Parents of teens are often frustrated by their teen’s ‘laziness’ but ‘lazy’ behavior is often a symptom of underlying issues. This article gets to the heart of how parents can look beyond the ‘laziness’ and make a positive difference in their kids’ behavior.
“My Teen is Lazy!”
If you’ve caught yourself saying that about your teen you’re NOT alone. This is a major frustration for most parents with teenage kids (or other adults who work with teens).
As a parent of 3 adolescent boys I’ve certainly said this (outloud and to myself) numerous times. But thinking of teens as lazy is a misunderstanding of their behavior that takes us parents in unproductive directions. It makes us want to motivate them, or get them out of the house, or, heaven forbid, nag them!
The truth is that ‘laziness’ is often a symptom of deeper emotional currents that our teens are wrestling with. If our ultimate goal is to get them to be proactive and self-motivate, we need to help our teens with these underlying issues instead of just bothering them to get out of the house more (or whatever it is you bother your teens about).
What are the underlying issues?
Teens deal with a lot of intense emotional stuff. That makes diagnosing exactly what they’re dealing with difficult to do. If you’re lucky, your teen might talk openly with you about what they’re struggling with (be it school, social life, etc …) But the reality is that most teens aren’t self-aware enough to talk about what they’re experiencing in detail. Most adults aren’t either for that matter.
Some common issues teens deal with are stress about school, wrestling with an identity crisis, fear of what the future could bring, social anxiety, all of the above, or something totally different.
The key here isn’t to understand exactly what they’re struggling with that’s manifesting as laziness. But we as parents can understand that there is likely something else going on.
Getting teens to be proactive and self-motivate starts with us being more present to what they’re dealing with emotionally and psychologically, and working with them to discover areas where they’re excited to take action.
As we say in our Masterclass The Path to Independence it’s really all about discovering what our teens are already motivated to do and then encouraging them to go in those directions.
The more confident and proactive they are in one area of their life, the more that will spread to the other areas.
The following points are taken from our Free Guide: Helping Your Teen (or Young Adult) Leave Home with Confidence which you can download and save if you’d like to explore any of the below in more detail.
Taken together, they’re a set of guidelines that us parents can follow that will help us help our teens discover their inner drive:
When we feel our teen is behind our natural reaction is to try to catch them up so that they are prepared for the wide world beyond. But this added pressure from parents can be crippling to teens and can actually discourage them from taking positive action.
1). Don't get stuck on conventional milestones. Meet your teen where they're at.
Consciously or not, most of us have a checklist of things we think our teen ‘should’ have achieved by the time they leave home.
When we feel our teen is behind our natural reaction is to try to catch them up so that they are prepared for the wide world beyond. But this added pressure from parents can be crippling to teens and can actually discourage them from taking positive action.
The truth is that there is no empirical scale for where teens should be at any given point. All teens develop in different ways and at their own pace, and pushing them toward these checkpoints can leave them feeling like they’re already too far behind to make an effort.
2). FOCUS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER TRAITS OVER OUTCOMES AND ACHIEVEMENTS.
Our ultimate goal is to help our teens develop the tools they need to make it as adults out there in the world. Because we’re human beings, we track their readiness in tangible, practical ways; that’s why we gravitate towards conventional milestones or other outcomes like good grades.
But achievements do not prepare teens to thrive on their own. It is our teen’s character that will support them when they no longer live at home with us. Adolescence is about self-discovery. By encouraging our teen’s positive character traits we will also be helping them along their path of self-discovery.
3). HELP YOUR TEEN FEEL MORE SELF-ASSURED.
The prospect of leaving home and setting out on their own for the first time can be exciting, terrifying, sad, frustrating, embarrassing, and generally prompts teens to question everything about themselves and their lives. This can be paralyzing. It makes teens want to focus on taking small, comfortable actions, which can make them appear ‘lazy’.
Plainly said, the teen years are a time of great uncertainty and insecurity. That makes it all the more important for us to reassure them that they are on the right path, that we are there to support them if they need us to, and that they will be alright.
4). ENCOURAGE YOUR TEEN’S SELF-MOTIVATION AND SELF-DISCOVERY.
Parents often lament how unmotivated and unproductive their teens are, especially in later adolescence. Seeing an unmotivated teen can provoke a lot of anxiety as it makes us face the prospect that once our teens are out of the house we will no longer be there to incentivize, bribe, cajole, or encourage them to do things.
Teens are much more reliant on self-motivation once they leave home, so it’s important to foster this skill early. When teens are able to identify the qualities and abilities they enjoy about themselves it becomes much easier for them to harness those qualities and abilities. So encouraging teens to reflect on when they come alive, laugh, or are happiest, gives them something to build on. It psychologically puts them in a better place and encourages internal motivation.
This can compel teens to want to apply these skills more often and can be a powerful motivator.FYI, we’ve got some questions you can ask your teen to prompt this line of thought in our free guide.
5). GIVE YOUR TEEN OPPORTUNITIES TO PRACTICE ‘ADULTHOOD’ AND EXERCISE INDEPENDENCE.
Yes, we left the practical life-skills part until last. It’s not that this stuff isn’t important, but it usually is the only part that parents focus on; because this stuff is tangible and easier to measure progress in. However, we strongly encourage you to apply everything from points 1-4 when helping your teen practice independence in practical ways.
Because leaving home for the first time and being an ‘adult’ is so existentially terrifying, we recommend breaking it down into more manageable chunks. A great way to determine what these are is to ask our teens to identify what parts of adulthood they’re afraid of and/or looking forward to. Then we can look for practical ways to allow them to practice those aspects so they can develop confidence and mastery.
This doesn’t need to end once they’re out of the house, BTW. Most adolescents can still use this type of support the first year they’re out of the house (and beyond).
You might be at the end of this post thinking to yourself, “This post didn’t help me deal with my teen’s laziness at all!”. And you’re right. But there’s no quick fix here. Helping our teens become proactive and self-motivated is a process that is made up of hundreds or thousands of smaller interactions.
That being said, by meeting our teens where they’re at and nurturing their character, self-motivation, and self-assurance we’ll be planting seeds that will inevitably grow and bear fruit.
This isn’t a perfect science but it is backed by science, evidence, and leading adolescent psychologists, so give it a try, see how your teen responds, and let us know how it goes!
If this article resonated with you we highly recommend that you download our free guide that covers these 5 tactics in more detail: Download The Guide
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