Get Your Teen to Trust You and Stop Lying

By Jane St. Clair

Since today's teenagers spend a lot of time away from their parents, trust issues between parents and teens are more important than ever. After studying tens of thousands of families, social scientists know that trust and disclosure of information are key parts of healthy relationships between parents and teens.

Here are other important findings from these studies:

1. Teens who feel that their parents love and support them tell their parents more about what's going on in their lives. Those teens view their parents as most trusting of them.

2. Teens who disclose the most information to their parents are less likely to become juvenile delinquents.

3. Teens who lie or keep secrets from their parents are more likely to experience low self-esteem, depression, physical complaints, stress and delinquency. This is the opposite of what researchers expected to find, as they believed that secrecy among teens would be a sign of healthy independence from parents.

4. Teens from warm, nurturing and highly interactive families have high self-esteem, which can lead to academic sucess and other kinds of achievement.

Though teens who trust their parents are more likely to tell them the truth about their activities, the majority of teenagers still tell major lies to their parents about six times a year. Teens are selective about what they tell their parents because they see many issues as personal. Girls tend to be more open with their mothers, and boys tend to lie more than girls.

While partial disclosure of information is normal for teens, avoidance of disclosure and lying is associated with poor adolescent adjustment. Even parents who have good relationships with their teens overestimate how much they know about their children’s lives.

Encouraging Communication

Teen years are years when children are forming their own identities separate from their parents, and are naturally pulling away, both physically and emotionally. The best you can do during those years is to aim for a good relationship with your teenager, and not expect them to fully disclose everything going on in their lives.

You can encourage your teen to open up to you by first opening up to them. Tell them about your own childhood and teenage years, or even your day at work. Encourage them to talk about their own feelings, as well as their activities. Do that by asking open-ended questions that cannot be answered with a simple yes or no, such as “Tell me about your day?” or “How did it go with that group of kids at lunch that were giving you problems?”

When Trust Breaks Down

Trust between you and your teen can completely break down if your teen is engaging in dangerously self-destructive behaviors like drug and alcohol abuse. Teens who engage in those behaviors may lie to their parents about their activities, steal money from their parents or even turn violent. Parents are then torn between wanting to support their child and needing a stable family life for themselves and their other children.

If your teen is involved in self-destructive behaviors such as drugs, alcoholism, abusive sexual relationships, stealing, violence or associations with inappropriate peer groups, you should seek professional help through a therapist or teen residential treatment center. Counselors can work with you and your teen to restore the trust that now seems impossible to repair. You can have a loving relationship with your teen, and again become a happy, loving family.