The conventional wisdom among social scientists is that there’s little payoff in investing in troubled teenagers. As the University of Chicago economist James J. Heckman argued in 2011, “we overinvest in attempting to remediate the problems of disadvantaged adolescents and underinvest in the early years of disadvantaged children,” when the potential gains are supposedly the largest. But … Continue reading »
teens
Tablet and smartphone boot camp for middle-school parents
Every day I read something that leads me to believe that tech devices are dramatically affecting our kids’ normal social, sexual, intellectual, and emotional development. What I’m most amazed by, frankly, is how uninvolved we parents tend to be in the online lives of our middle schoolers. Our tweeners tend to seem much more savvy … Continue reading »
Influencing teens and tweeners, part 2
In my last post, I introduced the idea of “motivational interviewing,” a way to engage with adolescents to make them feel heard, understood, and, ultimately, receptive to our wisdom. This technique, which has been proven effective in clinical psychology, is particularly useful when we want to influence our teens or tweeners to change their behavior. … Continue reading »
How to influence your teen, part 1
I frequently hear complaints from parents that their teenagers — or, more accurately, their adolescents — are irrational. Kids say they want to get into a good college, for example, but then they miss school because they’ve stayed up half the night watching movies. Or they say they’d like to keep taking guitar lessons so … Continue reading »