Study Finds Teen Emotional Openness Helps Parents Understand Them Better

A new study examines why teenagers often withdraw and keep less in touch with their parents, and what helps families communicate better. The researchers found that open communication, nonjudgmental listening, and steady parental presence strengthen the bond with adolescents and improve their willingness to share.

The study was conducted by Dr. Ronit Roth Hanania and Prof. Dafna Dolberg Ginio of the School of Behavioral Sciences at Tel Aviv Yafo Academic College, Prof. Rauma Gadassi Polak of Bar-Ilan University, Dr. Haran Sand of the University of Haifa, and Prof. Jutta Joormann and Dr. Nicola Hohensy of Yale University. It followed 112 parent-teen pairs, with adolescents ages 12 to 18, for 28 days using daily diaries. Each evening, both sides reported their feelings, how they had handled positive or negative emotions during the day, and what they thought the other family member was feeling.

The main finding was that parents were better than teenagers at identifying their children's emotions. The researchers said the gap may reflect emotional maturity, life experience, or the expectation that parents pay closer attention to their children's moods. They also found that when one family member used less effective emotion regulation strategies, such as suppression, hiding feelings, avoidance, rumination, or shutting down happiness, the other person had a harder time understanding what was really being felt.

That pattern appeared for both parents and teens, and for both negative and positive emotions. When family members used more effective ways to sustain positive feelings, such as lingering on joy, pride, or a pleasant experience, empathic accuracy improved. The researchers stressed that this was a correlational study, so it does not prove that suppressing emotions directly causes misunderstanding, and other factors like family closeness and prior communication patterns may also matter.

The researchers said the practical lesson is not to force teenagers to talk constantly, but to create more room for clear emotional expression, including both difficulty and joy. "Sometimes a conversation that ends in understanding begins not with big advice, but with the ability to say more clearly: 'This is what I feel now,'" they said. Dr. Rauma Gadassi Polak added that understanding depends not only on the listener, but also on how much the other person reveals of their emotional world.