What Changes During Adolescence?

Find a therapist to support kids and teens

Short disagreements between parents and adolescents can reveal longstanding communication difficulties.

Researchers distilled a 5-minute disagreement into 4 key elements of communication.

I-statements, vocalizations, body language, and overall relationship quality suggest areas of improvement.

Being mindful of these communication features may transform parent–teen disagreements.

Parent–teen communication is crucial for navigating the challenges of adolescence. Research consistently shows that open, responsive communication is linked to better mental health and emotional resilience. For example, a longitudinal study found that more open parent–adolescent communication predicted lower levels of anxiety and depression over time and may help adolescents develop coping skills to navigate new experiences.

At the same time, adolescence is a period when communication often becomes more strained. Developmentally, teens are striving for autonomy and independence, which can lead to increased disagreement with parents. Teens may question authority and values, resulting in more frequent misunderstandings, conflict, or withdrawal. These difficulties in communication are widespread.

Researchers at Brown University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Emory University tried to capture a range of communication components between parent-adolescent dyads. First, they asked parents and their children to independently rate how much they disagreed about a list of 14 issues like the grades, chores, friends, watching tv, curfew, privacy, etc. Next, they asked each dyad to discuss the issue they disagreed most on for a total of 5 minutes. What researchers were able to distill from only 5 minutes of observing a parent-teen disagreement was surprisingly informative.

Using the Dyadic Observed Communication Scale (DOCS), raters tracked four key verbal and nonverbal features of parent and adolescent communication. These included:

Positive or Negative Vocalizations

What are each of these features, and why are they important? What can be done to improve each of them?

I-statements are vocalizations starting with “I” that express your point of view for the purpose of communicating feelings, rather than blaming the other person. For example, “I feel angry when you tell me I can’t hang out with my friends." Or “I feel worried when you go out at night, and I don’t know where you are.”

I-statements try to reduce blame and defensiveness. Contrast I-statements with “You” statements like “You make me angry” or “You make me worried,” which imply blame.

I-statements are often taught in therapy and parenting programs since they make people in a disagreement more likely to stay engaged. They foster emotional awareness and can improve conflict resolution by teaching responsibility for one’s emotions.

Positive or Negative Vocalizations are short phrases, sentences, or interruptions and utterances that express positive or negative emotions. For example, in this study, phrases like “nice job” or “I love you” were used to compliment or praise the other person, while negative vocalizations include sarcastic phrases, scoffing, or utterances like “duh,” “psh,” or “shut up.”

What Changes During Adolescence?

Find a therapist to support kids and teens

Positive validations help reinforce connection and emotional safety. For example, saying “I appreciate you telling me that” increases the likelihood that adolescents (or parents) will continue to open up.

Negative vocalizations, in contrast, often escalate conflict or can quickly shut down dialogue.

Parents and adolescents who are aware of their vocalization patterns can increase positive vocalizations and try to replace negative vocalizations with more constructive language.

Body Language was also observed by the researchers in the study. They looked at 9 domains which included: eye contact, distance, orientation, posture, tone of voice, facial expressions, fidgeting, gestures, and head nodding.

Body language is powerful. Eye contact, nodding, and open posture signal attentiveness, while slumped posture or fidgeting may communicate disinterest.

These nonverbal cues are often targeted in communication coaching because they can change rapidly with awareness.

Relationship Quality was also scored on five dimensions: tone (e.g., warmth vs. hostility), process (e.g., problem solving, collaboration and perspective taking), clarity (e.g., direct communication vs. “beating around the bush”), time (e.g., degree of give and take), and power.

Watching the short, 5-minute disagreement between parents and their teens was enough to allow researchers to assess and assign a “relationship quality” score, which was consistent when different researchers rated the same 5-minute interaction (interrater reliability).

Importantly, this shows that it only takes a few minutes to capture the spirit of a dyadic interaction.

Overall, these quickly observable behaviors are easily identifiable and targetable. Being mindful of these simple communication features may transform parent–teen disagreements.

Hadley W, Stewart A, Hunter HL, Affleck K, Donenberg G, Diclemente R, Brown LK. Reliability and Validity of the Dyadic Observed Communication Scale (DOCS). J Child Fam Stud. 2013 Feb;22(2):279-287. doi: 10.1007/s10826-012-9577-1. PMID: 23645977; PMCID: PMC3639442.

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