Every teen needs encouragement!

If praise doesn’t work for your teenager, what is the best way to affirm teenagers? The answer is simple. Encouragement!

But, isn’t encouragement just another word for praise? Unfortunately many parents think the words are basically the same and believe they are encouraging their teen by giving them praise. This is unfortunate because in many cases praise will have a discouraging impact on a young person.

Praise and encouragement are different…

- Praise is a reward, encouragement is a gift
- Praise focuses on results, encouragement focuses on effort & growth
- Praise is often general, encouragement is about specifics

How to Encourage

In essence, encouragement is about you acknowledging the effort, growth, character, co-operation or feelings of your teenager. When you encourage, the affirmation is orientated towards your teenager as opposed to being about your feelings or comparisons to others. More specifically is often about character and who your teenager is rather than about performance and what your teenager achieves.

Encouragement can be in response to a special event but it can also be offered in the course of everyday life. Because encouragement comes from your desire to acknowledge who your teens is it can be done whenever you observe something positive about your teenager, you don’t have to wait for them to earn it.

This is not the same as randomly telling your teen how “clever” or “beautiful” they are. Encouragement needs to be linked to an observed act or demonstrated capacity. General “nice” words will merely puff up rather than build up.

Here are some effective forms of encouragement…

  ü  Your Gratitude

  ü  Your Appreciation

  ü  Your Confidence

  ü  Your Expression

  ü  Their Feelings

  ü  Their Improvement

  ü  Their Effort

  ü  Their Choices

There are many different ways we can encourage young people, however it is not only what we say that matters, but when and how we say it!

The Assisted Learning Centre in Fish Hoek, Cape Town, is a college that supervises and tutors grades 8 - 12. Not only do they use the best methods of teaching, but they also have the most qualified teachers.