The Peaceful Home
The Peaceful Home is a place for the modern busy mom looking to break out of the mold left behind by the moms of past generations and write a new narrative. The mom who is willing to embrace the chaos, the overwhelm, and the overstimulation of parenting in a world on fire. Delving deep into the self-worth, personal development, self-esteem, and self-care required to find more peace.
Here on the Peaceful Home, we talk honestly about the hard, we share stories, we laugh, we cry, and we heal but mostly we learn about who we are and we learn all about how to create for ourselves, and our kiddos, the Peaceful Home you have always dreamed of.
The Peaceful Home
Ep 71: The 4 Mistakes Most Parent Make in Communicating with Their Teens! (And what to do instead)
“Strong relationships are built on trust and communication. But if there is no communication, there can be no trust.” ~Simon Sinek
As parents is can be challenging, especially if it was not modeled for us, to communicate in a way that deepens connection and builds trust.
There are so many common pitfalls and mistakes that we can slip into and not ever realize the impact until years later. In this weeks episode Pam is talking about the 4 Major Mistakes To Avoid in communicating with your kids, and what to do in their place. She will walk you through the 5 Steps (well 6, there was a bonus) you NEED to implement in order to make your communication better and build deeper relationships with them!
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Welcome back to the peaceful home podcast. My name is Pam God Boyce. And today. We are talking all about communication specifically, how to develop better communication with your kids. Your pre-teens. Your teens as group that we call adolescents, because this seems to be the timeframe when connection starts to crumble. So we're going to look at that today and explore why that is and what to do about it specifically in a step-by-step way. So let's dive in. So it was scrolling the new social media platform called threads. And I read this statement by Simon Sinek. And I wanted to share it with you as we start this episode. Strong relationships are built on trust and communication. But if there is no communication, There can be no trust. And this is never truer Then in our parent child relationships. But so often we get wrapped up in what we should be doing and our role as a parent and teaching and all of the other minutiae and bullshit that society says is our job. Instead of just getting down to the nitty gritty and. Building trust through communication so that we can have better relationships with our kids. So today, the first thing that we're going to look at is the four major mistakes that we make as parents in communication and relationship building with our kids. And then I'm going to bring you through the step-by-step process. The five steps, the five things that you need to be doing to improve your relationships. So let's talk about that. First and foremost, Whenever I do episodes like this, where I look at the five most popular, the biggest mistakes, all of that stuff. I like to kind of see what other. Mental health professionals are saying. In the parenting world. And across the board over the last month, as I've kind of gathered some data. The number one thing that comes up on every single research article blog, post a podcast, any other place that we gather information? The number one thing that I'm hearing is that as parents, our biggest struggle is that we don't listen enough or we don't listen the right way. We talk too much. We lecture. And lecturing never works. I mean, think about it. If your boss at work starts lecturing, you. On something that they need from you and, you know, you already know. It's not like you don't know how to do your job right. So your boss comes into your office. He starts lecturing you. How do you feel about that? Are you like, oh yeah, I feel great. I'm going to go get on that thing that you wanted me to get on. Or do you feel. defensive, isolated, withdrawn, disconnected. For most of us, it's that one? It's the. Defensive isolated, withdrawn, disconnected. And when you lecture your kids, that's what you're doing to them. Because you're not lecturing them because you're telling them something or teaching them something for the very first time you're lecturing them because you've told them this 4 million times already. For the 4000000th time i'm telling you, this is what I need from you. And then we lecture about why this is important and why they're a contributing member to the family and all the other things. But they already know that and if you're lecturing about how to do it, they know that too. And if you're lecturing about what you need them to do yet, they've got that. And you want to know the real reason that you're lecturing is because you don't feel heard, you feel like you've said this thing to them over and over and over again, and they're just not hearing you. So your interpreting. Your not feeling heard. With them not understanding that maybe you haven't communicated clearly enough that you need this thing taken care of whatever it might be. Well, you know what. All your child wants from you. Is to feel heard as well. And so when we replace lecturing and over-talking with listening, things, start to shift things, start to. Transform. The thing about listening is that you don't have to agree to listen. So sometimes we think that our child will start saying something to us and we need to cut them off or interrupt to let them know that they're doing it wrong or communicating it wrong. What they're talking about is wrong. That there's another way. They don't need that from you. It's not your job to teach them all the time. It's your job to listen. To let them communicate what they need and we'll get to how you ask that's one of the things in the step-by-step, how do you ask and how do you get them to buy into and take action in the things that you want them to be doing? Which is why we talk so much, right. So that's mistake number one. The other component of that, that I just wanna remind you is, do not repeat yourself. If you cut down on repeating yourself. Then your amount of talking versus their amount of listening will drop drastically.'cause I feel like his parents were broken, broken records. We say the same thing over and over and over again, without your child coming to you and saying, can you remind me what you wanted me to do? That's a different scenario, right? If your kid comes into your office or comes into your bedroom while you're doing something and says, Hey mom, you asked me to do three things. Here's two of them. What was the third? I don't remember what the third was. Then by all means you tell them. But don't repeat yourself just for the sake of repeating yourself. The second mistake that shows up. And we talk about all the time. Is this idea of minimizing or belittling, their thoughts and feelings, disapproving of their ideas, just overall disrespect. To your preteen or your team. And this is kind of ironic because one of the things that moms say to me all the time, parents in general say to me is Pam. I just want my kids to be respectful. And yet when we act as their first bully, when we tell them their feelings are wrong, their experiences around what they're thinking, what's going on with them. When they come up with ideas and we tell them they're terrible ideas. We are treating them poorly, disrespecting them and bullying them. So if your child comes to you with a complaint, With an irritation with a frustration with a friend or a sibling or some other relationship in their life. Or maybe they forgot to pass in a school assignment. This happens in my house all the time. And you can very easily say. There are more important things in life than what you're dealing with right now. And you wouldn't be wrong. On the big scale. But to them you are wrong. You are wrong. And I get it as adults, we have like bigger concerns, right? We call it adulting. There's like, oh, all this, like moving into the adult world and having to adult and pay mortgages and make sure that there's money in the school lunch account. And. Buy clothes for our kids and all of those things that they need and want. And all of that. Stuff. But to your preteen. Your teenager. There was nothing bigger than this thing that they are bringing to you. So when you laugh at them, When you tell them it's not a big deal. When you tell them their feelings are inaccurate. Right. If you've ever had like your twelve-year-old come to you and say that their heart is broken because they loved this other person and you're like, you did not love them. That's not what love is. That is disregarding the way that they feel. That's what I'm talking about here. This bad is mistake. Number two. Some other things that show up here are things like raising your voice sarcasm. Now I am. The queen of sarcasm and my daughter and I speak in sarcasm together. We don't speak in sarcasm together when she's talking about heavy shit. I don't. Make snide remarks. When she's coming to me with something that is important. I might make a sarcastic remark when she says. Where are my shorts and I say I don't know, maybe they're in my bureau. You know, cause they're your shorts. So that would make sense, right? And then she'll laugh and she'll be like, so, okay, I'll go look. Because she comes to me before she's even bothered looking. And I know that about her and we've had this conversation and we have this understanding and I can make those comments. And she doesn't personalize them. Now, if you don't have the foundation of a strong trusting relationship with your child, Sarcasm is off the table. I don't care what your personality is. Get rid of it. You cannot use sarcasm until there is trust and connection in your relationship. And this is where we go wrong as parents all the time, we think, well, I'm sarcastic, or I say funny things all the time. And so I'm going to use this same idea, the same ideology, the same humor with my. Twelve-year-old. My twelve-year-old who, when she was eight, would've been fine with it. But at 12. It's hurtful. Because the connection, the reconnection is not there. And that's a lot of what this work is, is as our kids grow, we have to reconnect with them. We have to relay the foundation. It's like filling in the cracks of a foundation on an old house. It has to be done. It has to be done. That's what this work is. So other things that are disrespectful that are belittling. Is criticizing their beliefs. So if they say have a belief about something and you're telling them that they're wrong, their belief is wrong. That is disrespecting them. That's not holding space for what their, what their needs are. What's important to them. As well as things like using shame or guilt to try to get them to do what you want them to do. And refusing to meet them halfway. As parents, we have a tendency to be like, these are my rules. This is what this is. And we will lay down the law and then never meet our kids halfway on something. And that is our own cognitive distortion. Our own struggle with seeing things in black or white. Either I'm right. Or your right. And we can't both be right. But so often in relationships, we're both right. We both have a perspective. We bring those perspectives together and then we have a conversation and we go, yeah, I can see why this is the case. I can see why you're asking for this thing. It doesn't have to be. You know, hard and fast your rules, and this is the only way that it is. It doesn't work with adolescents. And part of that is because they're growing and going to be going out into the world and have to navigate situations on their own. And so if you are always solving their problems, if you're always telling them what to do and how to do it, Then they're going to get out in the world and have no idea what to do. And that's number three. That is number three, the directing their life always solving their problems. Always trying to fix them. Judging their decisions. All of those are mistakes that we make as parents. That send the message. I don't trust your ability to make decisions for yourself. Now. Sometimes we fall into it and we don't even realize we've fallen into it. So it's okay. Okay. As a matter of fact, that's something that happened here this week. I came to realize after a few days my daughter was baking cupcakes. She has a cupcake business. And. For the longest time she's made all the decisions. I don't make the decisions. And she may ask me a question here or there, maybe it's something I'm baking chemistry or maybe it's something measurement that she's not sure about. She'll say things like, do I double this ingredient? It doesn't make sense based on what it is. And I'll usually just confirm her thought already. And I realized three days in a row. She was coming in and asking me questions while I was working. That were like, Not significant questions. It was like, should I make a single batch or a double batch of this frosting? Well, how many cupcakes did you make? And so instead of asking herself that question, how many vanilla cupcakes did I make? How much of this vanilla cream, cheese frosting do I need for those birthday cake cupcakes? She was coming to me and asking me, expecting me to answer or give her the answer, give her the solution. And it was little things. It was little like, Hey mom, do you know where this thing is? Hey mom, can you, blah, blah, blah. Is this the right scoop? It was really really little things. And all of a sudden those little things. Accumulated. And I was like, wait a minute. She's asking me to make all these decisions for her. When she is fully capable. Now I could've gone out into the kitchen and said, Marley, this is ridiculous. You're capable of answering these questions. Why are you bothering me? I'm busy. But instead I said, Hey, I just want to. I share an observation with you. Here's something that I've observed. And I'm not sure what's causing it. But I do know that every single question that you've asked me over the last three days has been something you already have the answer to. You already know this information and for whatever reason, your deciding to rely on me. Two. Finalize the information. But I want you to know that I trust you to make those decisions. And if you've problem-solved through everything and you're still stuck, know that I'm here for you and you can come ask me. I know you've got this. That was it. That was the end of it. And she was like, okay, yeah, yeah, you're right. I don't know why that is. And it might've been, cause she was tired. She had a lot of things on her mind. She has ADHD and has not been taking her meds cause it's the summer. And so it could be some of that who knows, and she'll explore that because she always does. And she'll come back with an answer in a couple of days and say, Hey, I looked at this thing and I noticed X, Y, and Z thing. Great. And that's because we have these conversations all the time. All right. Number four. Speaking of conversations all the time. The number four mistake that we make. This is something I've seen over and over and over again. As we lose control of our own emotions. So our child says, or does something, it triggers us. We react. So maybe your kid. Is mad at you and tells you they hate you. And they storm off to the room and slam their door. And you say something like you'll want to slam that door in my house. I'll just take it off the hinges. Or they tell you, they hate you and you say, I hate you to write. And you might be like Pam. I would not say that to my child. I know these are big. These are kind of exaggerated. But they're really not exaggerated because I've heard these exact stories from moms that I work with. Because it's so easy now. Yes. When your emotions are in check, when you're feeling good, your emotions are regulated. You're taking care of yourself, your nervous. System's doing okay. Then when your child storms up the stairs, cause they're pissed at you tells you they hate you and slams their door. You just kind of nod and go, all right, well, we'll come back eventually. When you are dysregulated. When your stress levels up when something's going on. You're much more likely to chase them down and create more conflict. It created a bigger problem. And when we are not, when our emotions are not in check. We do either that we create a bigger problem or we avoid the difficult conversations. We avoid putting boundaries in place. We avoid communicating because we say things like I can't handle it. My emotions are out of control. And maybe it's like, I'm feeling overly anxious. So I'm not just talking about anger. I'm talking about, I'm feeling really anxious about this. Conversation. So I avoid the conversation. Chances are, if you're parenting in that way, if you're avoiding conversations because they're difficult. You probably handle all of your relationships and all the difficult things in your life like this. And you probably are somebody that needs to do some work on confronting some of that instead of avoiding. But the bottom line here is you got to get your emotions in check. You got to take care of your shit. Because it is not fair. It is not okay. And it is not healthy. To put your emotions or dump your emotions onto your kid because they're experiencing emotions because the message that you're sending when you do that. And some of you might've grown up in this environment, but the message that you're sending is my emotions. As the adult are more important than your emotions, they override yours. You're not allowed to feel the way you feel. And that is not what we want for our kids. At least it's not what I want for my kid. And that's not what I want for your kid. So those are the four things. Those are the four major mistakes we make. Now let's talk about. How do we do this? Right. And I said, I would teach you the process. For getting your kids to do what you want them to do. Number one. In how to communicate better. Is to make a request or an ask. This might be, Hey, can you empty the dishwasher? This might be heading this thing from you. This might be. A boundary that you're putting in place, it might be a request. It might be something that's a difficult conversation. I was talking about. That you want to have, it might be you pick your kid up at school and you say, Hey, how was your day? All of those things. Making a request or an ask is any question idea, notion, thought. Story experience that you bring up to your child. Right. So you are initiating. The communication. That's what that is. Step one is initiate. And you initiate from a place. Of caring. You know, when you're walking down the street. And somebody says, Hey, how are you? And you say, good. How are you? You know, that that person is not initiating that conversation from a place of really wanting to know how you are. It is a type of greeting. So when you pick up your kid at school and you say, how was your day? If you always say that and they never say anything, or regardless of what they say, you don't really listen to them, then they're not going to actually dig apart and tell you. The other thing is that. Because we are socialized to believe. That initial greetings are not actually desires to know what your experiences like. It takes some time to peel back the layers. So that's first and foremost is you've got to make the request. You can't just expect them to show up and make the request of you because they're not going to. And when they do make a request of you, it's going to be an actual request. Mom, can you drive me here? Dad, can I have money? Mom, can I go out with these friends? Right? It's gonna be. It's going to be requests that are not. That are asking permission. It's not going to be, Hey, can I sit down and talk to you unless you've already laid the foundation for this relationship, and this is the work that we do, right? We do this work and then our kids start to initiate conversations. But right now. Right now with communication, you have to initiate. Now, this is where this gets to be a struggle. So step one is you initiate step two is you give space. Now parents sent me all the time, Pam, this is ridiculous. I asked my kid like, how's your day and they go good. And then I'm like, okay. Was it good? Cause it seemed to be in bad mood. I'm not really sure what's going on. And so then they start peppering them with questions. How could you possibly have a good day you're grouchy and miserable and, or you're not, you're just gonna ignore me and be on your phone. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. These are the things we do to our kids. Or we say things like, Hey, it's time to get up in the morning. And if they are not on their feet and out of bed and getting dressed and brushing their teeth and doing the things that they need to do to get out of the house immediately. We go back in and we nag. What's taking you so long. Hurry up. You've only got so much time left. We ask our kids to empty the dishwasher, to put away their laundry, to clean up the living room or, or go clean their room. We expect them to do. It immediately. We expect them to do it. Immediately. But you have to give them time and space to process. To plan. And you have to give them the space and the opportunity to respond. So, you know, your child. It can be helpful to make a request. And then to come back a little while later and say, what's your plan? So in our household or, you know, have you, have you thought about this more or. What do you think the timeframe is going to be until you can get this thing done? And our household, my daughter does a lot of planning. So I will say here's the things that I need you to do. And I will often just write a list for her. Sometimes I'll give her the list verbally and she'll write the list. But I find that it's quicker and oftentimes I'm working. I on sessions with clients or coaching programs and she's still in bed. So it's much quicker for me to just write a list and leave it on the kitchen counter. And I, what I will often do is highlight these are the things that I need done this week. These are the things that I need done today. And I have a friend who does this system with post-its like one color post-it means get this done this week, one color post. It means get this done today. And she just writes the tasks and things on the post-it sticks them on the her son's door. And he, he knows the system. And so he takes care of it. Right. It is not necessary to be up their ass about things. But sometimes, especially our preteens, our preadolescence, our younger adolescents, they need more guidance. And if you've never done this with your 15 or 16 year old, they're going to need guidance too. I can guarantee you'll get a little bit more pushback from them. Because they think they know everything, right. So they don't need you to guide them and tell them how to do it. And so then you just ask, this is where this ask comes in. Hey, have you thought about this at all? What is your plan? And even in my house, there's a difference between how my husband approaches situations and how I approach situations. So Marley had said yesterday, I've got a shower today. And I've got to wash my hair, which means a longer shower. Okay. Great. So at seven 15 last night, my husband was like, when is she going to shower? What's the plan what's going on? It's going to get to be 10 o'clock at night, and then she's going to be too tired and blah, blah, blah. And so I was like, okay. And he said, well, can you ask her? And I was like, well, you could ask her. And he was doing something else. So I just walked into the other room and I said, Hey, Mara, you're planning on showering today. She was like, yeah. I'm like, what time? And she looks at her clock. It looks at her phone and goes seven 30. I'm like, great. Then the only next thing that I said to her was it's seven 30. And she was like, okay, there was no argument. There was no conflict. There was no nothing. And it is like that with everything in my house. Everything because we've laid the foundation. I give her time to process to think about it. I don't jump down our throat and say, what's your plan? How are you going to do this? What are you going to do this? I need you to do this right now. You've got to give them space. Number three is be flexible. Open. And welcoming. This is one of those things. That. Your preteen, your adolescent, your teenager. Is not going to come to you at the most opportune times. To discuss what they want to discuss. Maybe you have a 10 year old or an 11 year old. And it's time for them to go to bed. And they come to you and they say, Hey mom, I'm worried about this thing. I'm stressed about this thing. I'm upset about this thing. I'm angry about this thing. And you're tired and you want to go to bed. And so your approach to that is. Can't we just do this tomorrow. Well, what happens when we say that? Is we don't do it tomorrow. Not only do we not have space to do it tomorrow? You've shut them down and they're not coming to you again. And they'll try this out a handful of times, but if you continue to shut them down, They'll continue to not bring it up again. Because the message that you're sending them is what you have to say is not important. And this goes right back to that idea of like, your kid just wants to be heard. And no, it is not a strategy to stay up later. It is not a strategy to. Get more one-on-one time with you. It's a strategy. To build connection and to communicate what their needs are. I have a mom that I work with that has done this really beautiful thing of just, you know, she puts her younger two kids down and she'll go in and just lay on her daughter's bed with her. And they'll just chat like. About the day what's been going on, how she's doing. And it doesn't have to be. Long and deep and some nights it's a lot. Sometimes there's a lot on her plate because she happens to have a kid who worries about things and some good, some days it's not so much. And some days it's, it's like, it's just an opportunity for them to kind of chill and have five or so minutes together at the end of the day, after the younger kids have gone to bed. So it's really important to kind of carve out. To be flexible, to be open and to be willing and welcoming. So that if you're like in the middle of laundry or middle of doing the dishes, you're emptying the dishwasher and your child comes to you and says, they want to talk to you. They've got something going on. Then you say, sure, why don't you help me empty the dishwasher? And we can talk while we're doing it. Or you say sure. You know, Park yourself at the, at the breakfast bar and chat with me. Let me know what's going on. Tell me what's going on. I would love to hear about your day. I would love to hear about what's going on with you. I'm here for you. Right. That's number three. You've gotta be, you've got to like open the door and you've got to keep the door open. Right? We say, I have an open-door policy. You can come to me whenever you want. But if the energy behind that is not accurate, then it's not going to happen. They're not going to come to you. Number four. Is validate. Validate. Validate. Validation is a process by which you say good job. That's it basically we can validate their emotions. I get why you feel that way. Totally makes sense. Right. You don't have to agree with them if they're devastated at 12 years old, because the love of their life has broken their heart. You could be thinking this is nuts because they're 12 years old. They don't even know what love is. But the truth of the matter is it's the way they're feeling. So it doesn't matter if you agree with it or not. It doesn't matter if you're on board. If you can just simply say to them, Heartbreak is hard. And, you know, your first love, first time you go through that, it's really hard. What can I do for you? How can I support you? You don't give advice after you don't say it'll get better. It'll get easier. Blah, blah, blah, all those things, because that's invalidating, you're saying yeah, I get it. I understand why you feel the way you feel. That's a validation is validation has also cheerleading. It's things that we call door openers rather than the door closers and communication. So you're encouraging them. To talk openly or encouraging them to share. So you're like nice job. That was a really great question. Hey, I really appreciate your help on this thing. That's been amazing. So, thank you. Validation that I gave the other day. So you may be thinking like these types of validation don't sound like me. Oh, I understand. I can see why you're feeling that way. I'm sorry. You're going through that. Is there any way I can support, you might feel a little clinical to you. Marley came into my office the other day, same cupcake thing, right after all these things, we have this conversation and she comes in. With the piping bag with very little frosting left in it. Of her orange cream cheese buttercream, by the way, for the carrot cake cup. Cupcakes that she made for this weekend. And she says, this is what I have left of the frosting. Should I just throw it away? And I was like, that's what you have left. And she was like, yeah. And I was like of the frosting for all of the carrot cake cupcakes. And she was like, yes. And the carrot cake recipe is supposed to make two dozen and always makes three dozen. And then she had enough carrots. Shredded that she tripled it. So we've got we're inundated with carrot cake cupcakes, by the way. But it's fine because they're delicious. So I was like, seriously, that's how much frosting is left from those cupcakes. And she was like, yeah. And sometimes I don't know if you've ever baked from scratch. Sometimes it's hard to match up the recipe and the frosting and you get too much frosting or not enough frosting and you've got extra or you're like running out as you're trying to frost. And I was like, Damn Girl, you are a bad-ass and she like laughed. And I was like right on sista. Nice job. And she just smiled. You're a little giggle and walked away. That was a form of validation. I was like, damn. That was really good. I'm impressed. That you. That worked out exactly the way they needed to work out. Validation right. Validation is also, you've had this happen with your girlfriends. You'd go out to dinner or go out for a drink or grab coffee, and they're complaining about their spouse or something that's happening in their life, their boss, something. And you're like, oh, that bastard. I can't believe they said that to you. That's bullshit. That's also a validation, right? We call this mirroring. So mirroring their emotions. Cause they're experiencing them. The thing you want to be really careful with here is things like sadness or allowing your emotions to overpower there's. So. If you're mad, cause they're mad. Totally makes sense if you're sad because they're sad and you communicate. To them and they internalize or interpret your communication as I'm not allowed to be sad because that makes my mom's side. That's not what we're looking for. That's not validation. That's invalidation. So it's easy in this place of mirroring their emotions. To when we use too many words to fall into the trap of invalidation. Okay, so here's number five. Number five is compliment them. And compliment them with specifics. Wow. You did an amazing job on this. While you really handled yourself well, in that situation, I love how clear you communicated this. Ask. That was a really great boundary you put in place. Those are all compliments. With specifics. Now you can use any system you want to reward this. You could simply verbally. Compliment them verbally say nice job. I have someone that I work with. She is the absolute best cheerleader in the world for everyone else. And so one of the things that she's done in her own family is they have this jar where they put pompoms in it of like good job. You did a great job on this, right? And her kids give them to her as well. And so it's really kind of a, it's become like this fun thing and there's a reward at the end. Right. So if your kids are a little bit on the younger side, or you have kids that will buy into this, which a lot of our kids will don't assume that oh my. Teenager would never do something like that. Because if I said to my teenager, Hey, we're going to implement a Palm Palm reward jar. And when we fill it up, this is what we get. She would be in. A thousand percent in. And it's something that I use on my women's retreats. Right. S a similar system of a cheerleading jar where we validate ourselves with truly at ourselves and we validate or appreciate other people. So there's lots of different ways you can do this, but it's really, really important that you're cheerleading, you're complimenting and you're complimenting with specifics. If someone's ever said to you you're just the best. It's like, oh, Thanks. But if somebody says to you, I really appreciate how any time. I am stressed or struggling. I can pick up the phone and I always know that you're going to be there and that you're going to love me through it, regardless of what a mess I am or not. I appreciate that so much. Ha ha way more powerful. Right? It feels more powerful. It is more powerful. So we need to practice doing this with our kids, not Hey, good job, pat, on the head. Hey, you did a great job with this thing. Hey, I noticed that you cleaned up your room. It looks really great. Hey, you took care of this thing that I asked you to do. I really appreciate that. Oh, I noticed that you helped your little brother, your little sister with this task that I asked them to do. I really appreciate you stepping up and supporting them. Use the language you want them to use. Use the language you want them to use. So it's really important to you that they're respectful. You need to be respectful. And so that's kind of a bonus. Number six, I guess, is use the language model of a language. That you want them to use when they're communicating with you and with other people in their life. All right. Those are your top five will six, your six steps, your six important things. And the four things that you need to avoid at all costs. Let me know your thoughts. Share with me on Instagram. That's where I post about this stuff. So. Find me on Instagram and I will link up my contact in the show notes. And I would love to hear from you guys, how are you implementing these relationship, building better communication strategies with your preteens and teens and what is the result? All right. Get to work and have an amazing rest of your day. Take care guys, and I'll see you soon.