It can be tough to get kids to talk to you about what’s bothering them, but it can be less difficult if you have shorter, consistent conversations with them, says child psychologist J. Timothy Davis.
When your child is experiencing issues like challenges at school or difficulty expressing their emotions, Davis suggests the “25 1-minute parenting rule”: Brief chats about an issue over time, instead of one long conversation about the topic.
It can be even more effective for communicating with boys, he says.
“What I found over the years of working with kids and parents is if you break a big conversation down into little chunks where you learn something, that then becomes the start of the next conversation,” says Davis, author of “Challenging Boys: A Proven Plan for Keeping Your Cool and Helping Your Son Thrive.”
“You can get to where you want to go ultimately, but just in a way that’s going to be much more successful.”
Having lengthy discussions with children can overload them and cause them to get emotionally overwhelmed, he explains. This can be especially true when they’re younger and more prone to losing focus.
Your talks don’t have to be exactly one-minute long, but sticking to three to eight minutes is a good rule of thumb, Davis says. Spacing out the conversations throughout the day or week allows you and your child to process the emotions that may come up before you reconvene.
“Sometimes you might start a conversation with your kid, and they’re really opening up, and it’s going great. You’ve got to override the urge to try to maximize the moment,” Davis says.
“That’s the moment where you really want to tune in to their emotions to make sure that you don’t take it too far [and] make it a negative experience. It’s better to end with less on the table and everybody feeling good than to have squeezed every possible bit of openness out of that one interaction.”
Consider these three things when you’re trying the 25 1-minute parenting rule:
Let’s say you received an email about your child not turning in their math assignments, Davis says. Here’s an example of how you can use this format to get your kid to open up to you about it.
Parent: “I got an email from your teacher saying you haven’t been turning in some math assignments. What’s up?”
Child: “Math is stupid. Can I go?”
From this first chat, you can gauge that your child may be having a difficult time with math and may feel uncomfortable with it. A follow-up could be:
Parent: “Hey, I’ve been thinking about what you said about math being stupid. I can remember math being pretty hard sometimes.”
Child: “Yeah, she makes you show your work.”
From those two short discussions alone, you would be able to learn that your child doesn’t struggle with math but struggles to understand why showing their work is necessary. This approach is much better than chastising your child about not turning in their assignments because you get to the root of the problem.
With “these low-stress, little conversations, you can learn something and not overload your kids, so you’re creating a positive association to opening up rather than a negative,” Davis says.
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