Reem Raouda studied 200 parent-child relationships and discovered seven habits that keep kids talking to their parents into adulthood. She wrote this down. She published it. She wants you to know.
The findings are revolutionary. Listen early. Don't mock them. Show up. Be consistent. Ask questions. Don't be a psychopath. Congratulations, you've unlocked the secret formula that every functional human already figured out by accident.
Raouda needed 200 test subjects to confirm that not being a dismissive piece of sh*t makes children more likely to confide in you later. This is what passes for expertise now. Count things. Write them down. Call it research.
The other 193 kids presumably stopped calling their parents back and now text only on birthdays with increasingly terse messages. "Thanks." "Yep." "K."
Here's what kills me. Someone read this article and thought, wait, I need to implement these seven strategies immediately or my kid will never speak to me again. They're taking notes. They're highlighting passages. They're trying to reverse-engineer basic human empathy from a numbered list like it's a f*cking IKEA manual.
The study says do these things "early on." Early on. As if you can just phone it in for the first twelve years and then cram for the relationship like it's a midterm. Sorry Braxton, I ignored you until you were thirteen but I just read about active listening so we're good now, right?
Two hundred kids is the sample size here. That's not a study. That's a field trip.
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
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