Par­ents. Can't live with 'em, can't per­suade them to give you an al­lowance and de­clare you legal­ly in­de­pen­dent. They're some­times the bane of your ex­is­tence but they're al­so your bread, but­ter, lim­ing mon­ey and trans­port. It's awk­ward to live with peo­ple with whom you some­times dis­agree so strong­ly and whom at the same time you need so much.Par­ents com­plain that their chil­dren don't lis­ten to them. Young peo­ple com­plain that their par­ents don't lis­ten to them. Much of the time, what has hap­pened is that both sides are stand­ing on op­po­site sides of a yawn­ing gulf, shout­ing in­ces­sant­ly at each oth­er – it's no won­der no­body lis­tens, it's im­pos­si­ble to hear any­thing with all that con­flict go­ing on! Some­one once said, talk­ing to an an­gry per­son is like try­ing to rea­son with a drunk. It doesn't work and noth­ing you say will sink in. If you re­al­ly want to talk to each oth­er, you have to wait un­til every­thing is calm and then bring up your burn­ing top­ic. The trou­ble is, some things on­ly get dis­cussed in a sit­u­a­tion of con­flict. For in­stance, rules for go­ing to a par­ty may on­ly come up when there's a par­ty that you, the young per­son, want to at­tend. There's a lot at stake so the dis­cus­sion can quick­ly be­come heat­ed, both sides be­come very an­gry with each oth­er and noth­ing is re­solved. Fur­ther­more, when every­thing has cooled down, noone wants to re­turn to the core is­sue, which is - rules for go­ing to a par­ty. Who wants to start that fight all over again!!

The thing is, it doesn't have to be a fight. There are rules for hav­ing a suc­cess­ful ne­go­ti­a­tion:

1. Be very clear what you want to dis­cuss. State that at the out­set, e.g., "I'd like to talk about my week­end cur­few".

2. Use neu­tral lan­guage. So you wouldn't say, "I want to talk about why you won't let me go any­where!", you'd say, "I'd like to talk about house rules for go­ing out with my friends".

3. Per­se­vere, per­se­vere, per­se­vere PO­LITE­LY. So if your moth­er says, "What rules about go­ing out with friends, I told you can't go any­where with any friend!", KEEP COOL. Con­tin­ue the dis­cus­sion as calm­ly as you can. "I'd still like to talk about it, if that's okay with you."

4. Have lots of al­ter­na­tive op­tions to present. The par­ent who doesn't want you out with friends might be quite hap­py to let you go out with Aun­ty Lu­lu and to in­vite a cou­ple of friends along. Or might be com­fort­able with you and your cousins go­ing to the mall and yes, you can ask a friend as well.

5. Be pre­pared to present the so­lu­tions. Don't ex­pect par­ents to come up with them. Af­ter all, you're the one look­ing for per­mis­sion to go some­where, so you need to do the think­ing. For in­stance, you might want to have a check­list for go­ing out. Once you can sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly an­swer all items on the check­list, then you have per­mis­sion to go. The check­list might cov­er where you'll be, who else will be there, any adult su­per­vi­sion and who that adult will be, emer­gency con­tact per­son, con­tact num­bers, time you'll be back, trans­port arrange­ments, back­up plan. It may sound like a lot, but aren't these the arrange­ments which have to be made in any case? The dif­fer­ence is, you're plan­ning in ad­vance and giv­ing your par­ents ad­vance no­tice of the plan.

Last­ly, stick to just one top­ic per dis­cus­sion. You can't solve every­thing in one con­ver­sa­tion and you won't achieve any­thing if you try to do too much at once.

Hap­py talk­ing!