Teen Motivation: How to Get Your Teen off the Couch

"My teenager is brilliant!  Highly intelligent, has the potential to make all A's but is barely bringing home C's!  Help!"

This is a common complaint we hear about from many of today's parents.  Teens do not recognize the importance of education and what it means to their future.  As a matter of fact, we are seeing more adults going back for a higher education than ever before.  Why?  It is simple- education is the key to your financial future.  Now we need to get our teenagers to understand this.

It is up to parents to set boundaries and set the example.  We are not saying that teens are not allowed to have a social life, of course they are.  We need them to find the balance.

Here are some great tips from Parents and Kids:

1. Start early on as possible as you can, set up reasonable goals, begin with small tasks and give them time to improve. For example, have the child state the goal, the grade on their upcoming report card for their classes, math, English, science, history, etc.
2. Tell your child that you love him/her and wish to help him/her to have a bright future, then start the conversation with patience on his/her daily school activities, homework, test, class projects, etc. Prepare to hear some “bad news”, if it did happen, do not be angry with him/her, be calm down and help your child find the problem and try to find a way to help him/her to solve the problem.
3. In order to build a strong work ethic, need to set some rules and ask your child to follow, be strict and tell him/her why. For example, finish homework before watching TV. Why? Homework is the key to understand and master what teachers taught, which leads to his/her success in school. This rule helps him/her be stronger on self-control as well.
4. Encourage and praise the child wisely, not too much, otherwise would mislead him/her to think he/she is the best. Namely, let him/her know that the best needs continuous learning, although did a good job today, need do better tomorrow.
5. Teach your child to have passion for learning new knowledge by showing fun stuff for the project and try to get his/her interest.
6. Tell your child successful stories. Help them to understand to get a good education and succeed in school is one of the most important things for his/her life.
7. Tell your child to make friends with those who are successful in school. Do your best to get your child into a good school, because a healthy competition environment challenges the kid and help him/her to develop better.
8. Introduce some real role models to your kids, who fighting hard with difficulties and succeeded at last, gained people’s respect. Help him/her to learn that if we suffer a set back, we don’t give up. Instead, we try harder.
9. Just like parenting, motivating your children is a life-long job. Keep investing your time, efforts to motivate your kids no matter how busy you are, because it is the most important investments in your life. Kids are our future!

If you feel your teen has reached a level that is not productive and they are going down a very negative path, contact www.helpyourteens.com to find resources that could help you and your family.

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