This is an issue as old as mankind: How to talk to your children. The problem with the question is it does not always mean what parents might actually be thinking. What a parent might be thinking instead is, "How can I get my children to listen to me?" Interestingly, the questions go together quite well; for in order to get our children to listen to us, we must hear what they are saying. Sometimes that means reading between the lines, and more often than not, it requires us to ask the right questions.
It is almost always difficult for parents to get their point across to children in the way they intend. Sometimes it is literally impossible. Children have not lived the lives of parents, they do not have their life experience, and sometimes the object of concern is embarrassing to them, or even accusative. What parents must to to talk to their children, and to have their children listen to them in return, is to validate that they hear what the child is saying, to assure their child they are, in fact, listening. Parents want children to listen, but children want to be heard. Their concerns, though trivial to parents, are very important to them.
Children are well known for their ego-centrism, but they are just small people learning to live in a bigger world, and sometimes their mistakes are born out of reasons largely misunderstood. They are not always being selfish, though it is easy to assume. This is why, as stated earlier, it is important to ask the right questions. We, as parents, have to learn to see the world through their eyes in order to have chance of having them listen to us.
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