Good Guidance
with Karyn Baxter, Jenny Morris,
& Silke Hetherington.
FROM THE GUIDANCE OFFICE
How To Get An Answer About How School Was Today.
As we start back to Semester 2, we thought it might be worthwhile to give some ideas about connecting with your kids about how things are going at school. We know that keeping connected with our kids is really important in terms of supporting them, but as they move into adolescence this can often become harder and harder! I am sure many of us have experienced the stony silence, eye roll or “Nothing”!
Over the years, we have reflected lots about why this stage of life turns our kids from the chattering, keen to share children who are fighting to get the airspace to tell us in minute detail about their adventures to being the quiet, almost secretive teenager who can sometimes feel like a stranger to us. Our belief is that a combination of things contributes to this.
Adolescents’ perception around our genuine interest and concern is often that we are trying to ‘invade’ their privacy or gather information to ‘control’ them and that the way to manage this is to share nothing! More significantly, we must remember that adolescence is a time of huge brain development and neural pruning and pathway development and sometimes processing and reflection are skills that are slower for them and they truly are worn out by the end of the day and have nothing in the bucket left to give!
Below is a infographic of some suggestions that may provide ideas of some questions other than how was school today. They aim to be a little more specific and also take the focus off your child and more on to ‘external’ things.
If these things don’t work, we think the best course of action might be to try and find something they enjoy to do (even if you don’t) and do it with them. Learn that new game even if you are bad at it, try to enjoy the endless hilarious You Tube clips, make an embarrassing clip together, listen to their favourite music or invite them to cook their favourite meal together. Sometimes communication will come when you least expect it.