We all love a good engagement story…unless it ends with rejection! Too often parents feel that is the end of the story when they try to connect with their teen or young adult children. In this episode, we take a look at some ways to get better engaged!
First we talked about identifying barriers: expectations, distractions, influence of other relationships, and differences in personalities. Our journey starts with researching who our children are and what they like. We’ve got to do that with learning to ask good questions and being good listeners.
We shared a couple of resources to help parents with this process: Kara Powell & Brad Griffin’s 3 Big Questions That Change Every Teenager and D6’s Family App (Google Play or Apple Store). These have great tools to start conversations.
We also talked about some “games” suggested by Dr. Ron Hunter:
- Best Thing/Worst Thing
- What Are You Excited About
- Who’s Got the Ball?
We hope this episode equips you and encourages you to find the creativity, courage, and commitment to engage with your children. Be Abnormal!