Of course, that old saying, “Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me,” is wrong. Particularly between people who are caringly connected, like parent and adolescent for example, unhappy feelings expressed through hasty words can do a lot of damage. Thoughtlessly spoken, they are emotionally driven.

Some relationships are particularly volatile, like a quick tempered parent and a hot-headed teenager who can create a lot of painful interactions this way when they allow frustration, hurt, or anger to dictate what they say.

“I only spoke that way because I was feeling upset,” explains the offender. The parent or adolescent needs to find a better alternative, and the adult needs to lead and show that way. After all,now is later, an adolescent is just an adult in training, and part of the parental responsibility is modeling and teaching habits of spoken communication that the young person will carry forward into significant relationships to come. Ensuring safe speech means managing unhappy emotional arousal that can betray them into saying what can inflict serious injury.

To do so, parents must monitor their own emotional arousal. If they feel they are heating up with their teenager and are in danger of saying what they might later have cause to regret, they need to interrupt the communication and declare a short time-out. They do so to restore emotional sobriety, setting a time to re-engage conversation when able to do so in more measured terms. In this process, they are giving the teenager permission to do the same when in need of time to cool down.

And if betrayed by emotion into saying wounding words, they can sincerely apologize, listen to whatever injury was sustained, correct whatever hurtful impression was impulsively given, and make amends by resolving not to repeat whatever was harmfully said. This can also be a powerful model to provide.

This........

© Psychology Today