I'm asking this on behalf of a friend who has a constant major miscommunication issue with his parents and older sister. My friend is 15 years old. Whenever he does a mistake by accident (even a minor one), his family usually are quick to blame/call out on him in a very negative way and never understand to how he can make a mistake (Eg. socks being hidden at the bottom of his bag but was unable to find it himself, his mom finds it and tells him that he is dumb). His mom is the one who does this blaming the most. He gets frustrated by this often but his parents/sister never understand how he can be frustrated. His parents don't accept talking back at them so talking to them about how he feels when they blame him for minor mishaps is most likely going to result in them going down on him more (Nor do i believe his sister would bother helping him communicate his feelings) . His mom especially makes assumptions about things but never fully outright tell him (He was about to close the front door until saw his mom coming towards the house so being polite, he left the door opened for her but she scolds and tells him the dogs could've run out and disregard anything to do with him being polite to let her through first. Is there anyway to solve this very bad miscommunication issue? My friend is really getting pulled down and he even once thought of suicide before. I really don't want him to live through this useless blaming.
Your friend isn't dumb he's a teenage boy. Yes, teenage boys do dumb things, but its not the same as being dumb. I will call my son dumb sometimes because he does the same kinda dumb stuff. But, I know and tell him that he's a smart kid all the time to. And I tell him, I do dumb stuff all the time to. All human beings do dumb stuff all the time. While I think he understands the difference, he's having difficulties at school so I should check my own use of negative terms around my son. I would suggest your friend write down his feelings, and the issues as he sees it. Talk with him about these issues. He sounds like a normal teenage boy to me. So, as a parent of a 15 year old, we don't like him talking back to us when we are in the middle of correcting him. When things are calm, we want him to come to us and talk about what's going on. So, that would be my suggestion, have him write it down, talk about it with trusted friends/teachers, then pick a time when things are calm to bring it up with his parents.
His parents rarely praises him, most things he has told me was mostly his parents putting him down. He's extremely afraid of talking back to his parents even when they're calm about a problem he has as he feels like they'll find a way to get angry for criticizing and blame him. From what he also told me, his teachers are not very compassionate. They're like the teachers that don't really care about their students and dont do their jobs very well so talking to teachers is mostly out of the case. I'm currently his closest friend and he's only comfortable talking about this problem to me. Theres another thing i should add, his mom and dad are very broken in communication towards eachother. When he asks his mom something for approval, she tells him to ask his dad's opinion and will consider it from there but his dad tells him to ask his mom's again even though he already said that his mom's decision is based on his dad's
