Helpful Habits for Teens: Set Them Up for Long-term Success
Savvy parents know that getting teens to do almost anything works best when there are internal factors motivating them. Sure, rewards and punishment can sometimes serve a purpose when it comes to chores, grades, and family rules, but if you’re talking about big-picture success, building a foundation of independence, self-awareness, and responsibility will help them thrive long after they’ve left the nest.
So how exactly can parents help their teen develop drive and initiative that will serve them well through school, college, career, and life? It’s as simple as training their brains by helping them build good habits and reap the dopamine rewards.
As certified professional coach Amy Voros explains, “Tiny habits are created by making a recipe: Anchor, Behavior, Celebration. An anchor moment is a specific action you reliably do already. The tiny behavior is a scaled-down version of what you want the new habit to be. And celebrating is acknowledging that I’ve done what I intend, and creating a dopamine hit tells my brain that it should remember these actions as a positive event to repeat. Emotions create habits, not repetition.”
Ready to get started helping your teen set up tiny habits that will contribute to their short-term and long-term success?
Check out these seven ideas for helpful habits to teach your teens:
Planning:
Small habits can help boost your student’s ability to manage their time, plan ahead for big projects, and reduce their stress. These tasks involve executive function, a set of brain skills that help us prioritize, ignore or manage distractions, follow multi-step directions, and control impulses. To help build good planning habits, start with one very small change that represents the trajectory of the new habit your student wants to adapt for the long term.
Tiny habit: Have your teen write down deadlines for major projects or assignments on a wall calendar.
Organizing:
Serving as a sort of air-traffic control hub, the brain’s executive function skills also allow us to set goals, organize our time and develop systems to achieve those goals.
Tiny habit: Encourage your teen to compile a “to-do” list before bed to help free their mind for a restful night’s sleep and boost internal motivation by giving them their own set of goals to accomplish in the short term.
Note Taking:
Taking notes not only helps students focus, but it also helps them listen effectively and improve their understanding of the material. It’s a vital skill that will serve them well through school, college, and in the workforce.
Tiny habit: Ask your teen to read a single page from a current textbook and write down three bullet points as “takeaways” that might help them remember and understand what they read.
Test-taking:
Even the smartest kids can struggle with test-taking skills, but there are some best practices to increase your student’s chances of performing well. These include reading all the directions carefully, reviewing all the potential answers before choosing one, answering the easiest questions first, outlining essay questions to ensure all points are covered, and reviewing answers with any leftover time. Perhaps most important of all (especially for anxious test-takers), students should take a moment to calm themselves with a breathing exercise.
Tiny habit: Teach your student to try the 4-7-8 breathing exercise to “calm the chaos” in the brain that might be clouding their ability to focus or make good decisions. Instruct them to breathe in for a count of four, hold it for a count of seven, and exhale for a count of eight. (Remind them that the exhale is the most important part.)
Self-advocacy:
How many times have you “stepped in” to assist your teen when there was a problem at school? Whether it’s asking for an extension on a project, confronting a persistent school bully, or fighting an unfair consequence, parent involvement isn’t always necessary, especially with older kids and teens. Making decisions, taking responsibility for those decisions, and clearly communicating your own wants, needs, and rights is one of the most important skills your student will need to succeed in life.
Tiny habit: Suggest that your child or teen do one act of self-advocacy through verbal or written communication. This could even be as simple as writing a plea—with supporting points—as to why they should get a later bedtime, a kitten, or a new laptop.
Mindfulness:
Simply put, mindfulness really just boils down to being present in the moment. It’s particularly beneficial for kids and teens who have anxiety or simply tend to worry a lot. By focusing on the present—rather than worrying about the future or dwelling over things that happened in the past, students earn a sense of control over their emotions by simply observing them as they pop into their heads.
Tiny habit: Start with just one minute of mindfulness in which your student observes what they see, smell, touch, hear, and feel (temperatures, body sensations). Remind them to simply observe any thoughts or emotions that pop up without judgment before allowing them to fade into the background.
Sleep:
Of all the positive habits your teen can form, few will compare to the benefits they get from prioritizing sleep. Getting the right quality and quantity of sleep is vital not only for academic performance, but also physical and mental health. And because stress, anxiety, and the glow from technological devices can all interfere with our ability to fall asleep and stay asleep, it may be best to turn off devices or leave them in another room altogether.
Tiny habit: There are a number of tiny habits your child or teen can adopt to wind down before bed, fall asleep, and stay asleep. With a primary goal of heading to earlier, they’ll need to adopt habits that work for them: drinking chamomile tea, reading a book, taking a warm bath, or listening to soothing music. Suggest they try a couple of these habits one night and then reassess how they slept.
