Ways to improve communications with younger persons.

While we all want to have excellent communications with our children, that doesn’t always seem possible. Experts suggest some ways we might, as parents, teachers, spiritual advisors or even peripheral family members might improve our communications with younger persons. They include:

 Encourage the teen or young adult to talk about what interests them.

 Think like a journalist: put your own interests aside and concentrate on what they are saying.

 Listen with both ears and don’t interrupt.

 When you do ask questions, make them open-ended questions. If you ask a question that can be answered with a quick “Yes” or “No”, you won’t learn much.

 Back off if your child seems uncomfortable with the attention, which may feel unusual to him or her, and return to the conversation later.

 Try talking to him or her when you are both doing something else. Chatting while driving or while doing a repetitive chore like folding laundry can be a successful time to communicate. The distraction of the chore makes it seem less like putting him or her on the “hot seat.”

 Remember, your goal is not to prove how wrong he or she is, or how “right” you are. It’s just to open communications channels with each other. And you just might learn a lot about what’s in your child’s head.

 Discuss with them the legal aspects of drinking: the age limit, the consequences of drinking and driving, and the legal consequences of public drinking, giving alcohol to a minor, and any other ordinance in place in your community that sets guidelines for drinking alcohol in that community.

Teaching your child how to say “no” to those who would influence him or her into drinking while underage or abusing alcohol or binge drinking when away from home or in college is imperative.

Fortunately, the highly creative link www.thecoolspot.gov tells it like it is and the games on it are interactive and FUN. If talking to your child about alcohol abuse is tough for you, this little game site which offers free things for quiz busters can help you.

“The Cool Spot” also offers lots of interactive peer pressure examples and graphics to help youngsters know how to say no and still be popular. Youngsters I showed the link to liked the “How to Pick your No’s” comebacks for persistent “alcohol pushers”. In fact, after you check out The Cool Spot, you might want to play an after dinner role playing game. Members of the family could be the Persistent Peer while others take the role of the No Go person. It’s a good rehearsal for peer pressure to come.