How to Talk to a Teenager Who Just Grunts and Says 'I Dunno

The air in the room is thick with your effort and their silence. You lean forward slightly, trying to keep your posture open, your tone inviting. You’ve just asked a gentle, open-ended question about their week. Across from you, the teenager is a study in gravitational collapse, slumping into the chair, eyes fixed on a scuff mark on the floor. After a beat, it comes: a one-shouldered shrug and a low mumble. “I dunno.” This is the third time. You can feel the session slipping away, the pressure from their parents or your manager to “make progress” buzzing in your ear. Your mind starts frantically searching for a new angle, a different question, while you type into Google later, "my teenage client won't talk to me".

What’s getting stuck here isn’t just the conversation; it’s the structure of the interaction itself. You have accidentally become one half of a perfectly functioning system designed to produce exactly this result: silence. The harder you pull on the rope in a conversational tug-of-war, the harder they pull back by saying nothing. This isn’t a failure of technique. It’s a communication trap. Your professional responsibility to ask questions and their developmental need for autonomy have locked together, creating a pattern where your attempts to help feel like a demand, and their silence feels like the only available form of control.

What’s Actually Going On Here

This pattern is often called a complementary relationship: the more you push, the more they withdraw. The more they withdraw, the more you feel compelled to push with new questions, different framing, or energetic encouragement. Each person’s behaviour makes perfect sense in response to the other’s, and so the loop tightens. You are the designated “fixer” or “questioner”; they are the designated “unreachable problem.” Neither of you chose these roles, but the context, a therapy office, a guidance counsellor’s meeting, a formal check-in, assigns them automatically.

Think of it like an interrogation, even if you’re the kindest interrogator in the world. You are in a position of authority, asking for information they may not have the words for, may not trust you with, or may not want to examine. “I dunno” isn’t just a statement of ignorance. It’s a position. It means “I don’t want to answer that,” “I don’t know how to answer that without getting it wrong,” or “Answering you gives you power, and silence is the only power I have here.” The grunt is a shield.

The wider system you work in pours concrete around this dynamic. The school needs a report. The parents want to know if their kid is “getting better.” Your clinical supervisor wants to see your case notes reflect progress. This external pressure forces you to keep asking, to keep probing, to demonstrate that you are doing something. The very structure of your job can make it nearly impossible to stop pulling the rope.

What People Usually Try (and Why It Backfires)

You’ve likely tried these moves because, on the surface, they seem logical. The problem is they all reinforce the very pattern you’re trying to break.

• Drilling down with more specific questions. You hear the “I dunno” and follow up with, “Well, was it a good week or a bad week?” or “Did anything happen in maths class?” This escalates the interrogation dynamic. You’re no longer just asking a question; you’re signalling that their first answer wasn’t good enough, increasing the pressure to perform.

• Filling the silence. The quiet feels unproductive, so you start talking. You interpret their silence for them (“It sounds like you’re feeling overwhelmed”) or you start sharing a story of your own to build rapport. This might feel connecting, but it teaches them that if they wait long enough, you’ll do all the work for them. The silence becomes even more powerful.

• Switching to problem-solving. Frustrated by the lack of data, you stop asking questions and start offering solutions. “Maybe you should try joining a club,” or “Have you thought about talking to your teacher?” This positions you as the expert with all the answers, reinforcing their role as the passive, broken object to be fixed. It’s another way of saying, “Your current state is wrong.”

• Trying to be the ‘cool’ adult. You ask about TikTok trends or a new video game you heard about. Unless this is a genuine interest, it often lands as cringeworthy and transparent. It’s a bid for connection that can feel like another, slightly more disguised, demand: “You must relate to me so I can do my job.”

A Different Position to Take

The goal is not to find the magic question that will finally unlock the teenager. The goal is to refuse to play your assigned role in the pattern. You have to stop being the “Information Extractor.” Your new position is a “Co-Creator of a Different Kind of Space”, a space where silence isn’t a failure and talking isn’t a requirement.

This means letting go of the need for the conversation to be linear or productive in the way your manager might define it. You are stepping off the tug-of-war mat and sitting down next to the rope. You’re shifting the focus from getting an answer from them to simply sharing a moment with them.

Your primary job is to make the room safe enough for something other than a grunt to emerge. That’s it. You do this by signalling, through your actions, that you are not threatened by their silence and you are not going to force them into a conversation they don’t want to have. Paradoxically, the moment they feel the pressure to talk disappear is the moment they might actually want to say something. You are giving up control to create the possibility of connection.

Moves That Fit This Position

These are not scripts to be memorised, but illustrations of how you might embody this different position. The specific words matter less than the function they perform: reducing pressure and changing the dynamic.

• Comment on the shared present. Instead of asking about their internal world, talk about the physical space you both occupy. “This chair is way less comfortable than it looks.” Or, “Listen to that rain. It’s really coming down.” This is a low-stakes, side-by-side move. It’s not about them; it’s about us, here, in this room. It creates a tiny, shared experience without demanding anything in return.

• Wonder aloud, indirectly. Instead of a direct question like, “How did that make you feel?” try an externalised, wondering statement. “I wonder what it’s like to sit in a class where you feel like everyone understands it but you.” This isn’t a question requiring an answer. It’s a hypothesis offered gently, which they can confirm, deny, or ignore without feeling like they’re failing a test.

• Explicitly permit silence. This is the most powerful move. After a shrug or an “I dunno,” lean back, relax your posture, and say, “That’s fine. We don’t have to talk. We can just sit here for a minute.” By naming and allowing the silence, you remove its power as a weapon. It’s no longer a standoff; it’s just a quiet moment. You have to be willing to actually be quiet for 60 or 90 seconds. It will feel like an eternity, but it completely changes the dynamic.

• Introduce a “third thing.” Put something else in the middle of the space for you both to look at together. A whiteboard, a deck of cards with pictures on them, a piece of paper. “I’m a terrible drawer, but let’s try to map out the people involved in this.” The focus shifts from intense eye contact to a mutual task, however small. It allows you to talk about the issue without talking directly about them.