When your child was a toddler, it took all your gentle might to pry her from your leg—she just couldn’t get enough of you. Even in grade school, she called you first thing after the bell rang to tell you about her day. So you figured that, despite what you’ve heard about other tweens and teens, yours would always confide in you. Wrong. These days you can barely force a yes or no from her, much less a full-blown conversation.

“It’s partly a developmental thing,” says parenting counselor Julie A. Ross (parentinghorizons.com), author of How to Hug a Porcupine: Negotiating the Prickly Points of the Tween Years. “Besides the pull to separate from parents and become their own person, there’s a need to be more private and keep things to themselves or to share only with peers. It’s natural, and parents should support these healthy needs.” The irony is that kids this age require parenting as much as ever—if not more. Want evidence?

Consider the recent news that one in four teen girls has an STD; then think about how many more kids are having sex. So no matter how difficult it is, the lines of communication have to remain open, says Ross. “We bear the responsibility for how we should communicate during these years,” she adds. “If we’re negative about this time of separation, our kids will become even more wary of talking to us for fear we’ll come down on them.” In fact, she says, kids’ secretiveness and lack of communication is partly due to their parents’ low comfort level when talking about tricky topics like sex, alcohol and drugs—conversations that should have begun long before, Ross asserts. By adolescence, this discussion becomes awkward. “A parent then may put off the talk and assume nothing’s going on, until she sees a condom in her child’s drawer. But by then the child may not be very approachable.”

Still, that barely hidden condom might be a message to you. “Communication is not just words—it’s a child’s tone of voice, body language, things left around to see,” says Ross. So even if you’re freaked out about what you’ve found, it’s time for a talk. First, catch your child when she’s least likely to be defensive, like at bedtime or when the two of you are together in a parallel activity such as driving in the car. Next, say something like “I want to talk about sex.” Your child will typically answer, “I don’t want to.” Then say something like “I know you don’t, but I’m your parent and I need to keep you safe and make sure you’re doing things that are healthy. You don’t have to talk, but I do.” The key is not to lecture, says Ross. “Keep the conversation in an ‘I’ context rather than a ‘you’ context so as not to come off as accusatory: ‘I noticed a condom by your bed, and I feel concerned about it.’ Then add something like ‘Here’s what I want to tell you about this’ and state the information you need to share.”

There are other ways to communicate, too: paper notes, text messaging, emails. With written statements, your child can take in and absorb the information at her own pace. Any communication that helps reopen your relationship is good. Adolescence is a tough time of growth and discomfort, and kids this age often don’t feel lovable, so it can be very powerful to also express your affection as you talk. The overall message, counsels Ross, should be “I love you even though we disagree. I love you just the way you are.”

Essential Parenting Tools
When it comes to talking with tweens and teens, make sure these qualities are in your parenting arsenal, says parenting counselor Julie Ross:

• Respect Recognize and show consideration for your child’s developmental level.
   
• Support Look after your child’s needs that arise from that level. Reciprocity Recognize that you and your child have different needs and that both are valid.
   
• Collaboration Brainstorm solutions together that meet both your needs.