5 Tips for Building Assertive Communication in Kids and Teens

Wondering how to help your child or teen be more assertive? Here are five things you can do to help them grow their assertiveness.

1. Listen to your child.

When your child has something to tell you, take the time to be truly present and listen. Stop what you are doing, minimize distractions, and look at them. This conveys to your child that what they have to say is important and they deserve to be listened to, which builds self-esteem and assertiveness. Keep in mind the consequences of not stopping to listen to your child – a child that feels ignored or unheard will either escalate until they feel heard (reinforcing aggressiveness) or feel unimportant (leading to poor self-esteem or less communication).

2. Reflect and validate your child’s feelings.

Reflecting means repeating back the emotion that your child is expressing (e.g., “You’re telling me that you’re really frustrated” or “You seem to be really sad.”), which helps them to know that you are listening to what they are communicating. Validating means taking your response a bit further and conveying that you understand and accept their feelings (e.g., “I could see why you feel that way.”).  This conveys that their feelings are valid, worth sharing, and will be taken seriously. You don’t have to agree with their feelings in order to validate them – it doesn’t matter if you think your child should be feeling that way, wish they had a different feeling, or think that you would be feeling something different – your child is the one having the emotion and they deserve to have that accepted.

3. Respect your child’s thoughts and opinions.

You are not going to like every thought or opinion that your child has – some opinions will be silly, contrary just for the sake of argument, uninformed, or seem downright mean. However, you can still convey respect by letting them express these thoughts, listening, reflecting, and asking interested questions. If you don’t agree with something, you can always share your own opinion in a respectful manner. As adults, we know how awful it feels when someone tells us our ideas are silly, shuts us down and doesn’t listen, or immediately starts to argue and tell us why we’re wrong. When we don’t feel respected, the response is often to become argumentative with the other person or just keep our thought to ourselves in the future.

4. Engage your child in problem solving.

Problem solving is a great process to help your child practice assertive communication, strengthen executive functioning skills, take responsibility, and feel like their ideas are valued. When a problem comes up that needs to be addressed try the following problem solving method:

- Let your child know that you want to talk, name the problem, and ask for their feelings/thoughts (e.g., “I want to talk about school mornings. You seem to be running late a lot. How are you feeling about it?)

- Listen to your child’s thoughts/feelings, reflect, and validate. Ask to make sure that you’ve understood. (e.g., “You’re feeling frustrated that I nag you so much to get out of bed and get stressed out when I’m rushing you out the door. Is that right?”)

- Share your concerns and feelings (e.g., “I feel frustrated that it’s so hard to get you up in the morning and that you usually aren’t ready on time. I worry about you being late to school and sometimes I’m late for work because of it, which makes me angry.”)

- Brainstorm solutions together, pick one to try, and set a plan for how long you will try it out before re-evaluating.

5. Follow through.

When you’ve told your child that you’re going to do something, especially when it’s something important that they’ve asked for, make sure that you follow through and honor your commitment. Like the other strategies above, this lets your child know that they are important and worthwhile, building self-esteem and trust in others. Sometimes when I ask children why they aren’t speaking up at home or school when they need help, they tell me that it doesn’t seem to make a difference because their parents say that they’ll do something but then don’t. If you want to reinforce assertiveness in asking for help and problem-solving, make sure to hold up your end of the agreement.

Carolyn Mehlomakulu, LMFT-S, ATR-BC is a psychotherapist and art therapist helping parents, children, and teens in Austin, TX. If you are looking for extra support, reach out today for a free initial consultation call.