Miscommunication In Debra Kent's Stop Fighting With Your Teen

Miscommunication is the action of not discussing something well with another person, and it can strain the relationship between parents and their children if they never learn how to communicate properly. In Debra Kent’s, “Stop Fighting With Your Teen”, Joanne Stern Ph.D. emphasizes, “Conflict is part of life, and our kids need to know how to handle it with their friends, employers, and partners, and their own kids someday," (Stern).Everyone makes mistakes, and no one is going to do everything perfectly every time. It is important that parents teach their children that. However, if parents have a relationship with their child that is strictly only speaking when need be, then the child will have no mentor to lead them through the difficult situations of growing up.Miscommunication when situations happen within the household affects both the parent

She knows what’s up. The interim reports came today. Listen to me, young lady. I’m only going to say this once. You get those grades up or your name is mud. Hear me? Get them up” (Anderson 35-36). Melinda’s parents never really speak to her about school or her school work. As said earlier in the novel, the family communicates with each other through notes on the kitchen counter. Them yelling at her about her grades is not fair because of how unaware they are about what has happened. She is mentally struggling, and they cannot even tell because of how much they are not home. They do not even hear her out or ask why her grades are so low. They just assume that she is being lazy and not doing her work. This is an example of miscommunication because Melinda feels trapped inside her own mind, and her parents are expecting too much from her with the mental state that she is in at this time. In the play as well as the novel, the parents and the teenager do not communicate well with each other, and this causes the teenagers to feel alone, frustrated, and