I ran a seminar for parents of anxious kids last week and at the end one parent asked me this question:

"My daughter is having problems with the girls in her class.  I know we should talk about it - but every time I bring it up, she shuts it down.  She just doesn't want to talk with me about it.  What should I do?

Does this sound familiar?  Are you working on helping your own children talk about things they don't really want to talk about? 

If so, welcome to my world! :) :)

As a child psychologist, I know full well that helping children communicate about tricky topics is very difficult at times.   It's something I work on with kids constantly.  Here's a few things to know and a few things to try.

3 things to know about kids "not talking" 

1. It's quite normal for some children to not be interested in discussing difficult topics. 

In the last semester of the year, I speak to thousands of Year 11 and 12 students in Australia about effective revision technique. Here is some of the material I present.

Students should start revising for five minutes every day from now on. This might happen at the start of homework or study time, during the ‘ads’ on TV or while waiting at the bus stop. Spending five minutes per day going over something learnt last week will save hours of revision time overall because when tests and exams arrive most of the information will already be familiar. I also suggest to students the following key points:

When you revise, you need to WAKE YOUR BRAIN UP. No more limply reading over notes so that you can’t remember what you read at the end of the page. Revision should take a fair bit of mental effort. If you are zoning out while you revise, it’s not working. Here are some ways to revise effectively:

any teens are not especially communicative.  However some teenagers are particularly unlikely to share information or respond questions about their day or their interests.  Some tips for talking to these teens are below.

1. Talk while doing something else at the same time

For example, try conversations in the car, while taking the dog for a walk, while doing the ironing and so on.  If possible create spots in your house that a teenager can sit and eat or look at magazines etc while you are also doing something (cleaning up etc).

Many teenagers I work with feel hurt or sad about being excluded from friendship groups.  Usually one or more of their “friends” has done or said something to leave them feeling left out or not accepted.  This could be someone avoiding eye contact, ignoring them in conversation, not asking them to an event/gathering or not responding to invitations/communication.  This kind of exclusion can be mild (e.g. over the short term by one person only) or severe (long term and done by many).   

There are some tricky issues about exclusion.  First, many teens find it hard to admit it that it has happened.

Most parents of teens I talk to say:  “most of all, I just want him/her to be honest with me”.  A study of parents desires for teens found that honesty is up the very top of the list of characteristics we wish for our young people.

It is unfortunate therefore, that almost every single teenager lies, and lies frequently.  Some recent research by Dr. Nancy Darling in the US, found that out of several hundred teenagers, 98% of them had lied to their parents in the last few months.  Teens lie to their parents about many areas of life, including what they spent money on, who they were with, what they wore after leaving the house, about whether parties were supervised, what they did after school and who they were in the car with and what was happening at school.