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Teenagers

Parenting teenagers has its ups and downs. Get advice from Mumsnetters here.

Taking pride in one's work

3 replies

ByTheSea · 20/02/2009 12:17

DS1-13 takes pride in his appearance and hygiene and keeps his room weirdly tidy at this point, but has no sense of pride in any sort of work he does. He is not an academic person at all, and struggles with schoolwork, but even when he bothers with it he doesn't do his best and it's generally very low-quality. And it's everything else too. He just does half-assed jobs at everything, for example, cleaning up after himself in the kitchen, dumping the compost in the wrong place, any kind of work in the garden or house, hoovering, (even urinating he still pisses all over the seat because he can't be bothered to raise it arrgghhh). He has been told and shown how to do proper jobs of things but he just ignores that and does what he wants. I think it's important that he takes some pride in all sorts of work as this will be his way to succeed in life by doing a good job at whatever it is he ends up doing. When he does a good job at something, I make sure to specifically praise it and his effort, but he really just doesn't care. Does anyone else have this problem and are there any suggestions for ways to encourage him to take more pride in his work?

OP posts:
ThreadieMair · 20/02/2009 12:36

My son is pretty much the same. I don't think that there is much point in nagging too much. Just keep reminding him of what you expect and modelling the kind of pride in work that you admire. (And I agree completely that it is vital.). And keep on praising where he does do things conscientiously. My hope is that with maturity this will slip into place so long as you have modelled it and paved the way. (Fingers crossed.)

AMumInScotland · 20/02/2009 13:23

I'm not sure there's anything which will make him take pride in what he does, until/unless he gets the maturity to care about it. But you can make him improve his carefulness by insisting he redoes things to a decent standard! If the compost is in the wrong place, he has to pick it up and move it. If the kitchen isn't clear he has to do it again. If he wees on the seat, he has to go and clean it up.

You may not get him to care about it, but you can make it not worth his while to be careless about the things that matter to you round the house.

MaureenMLove · 20/02/2009 13:29

I don't think you can do any more than you already do. Athough I hate the expression, it is his age! DD is 13 and she's exactly the same, although her school work is beautiful, but that's a girl thing, I think. I think at 13, we do expect quite a lot of them. It takes until at least 16 before they get it right, (to your standards, of course) That said, I asked dd to tidy her room this morning and actually, it was almost done to my standards! It's taken a mighty long time to get this far though!

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