Communication (Parenting in general)

Member Name: Casseopeia

Product:	Parenting in general
Date:	09/12/02 (54 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gets people talking, you can discuss major issues without getting too personal

Disadvantages: none (anything is worth a try)

Having problems communicating with your teenagers? We have all been there at one time or another.

I would like to tell you about my experience in communicating with young people.
In my work as a community worker and then a housing worker for a homeless project I worked with some extremely vulnerable people who had suffered all sorts of trauma and abuse in their lives. As a professional it was important to build a relationship with people based on trust as part of my job was to enable them to look at their problems and help them move on with their lives. Finding a way to do that with someone who has built barriers around themselves can be tough going and can sometimes take a long time. However I used Eastenders frequently as a tool to get people talking. Even People who don't like Eastenders have an opinion on it and it always gets a coversation started! I found this a good way to get most people talking to start with. then discussing the story lines help peple build confidence in me as a worker enabling them to confide in me and start to address their problems. Many of the story lines were identical to events that had happened in peoples lives and was the cause or partly the cause of the situation they now found themselves in. I found using the programme as my communication tool worked across gender, class, sexuality and culture.

Even in my own personal life, as a lone parent, when my teenage son went through a major fall out with his father and he had started using drugs. When times were at their most difficult and communication was almost impossible. I used to cook Sunday dinner and no matter what was happening he would always turn up for that and we would watch the omnibus edition of Eastenders. We would talk about the characters and what was happening in Albert Sq whilst we ate our food. It hellped us talk through a lot of issues that were affecting our lives and my son saw that I understood more than he thought I did. Thank you Eastend
ers for that.

So to all parents and "people" workers if your finding communication difficult and need to get through some barriers why not give Eastenders a try?

Summary: