How to negotiate with teenage children: 5 key fundamentals

Reaching agreements in times of puberty and adolescence is hard for parents, but not impossible.

Adolescence is the stage of life in which rebelliousness prevails. The rapid hormonal changes, the tireless search for one's own identity and the frequent frustrations that these situations of rapid change entail very often make adolescents tend not to make compromises and to act always on their own..

This means that, if a certain balance is to be found in everyday domestic and family life, negotiating with these adolescent children is very necessary. However, this is no easy task and, often, trying to reach an agreement can generate even more conflicts and anxiety. But it is not mission impossible.

Reaching pacts and agreements with teenagers

The first thing to bear in mind before embarking on a negotiation is that this is a long-term project that requires continuous efforts. Believing that having reached a pact is enough to get the adolescent to enter into the dynamics of reaching agreements and keeping his or her word is to ignore how people's behavior works: actions must be converted into habits to last and appear spontaneously with little effort.

This means that all the effort and effort that we save when adolescents have already assimilated negotiations must be invested at the beginning of this process, to be withdrawn little by little.

So let's start with the keys to negotiating with adolescents and young people at the puberty stage.

1. Getting the adolescent to seek out negotiation

Parents and guardians of adolescents have a lot of power over the things that happen in their lives, and using them to improve the degree to which they can accept bargaining situations is entirely legitimate.

That means that, if at first these young people do not want to negotiate, we should not force the emergence of negotiation, we should not force the emergence of pacts.because the agreements we can reach will be fictitious: they will only exist in our imagination.

So, in the face of a refusal to take the first steps, we must not force the emergence of pacts, When faced with a refusal to take the first steps to accept a negotiation process, it is necessary to act consistently with the adolescent's attitude the adolescent's attitude and make one's own position inflexible. This simply means that we will unilaterally we will unilaterally set rules for the adolescent..

Ultimately, if a teenager is not willing to assume a degree of freedom where he can accept or reject options in a negotiation, then he must follow rules. The message here is that moving towards a higher degree of independence means assuming covenants in an adult manner.. Negotiating at any price is not an option.

But it is essential that these rules are those that we can enforce in the event of non-compliance. If there are no consequences for breaking them, it is as if the rules do not exist.. That is why we must work on our own assertiveness.

2. Negotiate in an emotionally neutral situation.

It is important that the first steps of the negotiation take place not in the midst of anger and tantrums, but when calm reigns. This will ensure that the other party's conditions are not interpreted as attacks or provocations.It will also help to detect those points that one is not really willing to accept because of their objective characteristics and those that one is not willing to accept because of what this would mean in the context of a discussion.

3. The sacred rule: always keep your word.

Failure to do what was previously said to be done is devastating to negotiations with teenagers, even if it only happens once.. This is true both in cases where the teenager keeps his or her word but we do not, and in cases where the teenager breaks the agreement and the adult does not act on it.

At the end of the day, the value of negotiations is based on trust and consistency.. They serve to eliminate a degree of uncertainty about what will happen if the adolescent behaves in one way or another, and if they do not serve that function, they are worthless.

That is why it is necessary to comply with the facts that negotiations have a value and can be useful for both parents and adolescents.

4. Going back to previous stages

If we have been going through a period in which an adolescent is willing to negotiate but at a certain point stops doing so, it is important not to try to continue negotiating by force; as we have seen in point one, this will be like building a fiction in the air, and the pact will not take place.

Thus, in these cases, it is necessary to do the same thing, in these cases it is necessary to do the same as we have said in point one: not to negotiate and to set unilateral rules.Do not negotiate and set rules unilaterally. We should not be blinded by the feeling that we have made progress, nor should we see this as a sign that all the previous negotiations have been for nothing. On the contrary, when comparing the return of unilateral rules with the pacts reached in the past, the second option is more attractive..

5. Know the interests of the adolescent

The best thing to do with negotiations is to tailor them to the teen's needs and aspirations. to the needs and aspirations of the other party..

This means that the effectiveness of negotiation depends on the degree to which we tailor our options to the unique and individual characteristics of the person in front of us. In the case of negotiation with sons and daughters, parents can make good use of their knowledge about this person.