Giving Your Child the X-Factor…..

Motivating Your Teenager.

With the compulsive viewing of the X Factor back on our TV’s in the U.K. I thought I would share with you my tips for giving your child the “X Factor”.

1. To start the ball rolling, ask your teenager this simple question:

“ If money was no object and you could do whatever you wanted when you get older, what would it be?”

You may need to push a bit here and not settle for the first answer. Keep going until you think you have something you can grab hold of.

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Motivating your teen

A lesson to Parents of Teens – tell me something I don’t know

I have, over the last few months, been exposed to A Cinderella Story, as my children watch it over and over again. I have even found myself singing the theme song over and over again, and then I had a thought …

The lyrics of that song are, in themselves, a lesson to every parent out there so let me share some of them

Everybody tells me that
It’s so hard to make it
It’s so hard to break in
There’s no way to fake it
Everybody tells me that it’s wrong what I’m feeling
I shouldn’t believe in
The dreams that I’m dreaming

I hear it everyday
I hear it all the time
I’m never gonna amount to much
But they’re never gonna change my mind
Oh!

Everybody tells me
I don’t know what I’m doing
This life I’m pursuing
The odds I’ll be losing
Everybody tells me that
It’s one in a million
More like one in billion or
one in a zillion

As parents we want what is best for our child and we also really fear them failing or being hurt, so to make up for this we try and lower their expectations or, as we put it, make them more realistic!

However, lets face it, our children know that. They know it’s difficult, they know its a challenge and all we are doing by being realistic is perhaps lowering their expectations of themselves. If you, the parents, cannot believe that it is possible for them, then how can they believe it for themselves?

So my challenge to you is, when they come with the big dreams and ideas, stop and tell them something they don’t know…like you can do this, I will support you, what could you do now to make this possible?

Or, as Selina Gomez put it…

Tell me, tell me, tell me something I don’t know
Something I don’t know, something I don’t know
Tell me, tell me, tell me something I don’t know
Something I don’t know, something I don’t know

How many inches in a mile
What it takes to make you smile
Getcha not to treat me like a child, baby

So make today the day you tell your child something they don’t know.

Listen to the show here, it’s really not that bad.