When it comes to building a good relationship with your teenager, learning how to make peace can be incredibly important.
Considering that it’s such a turbulent time, with hormones raging wild, a few arguments are bound to happen here and there.
Therefore, knowing how to talk to your teenager can be incredibly important when trying to maintain a good relationship.
Making peace after an argument may seem difficult when they don’t seem interested can appear difficult, but there are some steps you can take.
To find out some peacemaking tactics you can employ with your teenager, keep reading, as we take a look below.
1. Stay Calm
Although this one might not necessarily be considered a peacemaking tactic, it’s an excellent preventative measure that you can take during your next argument.
It can feel instinctive to shout and get angry, especially when your teenager is behaving rudely, or being disrespectful towards you and your spouse, but this won’t solve the issue at hand.
Instead, taking a few deep breaths and trying to remain calm can be incredibly helpful in the long run.
Instead of responding in the heat of the moment, tell them calmly that you’ll continue the discussion later.
After you’ve gotten some time alone to think, consider calmly what they were trying to communicate with you.
Perhaps there was a genuine issue that was bothering them, but they weren’t able to articulate it properly without getting upset.
Try to get to the root of the issue and understand things from their point of view.
After you’ve done this, and taken some time to calm down yourself, you can return to the conversation in a collected manner.
2. Practice Empathy
A great way to make peace with your teenager after experiencing an argument, is to simply empathize with their situation.
As we mentioned earlier, teenagers rarely get angry for no reason at all, although it might seem that way.
They might have had a disproportionate outburst about having to sit down for dinner with the family when they really want to hang out with friends.
This is an outcry for independence, and once you can understand that they’re gradually becoming their own person, and want to do things separately from you, it becomes easier to resolve these kinds of issues.
By empathizing with your reenages, and getting to the root of the issue, and why they might have gotten angry in the first place, you’ll be able to use this kind of language when you’re making peace with them.
Make sure to use lots of ‘feel’ words, such as, ‘I know you must be feeling very frustrated’.
This will help to show your teenager that you understand what they’re going through.
3. Address The The Things That Were Said
When it comes to talking about an argument after it’s happened, it’s a good idea to discuss some of the things that they said.
This doesn’t bring up their bad behavior in an accusatory manner, but rather, talking about it in terms of how it made you feel.
Just like you need to try to empathize with your teenagers feelings, they need to understand yours too. If they said some particularly hurtful things when you argued, don’t be afraid to tell them.
Tell them that when they said x, y or z, it made you feel as if they really hated you.
This gives them the chance to take accountability for their bad behavior in the argument, and ultimately come to a greater understanding with you.
4. Don’t Ignore The Situation
Some parents may feel inclined to simply forget about an argument after it’s happened, and pretend as though nothing has occurred in order to move on.
This isn’t a great idea though, and addressing an altercation between you and your teen is the best way to move forwards.
This means not belittling your teen’s feelings either, by using humor to try and relieve a situation that might have been upsetting for them.
It’s understandable that if you feel bad about what’s happened, you just want everything to be okay and move on, but it’s always best to talk.
5. Show That You Care
After the argument is over, and you’ve managed to talk about it and resolve it, you can then move on to having some fun with them again.
After the tensions of an argument, it is always a good idea to do something to relieve all of the energy afterward.
This could mean anything from sitting down and watching a movie with them, making a meal that they enjoy, or simply having a few jokes and a little bit of fun with them.
These are all excellent ways to show that you care, and to leave the argument that you had in the past.
Remember however, if your teenager doesn’t seem responsive to your attempts at having fun with them, leave them some time to themselves.
Perhaps they still need a little more time to recover from your argument, and some teenagers do this best when they’re left to their own devices.
Just give them some space to move on, then you can resume to your regular rapport.
Final Thoughts
Making peace with an angry teenager might seem difficult, but it’s not impossible.
The key thing to remember is to stay calm, and to always try and see things from their point of view in order to get a better understanding.
After you’ve both had some time to cool off, you can deal with the situation empathetically, using lots of ‘feel’ words, such as ‘I understand that you must be feeling frustrated’.
