will learn to go elsewhere for answers to the tough questions.
If the answer is best left vague, then use your judgment as to how much you share with your children, but always be honest, and try to answer as thoroughly as you can. The more detailed the question, the more your child already knows, so the more honest you need to be with him. You would rather your children learn from you than from the media, or other places, so swallow your discomfort, take a deep breath open up the conversation.
Don’t Talk "To" Your Kids
Many children will shy away from the hard conversations because they don’t want another lecture. Some don’t feel comfortable talking to their parents because they know their parents are uncomfortable talking about the issue. If, instead of talking to their children, more parents would talk with their children, more conversations about the hard issues might start taking place. Start the conversation by asking a question.
“Do you know anyone at school who does drugs?”
“Do you think that picture is appropriate?”
“What do you think about…?”
Find out what your kids think. Keep asking questions to get to the heart of the matter. Find out why they think drugs are ok? What is missing in those kids' lives that they feel the need to fill the void with artificial happiness? Listening to your children during a conversation needs to be at the top of the list of important things to remember, because conversations don’t happen when you talk to your kids, only when you talk with them.
