Checking in with your teen: what's your number?

My eldest son is a teenager and he's transitioning through what I've called a 'hard to love' phase, with communication often reduced to a series of grunts and shrugs. 

We know the teenage years are hard. It’s a phase of life where they are trying to figure out who they are, who their friends are, as well as separating from us as their parents. There are also the physical changes to their body as well as what's happening in their brain.

In my time working in youth mental health I received some excellent advice from my then CEO Jono Nicholas (now Founder and Managing Director of the Wellbeing Outfit, https://www.wellbeingoutfit.com/jono-nicholas) on how to check in with your teen. When I asked my teenager how was his day, I used to get a grunt, a one word response or a shrug. Jono's advice was to instead ask for a rating of the day, from 1 to 10.

If the answer is low, say a 3, you can then follow up and ask why the rating is so low. This has proved to be a really great way to open the lines of communication and understand more about what's going on day-to-day. It's also an opportunity to ask what could be done to bring that number up from a 3 to say a 5 or even a 7. Note, for my son, this is often trying to guilt me into agreeing to a mid-week fizzy drink or more dessert!

As much as we can with sport and other activities, we try to eat dinner every night as a family, and we now go around the table and ask everyone how their day was out of 10, why they rated it that way and how we could improve the score.

There are loads of other great strategies and tips about how to keep the lines of communication open with teenagers and ReachOut Parents is a great resource, check out: 
https://parents.au.reachout.com/skills-to-build/connecting-and-communicating/things-to-try-effective-communication