The Way Teens Learn: Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

  Parents of teen lecture series:

• Don't drink and drive
• Don't text and drive
• Don't drink
• Don't do drugs
• Have safe sex
• Don't have sex at all
• If you don't do your homework, you will not be successful in life
• Part of being part of a family is sharing responsibility: Empty the dishwasher

Here's what I love about this comic, and that I hope you take away from it. All those lectures really do make a difference, just not when your teen is in your presence. People learn through repetition. When your child was young and you were teaching them about manners, think about how many times you said after you gave them something, or someone else did: " Honey what do you say to Mrs Mcgillcuddy?"And your little cutie pie would say: "Thank you Mrs Mcgillicuddy!" You might have gone through this 10 times a day, 365 days of the year for two or three years, until this response become automatic for your child when it was called upon.

Teaching your teen to be safe or responsible or motivated, is absolutely no different. You can't just give a drinking and driving lecture, or safe sex lecture once, and think you've done your job. Every time your teen leaves to be with friends, it should be with a "so what's your plan to stay safe tonight, or a reminder to not drink and drive, or text and drive. They need to hear those messages over and over and over again, so that your voice literally lives in their head, just like Jeremy's parents do in the above comic. 

Besides the reminders, you still need to help them come up for a strategy for safety. Just saying don't do something is not a strategy. You need to have both, the reminder, AND the strategy. 

What parent lectures do you still carry in your head from your parents??