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According to a study carried out on adolescents, even young people who seem to reject their mother’s advice end up applying it on a daily basis. Proof that your word is not totally in vain!
Does he roll his eyes, seem inattentive or sigh? But beneath these visible signs of boredom, your words as a parent would still make their way to the disillusioned teenager who lives with you. This is what we learn from a study conducted by the University of Illinois and published a few days ago.
Mothers’ advice scrutinized
The experiment thus looked at the advice that mothers can give to their adolescents (and of which they are generally not stingy!) A sample of 100 young people (from various origins) and their mother was composed. Each pair then had to discuss for 5 minutes a school problem that the child had recently encountered.
Three types of advice have generally been given
- Cognitive reappraisal (suggest ways to reframe the problem, consider alternative explanations, view experiences as learning opportunities);
- Strategy development (encouraging young people to look for solutions);
- Help-seeking (finding someone who can help them, such as a teacher, parent, or older sibling).
The team of scientists then correlated these results with how he behaved after entering university the following year.
“We wanted to understand what was happening in conversations between parents and children. We focused on academic challenges such as difficulty understanding the academic requirement, boredom in class or problems with time management, because the “Academic expectations and pressure start to increase at this age. We wanted to know what parents tell their children about how to handle these stressors and how the children respond.” indicate the authors in a press release.
Under the “yeah” and “I don’t know”, your teenager hears you
The study also noted that the adolescents’ reactions ranged from rejection, to unflinching agreement, to ambiguous responses such as “maybe” or “I don’t know.” Nothing very engaging, then. And yet…
Overall, the researchers found that youth whose mothers provided cognitive reappraisal solutions had greater coping skills, while those who received more strategizing and job-seeking solutions help didn’t have any.
Even more surprising, children who rejected or responded ambiguously to their mothers’ advice actually reported more adaptive adjustment to college than those who accepted it. Furthermore, it seems that young people who easily agree with their mothers simply want to appease their parents and end the conversation, without really taking the advice into account.
“One of the main takeaways from this study is the importance of providing children with a wide range of suggestions that they can apply in different situations, especially when young people face academic challenges. Even if they don’t seem receptive in the moment, we see that some advice still has longer-term benefits.” concluded the lead author of the study.
So don’t be fooled by your teenager’s lack of interest. Your parental advice may annoy them, but it is useful to them.
Slide: 10 things not to say to your teenager