Ten Decisive Steps to
Motivating your Delinquent Teen to Action
(Page 9)
STEP TEN
BEFRIENDING THE PEER
The greatest challenge to teen achievement is
negative peer pressure, and a big percentage of our teens are highly
influenced by their peers, some negatively.
Our delinquent teens are often the product of negative peer
influence. The parent or
guardian that wishes to motivate his teen to action should combat the
negative effects of peer pressure by befriending the peer.
If you can befriend the peer that is influencing your teen and in
turn re-influence that peer, then you can help your teen in a two-fold
way. You teen will see you
influencing their peer and will often turn to you for some of that
positive influence and their friend will also influence them based on
your influence on their friends.
KEYS TO DO THIS
·
Invite that peer
over and get to know him or her.
Even if you don’t approve of them, you’ll want to invite them
over to first get a picture of the type of person that is influencing
your teen.
·
You’ll then want to
engage them in conversation.
Talk to them and question them.
·
Be respectful and
kind to them.
·
Use some of the
earlier strategies mentioned like re-educating.
Invite them to give input in your family discussions.
Ask them to read the same articles you’ve asked your teen to read
and let them give their opinion.
They will feel included and welcomed and will often responded by
taking the time to read whatever it is that you’ve asked them to read.
Of course it is taken for granted here that whatever you ask them
to read will be wholesome, age appropriate and in no way harmful to them
psychologically or otherwise, as your intent is to motivate towards
positive change. The case
is, even if you introduced the concept of subtly re-educating your teen
and they were not receptive; when they see their peer being receptive to
your ideas, they will be motivated to participate because they will not
want to feel left out. The
life of a teen is inclusivism and being a part of the group.
If you can befriend the peer and influence them to influence your
child then you’d have won back your teen and making progress towards
focused goal achievement and success.
It is very possible.
All you have to do is believe and try.
God bless you.
TANGIBLE INCENTIVE PROGRAMS IN SCHOOLS
Successful, positive behavior is a problem in all of
our schools today and educational professionals are struggling to come
up with ways to positively impact and motivate our students to right
action.
Many strategies have been tried and failed and even
where there are incentive programs that tries to reinforce positive
behavior, this often fails because the students are not sufficiently
motivated by the tangibility of these programs.
Incentive programs in our schools and homes should be tangible. We live in a materialistic world and unless we are prepared to reward our delinquent students with rewards and incentive that they can touch and appreciate, their behavior will not change.
You might say to reward on the basis of materialism
is to encourage the behavior.
The reality of our post-modern era however, is that persons react
and achieve on the basis of what they can see and touch, and on the
basis of value. It is hoped
that they will overtime learn responsible behavior.
What will be gained from a tangible incentive behavior program is
the fact that positive behavior pays.
TANGIBLE INCENTIVE PROGRAMS THAT CAN MODELED
One particular school have a demerit system whereby
students can earn demerits for positive or negative behavior, poor or
excellent attitude towards work and school.
This program works for the minority who are easily scared but
failed for those who are less responsible and are highly agitated and
adventurous. The long-term
effect of the program to some extent does not benefit the students who
are more likely to be disruptive.
These students are constantly getting demerits and will
eventually lose any privileges for the rest of their school life; as a
result they fail to phased or care about getting a demerit.
An improvement of this system is suggested below.
·
The system of
rewards can be administered individually by a teacher or at the
management level by school administrators.
It is suggested that one or more of the following systems be
adopted.
o
Students can be
placed in groups with group leaders chosen.
Each group can be assigned certain merits or currency (make
believe money) per week.
Based on the amount of merits or currency earned or deducted, students
will be given rewards.