The social work team at JCS renders services to teenagers and a need has been identified to assist parents and caregivers with how to raise responsible teenagers. Teenagers often crave more privileges but they can fail to follow through on their responsibilities.
Counselors have identified three essential components for cultivating responsibility in adolescents: internal motivation, the teenager’s ability to respond and the parent’s ability to hold their child accountable.
Internal motivation
- Internal motivation is a necessity to be a responsible teenager
- Teenagers must eventually learn to make the right choice because they want to
- Parents can help their teenagers develop internal motivation by holding them accountable and allowing them to make their own mistakes
- Parents can offer their teenagers guidance and direction without recuing them or taking over their responsibilities
- Ability to respond
- Teenagers need to learn how to respond to challenges
- Parents need to learn to de-escalate an argument with their teenager and take a minute before replying to their angry or emotional teenager
- Holding teenagers accountable
- Parents need to take an honest look at themselves and the things that they can do differently
- Parents need to show their teenagers how to cope with mistakes in healthy ways by setting a positive example
Please contact Renee Donneson at JCS on
021-4625520 should you require further information
