Teenagers: mostly listening

Everything that worked stops working. The techniques from the toddler years, and the authority that came free when they were eight, both quietly expire.

What is actually happening

Their brain is rewiring, back to front, with the emotional systems maturing well ahead of the part that handles consequences. That is why an intelligent teenager does something baffling and cannot explain it. They are not being obtuse. The machinery is genuinely uneven, into their twenties.

Their central job at this age is separating from you. Which means friction with you is not a malfunction, it is the work.

The shift

• From instructing to consulting. They will take advice they asked for. They will reject identical advice offered unprompted.
• From questions to availability. Interrogation closes them down. Being in the kitchen at 11pm doing nothing in particular is how conversations actually start.
• From control to negotiation on nearly everything, with a small number of things that are genuinely not negotiable. Pick those carefully. Three is plenty.
• From your timing to theirs. They open up late at night, in cars, and while doing something else. Almost never when you sit them down.

Practical things that work

• Keep a shared activity going, even a small one. Lifts, a takeaway, a match, a series you both watch. A relationship needs a container.
• Feed them and their friends. Being the house where people come is enormous intelligence and it costs you crisps.
• Do not react to the first version. They will test a story on you in its most alarming form. Staying flat means you get told the second version too.
• Apologise when you are wrong, specifically. It is the fastest route to being taken seriously by a teenager.
• Say the thing you assume they know. That you are proud of them, that you like them. They do not know unless you say it, and they will not ask.

Hold the line on very few things

Safety, honesty about where they are, and how people in the house are treated. Almost everything else, including hair, music, tidiness and taste, is not worth the relationship.

Watch for

Withdrawal from everything they enjoyed, big changes in sleep or eating, self-harm, a sharp drop at school, or a new group you know nothing about. Ask directly and calmly. Asking about self-harm or suicidal thoughts does not plant the idea, and the evidence on that is clear.

In the UK: YoungMinds parents helpline, and Papyrus HOPELINE247 on 0800 068 4141 for under-35s and anyone worried about them.