How I get teenagers to (mostly) make good decisions

[TeachWithMissM]

I’m a teacher who has been working in a secondary school with a pretty tough reputation for the past couple of years!

I have worked lots with teenagers and their families where behaviour has been a big issue and wanted to share my favourite tactic for getting them to make good decisions (I find this is about 90% effective, the only time it doesn’t work is if there are serious unaddressed underlying mental health issues)

First, clearly lay out the two options that they could choose from. E.g. “You can choose to give me your phone now or you can choose to refuse to hand it over”

Then lay out a clear consequence for each action. I like to use natural consequence where possible, or if not then at least relevant consequences - i.e. the consequence does need to relate to the behaviour (rather than more general groundings etc). E.g. “If you give me your phone now then I will give it back at X time, if you refuse to give it to me then I will need to keep it for (longer) time because I am worried that you don’t have the maturity at the moment to make good decisions about your phone use”

GIVE TAKE-UP TIME!! I cannot emphasise how effective this is! If you immediately ask them to hand their phone over etc they are very very likely to refuse as they probably won’t have brought their more logical reasoning online yet. I like to say something like “I will give you 2 minutes to make the decision, the time now is 10:28, please hand your phone to me by 10:30 or we will have the consequence of XYZ”. This is the one change that has had the biggest impact for me.

The consequence needs to be time-limited and relatively short to be effective. In this scenario, I would keep the phone for the whole evening/day but then give it back the next day and let them try again. They will absolutely make the wrong decisions at times, sometimes more than once - what’s important is that you stay neutral but follow through super consistently with the consequences. Over time, they will almost without fail learn to make the better choice!

Another important note is to make sure any labelling is of the behaviour (“that’s not a good choice”, “throwing the pen was unsafe”) rather than of the young person (“you are so unkind”, “don’t be stupid”) as they will very quickly internalise a belief that they are a bad person and this can become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy

i I find that this formulation is so so effective but lots of families I work with aren’t always aware of it, particularly of take-up time!

I have a bit of a reputation for being able to get through to even our toughest kids with a lot of consistency so if anyone has scenarios that they’re not sure what to do with I’m happy to share how I would normally handle them!

Love it, thanks for sharing

What would you do with this scenario:

Fourteen year old boy, youngest of three, elder siblings away at university. Stable home life, good strong role models, yet continually makes bad choices that lead to terrible outcomes and time worn consequences (removal of phone/screen time/pocket money/grounding etc). The longest stint without his phone was four months and it was amazing, did not want to give it back but sadly it is the only way plans can be made socially these days, once his restrictions were lifted. I didn’t want him to suffer or miss out on seeing friends and doing things in the hols, as this can have dire effects on the wellbeing of a young person.

Most recently a terrible thing happened and my son was not directly involved, but was there and did nothing to stop it, despite being in very serious trouble earlier this year and having strict boundaries in place/regular check ins/no phone/child psych intervention/advice and guidance on what to do in dangerous or unsafe situations, he chose to ignore it all and did nothing, so was complicit.

Today I have lost my shit. I have smashed up his phone. I have shouted at him and screamed that every time he regains his freedom and we loosen the reigns, he f*cks up; wherever there is trouble he is never far from it. It is the same old story on repeat and it is destroying my sanity and I can’t continue living like this.

During term time I live in fear of calls from school, rarely is it good news. He is in the top sets and has 100% attendance. School is not an issue, behaviour and bad friendship choices are. He has several after school detentions a week. Clearly they are ineffective and do not serve as a deterrent.

What would do with this sort of behaviour? Move away? Change schools? If the latter then due to him being mid way through Y10 he’d have repeat the year, something we haven’t entirely ruled out.

Sadly I think none of these. I think he will just always be drawn to bad people and bad situations. I cannot for the life of me fathom why.

That’s tough for you all @theyregonnaknow

If you’re in the UK, he won’t be able to repeat the year but if you can move, that might be a good option.

I would be replacing a smart phone with a basic dumb phone, and have strict boundaries and curfews. He can text and call friends, he doesn’t need other apps. And are these friends part of the problem anyway?

If he’s fallen in with a bad crowd getting him digitally and physically removed will be your best bet.

He’s academically able, the move won’t be catastrophic on his grades. But what good are top grades if he gets wrapped up in county lines or similar?

Makes sense, but how do you get the phone if they choose to refuse to hand it over?

I’m so sorry you’re having a tricky time! There’s quite a lot to unpick here so I will go through it in as much detail as I can!

First on the phone, I would consider maybe making it not an all or nothing situation but a more graduated approach. One option is to give him a dumb phone so he can still text to make plans but without access to social media etc. Alternatively, I would probably consider giving it back to him for short periods at a time early on, and mostly for times of day where he is more likely to be around you - e.g. he can have it from 5-7pm every evening. That gives him a chance to prove himself to earn more time but also holds him accountable to not make poor decisions. I would make sure you have the phone overnight as (a) teenagers need so much sleep and often don’t have the impulse-override to put their phones down and go to bed! and (b) unsupervised time is probably when he’s most likely to make poor decisions on social media etc.

With the situation where he was complicit, I suspect the best approach might be to have a really honest adult conversation with him. Make a point that you’re giving him lots of respect by just having a grown-up conversation about it, and see if you can get to the bottom of why he didn’t stop it. Did he know it wasn’t okay? Was he worried about what the others would say if he spoke up? A deep dive here might bring up some interesting things. It might even be worth getting someone else that he respects (older sibling, family friend, teacher etc) to have this conversation if he would be more likely to be honest with them.

I know it’s incredibly frustrating - but try not to shout or scream etc. He is still young enough that he will essentially mirror you when he has to deal with difficult situations so try to model the sort of response you would want to see to frustration/anger etc. it can be helpful to model this out loud e.g. “I’m feeling very frustrated now so I’m going to go out to the garden to get some fresh air/I’m going to walk away and take a break” etc

If he is in top sets that is a very good sign and could be very helpful! In sounds to me like he might have found himself trapped in an identity of being “naughty” etc and doesn’t really know who he is outside of that, so he sticks to the same people and same behaviour. If it were me I would probably be giving lots of compliments for how intelligent he is or any time he does homework or if you see his classwork etc - help him to build an identity and see that he can be a great person with an exciting future if he makes good choices! If there is a way for you to check house points, go really overboard for a little while with how proud you are of him every time he gets a house point and ask what it was for etc. Maybe spend some time talking with him about what he’d like to do when he leaves school as well, and really encourage that!

from the point of view of a teacher, I would just escalate it through the appropriate channels until a member of SLT came to remove it! if it were my child, I would probably just stop paying their phone bill for a period of time if they were given chances and continually refused to hand it over