Communicating With Your Teen: Trust
HE-0785 New July 2005, Jennifer Kerpelman, Extension Specialist, Human Development and Family Studies, Auburn University and Phillip Thorsen, Human Development and Family Studies Doctoral student.
 arenting involves allowing our children to have more responsibilities and freedoms as they grow older. Generally speaking, the goal is to let go, and letting go requires trust. Trust means, “I can count on you to be honest, to follow through on your promises, and to treat me with respect.”
As teens get older they spend less time with parents and more time with friends, at work, and in other activities away from home. Since teens are spending more time in places where parents are not watching, we have to trust them to make a lot of decisions. As parents, we often worry that our teens will
make poor decisions when faced with choices or situations they might not be ready to handle.
Fear is a reason that parents may not trust their sons or daughters to make some decisions. Parents may fear their teens will be unsafe while driving the car, or will try drugs, or become sexually active. Trust
is a balance between the fear of what might happen with the knowledge of past decision making and responsibility taking. If a teen has always driven the car safely in the past, a parent may be willing to
trust the teen to drive the car a longer distance.
Fear also can make it difficult for teens to trust their parents. Teens might fear that their parents will take away their freedom, try to control their lives, or embarrass them in front of their friends. Trust is not a
one-way street. It is not only the trust you have in your teen, but also your teen’s trust in you, that allows the two of you to have a positive relationship with each other. Trust between parents and teens makes it
easier for teens to talk with their parents when something goes wrong. The teens must set aside the fear that the parents will be angry and they need to feel confident that regardless of what has happened, things can be worked out.
Teens need to show that they are trustworthy.
Teens must show that they are responsible, honest, and truthful for their parents to be able to trust them. If your children have been trustworthy in the past and behave in a trustworthy manner now, you are likely to believe that your children will be trustworthy in the future. The opposite also is true. If your teens have participated in problem behaviors in the past, you may not completely trust them in some present situations.
Teens need to believe that you trust them.
If you trust your children, but do not show it by allowing them more responsibility and freedom, then they will think that you do not really trust them. Sometimes when children don’t feel trusted, they wonder if it matters whether they behave responsibly. Giving our children more responsibility and making sure they understand what gaining more responsibility means is important for teaching teens the skills they will need when they have jobs and families of their own.
The trust that your child has
in you as a parent is important.
Your teen’s ability to trust you is based on how you have behaved in the past with your child and how you have reacted to past information that your child has shared. If you have not been faithful to a promise or failed to show respect for your child’s feelings, then your teen will have difficulty trusting you. But there are
ways to help your children trust you:
Offer support to your children in their time of need. For example, if your son is upset with a friend and you support him by listening to his problems and do not break his confidence by talking to others about his problem, he will trust you more.
Accept your children’s feelings and views without making light of their experience. When your daughter is devastated because her boyfriend of three weeks dumps her, and you take her feelings
seriously instead of telling her the relationship was too short to matter, she will trust you more.
Share your feelings. Your teens will be more willing to share private feelings with you if they believe that you are willing to share your feelings with them. If you are honest with your teens about how you feel when someone has hurt your feelings or has made you angry rather than pretending nothing ever bothers you, they will trust you more.
Whether my teen has broken important rules in
the past (with family, friends, or at school).
What my teen’s worries and concerns are.
What my teen is generally doing each day.
How my teen tends to behave. |
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The following are ways to find out this information:
 Listening to your teens when they freely share with you about themselves and their lives. If your teens trust you enough to speak openly about their lives, you are in a good position to learn about and affect some of their most important decisions. In fact, research shows that parents trust their teens more when the teens are willing to share about their activities without being asked. When children share information on their own, this serves as the best means for accurate parental knowledge. It also is important to be a listening parent so your teens feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and experiences with you.
Asking your teens questions that encourage them to share. Asking your teens about their day or how a certain activity went may open the door to their sharing information about the choices they are making in their lives. If you respond calmly and supportively to your teens when they share, they are more likely to continue sharing.
 Snooping, spying, or asking other people to report on your teen. Although you may learn things about your teen, when you share your knowledge of activities based on these methods, your teen is likely to respond with bitterness and anger. Your teen also is much less likely to want to listen to your concerns, suggestions, or requests.
Trust expectations should be reasonable.
Be aware of your teens’ limits to handle situations and do not place them in a “test of trust” situation that would challenge them to go beyond their limits.
Teach trust to your children by example.
Ask yourself, “What message am I sending to my teen? How does my teen talk about me with friends? Am I a positive example? What if my teen reported on my actions during a class presentation about family?”
Avoid dishonesty.
Encourage honesty in your children even in situations when it is difficult to be honest. Make a point of rewarding your teen for honest behavior. Follow through on your promises.
Encourage communication.
Be home at times when your teen is at home, but let your teen take the first step to talk with you most of the time. Just being in the house, even if your teen doesn’t talk with you, helps your teen feel
cared for and safe. Your being there lets your teen know you are available.
If your teens do take the step to talk with you, listen much more than you talk. If they ask for advice help them consider their options, and as much as possible let them figure out what they should do.
Ask your teens if you can talk with them if something is worrying you. If your teens agree, try to start the conversation with a comment such as, "I heard from a few parents that some kids at school have been
experimenting with crack.” Don’t say, “I think you might be using crack,” unless you have solid evidence. Once you raise the issue, listen more than talk. Your purpose is to let your teens know that you care about
what they feel and think, and that you respect them.
Allow freedom with limits.
Encourage and support your teen to be independent from you by slowly allowing more freedom. Your teens still need limits on behavior and consequences when they break rules, but they also need to
have privileges that increase with age and maturity.
In general, trust is broken when parents or teens learn something about the other that does not fit with what they expected. For example, if a mother expects her son to return home at the designated curfew
and the teen does not, then the teen has broken the trust of his mother. Likewise, if a father tells his daughter she can go to a movie with her friends as long as she does her homework, but then the father fails to keep this promise, the father has broken his daughter’s trust.
Breaks in trust are often upsetting because parents do not want to see their teens get hurt and teens want to please their parents while gaining more independence. In fact, serious breaks in trust make us think the other person does not care about our feelings. Parents and teens may feel very angry, hurt, or even foolish when such a situation occurs.
Examples of Situations When Parent-Teen Trust is Broken
Teen Lying.
Teens usually lie because they are trying to establish themselves as separate people from their parents. Some of this lying is done to prevent parents from knowing everything or to be able to do things parents may not like. Parents often feel hurt or angry because they think their child is pulling away from, or even defying, them. Lying to parents can be quite normal for teens when the goal of lying is to establish healthy independence. Parents can respond by expressing disappointment in the lying, while also letting the teen know they respect the teen’s ability to make choices. Lying can open a discussion about which situations, such as choice of friends, clothing, or spending of allowance money, are okay for the teen to
decide independently.
Parents’ Violation of Teens’ Privacy.
Snooping as a means for finding out information about your teen may do more harm than good in your relationship, because it could make the lack of trust between you and your teen worse. If your teen
knows you have been snooping, it may be more difficult to trust you enough to turn to you for help if your teen is in trouble. Snooping also sets up a bad habit for learning about your teen’s life. When it comes to areas that threaten your teen’s well-being, set limits with consequences you can enforce. For example, if you are worried that your 16-year-old son may be drinking alcohol, you can establish a rule that it is not okay to drink since the legal drinking age is 21.
Let your teen understand that if you catch him drinking or learn from another parent, the school, or the police that he has been drinking, then he will lose certain privileges. Identify which privileges will be lost, such as spending time away from home with friends and using the family vehicle.
Teen Pressure to Be Trusted.
Sometimes teens will expect parents to trust them in situations that parents know their teens are not ready to handle. Let’s say your 14-year-old daughter asks you to let her go on an evening date with her
16-year-old boyfriend who has a car. If you say she can’t go on the date, she will likely accuse you of not trusting her. In all honesty, you don’t trust her in such a situation mainly because you know how hard it might be for her to manage her feelings and behaviors when she is alone in the car with her boyfriend.
It is important to set this limit while still saying that you believe she is a good person. You can explain to her that you can’t expect her to be in control of a situation that is not easy to manage. She might think she is doing fine until the situation gets out of hand. You also can say that as she gets older and gains
more experience, she will learn how to handle such a situation. You are letting her know that you trust her to handle things she is capable of handling and that you would never want to put her in a situation that she is not ready to manage. If you allow your teen to be in situations for which she is not ready, trust is likely to be broken.
Helping your teen earn back trust that has been lost can be difficult. You might be afraid that your teen is likely to do something that breaks your trust again. Here are some steps you can take:
Discuss each of your views regarding the trust that has been broken. Try to understand each other’s thoughts and feelings, and clear up any misunderstandings.
After discussing how trust has been broken, spend time thinking together about how the relationship will be better if trust is restored.
Finally, decide on specific steps for regaining trust and a time for talking again in the future to see whether progress is being made. For example:
The teen will check in when he or she has arrived at the destination and will give the number of an adult who can be contacted for verification.
The teen can have friends over to the house after school when a parent or responsible adult can be present.
If your teen is engaging in serious problem behaviors (drug abuse, promiscuous sexual activity, stealing, repeated physical fighting, or other types of violence), do not try to handle this on your own. In these instances, given that the breaking of parent-teen trust is only part of the problem, professional
help is needed. Asking for help is a way to make your children feel safe and for them to know they can trust you to take care of them. You can get information on finding professional help in your area by contacting your school counselor or your local Alabama Cooperative Extension System office.
Try these other Principles of Parenting publications:
“Communicating with Your Teen”
“Negotiation”
“Spending Time Together”
“Talking About Sex”
“Homework Horrors”
Jasmine was a good student and usually completed her work on time. She had earned the trust of her parents to do her homework in her bedroom rather than at the kitchen table. One week Jasmine did not finish some of her homework. Jasmine’s teacher sent home a note to her parents telling them that several of her homework assignments had not been completed. Jasmine was expected to get the note signed by her parents. Jasmine did not want to disappoint her parents or lose her privilege of doing her homework in her room, so she forged her parents’ signatures on the note and gave it back to her teacher the next day. Jasmine’s teacher happened to mention the homework incident to one of Jasmine’s parents during a parent-teacher meeting, and was surprised to learn Jasmine’s parents knew nothing about it. Jasmine’s parents were surprised too. Jasmine’s parents talked with her about the problem, letting her know that failing to do her homework was a problem, but covering the problem up was their bigger concern and that she really broke their trust in her. Jasmine was expected to do her homework at the kitchen table again. She understood that she would need to regain her parents’ trust in her, so she could earn back the privilege of doing her homework in her room. Because they talked openly and Jasmine had clear consequences for her behavior, she and her parents were on their way to rebuilding the trust in their relationship.
“The Credit Card Caper”
John enjoyed his privilege of driving his mom’s car on the weekends. One weekend afternoon, he wanted to use the car to go to a football game with some friends across town. When he noticed the car was low on gas, he decided to take his mom’s credit card without telling her. When his mom received her credit card bill and saw a charge she did not remember making, she asked John about it. He admitted what he had done. His mother explained that she would not have minded him using the card to buy gas for the car if he had asked. But she did mind that he had taken her credit card without permission. As a consequence, John had to pay his mom back for the gas, and he was not permitted to use the car for the next two weekends. John’s mother did tell him she was glad he told the truth about using the card and that this helped her believe she could learn to trust him again in the future.
For more information, contact your county Extension office. Visit http://www.aces.edu/counties or look in your telephone directory under your county's name to find contact information.
Issued in furtherance of Cooperative Extension work in agriculture and
home economics, Acts of May 8 and June 30, 1914, and other related
acts, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Alabama
Cooperative Extension System (Alabama A&M University and Auburn
University) offers educational programs, materials, and equal
opportunity employment to all people without regard to race, color,
national origin, religion, sex, age, veteran status, or disability.
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