Having hard conversations

Is there a perception that young people need to be protected from the hard things that happen in life?

Absolutely. A big reason that parents refer their children to us is because this big, difficult thing has happened, and they don’t know how to talk about it with their kids, or even with other adults. There can be a huge taboo around family violence, and experiencing difficult things in general, which makes it hard to talk about because we don’t have the shared language.  

Western culture has this idea we need to protect the innocence of childhood and adolescence, but these things don’t really exist, and we often don’t give young people enough credit. In efforts to try to “preserve their innocence” and protect them from difficult things, we end up not talking about the things that have happened to them. They are usually very aware of what’s happening, and not talking about it can cause harm. Depending on the age of the child or young person, they might internalise blame and think the things that have happened are their fault. So, we all really need to learn how to have open and honest conversations with each other.

It’s important to recognise the real capacity of young people to hold a lot of hard truths about the world. Even though it’s hard for adults to imagine their so-called innocence being stripped away, that innocence can be a myth. We can really deeply enrich our relationships and communication with young people when we are able to openly listen to their truths and share our own as well. 

How can parents/carers and young people engage in hard conversations with each other?

It’s going to depend a lot on your child and your parent/carer and the relationship between you.

I think some of the basic things are:

• Start slow. You don’t have to sit down and have a big conversation about everything all at once. You can start with one idea at a time. 
• Listen. Really listen to your young person’s responses. 
• Be honest. Wherever you can, use real words. Tell the truth about what’s going on. Trust that having more information is more helpful to your kid to process and integrate the story about what’s happened.
• Say “I don’t know.” Sometimes there aren’t good answers to the questions that kids ask about hard topics, and it’s okay to say “I actually don’t know the answer to that question right now. Let me have a think about it and I’ll see if I can figure out some answers for you.” Or “I actually don’t know the answer to that question. And I might not know the answer for a little while, but I can see that it is important to you and I’ll tell you when I do.”
• Build trust. It’s not just conversations about hard things that have happened to us. It might be hard feelings that we’re having. Parents can have a lot of fear around conversations with kids and teenagers about things like self-harm and thoughts of suicide. These can be terrifying conversations for us to open as adults because it’s so devastating for us to think about our child being hurt. Kids can read that in us. 

If we’re coming to the conversation from a place of fear and needing them to stop what they’re doing, then your kids are not going to be able to be open with us about why it’s happening for them and what they might need. It can become a very reactive conversation because you need them to be safe, and they might need you to have an openness to understand why it’s happening and why it might be the only way that they can cope with whatever situation is going on for them. 

How would you suggest a young person engage their parent/carer if they have questions about difficult topics?

Remember that your parent/carer are human and doing their best.

As much as we are asking parents to come at these conversations with an openness and a compassion and to see past their own fear and panic about their child’s safety and wellbeing, it can be helpful for young people to also acknowledge that fear in their parents. To recognise that your parents are human and that a lot of their responses might be coming from a place of fear, which underneath that there is love, and a want for safety, protection, and for things to be okay. 

This can feel stifling as a young person, because we want to be seen in our fullness and often that comes with a lot of shadow parts and dark parts and hurt parts that need to be held and regulated. And it can feel like sometimes when we share, our parents get so overwhelmed that we have to take care of them. That’s really complicated for us to do as young people as well. 

If both parties can come with an understanding of what this is all going to trigger in one another, it increases everyone’s emotional awareness a lot. This can’t always happen because we are imperfect and human, but if we are all coming from a place where we know that we care about one another, this makes a big difference. 

What is truth telling? Why is it important for young people? 

Truth telling builds a sense of trust for the child and the young person that they are going to be told the truth. It stops that sense of wondering and the narratives that build up that things are our fault. It really supports the young person to have an understanding of what’s going on, why things are happening and, understand what might be happening next. That frees up so much space inside of us.

In telling them the truth about what is going on, we are teaching them to trust their instincts and perceptions. If we outright lie and say everything is fine, they are going to stop trusting their own body signals when they’re picking up information that things aren’t fine. That’s going to cause a dissonance in their understanding of their own responses and their own bodily sensations.

Truth telling also allows for a tremendous amount of respect for young people and for their own knowing, showing that we respect the wholeness of them as people in their own right. It communicates that they are worth telling the truth to, and you can then handle and hold difficult things together.