If you find that when your son or daughter enters teenage years your relationship with them starts to change do not be concerned. This is a new phase of their life. As a child, they may have been willing to follow your ways, your standards and your beliefs.

However now they are entering a stage of life where they will decide on and define their own beliefs, standards and ways. Some of their decisions may conflict with your perspectives, but do not be concerned. If you trained them well as a child your influence in their lives will always be there to guide them.

With the help of some young friends, I have put together a series of tips designed to help you maintain a successful relationship with your teen during these restless years and on into their adulthood.

Teenage Years, Fun or Frenzy?

We started with looking at:

Eight things you can DO to help build and maintain the relationship between you as a parent and your teen.

One of these 8 tips was:
Do discuss issues with your teen. Now I am not talking about a heated discussion, but a good discussion over a cup of coffee or an ice cream. You may of course carefully point out the consequences of the issue in question, but the final decision will be theirs. Don’t ever try to control that.

What if they make the wrong decision? This is where unconditional love comes into the picture. You will always be there to support and love no matter what happens.

Now this does not mean you have to “bail them out”. No, let them pay the consequences (this is how they will learn), but always be there to support.

Dining together as a family was another tip that my friends thought to be important. The family dinner table can be a great place to share and strengthen family bonds.

You can find more about the first 4 tips (listed below), by clicking here.

• Do discuss.
• Do point out the consequences.
• Do allow choices.
• Do dine together as a family
  (Click on the link above or here to read more).

More about the second 4 tips (listed below) can be found here:

• Do trust them (this is very important)
• Do restrain (with wisdom)
• Do involve them in the family activities (they have not left home yet)
• Do continue to believe the best (this is also VERY important.
  Click on the link above or here to read more.)

Teenage Years – Parents Adventure or Nightmare?

This depends greatly on your relationship with your teenager.

Here is a list of things to avoid doing in order to maintain a successful relationship with your teen.

You can click on the links to read the complete post about the respective topic.

Don’t Argue

Don’t Threaten Your Teenager

Don’t Punish Us, My Teenage Friends Say

Don’t Smother Your Teenager

Don’t Antagonize Your Teenager
Here I take a look at three definitions of the word “antagonize, and apply them to your relationship with your teen.

Don’t Ignore Your Teenager
(This can be a major temptation when things get difficult.)

Don’t Give Up On Your Teenager

I trust these tips will help you with your relationship with your teen. I look forward to hearing about your experiences and recommendations that will help to build a successful relationship with our teenagers.

May All Your Relationships be Successful!

These tips were either suggested or approved by my teenage friends, and the sixth tip that was named is:

Don’t Ignore Your Teenager.
Two major keys to any successful relationship is love and communication. One expression of love is to show a genuine desire to communicate with the person.

When both love and communication are present in a relationship any problem can be worked out.

When some parents face difficulties with their teenagers that seem impossible to solve, they tend to take the “easy way out” and simply ignore their teen. I am sure you have heard of the theory “if I ignore it, it will go away”. This is so often the human way of coping with many situations that are difficult to handle.

However, in actual fact ignoring a problem does not solve anything, but rather it allows time for any unresolved emotional reactions to go deeper and fester.

There will be added difficulties if communication difficulties existed with your teenager when he or she was a small child. But be encouraged, it is not impossible to restore your relationship with your teen to become a successful one. It will take some time, patience and a determination to win. But always expect the best, and you WILL win!

• Love is gentle and kind. Be gentle in all your communication. The time to give orders is now over. You may have been able to give orders to your child when he or she was young, but they is now a young adult and will not tolerate being told to do anything. They are much more likely to respond when asked politely if they would do something.
• Love is respectful. Your teenager is now a young adult and deserves the same respect you would give to any of your adult friends.
• Love is considerate of the other person’s needs. Your teenager is finding his own feet in this world, and now has his own agenda. Be considerate of him or her as you would be of a close friend.

  Take some time to chat with your youngster. Talk about some possible family activities coordinating with their timetable. Ask him for suggestions also. You are sure to find your teen much more cooperative and willing to join you when you approach them with consideration.

Here are three suggestions to help you build or rebuild and maintain good communication with your teenager and let them know that you really love them.

Include your teenager in family activities.
Remember to include your teenager when you plan family activities. However invite him or her to participate, don’t order. Make sure you leave them with the freedom of choice.

Remember they are now at the stage of life where they are creating their “own life”. Invite them to participate with you and the rest of the family and they are more likely to reciprocate by inviting you to join them in some of their activities from time to time.

Invite to your teenager dine with the family.
If you already have established the habit of eating together as a family, this will be much easier. In fact it will be most likely be natural that your teenager will continue dine with the family on a regular basis.

If you have not been accustomed to dining together as a family, it is very important that you start a new family dining tradition as many times a week as your schedules will allow.

Remember do not demand they join you for the evening meal. Rather invite them to join you.using phrases such as “we would love to have you here this evening so that we could enjoy a meal together as a family” or “would you like to join us this evening for dinner, it would be great if you could”.

Inspire your teenager at every opportunity.
I have a friend who used to write little inspirational notes and hide them in her children’s lunch boxes or under their pillows when her boys were small. She continued to place notes under their pillows and around the house when they were older.

This is a very effective communication tool if used wisely. It made a lasting on my friend’s two youngsters who have grown up to be fine young husbands and fathers.

Here are some tips to inspire you to use this effective communication tool.

• Make sure that all of the notes you write are inspirational or motivational. Some of the notes could your own comments while others could be quotes from great men and women. When you use quotes, adding a simple comment from you as well may be appropriate.
• Take advantage of this tool to let your teen know how much you love them, believe in them and admire them. Some unexpected personal words of encouragement from you will always go a long way.
• Never use this communication tool as a weapon to try and manipulate or convey any negative message.
• Send a surprise text to their cell phone with a word of encouragement for the day. Again this word of encouragement can be a personal one from you, or a quote. And once again remember, never use texting for any negative communication.

I am sure that a little bit of patience, lots of love and effort to reach out to your teenager will certainly pay off for you.

May All Your Relationships be Successful!

The full series Embrace The Fun and Adventure With Your Teenager and Avoid the Frenzy and Nightmare can be found here

A person who openly displays characteristics of selfishness is not someone whom you will readily trust. You will know that in moments of stress or life crisis, you could never count on them to help or support you. They will be too busy thinking about themselves.

You would also know that they will probably even be unreliable to keep an appointment or an agreement because if something comes up meanwhile that is more beneficial to them, then they will more than likely conveniently “forget” about their obligations to you.

We Learnt To Mistrust

It is very sad but true that by the time most of us arrive at adulthood we have had to learn to mistrust.

Perhaps you have to face a few betrayals and disillusionments to come to the conclusion that it is not always good to readily trust a person until you get to know them, but unfortunately most of us have had to come to this realization.

However to live a life always “on guard”, mistrusting every new person you meet is very stressful. It is difficult to make new friends or even form strong business relationships with such a wary attitude.

Trusting Again Starts With Trusting Yourself

So how CAN we learn to relax and trust again, when we know (by experience) that not all people are trustworthy?

The key is to follow your heart your “gut feeling”. In fact what you are really doing is learning to trust yourself, and your own intuition.

Believe it or not, most of us don’t really trust ourselves and that is what can get us into trouble. When you don’t really trust yourself, then you don’t have the necessary strength to push against the tide, which is often necessary when we follow our hearts.

I know in my life, the worst decisions I have made were made against my own heart, and in “obedience” to others who I thought knew better than I did. Now I have come to the firm conclusion that where my life is involved, God and I are the only ones who really know what is best for me.

Once you are able to really trust yourself you will be able to relax more and everything else will become much easier and fall into place.

Deciding Who To Trust

There are some people we meet who are obviously not trustworthy, others we are just not sure about. But remember, we trust ourselves first, and then we can trust others as we sense it is ok.

The obviously not-to-be-trusted ones certainly need to be treated with a grain of salt, and not allowed into our “inner circle”. The more we can stay away from them, the better it is for all. Those we are not sure about, get to “prove themselves” before we allow them to step into our circle of trust.

Trust Is Earned

The bottom line is that all trust (and mistrust) is earned, whether the person involved earned it with us, or with others before meeting us and so created an “air” about themselves which our hearts or “gut feeling” picked up when we met them.

It is as the saying declares: their reputation goes before them.


My Checklist:

May All Your Relationships be Successful!

At least they will not always live up to our expectations of them, because our expectations will probably be above what they are really capable of doing at times.

The question is, how are you going to react when they fail? You need to ask yourself honestly, how much imperfection will I tolerate? That is something you need to settle in your own heart, BEFORE moving forward to build a relationship with another person.

So, one of the key ways to learn to trust again is to learn to forgive.

HOWEVER, please note I am not saying that if you forgive, it automatically means you will trust as before. No, forgiveness and trust are two very separate things.

• Trust is earned by the other person. We also make a decision to trust them once we sense it is “safe”.
  
• Forgiveness is a decision we make and has actually may not involve the other person at all. When we forgive we release the burden of bitterness and resentment from our own lives regardless of whether the person who hurt us has changed or not.
  

Steps To Take To Trust Again:

Step One

To be able to trust again, the first step is to learn to trust yourself. Trust that YOU know what and who is best for YOUR life.

The worst decisions I have made in my life are when I followed what others said was best, against what I felt to be right for me. Believe me, that is suicide.

Step Two

The second step is to place limits, and trust each person in our lives according to their reputation.

Trust is earned, so don’t fall into the trap of fully trusting too quickly before you really have a chance to get to know the person.

Step Three

The third step is to accept that no one is perfect, and allow for that.

Now we can relax and enjoy our friends and family, trusting each one on the level they have earned, and accepting each member as a unique individual we are learning to enjoy, not change.

Learning to accept others and not try and change them is another topic, but for here it is sufficient to say, we need to accept a person and not try to change them before trusting and loving them.

If you find yourself trying to change someone close to you so you can feel more comfortable with them, then it is time to ask yourself:

Am I prepared to accept this person as they really are and love them for themselves?

Or could it be I have a fantasy image of my “ideal friend or companion” and I am trying to force this person to conform to this image?

If the latter is true, trouble is close on the horizon! It is time to act NOW!

What to do? Wake up to reality, accept them for who they are, or if you cannot do that, then they were never your friend.

Check List:

• Do I trust myself?
  If your answer is no, stop right here, this is an area that needs work first.

  You are your own best friend and your own best judge.

• We all need to place limits.
  Have I placed limits on the extent I trust each of my circle of friends (and even family)?

  Am I trusting each person to the extent they have showed themselves trustworthy. Have I set limits for each person which gives boundaries marking their place in my life?

  If the answer is no, you are setting yourself up for suffocation.

• Am I trusting real people or fantasy images?
  This seems a strange question. But so many people conjure up images in their minds of the “ideal friend” or the “ideal companion” etc and they trust this image rather than the real person. Of course it won’t be long before the real person does not measure up to the fantasy image, and we feel disillusioned.

  Do I trust everyone in my life according to who I know them to be or for who I hope they are or will be?

  Remember if you are trying to trust an imaginary person (who you hope they are or will be), you are setting yourself up for disillusionment at best or betrayal at worst.

I trust that these questions will help you get started on the road to trusting in the right way, or if are on this road already, I trust this article will inspire you to continue.

If you are facing or have just faced a broken intimate relationship, please click here to see something that will help you.

May All Your Relationships be Successful!