How Communication Will Save Your Relationship With Your Teen

Making sure your teen feels open enough to communicate can be a daunting task for parents, but it’s of utmost importance in maintaining a healthy parent-teen relationship, especially in dealing with bullying and avoiding crowds of bad actors.

But how do parents accomplish this without falling into the vice of helicopter parenting? In the third full-length episode of “Parenting,” Dr. Jordan Peterson sits down with parents Sean and Jennifer to discuss the importance of knowing when and when not to step into the social lives of their two teens. 

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“Our daughter, when she was in fifth grade, was bullied by an LGBTQ club and friends at her school that tried to pressure her to join,” the mother, Jennifer, said. “We started noticing a change in her, and she eventually came to tell us that these students were bullying her.”

“As this is happening, our son, who’s in seventh grade… you start to see him hanging around with the wrong friend group,” the father, Sean, added. “He was starting to withdraw from us as a family… [He] turned to substance abuse at that time.”’

The parents explained how their relationship with their children, especially their son, is not as strong as they desire it to be. Jennifer pointed out their son has expressed a desire for “freedom.”

Dr. Peterson encouraged the parents to reasonably communicate with their son and have him develop a vision for the freedom he wants.

“Freedom and anarchy aren’t the same thing,” he said. “Freedom to do anything? That just makes you anxious. You want ordered freedom.”

Watch “Bullying + Peer Pressure” on DailyWire+ to find out how Dr. Peterson advises Sean and Jennifer to deal with their teens’ social issues.