The Parenting Coach

I was a coaching a mom recently who is very concerned about her teen who is falling badly behind in school and making a lot of bad choices.  She gave me his history and without knowing more details than the ones she provided, I can see how things got derailed for this soon to be 18 year old boy. 

There has been a lot of research around the differences between boys and girls and why it is that boys often fall behind in school and are unmotivated.  It’s not that they’re not bright or they’re incapable of learning.  It’s more that the stystem doesn’t match their style of learning and in many cases, they’re starting school before they’re ready. They’re also wired differently than girls.

My client told me  her son was falling badly behind in school in the early years so she decided to take him out and home school him.  He quickly caught up and was soon reading at the same level as his peers.  This just said to me that clearly, it wasn’t because he wasn’t capable of learning to read, he just wasn’t able to learn in the way the public school was teaching him. 

Academic challenges are one of many reasons teens start to go elsewhere to “succeed”.  Sometimes it’s problems at home or difficulties fitting in at school.  What parents see is an acting out teen and that’s what they react to.  Their teen lashes out and the parent lashes back and on and on it goes.   Soon the teen assumes the label they’ve been given which can be things like “lazy” “slob” “ungrateful” “irresponsible” and any number of other unflattering adjectives.  Their actions then evoke a response from their parents and other adults around them which reinforce the label they’ve been assigned and how they see themselves.  We have a cylce and as hard as parents try to change things, this cycle can go on for some time.

Even if a person does act in a way that makes them appear ungrateful or irresponsible or lazy, does it help if they’re constantly reminded?  Does hearing “You’re so irresponsible!!” make someone responsible?  If you always hear “You’re so lazy!” do you suddenly start being more productive?  No.  Teenagers, like everyone else need to hear what we love about them.  They need to be acknowledged for what they can do. They need to hear we believe in them.   We always have to keep in mind that whatever label we assign to them or the one they perceive they’ve been assigned, is exactly what they live up to.

To learn more about helping a troubled teen, this article from Canadian Living magazine may help.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 7th, 2008 at 8:52 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I was a coaching a mom recently who is very concerned about her teen who is falling badly behind in school and making a lot of bad choices.  She gave me his history and without knowing more details than the ones she provided, I can see how things got derailed for this soon to be 18 year old boy. 

There has been a lot of research around the differences between boys and girls and why it is that boys often fall behind in school and are unmotivated.  It’s not that they’re not bright or they’re incapable of learning.  It’s more that the stystem doesn’t match their style of learning and in many cases, they’re starting school before they’re ready. They’re also wired differently than girls.

My client told me  her son was falling badly behind in school in the early years so she decided to take him out and home school him.  He quickly caught up and was soon reading at the same level as his peers.  This just said to me that clearly, it wasn’t because he wasn’t capable of learning to read, he just wasn’t able to learn in the way the public school was teaching him. 

Academic challenges are one of many reasons teens start to go elsewhere to “succeed”.  Sometimes it’s problems at home or difficulties fitting in at school.  What parents see is an acting out teen and that’s what they react to.  Their teen lashes out and the parent lashes back and on and on it goes.   Soon the teen assumes the label they’ve been given which can be things like “lazy” “slob” “ungrateful” “irresponsible” and any number of other unflattering adjectives.  Their actions then evoke a response from their parents and other adults around them which reinforce the label they’ve been assigned and how they see themselves.  We have a cylce and as hard as parents try to change things, this cycle can go on for some time.

Even if a person does act in a way that makes them appear ungrateful or irresponsible or lazy, does it help if they’re constantly reminded?  Does hearing “You’re so irresponsible!!” make someone responsible?  If you always hear “You’re so lazy!” do you suddenly start being more productive?  No.  Teenagers, like everyone else need to hear what we love about them.  They need to be acknowledged for what they can do. They need to hear we believe in them.   We always have to keep in mind that whatever label we assign to them or the one they perceive they’ve been assigned, is exactly what they live up to.

To learn more about helping a troubled teen, this article from Canadian Living magazine may help.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 7th, 2008 at 8:52 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.