A key point for adults to remember as we work to engage youth in conversations about respectful relationships is that conversations involve talking and listening. As adults we may have great experience, problem solving skills and helpful advice to share, but we must recognize that teens are the best experts on their own experience and on teen relationships in general. Really listening to hear where they are coming from will help you both to make plans for how to promote respectful relationships and prevent teen dating abuse.

Hints

• Listen. Notice how much of the talking you are doing. If you’re doing 50% or more of the talking, you could probably be listening more.
• Suspend judgment. In order for you to listen, your kid will need to do some talking. If you’re listening with all of your might and only hearing crickets, you might need to do a little more work to set the scene (link to the “setting the stage” tab). It can be a process to foster the trust that will enable your teen to share their point of view.
• Don’t presume to know. Though many aspects of the teen dating world may be similar to when adults were last there, we can’t presume to know how it all works. Listen to really hear what’s different and which challenges and thrills are still pretty much the same.

If your teen is experiencing relationship abuse

In a national study only 32% of teens reported that they would tell an adult about their experience of teen dating abuse (TRU, 2009). Youth report that they seldom tell adults about their experience of teen dating abuse (TDA) because they believe that our interventions will make the situation worse. In spite of our best intentions, youth have not found adults to be very helpful in solving the problem of TDA and our blundered responses serve to reinforce the isolation and secrecy that youth experience around this social problem.

An often repeated theme in working with adult survivors of domestic violence is that the victim is the best expert on her or his experience. In working with youth experiencing TDA, we’ve had a bad habit of forgetting this wisdom. With the intention of protecting, adults may attempt to restrict or control the victim’s environment. The victim of TDA probably wants the violence to end, but she probably doesn’t want to lose access to her cell phone, social media accounts, friend groups, social organizations, etc. And if we reflect honestly on this lockdown approach to disclosure, we probably aren’t encouraging future disclosure from this or other victims.

In addition to wanting safety for the victim, adults may want to pursue accountability for the perpetrator. It’s very important to recognize that the victim may or may not share this goal. Our impulses are well-intentioned; we want kids who are behaving abusively to be held accountable out of a sense of justice, to prevent him or her from offending again, and to offer interventions designed to change abusive behaviors. But it’s important that adults don’t push our desire for accountability if that agenda negatively impacts the victim’s strategy for safety. A victim of TDA may not want to pursue accountability options for emotional reasons, for social reasons, or because he doesn’t believe that our accountability systems will be able to keep him safe from retaliation.

Adults can be supportive and effective by talking with victims of TDV about their safety and accountability options, and collaborating with them to create the safety plan that best meets their needs. Adults can help victims to explore their options—including what’s possible within the organization as well as the community’s civil and criminal legal systems—and the possible pros and cons of each choice. An excellent model TDV safety plan can be found at:

http://www.thesafespace.org/pdf/handout-safety-plan-workbook-teens.pdf