As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you play an essential role in your teen’s success. There are intentional ways to grow a healthy parent-teen relationship while building valuable listening skills in your teen.

Your teen’s success depends on their ability to listen and understand what you and others communicate. Listening skills can support your teen’s ability to engage in healthy relationships, focus, and learn. For example, teens must listen to their teacher if they follow directions and successfully navigate expectations at school. Not surprisingly, better listening skills are associated with school success.

Teens and emerging young adults ages 15-19 are transitioning between childhood and adulthood, learning about who they will become as independent people, their strengths and limitations, why they feel the way they do, and how they relate to others. This is also known as their self-awareness. They come to better understand themselves through interactions with you, their teachers, and their peers. This is a critical time to teach and practice listening skills.

However, everyone encounters difficulties in listening. With screens, such as mobile devices, captivating teens for hours each day, it's easy to overlook chances to engage with your teen and practice listening skills. Effective listening involves utilizing crucial skills such as impulse control, focused attention, empathy, and nonverbal and verbal communication.

For parents or those in a parenting role, the key to many challenges, like building essential listening skills, is finding ways to communicate to meet your and your teen’s needs. The steps below include specific and practical strategies to prepare you for growing this vital skill.

Whether it’s your fifteen-year-old walking away frustrated while you are talking or your nineteen-year-old daydreaming during their teacher’s instructions and not understanding how to do their research paper, establishing regular ways of practicing listening skills can prepare your teen for family, school, and life success.

Today, in the short term, teaching skills to listen effectively and reflectively can create

● greater opportunities for connection, cooperation, and enjoyment

● trust in each other that you have the competence to manage your relationships and responsibilities

● a sense of well-being and motivation to engage

● language and literacy fluency

Tomorrow, in the long term, working on effective listening skills with your teen

● develops a sense of safety, security, and a belief in self

● builds skills in self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making

● deepens family trust and intimacy

This five-step process helps you and your teen cultivate effective listening skills, a critical life skill. The same process can also address other parenting issues (learn more about it)[1] .

Tip: These steps are done best when you and your teen are not tired or in a rush.

Tip: Intentional communication[2] and healthy parenting relationships[3] will support these steps.

You can get your teen thinking about listening skills by...