How to negotiate with adolescent children: 5 fundamental keys

adolescence is the stage of life in which rebellion prevails. The rapid hormonal changes, the tireless search for one's own identity and the frequent frustrations that these rapidly changing situations entail Very often, adolescents tend not to make commitments and always act on their own.

This means that, if a certain balance is to be found in domestic and family daily life, negotiating with these adolescent children is something very necessary. However, this is not an easy task and often trying to reach an agreement can lead to even more conflicts and anxiety. But it is not mission impossible.

Reaching pacts and agreements with teenagers

The first thing to keep in mind before starting a negotiation is that this is a long-term project that requires continued efforts. Believing that by having reached an agreement, the adolescent has already been able to enter into the dynamics of reach agreements and keep your word is to ignore the functioning of the behavior of the people: actions must be turned into habits so that they last and appear spontaneously with hardly any effort.

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

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

1. Making the adolescent look for the negotiation

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

This means that if at first these young people do not want to negotiate, we must not force the appearance of pacts, because the agreements that we can reach are going to be fictitious: they will only exist in our imagination.

So that, Given the refusal to take the first steps to accept a negotiation process, it is necessary to act accordingly with the adolescent's attitude and make one's own position inflexible. That simply means that we will set rules unilaterally.

In the end, if a teen is not willing to assume a degree of freedom where she can accept or reject options in a negotiation, then she must follow rules. The message here is that Advancing towards a greater degree of independence involves assuming pacts in an adult way. Trading at any price is not an option.

But it is essential that these rules are those that in case of being breached we can enforce. If breaking them does not carry consequences, it is as if the rules did not exist. That is why we must work on one's own assertiveness.

2. Negotiating in an emotionally neutral situation

It is important that the first steps of the negotiation are taken not in the midst of anger and tantrums, but when calm reigns. This will ensure that the conditions of the other party are not interpreted as attacks or provocations., and it will also help to detect those points that you are not really willing to accept for your objective characteristics and those others that are not accepted by what that would mean in the context of a discussion.

3. The sacred rule: keep the word always

Not doing what was previously said to be done is devastating for negotiations with adolescents, even if it only happens once. This is valid both for those cases in which the adolescent keeps his word but we do not, as for the cases in which it is the adolescent who breaks the agreement and the adult does not act accordingly. consequence.

After all, the value of negotiations is based on trust and coherence. serve for remove a degree of uncertainty about what will happen if the adolescent behaves in one way or another, and if they do not fulfill that function, they are worthless.

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

4. Returning to previous stages

If we have a streak in which an adolescent is willing to negotiate but at a 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.

So that, in these cases you have to do the same thing that has been said in point number one: Do not negotiate and set standards unilaterally. We should not be blinded by the feeling of having made progress or see this as a sign that all previous negotiations have been for nothing. On the contrary, when comparing the return of unilateral rules with the agreements 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 make adapt to the needs and aspirations of the other party.

That means that the effectiveness of the 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 negotiating with sons and daughters, fathers and mothers can make good use of the knowledge about this person.