Parenting Guide: 7 Things every parent should teach teenagers about relationships

By teaching these seven lessons, parents can guide their teens toward making positive choices in friendships and relationships while fostering confidence and emotional intelligence.

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Teenagers navigate friendships, crushes, and serious relationships as they grow. Parents play a crucial role in helping them understand the value of respect, boundaries, and emotional well-being in relationships. Here are seven essential lessons every parent should teach their teenager.

7 Things every parent should teach teenagers:

1. Educate Them on Healthy Boundaries

Personal boundaries are one of the most important components of emotional and physical health. It is important that your teen understands the need for boundaries, and how to both set boundaries and respect them in friendships and romantic relationships. Ensure they understand that saying, “NO,” is an option, and that having boundaries goes hand in hand with mutual respect.

2. Help Them Identify Toxic Behaviors

Not every relationship is a good one, and teaching your teenager about toxic behaviors is very important. Help them identify different areas in which toxicity might show up in people's behavior. Examples of negative relational behaviors to identify might include manipulation, disproportionate control, emotional abuse, etc. Support your child in distancing themselves from relationships that damage their self-esteem and could potentially harm their mental health.

3. Explain The Importance of Communication

One of the most important aspects of any healthy relationship, is that communication is open and honest. Help your teenager learn how to communicate their feelings effectively, listen to the feelings of others, and to manage conflict in a calm manner, rather than through aggression or silence.

4. Teach Them About Self-Worth and Confidence

If your teen can build self-worth, it will have a huge impact on their relational involvement. Teach them that their value is not tied to their involvement in a relationship. Encourage independence and self-love, and to seek out their love and passion first rather than what others say about them.

5. Teach Them to Handle Peer Pressure

As teenagers are exposed to dating, relationships and intimacy, they are subject to peer pressure from their peers. Help them become confident in making decisions based on their principles versus peer pressure. Teach them to stand strong against pressure that does not sit well with them. 

6. Teach Them About Consent and Respect

Consent is mandatory in any relationship. You should ensure your teen appreciates that consent needs to be clear, enthusiastic and fluid in all of their interactions. Respect also needs to go two ways; no one should ever feel ignored, pressured or treated poorly. 

7. Support Emotional Independence

A relationship can be fulfilling, but it shouldn’t be your only source of happiness. Teach your teen emotional independence, so they aren’t relying solely on someone else for their happiness. Support your teenager to find pleasure and enjoyment in their own hobbies, self-care activities and friendships that don’t directly involve romantic relationships.