Why pointing out what your teenager is doing RIGHT might be the fastest way to change what’s going wrong
There’s a very easy trap to fall into when you’re parenting a teenager.
You notice what’s wrong.
The wet towel on the floor. The homework that hasn’t been done. The plate abandoned in the bedroom. The dog that hasn’t been walked. The revision they promised they’d start. The thing you asked them to do three times that is still sitting there.
And because we’re parents, we think our job is to point these things out. After all, how else are they going to learn?
Here’s the problem.
If most of what your teenager hears from you is what they’re getting wrong, eventually that becomes the story they hear about themselves:
I’m lazy. I’m disorganised. I’m disappointing. I never get it right. Mum/Dad is always annoyed with me.
Once that story takes hold, criticism often stops motivating them and can actually make them give up.
“But he is making excuses”
Imagine your teenager is supposed to walk the dog and doesn’t do it.
You ask why and he says he was tired. He forgot. He had homework. He was just about to do it. He thought someone else was doing it.
You think: Here we go again. Excuses.
You might think What does this say about me as a parent? I should sort it out now. If I don’t they’ll end up being a horrible person and I’ll be known as the parent who raised the horrible person.
Stop shoulding all over yourself and ask this question that I find much more useful:
What am I trying to achieve?
Do I want to prove that he’s making excuses or do I want him to become someone who takes responsibility? Those aren’t necessarily achieved in the same way.
If I say:
“You always have an excuse.”
I’m describing his character.
If instead I say:
“You didn’t walk the dog today. What got in the way?”
I’m talking about a behaviour, which is an important distinction.
One leaves a teenager defending themselves, the other gives them a chance to look at their choices and think about what’s going on.
Then look for what IS working
This is the part we often forget.
Suppose he walks the dog four times this week but fails to do it three times. What gets most of our attention? The three, right?
It’s understandable. Those are the times that create a problem for us, but imagine being on the receiving end of that.
Four successes disappear completely, while every failure is noticed.
So I’d deliberately mention the successes too.
“I noticed you took the dog out without me asking yesterday. Thank you, that’s really helpful.”
It can feel ridiculously small, but it isn’t. You’re helping your teenager notice evidence that they can be responsible. It matters because behaviour isn’t just shaped by rules and consequences. It’s also shaped by identity.
A teenager who begins to think I’m someone who can be relied on has a very different starting point from one who thinks I’m the lazy one in this family.
I noticed this with my daughter when I asked her to collect some flowers for a table arrangement for guests. She immediately tried to get out of it. When I asked her why she made it clear that she wouldn’t do a good job. I realised it’s not that she doesn’t want to do it, she thinks someone else will do it better. I insisted, and when she brought them in I exclaimed at how genuinely lovely they were and showed her how to prepare them so they’ll last in a vase.
I realised a while ago that she tends to step back because she’s grown up with older sisters who are immensely competent. She fell into the trap of learned dependence in the home, believing that there was no point because she wasn’t needed and everyone else did things better than her.
Once we notice what’s happening we can slowly shift the narrative.
This doesn’t mean praising everything
I don’t mean following your 17-year-old around saying, “Fantastic! You put your cereal bowl in the dishwasher!”
Teenagers can detect manufactured praise at twenty paces. Nor does it mean ignoring poor behaviour. If they agreed to walk the dog and repeatedly don’t do it, that needs addressing.
I like to ask them for their ideas about what they think I should do to change behaviour that’s unacceptable. It helps them to think about the situation from a different viewpoint, and empathise with my role.
I wrote about setting rules and boundaries here.
Catch them moving in the right direction
We often wait for the finished product before acknowledging progress, but adolescence is essentially one enormous work in progress.
So look for subtle shifts that will start an upward spiral. Notice:
The teenager who normally has to be woken five times got up after the second call.
The teenager who normally shouts during an argument walked away and came back ten minutes later.
The teenager who usually leaves everything until the last minute started revising for twenty minutes.
The teenager who is painfully shy spoke to somebody new.
The teenager who normally needs repeated reminders remembered something themselves.
Nothing big, just say, hey I noticed you… well done.
Ask questions instead of delivering verdicts
There’s another shift I’ve found useful. When something has gone wrong, rather than immediately explaining what I think happened, I begin with wonder:
“I wonder what happened?”
“I wonder what got in the way?”
“I wonder what you think would make it easier next time?”
“You managed it yesterday — I wonder what was different today?”
I prefer inserting the word wonder because it feels less acusatory and more of a thoughtful prompt.
Encouragement isn’t the soft option
Sometimes parents worry that if we focus on what’s going well, our teenagers will somehow become complacent. I think the opposite can happen.
I’ve been studying Positive Psychology and Flourishing and what I’ve been learning has changed my perspective. We have four core negative emotions: anger, fear, sadness and disgust. When we experience them our brain narrows our thinking to pay attention to dealing with the ‘dangerous’ thing that’s troubling us.
When we experience emotions such as joy and trust our mind is expansive. It looks for more things that bring us those emotions and open our minds to building more skills so we can experience those feelings more. It’s called the Broaden and Build theory.
Constant criticism puts our children into protection mode, and the feeling that there’s no point trying because the parent will find something wrong anyway. Encouragement gives them a reason to keep going.
It says: I see the person you’re becoming, not just the things you’re getting wrong along the way and that’s particularly important during adolescence.
Our teenagers are trying to work out who they are. They’re constructing an identity from the reactions they get from friends, teachers, social media — and us.
Our words become part of their self-image. To a teenager who’s still deciding what sort of person they are, hearing the people who know them best can see the best in them will give them the strength they need to keep growing.
This is particularly important for children who struggle or are neurdivergent; they hear a lot of negative feedback so your positive words will have an outsized effect.
Catch them becoming the person you hope they’ll be. I wrote more about this here, and we talked about how this is particularly important for neurodivergent children in this interview.
