Eight Effective Tips to Let Your Child Speak to You

Use your critics appropriately

If you want your child to speak to you, do not criticize him at the first place. A scold or a criticism is a “killer” to close up the conversation between you and your child. Also, do not draw any conclusions earlier without listening to his/her explanation. You should behave like an audience who wishes to listen to him/her patiently and attentively in order to catch his/her interest to speak more to you. After his/her story, reward or praise him/her by guiding him/her to solve the problems.

Create an opportunity

“Son, let’s have a talk!” , a common starting point most people will use to begin a conversation with their children, but this will finally end up you yourself is lecturing but your child keep his mouth zipped. You should create an opportunity while doing outdoors activities with your child. When playing football with your child, you can use this opportunity to talk to him. You may even talk to your child while on the way driving back. If you want to understand your child better, create some situations that will not make your child feels pressure to open his/her mouth. When you wish to ask your child some questions, try to avoid “Why?” in your conversation. As this simple word : “why” will make your child becomes violence and rebellious against you.

Control your reaction

If your child tells you that he/she is not selected for a school football team, do not react upon this by showing that you feel very sad and disappointed. Your child is very smart as he/she can read your facial expression. So, be careful in whatever reactions you take. If this happens, he/she will only tell you a good new in the future. No matter your child tells you a good or a bad new, you should remain calm and please to listen.

Choose the right time

Your child may have lots of things to tell you after the meal particularly at 7p.m. You may have lots of plates to wash, table to clear up, floor to mop, but wait for a moment before doing these household chores. Spend some time at the table to listen to your child’s story. Adults always ignore this important timetable by planning ahead activities to be carried out. You should appreciate this moment and let your child to talk for a while. Otherwise, he/she will feel hurt and not to speak to you anymore as he/she feels that you are not paying attention to him.

Reward the honestly

When your child did a mistake, do not at the first place scold or punish him/her. If he/she admitted his/her fault, you should reward his/her honesty by forgiving him/her. Your child will feel very anxious when doing mistakes, as he/she thinks that this will upset you and finally he/she will scare of losing your love and attention. You should cultivate good habits and virtues in his/her life. Most importantly train him/her to admit his/her fault bravely in front of you without telling you a false story.

Respect to the privacy

Though how close are you to your child, he/she sometimes will have some secrets to keep away from your knowledge. This is particularly obvious when he/she reaches his/her puberty period. At this stage, he/she will apart from you by having not so close relationship with you. He/she will feel more secure and reliable to turn to his/her friends. When this situation happens, do not scold or ignore your child. What you should do is to let him/ her know that you will be by his/her side no matter what happens. Let him/her feel your love and acceptance, so that he/she may open his/her mouth to speak to you without facing any obstacles or gaps. Do not fence up yourself, try to be understanding and close to your child.

Keep things secret

Let us imagine, one of your best friends tell you something very important and privacy, if by accidentally you revealed this secret to someone else, what will your best friend feel? Of course, he/she will feel very hurt and he/she will not believe on you anymore. Similarly, when your child tells you something, you should keep the things secret. By keeping it secret, your child will feel secure to speak to you and will tell you anything he/she knows. If one day your child feels that you leaked out his/her secret, he/she is not going to speak to you anymore as he/she feels that you are not a reliable person to rely on. Finally, he/she losses his/her confidence to speak to you. This is probably the fastest way that your child will feel disappointed to speak to you.

Correct the fault immediately

No matter how alerted and careful are you, you sometimes make mistake in front of your child. When this situation happens, it is very important to correct it immediately. You should admit your mistakes without blaming or pointing the accusing fingers towards your child for doing wrong things. At the same time, you should apologize to him/her to make things cleared out. Otherwise, he/she may lose confidence towards you and feel like not going to tell you his/her affairs anymore.