How to get Teenage Girls to do What we Want Them To

Listening is Key to the Art of Communication

A couple of things have happened today that have prompted me to write this blog post.  Firstly, I read a post by Sarah Newton on her excellent blog “The Youth Expert”, then I attended a two hour course by Sian Goodbourn on Effective Communication.  Both are essentially about the importance of listening.

Teenage Girls are notoriously difficult to communicate with.  If you have teenage daughters or nieces you will probably know what I mean.  If you’re a woman you will probably cringe when you think about some of the strops and tantrums you pulled as a teenager.  

In the past this has always been attributed to hormones and “growing up” but the tide is turning and new thinking would suggest that effective communication with teenage girls starts with the adult.  If you communicate in an effective way you will receive effective communication in return.

Communication is all about listening……

In the Effective Communication course Sian asked us to think about how we listen and gave us a scale of the “Levels of Listening”.  The bottom three levels were as follows:-

Ignoring – not listening and making this obvious

Pretending to Listen – not listening and trying to look like you are

Selective Listening – listening to most of what is said but only paying particular attention to some of it.

If you think about the last conversation you had with a teenage girl how many of you would say your listening took one of the above forms?

I suspect most of us use selective listening.  It can be very tempting to only listen to most of what is being said particularly if we are busy and distracted by work, cooking, television, or other children etc.  I think this is true in all aspects of our lives but even more so when we are communicating with a teenager when we have preconceived ideas that what they say will be immature or that we wont learn anything new by listening to them.

In Sarah’s blog she outlines the main qualities that teenage girls think a good listener should have.  These include:-

• We want them to listen with their mouth shut
• We want them to understand
• We want them to give us an opinion but not tell us what to do
• We want them to express themselves and not just agree with everything we say
• We want them to have good body language and eye contact
• We want them to be funny and cheer us up and not to be too serious

This corresponds almost exactly with Sian’s “Empathic Listening” where she encourages us to listen, paying good attention to everything the speaker says and to encourage the speaker, to concentrate and focus solely on what the speaker is saying and on the message they are trying to get across and probably, most importantly not to pre-form a response to what we are being told.

You may be wondering how this fits with getting teenage girls to do what you want.  Communication must beginning with listening.  Only by listening will we discover what is important for teenagers and we can then guide them to make the right decisions for them; therefore making it their idea.

If I was to tell a teenage girl that she mustn’t eat snack foods on her way home from school I suspect I wouldn’t get very far.  She would probably consider that I was ordering her about, not understanding how she felt after school and making her different to her friends.  She would most likely dig her heels in and refuse to co-operate. 

If instead I started by asking what she knew about healthy eating encouraging her to think about how a healthy diet could improve her energy levels, complexion etc I would probably find that there was something that would motivate her to think about what she ate.  From here we could start thinking about why she needed a snack after school, was it because she was bored, was it habit or was she actually hungry?  Next we could start to think about what sort of snack might be a compromise for health and convenience and so the conversation would go on……

As Personal Trainers and Fitness Coaches we are uniquely placed to make a difference.  By encouraging teenage girls to tell us how they feel and by listening and focusing on what we are being told we can find out far more about what is important and what we can do to help them achieve their goals. 

Rather than assuming teenage girls feel the same way we do we can learn more about what is important to them and together we can find actions that solve the problems they face - ultimately leading to happier, healthier, successful, and confident  teenage girls which is what we wanted all along!

 

After spending her teenage years as an international athlete Maggie Ayre qualified as a Personal Trainer and Nutrition Adviser.  For the last two years she has specialised in teenage girls working as a Fitness Coach for Teenage Girls.  Recently Maggie has developed the 3G Program and she is currently looking for schools to take part in a pilot project in September 2011.  More information about Maggie’s work with teenagers can be found at www.maggieayre.com or www.femalefitnessrevolution.com.

Comments

[Hugo]

Are there any hip hop clubs left in Manila besides Manor? I can't hadlne rock, top 40, dance disco mash up crap. I know they want a cater to the masses but how you can dance or get into the music when they play rock song mixed into a dance track with rap over the top of it? I don't know maybe it's just me. Love the site been looking for a site like this for a long time! Could you guys possibly add a review section each club? That way people can tell others about the crowd, what music they play on what nights and provide other info?

[Leandro]

hi!! i kept on searching till i found this site.. im a party lover and kept on einporxlg new clubs around manila.. just wanna ask where s that ROBOT located?? coz i ve heard about it nah.. was that a superclub like republiq/ encore?? and wat are d days deyr in hip/hop sounds..Thankzz..

[Keith Blattler]

Pretty! This has been an extremely wonderful article. Thank you for supplying this information.

[Pattie Purkhiser]

Great article. I am going through some of these issues as well..

[Eve Kuziel]

Pretty! This was an incredibly wonderful post. Thank you for supplying this info.

[Gudrun Kindall]

Oh my goodness! Incredible article dude! Thank you, However I am going through problems with your RSS. I don’t understand the reason why I am unable to join it. Is there anyone else getting similar RSS problems? Anyone who knows the solution can you kindly respond? Thanx!!

[Tessa Wemark]

After I initially left a comment I seem to have clicked on the -Notify me when new comments are added- checkbox and from now on each time a comment is added I get four emails with the same comment. Perhaps there is a way you can remove me from that service? Thanks a lot!

[Shakita Querido]

You ought to take part in a contest for one of the best blogs on the net. I am going to highly recommend this site!

[Yong Ucha]

I really like it when individuals get together and share thoughts. Great site, keep it up!

[Odette Meadors]

Very good write-up. I absolutely appreciate this site. Thanks!

[Lisandra Araiza]

An impressive share! I have just forwarded this onto a friend who has been conducting a little research on this. And he actually ordered me dinner simply because I discovered it for him... lol. So let me reword this.... Thank YOU for the meal!! But yeah, thanx for spending the time to talk about this subject here on your site.

[Remona Rosca]

The very next time I read a blog, I hope that it does not disappoint me just as much as this one. I mean, Yes, it was my choice to read through, nonetheless I really believed you would have something helpful to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something that you can fix if you were not too busy searching for attention.

[Annabel Tujague]

Very good article. I definitely love this website. Continue the good work!

[Elnora Quinby]

There is definately a lot to find out about this subject. I really like all the points you have made.

[Macy Hamiss]

Having read this I believed it was really enlightening. I appreciate you spending some time and energy to put this content together. I once again find myself spending way too much time both reading and commenting. But so what, it was still worthwhile!

[dagmara]

Good day! I know this is kinda off topic however , I'd figured I'd ask. Would you be interested in trading links or maybe guest writing a blog post or vice-versa? My site goes over a lot of the same subjects as yours and I feel we could greatly benefit from each other. If you might be interested feel free to send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you! Excellent blog by the way!

[Angelena Kader]

I need to to thank you for this fantastic read!! I definitely enjoyed every bit of it. I've got you book marked to look at new stuff you post…

[Georgianna Noor]

I was able to find good information from your blog articles.