Ideas on how to talk to teens and emerging adults

• Question your assumptions: What worked in your youth might have little relevance today.
• Offer suggestions, not pronouncements: Say ‘you could’ not ‘you should.’
• Welcome a dialogue: Listen, don’t lecture; you’ll learn things and give better advice.
• Resist saying: ‘When I was young…’
• Don’t belittle technology: If you’re critical of social media, young people may dismiss you as a dinosaur.
• Accept your limitations: The young understand the world today. Sometimes, the best advice is: ‘Trust your instincts.

At FYI, we are very committed to exploring intergenerational ministry and relationships; we continue to see its importance in our research.  This article reminds us all that we need to be aware of how we sound to the ears of young people.

• Stephen Bautista

  I really enjoyed this article and hoped it was much longer. I’m a college professor and information like this can be vital for establishing ties to this generation of young adults. Many of them are “emerging adults” even in their 20′s.

• Karin

  I’m not sure I totally agree with the last bullet point – that the young understand the world today. Maybe their own limited world of friends and media intake. But not the world at large. One mistake I have made is assuming teenagers have been taught about communism, for instance. I grew up under it but am shocked to see how many teens don’t know what the big deal is, and they wear Che Guevara shirts, etc. That is a huge info gap there where we’ve dropped the ball. They take their fashion cues from an equally misinformed celebrity posse and it’s just not what I would consider a historically correct understanding of the “world”.

• Shannon

  I don’t quite agree with the last point about young people understanding the world today. The part I am skeptical of is the phrase ‘trust your instincts’. I’m not sure that as human beings or even as Christians we should use our “instincts’ to guide us. I would tend to think that intincts are for animals.

  I agree with the comment above as well in that I don’t believe that they understand many things about the world based on they places that they derive their information from. The media certainly promotes a lot of falsehood.

• http://www.kchblog.com Kathy

  This made me feel better about using lots of !!! when I write!!!

  No generation has all the answers. We all need to cut each other a break and try to understand where we’re all coming from.

• http://www.kenrawson.com Ken Rawson

  Man, I’m getting old. I learned a new one that my students HATE hearing that I totally didn’t ever mean to be bad. “It’s been my experience that…”

  They don’t care about my experience. I can say the same thing and just reframe it in a way that doesn’t put them off.

  Never stop learning how to be a better communicator!