Intermountain Children’s Health’s “Talk to Tweens” is an emotional wellbeing toolkit for parents.
(PRUnderground) February 2nd, 2025
As a parent, you help your children learn skills to walk, talk, eat, and learn. As children grow into tweens, they need new skills to navigate feelings and emotions – and you’re the perfect person to help them.
It all starts with spending time with them, talking to them – and getting them to talk to you, which is more natural when you are doing things together.
Intermountain Children’s Health’s “Talk to Tweens” is an emotional wellbeing toolkit for parents. It offers free conversation-starters, ways to identify and talk with kids about their feelings, and tips on how to help kids manage challenging emotions and situations. The resources are available at TalkToTweens.org.
“Talking to tweens often about their feelings and relationships is very helpful to the child and parent,” said Karlee Kump, community health programs manager at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital. “’Talk to Tweens can help you find a way to start these conversations.”
In the last 15 years, the rates of young people who report feeling persistent sadness and hopelessness have increased by more than 40 percent. They want trusted, informed help, and are most likely to seek it from a parent.
“Often, we don’t need to jump in with advice or a solution, because children just want to be heard and understood,” Kump said. “We can learn to listen without judgment and validate our tween’s feelings. We can ask them if they just want to be listened to, or if they want help solving a problem.
Kump recommends following the child’s lead and matching your behavior to what he or she needs or wants in the moment, and praising them for voicing what they want. “Teaching and reinforcing self-advocacy, especially when done in a kind way, contributes to your child’s safety and ability to set boundaries in relationships,” she said.
Here are more tips to help your child:
Emotional Health: Talk About Feelings
Emotional health is the ability to express feelings, adjust to emotional challenges, tolerate frustration, cope with life stressors, and enjoy life. Here’s some ideas to talk about feelings:
- Identify: Remember, feelings are information, what are they telling you about the situations and people around you? Expand your feelings vocabulary, then name your own feelings and help tweens name theirs. Try the phrase, “I feel ____(emotion) because ____(situation), so I will do ____this or need ___that…(action).”
- Accept: All feelings are valuable and fleeting; they come and go. Sit with your child when they experience unpleasant feelings. Empathize with how they feel. “I’m sorry you feel ___” or “That sounds really hard.” There’s no need to rush. This gives them time and space to share with you.
- Validate: Acknowledge your child’s experience without judgment. Help them plan in advance how to handle intense feelings, including naming the feeling, identifying healthy ways to manage it (such as breathing, physical activity, talking, journaling, or an enjoyable activity), and asking for help when needed.
“We can also help our tweens build resilience by encouraging appropriate emotional risks, such as joining a club or trying out for a team, sharing disagreement about something, or speaking up about something important to them,” Kump said.
Social health: Connect with Your tween and help them connect to you and others
Social health is having healthy relationships with friends, family, and the community, and having an interest in or concern for others. Here are some starters:
- Connect: Family time is important, even as peers become more important to your tween. Talk about characteristics of healthy relationships such as mutual respect, trust, honesty, compromise, and healthy communication. Identify unhealthy relationships and characteristics like disrespect, control, and manipulation.
- Interact: Interacting effectively with other people requires skills and practice. Encourage face-to-face interaction to help them learn to “read” people. Coach active, in-person listening skills, such as making appropriate eye contact and putting down devices, and learning how to politely disagree. As relationships come and go, help them practice managing emotions, resolving conflict, and recognizing their boundaries and strengths.
- Guide Online Activity: Monitor your tweens’ social media accounts and talk about the interactions that happen. Being aware of what your tween is doing online can help you start conversations and build skills.
Conversation Tips
If you feel like your tween won’t give you more than a one-word answer, try this:
- Use open-ended questions.
- Be patient and comfortable with silence.
- Time your conversation when they’re relaxed, like mealtime, during an activity, or in the car.
- Start questions with “tell me” or “describe” instead of “how.”
- Use humor when appropriate.
- Be supportive and remind them that disappointment is normal and OK.
“The more you talk with your tween about feelings and relationships, the easier it gets,” Kump said. “You can also start with your child’s experiences, hobbies, movies or music they like to begin the conversation.”
For more information on emotional wellbeing and other ways to keep children safe, visit intermountainhealth.org/childsafety.
About Intermountain Health
Headquartered in Utah with locations in six states and additional operations across the western U.S., Intermountain Health is a not-for-profit system of 34 hospitals, approximately 400 clinics, medical groups with some 4,600 employed physicians and advanced care providers, a health plans division called Select Health with more than one million members, and other health services. Helping people live the healthiest lives possible, Intermountain is committed to improving community health and is widely recognized as a leader in transforming healthcare by using evidence-based best practices to consistently deliver high-quality outcomes at sustainable costs. For up-to-date information and announcements, please see the Intermountain Health newsroom at https://intermountainhealthcare.org/news.
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