The longer I spend working with kids, the more clear it’s becoming to me that the key to a healthy relationship with a young person is this (you’re going to want to write this one down!):
Great communication.
Not the startling revelation you were hoping for? Ok, stick with me.
I spend time working with young people with mental health issues, and I think it’s important to understand just what it might be like to actually be a teenager with a mental health challenge.
Now there’s a couple of approaches you could take here. Go ahead and find a young person in that situation, if you like, and say this:
“Hello there young person. I’m adult and I want to understand you. Please describe for me what it feels like to have Bipolar disorder“.
Then sit back and put on a thoughtful, caring and understanding expression. You can even pull out your clipboard and pen if you like, and prepare to take notes.
Maybe you can imagine the probable outcome of that conversation.
Or you could go to YouTube and you might find something like this:
Now stop for a moment, and ask yourself this: Have you ever felt frustrated with teenagers who seemed unable to communicate? Have you thrown your hands up in frustration wishing that a certain young person would just open up to you, and “let you in”?
Would you consider the person who made that particular video incapable of communicating clearly and effectively?
So here’s my question:
If I’m attempting to communicate with you right now, who is responsible for making sure that my communication is understood correctly?
I ask this question of young people a lot, and do you know what the most common response I get is? It turns out that most people (adults included) have never stopped to think about it. Now, that should be a revelation in itself.
If you are trying to get a message across and you’re not sure who has to do the work of creating the correct meaning, I think you’re setting yourself up for failure.
Another common answer to the question is also “Well, I guess it’s 50-50″. In other words, I create half the meaning, and the rest is up to you, the receiver of my communication, to make of it what you will.
Others will tell you that it’s 100% the other person’s job to assemble the communication, make sense of it, and respond. Have you ever met someone who says something like this:
“I like to speak my mind and if you don’t like it, that’s your problem!”?
Look at it like this:
Imagine, if you will, that you had a hundred thousand dollars in cash. You can’t make it to the bank (let’s say for the sake of argument that you have a broken leg), but you don’t like the idea of having that much cash sitting around. You have a teenage son, and you figure that he might be able to take that money and put it in the bank for you.
You figure if you can deposit that hundred thousand and let it sit in a term deposit, at some point in the future the value of that money will have grown. The magic of compound interest is a wonderful thing. Maybe it will have generated enough interest for you to be able to purchase your son a new computer, or something else he’ll find useful in his own life.
Of course, he’s a teenager and it’s natural for you to be worried that he wouldn’t understand how to set up a term deposit, or that he’d be careless with the money, maybe lose a bit on the way to the bank, or spend some of it on stuff he wants instead.
Would you want to make sure, in that case, that your communication to your son was as clearly understood as possible? You probably would. In fact you’d probably take great pains to make sure that he understood every single thing about that transaction. If he messed it up, after all, there’s a chance that hundred thousand dollars of yours could become much less valuable. Not only would there be no interest, but there might even be built up resentment about the loss of value, due to carelessness of your son!
It’s up to you, folks.
In order to communicate effectively and clearly with young people (none of this applies to any other sort of communication, of course!) you need to take full responsibility for the communication. You can’t “hope” they understand. It’s your job as an excellent communicator to ensure that your message is received and understood just as you require it to be.
