ITL087 : How to Communicate Effectively with Teenagers
In the Loop with Andy Andrews
Matt Lempert
4.9 • 614 Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2013
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode, Andy answers a listener question about the best way to communicate with teenagers.
Listener question:
• When my daughter was 12, her three best friends moved away. Around that same time, another friend decided to tell her everything people didn’t like about her. We’ve been trying for the past three years to empower her again. She is now at a new school, but can’t seem to break out of the “new girl” frame of mind. What do we do as parents to break her out of this rut?
The most important thing you could do at this time is to be friends and talk to her. Really talk to her.
• Sometimes you will have to talk about why you are talking to her.
• A lot of times, kids this age tend to go to their room and put up a do-not-disturb sign.
• In spite of this, you still must talk to them.
It is important that you don’t teach your kids what to think, but how to think.
• We see this problem in our schools, but we tend to ignore it at home.
• Many parents sadly miss the opportunity to have long conversations with their kids about why they believe what they believe.
Kids will have conversations with you if they don’t think the answer will be a lecture.
• Giving kids the reasons and thought process behind the things you believe will create much more productive conversations.
• You need to be vulnerable sometimes and reveal that you recognize that you don’t know everything.
This is not to say that you should stop being an authority figure.
• You don’t need to be on “equal footing” with your child.
• But these conversations will allow you to teach your child how you arrived at these positions.
• Like it or not, at some point, your children will decide what they will believe, and you will have no control over it.
Questions for Listeners
• Do you have a question for Andy? Call in and your question might be featured on the show!
• Phone: 1-800-726-ANDY
• E-Mail: InTheLoop@AndyAndrews.com
• Facebook.com/AndyAndrews
• Twitter.com/AndyAndrews
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're listening to In the Loop with Andy Andrews, a unique opportunity to see life from a different perspective with New York Times bestselling author, Andy Andrews. |
| 0:12.2 | Now here's your host, Andy Trobb. |
| 0:15.5 | Well, welcome everyone back to another show with Andy Andrews. |
| 0:18.2 | How are you today, my friend? |
| 0:19.9 | Good, AT. How are you? |
| 0:21.5 | I'm very, very good. Thank you very much. |
| 0:23.8 | I love the variety of listeners that we have because it creates a huge variety of listener |
| 0:28.6 | feedback. By the way, we're closing in on 400,000 downloads of Inuit. |
| 0:34.6 | Wow. |
| 0:35.0 | So we have a couple listeners that have listened a lot but no we have a lot of |
| 0:40.5 | listeners everywhere and a lot of them are parents and this question for you andy is about |
| 0:46.6 | someone's daughter it's a pretty powerful question so here we go and this is from this is from |
| 0:51.9 | lorry it says when my daughter was 12 years old, her three best friends all moved away. |
| 0:58.1 | About that same time, a former friend of hers decided to play head games with her and tell her everything that people didn't like about her. |
| 1:05.2 | It did a number on her self-esteem, and we've been trying for the past three years to empower her again. So she's now 15 and a second |
| 1:13.3 | semester freshman at a new school, different from where her other friends went. And she can't seem to |
| 1:19.0 | break out of the new girl frame of mind. She's extremely social and outgoing in school and on her |
| 1:24.2 | sports teams yet on the weekends, she just sits at home alone, |
| 1:27.9 | hoping that someone will call her. We've encouraged and nagged her to text her call the many |
| 1:32.9 | kids she knows from school, but her answer is always either, I don't know her well enough to |
| 1:37.9 | invite her over, or if they wanted to hang out with me, they'd invite me. What do we do as parents |
| 1:44.0 | to break her out of this rut? |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Matt Lempert, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Matt Lempert and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.