2 Sharing Skills to Encourage in Your Teen

Source: Carl Pickhardt

Consider the psychology of sharing—how maintaining a relationship is complicated because now two parties must manage a working commonality between them.

Specifically, consider two powerful sharing skills that parents can teach their teenagers: cooperation (working together) and communication (exchanging information.)

Such actions that may seem simple for parents can become more difficult for their teenager. Thus it can help to appreciate the increasing complexity.

With the onset of adolescence, a young person can become more self-centered to focus on coming-of-age challenges, and less disclosing to protect one’s growing life apart. Cooperative and communicative sharing can suffer on both counts, so parents need to encourage their continuation. Consider the importance of each.

How Cooperation Contributes

Family life can teach valuable lessons about working together and contributing effort for the family good. Now mutual sharing becomes an ongoing joint responsibility. At the same time, four common sharing complaints may be more frequently expressed by parents as their adolescent becomes more self-centered and focused on independence.

1. This relationship is all me: There is too much responsibility for others: “I have to do everything for us!” So maybe parents insist on equity of sharing, with the adolescent now contributing more.
2. This relationship is all you: There is too much self-preoccupation. “You mostly focus on yourself!” So maybe parents insist on more sensitivity, with the adolescent now showing consideration for others.
3. This relationship is all us: There is too much togetherness: “You need more room for social life apart from us!” So maybe parents encourage the growing adolescent's need for time with peers and social independence.
4. There is no "us" in our relationship: There is too much separation: “We miss hanging out with each other!” So maybe parents insist on having regular family times simply dedicated to enjoying caring company.

Whenever a parent feels inclined to make any of these sharing complaints, it’s usually a time to speak up and talk about the felt imbalance in the relationship so the need for more equitable sharing can be discussed. Continued togetherness requires constant attention and effort.

How to stay meaningfully and continually connected as adolescence gradually pushes parents and children further apart? This is the challenging parental question posed by adolescent change.

Getting the mix of sufficient sharing and separation with your child is an ongoing challenge in adolescence. “When we want family time together, you want to have time with friends!” One common solution to this conflict is including adolescent friends in family activities.

How Communication Informs

In caring relationships, as intimacy grows, there is a greater desire of each person to know the other and to be known in return. Now small contributions or omissions can signify more as specific acts assume symbolic value. "When you don't listen, I feel you don't care!"

Intimacy requires sensitive communication. Like needing air to breathe to live; people constantly need information to understand what’s going on with each other. In caring relationships, ignorance can be risky—leading people to falsely assume the best or imagine the worst.

However, information needs can be contradictory, which is why human communication in caring relationships can be so complicated to conduct. What do I really want to know? What would I rather not know? What about me would I like to be understood? What about me would I like kept private? Communication is challenging.

So: consider four basic information needs in caring relationships.

• Need to know: To be currently informed about how each other feels and what is happening in the other’s life. “Tell me about what’s going on.”
• Need to not to know: To be kept in ignorance of past relationships that mattered then. “Don’t tell me what is upsetting.”
• Need to be known: To be intimately appreciated, accepted, and well understood for the person one is. “I want to confide in you about me.”
• Need not to be known: To preserve privacy for sufficient life apart. “There are parts of my life I want to keep to myself.”

Then, of course, there are common information need conflicts:

• The need to know vs. the need not to know: When the truth is painful to hear, when ignorance is preferable to understanding. “I’d rather not be told about all the risk-taking in the lives of your friends.”
• The need to be known vs. the need not to be known: When understanding is at the expense of privacy, when exposure reveals too much. “I like telling you about my life, but some information I want kept to myself.”

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In caring relationships, communication needs are complicated. Nobody wants to know everything, but everybody wants to know something. Nobody wants to be completely known, but everybody has some need to be understood.

Adolescence is Awkward

As their daughter or son separates from childhood and begins the coming-of-age transformation, communication conflicts increasingly occur between parents and more independent adolescents.

Opposed to the parent’s growing curiosity is the teenager’s increasing need for privacy. Now the growing accommodation between them can be times of reluctant compromise for both: parents being informed less than they ideally want, and the teenager disclosing more than she or he really wanted to tell.

The Takeaway

Contrary to what some adolescents seem to think, parents should not do all the household work and are not best served by ignorance. Insufficient adolescent family contribution can cause parental resentment, while insufficient adolescent communication can cause parental distrust. Anger and ignorance do not enjoyable parents make.

When it comes to sharing work and information, the injunction from parents to their teenager might be simply this: “We expect you to contribute some regular help to support family functioning, and sufficient communication to keep us adequately informed.”

In most cases of sharing between people, "some" has to be enough.