Open Communication Requires Open Mind

Sally, your 13-year-old daughter, comes home from school and announces, in no uncertain terms, that she’s going to get her belly button pierced.

The parent in you instantly wells up with anger and retorts, “Over my dead body,” to which the clever teen responds, with a twinkle in her eye, “That can be arranged.”

To keep yourself from strangling the little brat, you order her directly up to her room at which point, she tells you where you can go, instead, and you find your hand raised to backhand her sassy mouth off her face.

Defiantly, she stands poised to receive the smack that will, no doubt in her mind, land you in jail, with the police happily taking her to get her belly pierced while they watch AND pay for it.

You are at the point of no return.  Now you either have to backhand her, which, could very well, land you in jail, or you’ve got to back down and let her ‘win.’  Neither of these outcomes is very desirable, so let’s hit the reverse button and go back and replay this scene again, this time with the parent keeping an open mind and a cool head.

Sally walks in and makes her announcement.  Parent takes a deep breath, smiles, and welcomes Sally home from school.  Sally, certain her parent did not hear what she just said, announces again, her plans for self-mutilation.  Parent takes another deep breath and sits down at a nearby chair, pulling another chair out for Sally, too.

Sally will, at this point, probably get a little frustrated because she is not getting the freak-out reaction she was going for, but seeing a parent with an open mind, she sits in the chair and now asks, with a tone, if she can get her belly pierced.

Parent, that’s progress.  She went from announcing to asking.  She’s moving in the right direction.  Take another deep breath and smile and pause.  Make a “thinking” noise like “Hmmm,” or “Huh” and give the impression that you are considering it.  Sally will then get nervous because she has not yet been told ‘yes’ and she has not been told ‘no,’ and yet the question is out there, “Can I get my belly pierced?”

Sally may then add that Felicia has hers pierced and Tonya has hers pierced and Toni’s mother is letter her pierce hers on Saturday.  Take another deep breath.  Pause.  We’re still not sure what Sally is trying to say, but she IS talking.  Try to make a comment that really has no judgmental content.  Say, “Hey,” or “Wow,” or “What do you think of that?”

At this point, since you haven’t freaked out, Sally is now free to tell you what she really thinks.  She blurts out, “I think it’s dumb, I don’t want to do it!”  Well, holy cow!  What just happened?  You just found out what Sally REALLY wanted to talk to you about when she whirled in and blurted out her plans for belly beautification.

Through your patience and your level-headedness, you have just found out that Sally’s friends are all doing it and that she doesn’t even want to, but she feels pressured into doing so.

Now you can be sympathetic and see what else she has to say.  She may admit to you that she foolishly told Toni she’d go with her on Saturday and get hers done, too, but now that she’s thought about it, she really doesn’t want to.  Now the two of you can figure out what she’s going to actually do.  Will she go have it done?  Will she tell her friend she changed her mind?  Will she tell her friend that her mother won’t let her?  The two of you can plan something sensible to do.

Now, fast-forward back to the first scenario, the one in which you backhand the sassy Miss Sally and she storms off, crying.  In that scenario, Sally has to go and get her belly pierced to save face with her friends, unless she was lucky enough to get grounded.  In fact, that could be what she was really going for in the first place, to get herself out of the mess she got herself into by telling her friend she’d go with her to have her belly pierced, too.

The choice is up to you as a parent as to how these scenarios go.  You can keep an open mind and keep your cool and keep the lines of communication open or you can freak out, end the discussion, and leave your teen to make decisions on their own without your input or supervision.  I think you know which strategy has the better outcomes!

Marlo Archer, Ph.D.
Down to Earth Enterprises
1250 E. Baseline Rd., Suite 102
Tempe, AZ 85283
(480) 705-5007