When your teenager stopped telling you things

Parents describe this to me in almost the same words. Until about eleven they told me everything. Now I get one word answers.

Something did happen. It was not dramatic, and it was not a decision your child made about you. Here is the usual version of it.

They came to you with something small and difficult. A friend had been unfair. A teacher had said something in front of the class. They got about forty seconds in, and somewhere in those forty seconds you did one of three things, because any decent parent would.

• You fixed it. You told them exactly what to say to the friend tomorrow.
• You judged it. You said the friend sounds horrible, or that they should not have reacted that way.
• You enlarged it. You asked more questions, and a small thing became a serious thing with a meeting in it.

Every one of those is love. And every one of them teaches the same lesson, which is that bringing something small to this person turns it into a project. So the next time, they keep the small thing. And the small things are the whole relationship.

The forty seconds

The next time your child starts telling you something, do nothing for forty seconds.

Not warm silence with advice waiting behind it. Actual nothing. Make the sound that means carry on. Keep looking at whatever you were already looking at, because teenagers talk better when they are not being watched.

Then pick one of these.

• That sounds annoying. Naming it is enough. You are not required to solve it.
• What happened just before that? This keeps them telling the story instead of defending it.
• Do you want me to help, or just listen? Ask this every time, until the day it stops surprising them. Most of the time the answer is listen, and you have just saved yourself an argument.

Where these conversations actually happen

Not at the dinner table, facing you, with a question lying on the table between you.

They happen in the car. At the kitchen counter while something is cooking. On a walk. At eleven at night when you want to sleep. Side by side, with something else to look at, and no clear beginning, so that nothing feels like an interview.

If you want more of them, be in those places more often and ask for less while you are there.

Why it works

A teenager is deciding, over and over, whether talking to you is worth what it costs.

Every time it costs them nothing, the price comes down. Do that for a few months and they will bring you something that genuinely matters, usually at a bad hour, usually with no warning at all.

You are not trying to get your child to open up. You are trying to be cheap to talk to.