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Parents and Teens often find themselves in conflict with each other. Parent Teen Mediation is a helpful alternative that promotes healthy communication between Parents and Teens about their issues. Parent Teen Mediation offers a family system faced with conflict with an opportunity to promote understanding in order to resolve the issues within the system.
Mediation provides a safe, neutral environment where family members can talk to each other, explore areas of disagreement, and come up with solutions to which both sides can agree. Giving teens a voice in making decisions affecting their lives empowers them and acknowledges their need for greater autonomy in a way that is acceptable both to them and to their parents.
Issues of particular concern to teens include:
- school
- friends
- rules and discipline
- privileges and responsibilities
- jobs
- planning for the future
- money
All to often, families faced with Parent Teen Conflict are potentially faced with high-risk behaviors from the youth who live within them. High-risk behaviors may include running away, breaching rules and breakdown in relationships. Unfortunately, there are often assumptions made that suggest that the family has a ‘troubled teen’. Unforeseen contributors, like a breakdown in communication from within the family system, can often be overlooked. Parent Teen Mediation is most useful in situations like this when behaviors presented by a Teen are clearly a symptom of greater systemic issues from within the family system.
A Mediator who practices Parent Teen Mediation has the opportunity to provide a transformative approach to mediation by promoting a change in how the family unit has historically communicated. Parents and Teens need not agree with the exact same issues of conflict in the exact same way, but rather agree that there is in fact a conflict that exists. The mediation process will support the family members as individuals and as a greater system by facilitating a safe environment to promote understanding as to why the conflict is taking place based on explanations of the unmet interests and needs.
Parent with Teen Mediation begins with a short phone interview to identify the general issues. The family is assigned a mediator (sometimes a team of two) and mutual mediation date is set.
- In preparation for the joint session, each family member talks privately with the mediator. In this confidential conversation, the mediator explores the key issues, how to voice the issues, and how to be open to listening to diverse perspectives on that issue.
- During the joint mediation, the parent(s) and the teen sit down in a safe, confidential setting to discuss their issues with a professional, impartial mediator who refrains from giving advice or counseling. The mediator guides the conversation and ensures each person has the opportunity to express his or her viewpoint. The mediation process also helps each person to listen, build understanding, and identify ways to work together to meet the needs of the entire family.
Contact
- (226) 667-5118
- info@phoenixadr.ca