It’s time to get serious and decide a win-win deal together. Take turns speaking and listening to each other. For negotiations to be successful create a situation where your teen will stay comfortable and alert enough to listen closely to you. The most important thing you can do is to keep any of your positive or negative emotions/thoughts/or reactions out of the negotiation. Instead aim to stay completely helpful and businesslike about the agreement you are negotiating, even when they attempt to derail the negotiation.
Here are my best tips when negotiating with teens:
- With teens who are extremely private, don’t stare in their eyes, stand higher than them, or even stand or sit very close to them. They might find that close proximity threatening and too personal. Instead, position yourself so that you can glance at or towards them occasionally.
- Speak briefly in short and simple sentences.
- Speak in a low, quiet, businesslike voice.
- Speak slowly and pause briefly between sentences, checking they have understood what you are saying and they are still listening.
- When they seem easily distracted, you might ask them to repeat your main ideas in a mild and helpful voice. Listen closely to their responses,
- and if necessary briefly repeat any information they might not have heard, understood, or remembered.
- Then check again that they have understood and remembered what you have said. Helpfully repeat this sequence until it is clear they are paying attention.
- If they interrupt you while talking you can choose to either stop talking briefly to listen closely to them to understand their concerns, or ask them to remember that point for when you are finished talking.
- There will be a time to ask for their opinion of what you have said. Listen closely to understand. Repeat what they have said in your own words until they know that you have understood their concerns, then you can discuss them.
- Sometimes it is helpful when deepening your understanding of each others’ concerns to write down what those concerns are in a pros and cons list.
- Take your time to find an agreement you both believe is the best possible one you could find. Sometimes you may negotiate for several days until you are both happy. There is no hurry to come to an agreement.
- Only accept win-win solutions. You both have to be relatively happy with the agreement otherwise you have one winner and one loser. However, the perfect agreement is hard to reach and you both might have to compromise on some of the things you wanted. Still, if you are both happy enough with the deal created between you, then you have created a deal you can both live with.
- Remember that all privileges relating to the agreement (or positive consequences) are suspended until an agreement is reached. At some point your teen will want solutions decided so that they can have their privileges back.
Put the final agreement in writing then you and your teen can always refresh your memories as to what was agreed. However, you can still both agree to modify this agreement as you go along because situations change.
Lastly, I want to warn you that your teen might know you better than you know. Many are shrewd negotiators who might push you to change agreements with them before you have had time to think coolly and calmly about what you really want, and what your bottom lines are. So check out my suggestions on working with teens before you agree to any changes.
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Warmly,
Anne
Families as Coaches 