Hear Yourself – 2 Minute Tip for Parenting Teens (#107)

Hi – Sue Blaney here with your weekly 2 Minute Tip for Parenting Teens

My tip this week is: Hear Yourself >>Listen

When I was growing up, my Mom called me a lot on my tone of voice. Still one of my short comings is that my tone of voice can sometimes be off-putting, express impatience, or even indicate feelings that I’m not consciously aware of. Lately, I’ve been having what feel like out-of-body experiences, where I hear myself as others hear me. And sometimes it isn’t pretty. Sometimes it’s even shocking to hear my tone of voice and know that that came out of me! It makes me want to crawl under a chair. It shocks me to think that I sound like that at times. I see I still have a lot of work to do – on me.

So, this may raise a good question for you to consider: what’s a major shortcoming in the way you interact with others? Perhaps you don’t listen very carefully, or you interrupt people, or you always think you have the right answer. Maybe your shortcoming isn’t on the communication front, but you are a procrastinator, or you are disorganized, or you exaggerate so much people aren’t sure when you are being accurate or honest. This is important here as we discuss parenting teenagers because you can be pretty sure that this short-coming shows up in your parenting. So now, as you tune into it, you have an opportunity to address it – again.

Our children are reflections of us in many ways. If you don’t pick up on your shortcomings on your own, you may see them in your child’s behavior. You may not recognize it right away, but it is likely that some of the behavior that you witness from your teenager – the behavior that you find most irritating or worrisome, even – is behavior that s/he has learned from you. Try to look more objectively at your teenager, consider where she sees that behavior being modeled, and be sure to take a good long look in the mirror.

If you don’t like what you see, take note.

Hear yourself. And make a change.

Thanks for subscribing to my 2 minute tips for parenting teens. ‘’Til next week, I’m Sue Blaney.
Note: We are having technical difficulties with our other website www.ParentingTeensInfo.com, so we are publishing this week’s 2 Minute Tip for Parenting Teens here.