One Way to Praise Your Teen

Praise, yeah.  It came naturally to me to praise my kids then when they were little. 

“Good job, son. You ate all your vegetables.”

“You got an A. Hurrah.”

Now that my kids turned into aliens, I mean teens, praising them gets harder and harder, especially that lately, they ditch school or eat a lot of junk food that landed on her hands out of nowhere.   Actually, we have bigger problems, but anyway, this way is an easier comparison.

“You only skipped ten classes this week. Hurray!” Well that is inappropriate.

How to Give Praise to a Teen

My rebellious teens do numerous things wrong.  It is difficult for me not to focus on their failures or mistakes.  Anyway, I know and I am reminded by the book that I still need to praise them for the actions and decisions they do right.  This reverse psychology is supposedly done to show teenagers that attention can be obtained by doing positive things, not bad.

So here, I simply copied a certificate from the book. I will be handing out certificates of Positive Report to my daughter.  (Well my son ranaway from his foster dad last night, so I cannot even borrow him and apply my newly made certificate awards experiment).

I will start handing this out to my daughter for exceptional behavior.  I plan to do this for a month and  I will see how this goes.  I mentioned the idea tonight to her and she did not say “Ooh, that is just for little kids.”

We shall see.  My plan is this will work and by two months I will have a happy, less-defiant, and well-praised, behaved-most-of the time kid.

How do you praise your children?