It’s never too early to encourage and guide your children toward a lifetime of healthy and safe relationships!
As your children get older and begin to form relationships and romantic feelings with others, it can be confusing for parents to know how to best support them. You may wonder what role you should play or how involved you should be in their relationships.
Whether your teen hasn’t started dating or you have a teen deep into a relationship, it’s important for parents to understand how to stay engaged with their children and encourage them to have healthy relationships. Check out the tips below to get started.
Parenting Tips for Helping Teens Build Healthy Relationships
Military OneSource offers assistance for military personnel and their families, including resources for you to support your teen(s) to have a safe and healthy relationship. Other sources include the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, and the Love is Respect organization. Here are some actions these organizations have offered that you can consider:
- Build trust. You and your children need a trusting, open relationship if they are going to feel comfortable coming to you. Show them it’s safe to come to you without fear of judgment, shame, or anger. Remind them you’re here for them and love them unconditionally. This foundation will make it easier to discuss relationships, friendships, and more.
- Listen. If your teen is willing to talk and share their life with you, it’s important for you to listen. Try not to interrupt or to be critical of what they’re expressing. Be supportive, offer guidance if you’re asked, and show you’re interested in the things that matter to them, even if they don’t seem important to you.
- Discuss what makes a relationship healthy.
Your kids are still figuring things out at their age, so it’s important to talk about what makes a relationship healthy. Talk about key elements such as respect, trust, and honesty. Discuss the importance of spending time together, but also respecting each other’s independence to enjoy other activities, interests, and friendships. Talk about being fair, communicating openly, and keeping the relationship balanced. - Discuss what makes a relationship unhealthy. It’s important to know that an unhealthy relationship isn’t just one that’s physically abusive. Discuss what makes a relationship unhealthy. It might include not being honest with each other, not allowing or accepting space or independence, not valuing your opinion or wishes, keeping you away from family or friends, and more.
- Model healthy relationships. Your children are watching and learning from the relationships they see around them. Show them what a healthy relationship looks like. Explain how you settle disagreements, compromise, and respect each other’s boundaries. Even as teens grow and become more independent, you continue to have influence over their ideas, beliefs, and behaviors.
- Teach them about consent.
Make sure your children understand what consent looks like when it comes to physical and sexual relationships. Teach them to always ask for permission before engaging in any sexual or physical behavior. Remind them that everyone has the right to say no or yes, each time, at different times, and that it’s important to check in often. Make sure they understand that it’s never OK to threaten or pressure someone into doing something they don’t want to do. Even if you’re confident your kids aren’t engaging in a physical relationship, tell them consent is an important concept to understand early on. - Teach your teens about safe sex.
No matter what your rules or expectations are for your teens, it’s important for them to learn about safe sex practices, sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy, and anything else you’d like them to understand before engaging in sexual activity. - Teach them about boundaries. Having clear boundaries is an important part of maintaining healthy relationships with anyone, including romantic partners, but you may need to help your teens identify what their boundaries are. You can start by asking them questions like – What makes you comfortable in a relationship? What level of independence do you need or want? How much of your relationship is OK to post on social media? What level of intimacy are you ready for?
- Talk to your teens about technology and its risks.
Talk to your teens about the risks associated with technology and how it may impact their relationships. Unhealthy behaviors can include excessive texting, sharing private conversations or photos with others, bullying, harassment, and more. Learn more about the technology risks young people face and how to navigate them. - Recognize signs of stress in your teens. Being a teenager can get pretty stressful. Kids show stress in different ways, but be on the lookout for symptoms such as acting out, physical ailments like stomach aches or headaches, sleeping issues, slipping grades, withdrawal from activities, and more. Learn more about helping your teens manage stress effectively.
- Get support. You and your teen don’t have to manage all of this on your own. Encourage your children to reach out to trusted adults, like teachers or coaches, when they need advice. Offer to connect them to a counselor or someone else they can talk to confidentially if they aren’t willing to open up to you. Check out the information below for some additional resources.
Resources
- The National Domestic Violence Hotline has a lot of information and resources for both parents and teens. Parents can learn more about how to talk to teens about relationship abuse, and teens can check out love is respect, a page full of guidance on setting boundaries, ending unhealthy relationships, and more.
- Your family can explore confidential counseling as a way to help your teen cope with difficult issues. Military OneSource provides free counseling for youth ages 13-17 and family counseling sessions for children ages 6-12 with a parent present. In addition, the Military and Family Life Counseling Program offers counseling on or near installations to children under age 18. Counselors can help your teens deal with topics such as low self-esteem, loneliness, relationships, and more.
- Military OneSource offers a Building Healthy Relationships specialty consultation. You can work through a customized track on healthy parent-child connections, so you can be confident and ready the next time you and your teen sit down to talk.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers Dating Matters, a toolkit full of strategies to promote healthy teen relationships, including a section for parents.
It’s never too early to encourage and guide your children toward a lifetime of healthy and safe relationships!