How Grandparents Can Connect with Teen Grandchildren
Do you want your grandson or granddaughter to always remember you with warmth? Then this article is just for you. We have prepared some simple but effective tips that will help you establish a strong relationship with a teenager.
It is not worth trying to be on the same wavelength with teenagers. Attempts to look youthful can, on the contrary, cause teenagers shame and rejection. For them, it is much more important that an adult is next to them, and not someone who is trying to imitate them.
In attempts to understand teenagers, the older generation sometimes tries to mimic the youth environment. Grandmothers sometimes start using slang, trying to take on the role of a friend in conversation and behavior. At first, this may amuse grandchildren: you can talk to your grandmother without being embarrassed in expressions and without observing age boundaries. But, as a rule, this period does not last long - a teenager is unlikely to trust their grandmother in the same way as a friend, and her flirting with youth culture will quickly begin to irritate.
At the same time, the age of grandparents is optimal for communicating with children. Parents are busy with work and solving many household problems. And grandparents have already achieved everything, have set life priorities. It is time to pass on experience to the younger generation.
What Can Be Done
Share your life experience not from the position of science, but in a non-intrusive conversation with specific instructions on how to get out of this or that situation. For example, you know that your grandson is not getting along with classmates: recall a similar situation from your life at the same age, honestly tell how it was.
Do not embellish or exaggerate your life experience. You are not a superhero, but an ordinary person who can make mistakes and lose, and teenage problems, regardless of the time of action, are in many ways similar.
Maintain your own sphere of interests, without looking back at grandchildren and children. Grandchildren, seeing that their grandmother is passionate about, for example, choral singing or dancing, that she has her own interests (and they do not revolve only around the grandson), will respect them much more.
Respect the hobbies of your grandchildren. If a granddaughter enthusiastically tells how she watched an online concert of a Korean pop group, you can tell about how you went to a concert of organ music. In the discussion, emphasize what is common in your situations: you feel the same positive emotions from your favorite music, although your tastes are different.
Find hobbies that unite you. Perhaps a granddaughter, like you, likes to color pictures by numbers, and a grandson likes to go skiing. Then this is a great occasion for a joint hobby.
Try to understand the rules of communication and the language of young people, without lowering your cultural level. Continue to communicate with your grandchildren in literary Ukrainian, not slang, but at the same time, do not hesitate to ask the meaning of a slang word that you do not know. This, by the way, is a good language practice for a child - to learn to explain in synonyms what sounds incomprehensible to others. At the same time, you can ask why this or that concept is called that in slang. Grandson does not know? This is an occasion to search for an answer together on the Internet.
Answering young people does not mean imitating them. They need to be understood, supported, and accepted as they are.
