Search Results for: blog using encouragement to motivate your teen

Teach Your Teen a New Skill This Summer

Every summer I like to take advantage of the extra time to teach my children a skill. Some years they all learn something and other years the focus is on just one child. This summer it will be my youngest son who will be taught how to wash his own clothes. I can’t tell you how much this has unburdened me with my other two children now completely responsible for their own wash. With my daughter, she just sort of decided on her own to start doing her laundry. But she’s pretty independent and self-sufficient that way. My oldest had … Continue reading →

A Teen’s First Job Interview

My 17-year-old son has been looking for a job since December. He hasn’t had a single bite, not one call for an interview. So last week when McDonalds had a “National Hiring Day,” he went in to fill out an application. Well so did a whole lot of other people, so we knew the chances might be slim. However to our luck a friend of mine has a daughter who happens to work at a McDonalds close by, so my son was able to use her name as a reference. Finally, after almost five months of applying for jobs, he … Continue reading →

Using Encouragement to Motivate Your Teen

When my children were younger one of the parenting concepts I tried to follow was to catch your child doing good and give them recognition for that. This was especially helpful during the years when my children were around 2, 4 and 7 years old. Now that I have a preteen and teenagers, I am finding that parenting concept to be helpful yet again. It probably isn’t really this way but it sometimes feels like there is always something going on. There is always some issue with at least one of my children. Having two children in middle school and … Continue reading →

Eating Habits

You know the old saying, “You are what you eat.” But I also think it could be said that our children are what we eat. In other words, our eating habits are transferred down to them. I was recently reading an article about the “10 Bad Eating Habits Parents Often Teach their Kids” and came to a realization about something. I have gotten slack in this department. When they were younger, I had a lot more control over what they ate. I leaned toward healthier choices and because that was what I purchased, it was what I ate as well. … Continue reading →

What’s Wrong with Some Healthy Competition?

Last week I heard a story on the radio about a blowout high school basketball game that took place in Utah. Christian Heritage High won over West Ridge Academy, 108 to 3 in girls’ basketball. Instead of the story being about this awesome game that Christian Heritage won, it was about unsportmanship. Why? Apparently some have criticized the coach for allowing the team to score so high. His defense was that he only had nine available players and so he couldn’t pull out his starters. I guess some believe that they should have slowed the game down a bit and … Continue reading →