Teen Talk: Healthy Relationships vs Bullying

Young people need guidance when it comes to relationships. Parents cannot rely on television and other media to teach teens how to avoid bullying situations and build on healthy relationships. Just take one look at what your kid (mine too) is watching and you will see that kids are actually being taught more about dysfunction and bullying than about promoting healthy relationships. What can we do? First, model healthy relationships in our own lives. Second, talk to your teen! Discuss what you do and feel in a healthy relationship and how that is different from what a person does and feels in an unhealthy relationship, or one involving a bully. Here are some real actions and feelings associated with each category of relationship:

Healthy Relationships Do…

• Show mutual respect for both people
• Have fun together
• Increase each other’s self esteem
• Communicate well and easily
• Encourage each person to have their own identity
• Allow and encourage other personal interests and friends

Unhealthy Relationships Do…

• Use the other person to gain control
• Pressure one person to quit activities they previously enjoyed
• Force one person to justify what they do, where they go, who they see
• Force one person to share everything, with practically no privacy
• Criticize one person’s behavior
• Pressure one person to change
• Attempt to manipulate and control one person

Healthy Relationships Feel…

• Trusting
• Fair and equal
• Honest
• Supported
• Comfortable

Unhealthy Relationships Feel…

• Full of worry
• Afraid, especially if one person disagrees
• Pressured
• Little to no privacy
• Unfair
• Disrespectful
• Unequal in power

Of course, relationships are complicated. Teens often don’t want to talk about their relationships, especially with their parents. Sometimes the conversation needs to happen with a hypothetical relationship. Sometimes, you can employ grandparents, aunts, uncles, even trusted young adults, to share some of these truths with your child when he or she won’t listen to you. Whatever you do, keep talking, never give up and always love, forgive and accept your child, even when he or she makes mistakes or doesn’t listen. It will happen, eventually and with a little luck and mercy; your young man or woman will grow up and look back on all the wonderful lessons you taught, and teach them to your grandchildren!