My teenager is in a slump. No matter what I say or how much I threaten, I can’t get him to complete his schoolwork and clean his room. His motivation is just not there. Parenting teens feels especially hard right now, while he feels isolated by online learning. It’s all I can do to motivate him to complete virtual assignments much less excel at them.
Parenting teens: How to motivate teens…through behavioral science
I hear you. Teen parenting is no easy task. When my teen lacks the motivation to do the things we both know she needs to get done, like house chores or schoolwork for high school, it’s all I can do to keep my patience. It doesn’t seem to matter what I say or what consequences I put in place…it’s like talking to a brick wall. She’s in what should be the most motivating time in her life, and all she wants to do is play on her phone. Or sleep.
The good news…there are two big ideas about motivation and behavior that apply specifically to parenting teens that we can learn from science.
1. Motivation is not an internal state, but a reflection of what is going on in the environment.
There are all kinds of misconceptions about motivation, but the biggest one is that it is some kind of internal switch that is either on or off. That’s not the case at all!
Motivation is not located inside a person or controlled by some sort of internal motivation monkey.
Motivation completely depends on what is going on the environment and how available rewards are at that time.
The good news for parents is that they can help arrange a teenager’s environment so that they are at least motivated to do some of the things some of the time in the hopes that eventually, teens will begin to internalize those environmental changes and want to make changes all on their own.
We call this intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is the Holy Grail for parents. If we could just get them to want to do it, everything would be easy, but even intrinsic motivation is not an internally-controlled switch. It just means that it feels good inside to get something done.
The value is in the feeling and the person is in control of that feeling. Let’s face it: cleaning your room or getting your schoolwork done doesn’t feel good to your teen in the same way that paying your taxes or getting up early for a meeting doesn’t feel good to you.
Not everything feels good enough to be intrinsically motivated to get it done.
2. Teenagers’ brains are receptive to rewards and not receptive to punishment.
Teens don’t yet have the kind of cognition to learn from punishment, but they can learn from reinforcement.
This changes in adulthood as the brain matures. Adults can learn equally from punishment and reinforcement, but teenagers cannot. Their brains just aren’t there yet. This is one of the reasons that punishment is so ineffective for teens. When you try to apply punishment to the teenaged brain and expect it to work, you’re right back at that brick wall.
We want them to do things, and we want them to want to do things, and they just don’t.
Parenting teens is tough. So, what can you do?
Let’s remember that when parenting teens, punishment is not going to be effective. Take it off the table. However, reinforcement or rewards is effective in helping teens learn.
To increase motivation, parents need to increase the rewards available for the teen to experience. Doing stuff, especially stuff they don’t want to do, has to be valuable to them.
It’s a simple formula: Teen doesn’t want to do it, so you reward them for doing it anyway. That’s it! It’s science, but not rocket science, as we like to say.
Behavior can be baffling. Here are some ways it might get tricky and how you can troubleshoot this from the start.
You don’t get to decide what is rewarding for your teen. Don’t make assumptions about what should be motivating. Ask them what makes it worth it to get their chores or schoolwork done and listen to what they say. Arrange rewards for them that are actually meaningful to them. Check-in often and make sure it’s still rewarding.
Monitor how often teens are getting a certain reward. Rewards can lose their value if you have too much of them. Think about the last time you were completely stuffed after a meal. Even if you had been offered your favorite food, you wouldn’t want it. Rewards are like that.
Rewards need to be earned. If you could get your paycheck without going to work, you would do that. If teens regularly get access to the things they love ‘for free’ it is going to be hard to get them to work for them. This is especially true of electronics and access to media. If teens get free access to media, it will be hard for those things to be valuable enough.
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