Tips for talking to teen boys

Transcription:

In the three years that I spent researching my book and traveling across the country, interviewing teenage boys from various socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, I really discovered that the best way to talk to a teenage boy is to allow them to teach you some things that you might not know. To admit that you don't have all the answers. To be the student and let that teenage boy be your teacher. Admit that being a teenage boy today, in 2012, in America is not what it was back when you were a teenager. Times have changed. There are many other influences out there that have affected teenage boyhood culture. Allow yourself to say to your child, "I don't know. Let me know what's going on. Teach me some things about yourself. Tell me what your experience is like, and together, we can find a way to make your life better; and your experience as a teenager, a more positive experience."

Video Categories: ALL PARENTS, Family Life, Gender Differences, TEEN, Parenting Teens, Talking with Teens

Malina Saval, Author & Journalist, shares advice for parents on how to best communicate with your teenage son and get them to open up to you

Transcript

Expert Bio

Malina Saval

Journalist & Author

Malina Saval is the author of The Secret Lives of Boys: Inside the Raw Emotional World of Male Teens. As a journalist, her work has appeared in Variety, Los Angeles Times, Glamour, LA Weekly, Flaunt, Jerusalem Post, Forward, Heeb, Premiere.com, Moment and Fanzine, for whom she pens a monthly column entitled "Sponsored in Part." Her short fiction and essays have been included in Palehouse and The Truth About the Fact literary journals and in the anthology Now Write! Nonfiction: Memoir, Journalism and Creative Nonfiction Exercises from Today's Best Writers and Teachers. She's lectured at several universities, including University of Central Florida and University of Eastern Michigan, and has appeared as a special expert guest on the Tavis Smiley Show (PBS), Fox News, NPR's "Talk of the Nation" and the Patt Morrison Show.