Motivating Your Unmotivated Teenager - It"s in the Relationship
As a parent concerned about your teenagers' lack of motivation, you have likely tried numerous methods to try to trip their motivational trigger.
You do so because you believe that their motivation is in there somewhere, and you just need to find it.
However, recent research on motivation indicates that your attempts to discover and light their motivational fire are likely to be futile.
This is because motivation, as we now understand it, is less an individual characteristic and more a function of relationship.
Therefore, your efforts will be more rewarding if, instead of trying to fire their personal motivation, you develop a motivating relationship with them.
Thus the critical question for you is not "What in the world might motivate my teenager?" but rather "Do I have a motivational relationship with my teenager?" Let's begin by discussing, in this article, what does not constitute a motivational relationship before moving on, in future articles, to outline what you need to do.
Here are some things that tend not to be motivating: punishments, rewards, criticism, sarcasm, threats, raised voices, arguments, lectures, sermons, pleading, and predictions of bleak futures.
If you are engaging in any of these behaviors you are, despite your best intentions, probably not motivating your teenager.
Here's an interesting fact about motivation: one person does not motivate another.
But in a motivating relationship, one person can elicit the other's motivation.
That is, through a particular type of discussion, you can evoke from your teenagers what is truly motivational to them.
This is in contrast to what you have likely been doing, which is telling your teenagers why they should be motivated or what they should be motivated for.
You will not successfully inject your teenagers with motivation.
It is not yours to give to them.
Instead, your future efforts will be a matter of "teasing out" their motivation rather than "trying to get it through their heads.
" This involves understanding some simple facts about the change process in general, having a discussion more concerned with understanding than persuading, and actually listening to your teenagers in an effort to truly understand their position.
How to do this will be discussed in future articles.
You do so because you believe that their motivation is in there somewhere, and you just need to find it.
However, recent research on motivation indicates that your attempts to discover and light their motivational fire are likely to be futile.
This is because motivation, as we now understand it, is less an individual characteristic and more a function of relationship.
Therefore, your efforts will be more rewarding if, instead of trying to fire their personal motivation, you develop a motivating relationship with them.
Thus the critical question for you is not "What in the world might motivate my teenager?" but rather "Do I have a motivational relationship with my teenager?" Let's begin by discussing, in this article, what does not constitute a motivational relationship before moving on, in future articles, to outline what you need to do.
Here are some things that tend not to be motivating: punishments, rewards, criticism, sarcasm, threats, raised voices, arguments, lectures, sermons, pleading, and predictions of bleak futures.
If you are engaging in any of these behaviors you are, despite your best intentions, probably not motivating your teenager.
Here's an interesting fact about motivation: one person does not motivate another.
But in a motivating relationship, one person can elicit the other's motivation.
That is, through a particular type of discussion, you can evoke from your teenagers what is truly motivational to them.
This is in contrast to what you have likely been doing, which is telling your teenagers why they should be motivated or what they should be motivated for.
You will not successfully inject your teenagers with motivation.
It is not yours to give to them.
Instead, your future efforts will be a matter of "teasing out" their motivation rather than "trying to get it through their heads.
" This involves understanding some simple facts about the change process in general, having a discussion more concerned with understanding than persuading, and actually listening to your teenagers in an effort to truly understand their position.
How to do this will be discussed in future articles.
Source...