“I would like you to be more affectionate,” says Catherine to her husband Mark, while they’re walking in the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area. As soon as she finishes saying those words, Mike notices the thoughts Does she want me to send her flowers? Would she like me to get her the purse she showed me the other day? Or does she want more movie nights? As the walk progresses, Mark does his best to continue to be engaged in the conversation, but at the end of their walk he realizes that he didn’t understand what Catherine meant by asking him to be more affectionate. So he decides to ask his wife what she meant by that comment, and the next thing he hears is “Sweetie, you will figure out. We have been together for over ten years…” Mark can’t stop noticing all the new questions showing up in his mind trying to make sense of Catherine’s response.
Whether it’s a romantic relationship, a friendship, a sibling, or parent-teen relationship, assertiveness skills are necessary for everyone and in every relationship. We constantly communicate with each other for different purposes, and unless we develop a style of communication that facilitates clarity in the conversation, it can be very frustrating and unsatisfying for everyone involved.
By incorporating assertiveness skills in your parenting job, you’re modeling for your teen a type of communication that is a prerequisite for healthy and fulfilling relationships. Assertiveness is a specific type of communication that will allow you to clearly state limits with your teen, ask for a change in his behavior, and give him feedback while increasing the likelihood of being heard.
“Mom, can I use the car tonight to hang out with my friends? We’re meeting at about midnight, so it shouldn’t interfere with your plans.” Annelisse, one of the parents I worked with years ago, received this request from her son, Timothy, as if it were the most natural thing for a teen to do, to hang out at midnight on a weekday with his friends. Teens, more often than not, make requests for money, clothes, birthday parties, trips, and all types of things, and often the parenting job is to say no. However, saying no becomes a tricky task when you suspect that your teen’s emotional switch is going to turn on and a potential argument could start right away. Here are the steps to assertively say no to your teen when receiving inappropriate requests:
Optional: if you don’t have an immediate response, it is important to let your teen know that you will think about the request and get back to him after a certain period of time.
Did you notice that the first step for saying no is to appreciate your teen’s feelings, wishes, and wants behind his request? The appreciating skills you learned in chapter 11 are key for developing assertive behaviors; they will certainly make room for your teen’s needs to be seen at all times, even when he’s making an inappropriate request. Imagine for a second how it would be for him to hear a radical no from you versus receiving an appreciative response. Quite different, right?
Here is an example of how Annelisse responded to Timothy’s request: “Timothy, I can totally see how excited you are about hanging out with your friends, and it’s really kind of you to think about how not to affect my regular schedule [appreciating verbally]. However, it’s not safe to be walking around and driving in town at midnight, most places are closed, and it will be very stressful if something happens to you in the middle of the night [explaining the rationale]. What about if this weekend I drive you to your friend’s home from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. or maybe a sleepover at our house? [offering choices].”
Saying no in an assertive manner won’t stop your teen from making all types of demands or requests, appropriate and inappropriate ones. However, learning from you, through firsthand experience, how to say no in a manner that doesn’t damage the relationship between the two of you is a skill you’re giving him in life. In the end, you’re the emotional coach in your teen’s life.
Let’s think together about a scenario that I frequently encounter in my clinical work with teens: imagine that your teen has been cutting his wrists, using marijuana, drinking alcohol, and having random sexual encounters; at home, his bedroom is messy, clothes are all over the floor, and plates of food are left on the night table. What are your emotional reactions to these images? Notice the different types of thoughts that show up in your mind after holding those images. Any evaluative thought, future or past thoughts, any story about your teen, or even a rule broken by him? Did you notice any impulses to fix any or maybe all of those problems?
A regular day in the life of a teen suffering with intense emotional reactions is usually full of reactive behaviors, and it’s challenging for any parent to navigate through those multiple problems. Chances are that solving any of these difficult situations involves making a request to your teen to adjust or change his behavior.
Pause for a moment and think about how often you ask your teen to start, stop, or do more or less of a specific behavior; quite likely, you have made these types of requests very often. Now, pause again and ask yourself how many of those requests end up in a conflict with your teen. Choosing what to address and assertively doing it will prevent things from going south with your teen. Asking for what you need is a skill that requires awareness, prioritization, and appropriate communication.
The secret ingredient for making requests from the beginning to the end is behavioral clarity, which means describing behaviors in a very observable manner and in a way that any person can watch the behavior happening step-by-step.
Exercise: Practicing Behavioral Clarify
Grab your parenting journal and write a list of your teen’s problematic behaviors as specifically as possible. (Words like “laziness,” “disengaged,” and so on are not specific; a specific behavioral description is “throwing and leaving dirty clothes on the floor,” “texting while having dinner,” or “playing video games from 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.”) Then organize these items into three problem categories: low, moderate, and high difficulty. Finally, based on the reorganization of the items, choose the least problematic ones to start practicing making requests. For example, after completing her list and organizing her items, Mayra decided to start working on her daughter Tessa’s behavior of “throwing things in the trash even though the trash can is full and the garbage is spilling onto the floor.”
Now here are the four elements that are fundamental when making a request:
When Mayra followed the above steps, she came up with the following request for Tessa: “Tessa, this morning I saw you throwing your breakfast leftovers into the full trashcan, and the garbage spilled onto the floor around it. I feel frustrated about it because it’s important to me to keep the house clean for all of us and to avoid any bad odors or bugs coming into the house because of the trash on the floor. So, I need to ask you to please empty the bin when it is full.”
When Mayra uses clarity as a guiding principle to make a request and follows all the suggested steps, she increases the chances to be heard by her daughter, decreases opportunities for escalation, because she’s not accusing her teen of anything but is instead asserting herself, and teaches her teen how to make requests without damaging the relationship.
Exercise: Practicing Making Assertive Requests
See if you can come up with assertive requests, using the four fundamental elements for making a request, for the following scenarios:
No relationship will survive if you don’t express your concerns, disappointments, or requests. Making a request is a survival skill in the relationship with your teen, and it will allow you to address those rocky situations as they come up. Remember, not asking your teen for a change is prolonging more internal conflict for yourself.
It’s quite likely that your teen’s behavior is not going to be appropriate or helpful at all times, and as part of your parenting job description, you’re the most suitable person to give him feedback. Giving feedback is different from making a request, because you’re not asking your teen to change his behavior but simply letting him know your concerns, worries, and fears about a particular behavior or situation you observed. This is a very difficult task because dysregulated teens may perceive the feedback as personal criticism if their emotional switch is on.
At the same time, if you give your teen caring and effective feedback, you’re teaching him how to handle the disagreements, concerns, worries, and differences that we all have in relationships. Giving feedback to your teen is very similar to the steps described when learning the skill of making a request, but with specific modifications:
For instance, when Lizbeth practiced giving feedback to her son Philippe about dating multiple people, she told him, “Philippe, there is something I would like to share with you from a place of caring. I noticed that the last three weeks you have been going out with four different boys as your dates to different parties; I’m worried about this because I’m afraid you may get hurt or you may hurt other boys without wanting to do so. So let me know if you want to talk about it at some point. Your call. I’m here for you to figure things out together.”
According to McKay, Davis, and Fanning (2009), there are three important principles for giving feedback: immediacy, honesty, and supportiveness.
Giving feedback is a core assertiveness skill that will allow you to state your concerns about your teen’s behavior in a way that preserves the relationship and helps you exercise your parenting values.
As you might expect, when learning new skills and getting ready to put them into action, your mind will come up with all types of images, thoughts, or narratives, some of them helpful, some of them not. Again, a very important ACT skill is to notice your mind noise for what it is: mind noise. You cannot control what your mind comes up with, but you can certainly choose how to respond. For instance, when talking about assertiveness skills, a parent shared a thought that popped up for him in that moment: “Why do I have to explain myself or be so thoughtful when talking to my teen, when I’m the parent?” Are you having a similar thought or some version of it? If so, let’s briefly take a look at what this thought does for you.
Exercise: Looking at What Mind Noise Does for You
Pick up your parenting journal and answer these three questions:
For instance, when Annelisse answered those questions she came up with the responses below:
Annelisse acknowledged that it’s easier to ask her teen to do X in a given moment than to notice the frustration, exhaustion, and even powerlessness she feels at times as a mother.
Our minds play tricks, and it’s natural that when incorporating assertive behaviors, your mind is going to be like a popcorn machine and will throw at you all types of thoughts; your mind is just doing its job. Then here is a key ACT question: would you be willing to have those uncomfortable thoughts and still follow through with the suggested steps when saying no, making a request to your teen, or giving feedback, so you can be the parent you want to be? The choice is yours.
Successful relationships are partly based on how we handle our internal reactions and partly based on how we handle our behaviors with others. By practicing how to say no, making assertive requests, and giving caring feedback to your teen, you are teaching him the core skills of an effective communicator and increasing the chances of him creating healthy relationships. No healthy and successful relationship comes premade into our interpersonal world; each one of them requires a style of communication that facilitates understanding of one another and the fulfillment of our emotional needs.
Now let’s face it: even if you give assertiveness skills your best shot when communicating with your teen, conflict is going to show up sooner or later. Some of the issues you argue about may be fleeting ones compared to other times when you and your teen may argue about the same issues over and over. You’re going to need a different set of skills to handle these repetitive problematic behaviors, so you can stop nagging and start rewarding your teen. Ready to learn how?