1. What grade will your pre-teen or teenager be in this year?
2. When Does school start in your area?
3. Have you completed all of the back to school shopping?
4. Is your child anxious about the upcoming school year?

Some would joke that the only way to motivate teens is to threaten or bribe them, well those may work but in the long run, they won’t teach your teen the valuable lesson of accountability {smile}.

As you know, teens never seem to lack motivation to do what they want to do — talk on the phone, meet up with friends, go to the movies, etc. But, when it comes down to getting them to do the things that we want them to do and the things that the need to do, that seems to be a different story.

Here are some tips that we as parents can use to help motivate our teens to become more organized.

Build your teens confidence by identifying the ways in which he or she is already organized. Everyone, including your teen, shows signs of being organized with some things. Teens love to be acknowledged for a job well done so if your child does a great job organizing his or her school work or his or her clothes, try to encourage them to apply those same organizational skills to the other areas in their life that can use some organizational help.

Teach them & Have fun. Perhaps your teen really doesn’t know where to begin! Socks here and there, books under the bed, clothes stuffed behind the hamper. All of this can seem like a battle for them that is useless to fight. Why not set up a date with your child to organize his/her space together. Turn on the radio (to their favorite station of course) and together work to de-clutter the space. Keep in mind that your organizational style my not work for them so ask them questions as you go along and try to help them figure out a way to organize things so that it is easy to keep up. Another fun way to get them motivated is to provide fun, funky and cool storage bins to use for those small items that seem to just collect in the corners of their rooms.

Set Clear Rules and Let them set the schedule: Be sure that you set clear rules as to what is allowable daily clutter and what isn’t. For instance, if you don’t allow food or dishes in your teen’s room, be sure that they are following those rules and respecting them. If shoes on the floor are OK, then let them know that as well. Teens need clear-cut rules to follow. Sit down with you teen and simply ask them “What day can you carve out at least 1 hr to do a full room cleaning?” and let your teen set a day (either weekly or biweekly). What this does is let them know you value their time and schedule and it makes them accountable.

Finally, be sure you reward and commend your teens organizing successes with either a small token of additional freedom or kind words. Keep in mind that being organized is all about being responsible. For a teenager, gaining trust and freedom from parents is one of the biggest motivations of all.

I wanted to share this great online resource with you called My Out Of Control Teen don’t let the title fool you. Your teen doesn’t need to be totally out of control for you to reap the benefits of this great program because it is great for any parent of strong-willed children.

This program is an online parent support (OPS) system that includes thefollowing:

•  My Out-Of-Control Teen eBook (which contains 150 proven techniques to
   use with your strong-willed teen)
• Full access to Bonus eBooks Site
• Live audio recordings you can listen to online
• Power Point Presentations and Videos you can view online 
• Full access to OPS Website

Best of all, it is at a great low price and comes with a no hassle money-back guarantee.

Visit http://www.parentingmyteen.com/Out-of-Control.HTML soon and let me know what you think! :) 

Take Care,
Aurelia Williams

Parenting My Teen eStore!

I am so happy to be able to share this news with you because many times I receive an email asking for a particular book or resource recommendation and I usually have to go deep sea diving for it (smile). Well now, I have finally placed ALL of my favorite resources into one spot and created a brand new Parenting My Teen eStore
http://www.parentingmyteen.com/eStore.HTML

The best thing about this eStore is that all of the items listed are affordable and it is filled with many resources such as:

• Books For Parents of Teens
• Books For Teenagers
• Educational Books
• Book on Teen Driving (For Parents & Teens)
• Teen Substance Abuse Resources
• Teen Eating Disorders Resources
• Gift Ideas For Teens

Many of the books that are in the store are books that I have personally read and my daughters have also read many of them as well. 

I will be adding to the store frequently, so be sure to keep checking back with us.  I’ve added a link to the store to the  www.parentingmyteen.com site, you will see the link to the on the left hand side of the site.

I created this the Parenting My Teen site, pod cast and all of the resources with you in mind, so feel free to share your thoughts.  Simply leave your comments here and let me know what you think or you can call our listeners line at 214-615-6505 ext. 4245 and record your thoughts.  (You never know, you may hear your recording on a future show).

Take Care & Hugs Those Teens,
Aurelia Williams