IMPACT: Parenting with Perspective
IMPACT: Parenting with Perspective
Unlock Your Teen’s Hidden Motivation
Is your teen struggling to stay motivated? You’re not alone! In this episode, we explore how to unlock your teen’s hidden motivation. 🎙️
Learn why their motivation is outside your control, how your own thoughts and actions can inspire them, and practical tips to help them find their drive. We’ll also dive into using positive incentives, understanding their values, and letting them learn from natural consequences.
Plus, we’ll share fun stories, simple advice, and ideas to make parenting more enjoyable for you and your teen. If you’ve ever wondered how to boost your teen’s confidence and help them thrive, this episode is for you!
💡 Have a question about parenting teens? Hit the link in the show notes to send us your questions!
Follow the podcast for more tips and tools to help your teen grow!
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I'm Ben Pugh and you're listening to IMPACT! Parenting with Perspective. This podcast is all about helping parents manage the mental and emotional drama that comes with parenting teens so they can focus on what's most important. Building rock solid relationships and having a powerful impact on their teen's life. Join me each week as I dive into real tools to help you and your teen turn struggles into strengths.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for hanging out with me. And Cortni, I feel like we need like a theme song. Like, remember the eighties, um, like Charles in charge, or
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Do you have one that's a little bit later than that?
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Wait, aren't you older than me? Like you should remember.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Do I look older than you? No,
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:No, you do not. Okay. Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Yeah.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Yeah.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Yeah. If any of you guys listening are musically inclined and you would like to create a theme song, please feel free.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:To the fresh Prince of Bel Air like music. That'd be awesome.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Yeah. I don't know if I'm cool enough to pull that off.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Now, this is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down. I think we could do it.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Okay. Yeah. Okay. That might be the next project. Fortunately, it is not the project that we're talking about here on today's podcast. We're actually talking about your teen's motivation and things that no one's talking about when it comes to. Teen motivation. So part of the reason I'm talking about this again, just like last week, this is another one of the hot topics that I hear parents talking about. Um, I am in contact with a local school. I'm hoping they'll let me come speak at their school. But the lady's like bullying and teen motivation. Like, I need help fixing those two things. Oh, we should totally talk about bullying one of these days.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Yeah.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:But for today, teen motivation. So here are three things that I think most people aren't talking about that I think are helpful when it comes to the conversation about. Teens and motivation, and the first one is no one's talking about the fact that your teen's motivation is completely outside of your control, like your teen's motivation is how they feel, which is based on how they think. Cortni's texting me during, okay, yeah. I'm gonna send you a mic anyway. Deb might cut that part out. Who knows? Your teen's motivation is how they feel. So the self-coaching model, which I use all the time, like it talks about how our thoughts create our feelings and our feelings fuel our actions, your teen's motivation is within their model. And one of the things as a teacher, people will be like, Hey, you've got to motivate your students. Well, guess what? There's some students, and I used to be this student that would come in, put their head on the desk and take a nap. There's probably nothing you can do to motivate that kid. Like you can bribe him. You can beat him like whatever, but it's not gonna change their motivation long term. Cortni, anything you want to add about your teen's motivation being outside of your control?
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:No. Um, it kind of goes along with last week's conversation about their confidence. Um, I feel like lack of confidence creates lack of motivation.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Yeah, I agree. Um, I wasn't planning to talk about this, but I think the system that we have in place is. Very fundamentally flawed, and a lot of times when it comes to teen motivation, we are so focused on teens not being motivated, that we're not really focused on fixing a system that is not very motivating. Like one of the things that I would love to do is like take a group of teens, like out into the wilderness. Like drop them out of a helicopter with parachutes. Cortni, you can come to, I'll be there and we'll have to like hike through the jungle and at some point we'll have to like find, build a raft. Oh, that would be fun. And like float down the Amazon River or something. Something like that. Like teens would be motivated. They would wanna live, they'd want to get back to their Xbox or PlayStation. The problem is. The way school is designed right now, it's not very motivating. We're not allowing our kids to use their creativity. We're not unleashing them on the world. I, I feel like a lot of the problems our world is facing, we could use a fresh teenage perspective and that would be motivating. Anyways, that wasn't even in my notes and here we're talking about it. Um, let's talk about the model for a minute. This is something not very many people talk about, like when they talk about motivation, they're talking about the feeling they're talking about, like, why aren't kids motivated? I think it's important to understand that your teen's motivation is based on their thoughts. One of the lessons that I've learned from coaching football, like I lift weights with the kids during the off season. That's why I'm so ripped. Actually, I'm not very ripped, but I am freakishly strong for like I have farmer strength plus old man strength plus. I work out with these high school kids. I'm basically a silverback gorilla,
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Oh
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:but without all my hair. But the thing is, when I talk to kids that aren't working out very hard, like I know it's a lack of motivation, I'm like, dude, why aren't you pushing yourself? They always have excuses. Most people, a lot of coaches, like especially athletics coaches are gonna cut the kids off. They won't even let them finish with an excuse. They'll just be like, oh, excuses are like a-holes. We all have'em and they all stink and they like won't even go there. I love hearing my players excuses. Because it gives me a window into what they're thinking. If they tell me, man, I'm just not feeling it today. I'm tired. I was hanging out with my friends and I gotta save my energy for later, I can start to understand, oh, of course you're not motivated because you are thinking this. And then I can challenge those thoughts and sometimes I can help'em think new thoughts and I feel like. Anytime as parents, as teachers, I know I have a bunch of teachers who listen to this podcast, and I wish I had more football coaches, but I'm gonna talk to you guys too. Anytime you have a player or a student or your teen is giving you an excuse. Just keep in mind they're giving you a glimpse into what they're thinking, and if you allow them to talk and you just listen to'em, like go ahead, let'em make up excuses. But if you let them get through that process, then you can better understand what their thoughts are, where they're coming from, and you can possibly introduce new thoughts to help them. Cortni, anything you'd like to add about that?
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Yeah, I think a big thing is actually letting them talk and then not having a rebuttal right away to tell them how that's wrong or, you know, that's not gonna serve them or, um, you know, but just carrying the conversation as though like. Other suggestions that might be positive rather than tell them that it's ridiculous, um, because that's not motivating and that's certainly not gonna encourage them to wanna talk to you. I.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Yeah. Yeah. Um, so when I lift weights in the morning, which they change the weightlifting schedule, I'll be honest, I haven't lifted weights this week. I'm probably not as strong as a grill on right now, but when I was lifting weights, I was lifting with one of my football players. He'll be a junior this year and. His dad sometimes listens to this podcast. He'll know. I say this with love. Sometimes he doesn't lift as hard as I think he should, and we have a good enough relationship that I can call him out on it. He'll usually gimme some sort of excuse, but what I like to do is I like to talk about things that I know he wants to accomplish. I know he wants to play varsity football this year. And he's really big and I'm like, dude, you need more strength to go with your size. It's not good enough to just be big. Like remember, there's a team that we play, they're. My least favorite team to play. They are good. They've, I think they took state last year. There were the runners up the year before, and I'll tell'em like, you've seen those dudes on that team. How hard do you think you need to be lifting to. Catch up to them to be in a position where you can block them and he's like, yeah, let's do it. One more set. The annoying thing is I'll push him to do a little bit more and then he does the same thing to me, and then I come home so sore that I can barely stand up after sitting down. But it's that skill of. Shifting the focus. Like if I let him dwell on, oh geez, well I stayed up too late and I'm super tired and I don't have the energy, and I'm not feeling that. If I let him dwell on that, our workout's gonna suck. But if I can be like, dude, how awesome would it feel to beat those guys and to be celebrating on their 50 yard line? Just having a blast. And that's a motivating thought.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Mm-hmm.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:I'm not motivating him. I'm helping him think things so that he can motivate himself.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Mm-hmm.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:anything you wanna add to that?
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:No, I think that's great. That's a really good example.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:So let's talk about the last one that I have written here. How you think and feel impacts how your teen thinks and feels. Um, one of the things that I like to ask parents, Cortni, this will be fun. I'm gonna ask you.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Oh.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Are you having fun parenting your teen?
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Um,
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Let's narrow it down to last week. Yeah, have fun. Last week, parenting your teen.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Fun might not be the word. Um, I used to describe it. Am I falling into your trap? Oh, no.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Did you enjoy parenting your teen last week? I.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Um, I think there were moments yeah. Where I did, yeah.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Yep. Awesome. Here's the secret. If you enjoy parenting your teen, there's a pretty darn good chance that your teen enjoyed being parented by you last week.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Uh, that's questionable, but we'll go with it.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Yeah.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:feel better.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:I'm telling you, I coach enough parents and their teens that I'm pretty sure this is true. And if you have fun with your teen. Your teen is way more likely to be having fun with you. So if you can make parenting fun, your teen's gonna have more fun than your teen. How you think, how you feel, how you behave, impacts how your teen thinks and feels and behaves. I'll be honest with you, there are a lot of adults in our world right now who are not very motivated.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Mm-hmm.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:We sit here wanting our teens to be motivated.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Mm-hmm.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:And this goes along with what we talked about last week. Be the change you want to see If your teen isn't motivated and you want your teen to be more motivated, ask yourself, how can I be that change that I'm looking for? How can I be more motivated? And the better you get at understanding your motivation and what motivates you, the better you'll start to understand your teen's motivation and what motivates them. Anything you wanna add to that, Cortni?
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:No. Um, I was sitting here thinking while you were talking, while absorbing all of your wisdom. Um, you know, the more parents I talk to that of. The who have boys in this the same age as my son, the more I realize he is just like every other teenage boy. frustrating as some of the struggles I have with him are, you know, lack of communication and not always the most more motivated or that's 95% of the boys. You know, of the parents I speak with, um, I think it's a phase. I think they're learning and it just, it's gonna take time. Um, don't try not to be too hard on him anymore. I should say that, like, when it comes to not communicating and, um, being proactive, I'm trying to be more encouraging and not harping and complaining.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Yeah, while you were talking about that, it reminded me, I went to education conference, one of my favorite ones.'cause one of the speakers was like everything we're talking about, like throw it out the window. It's all such garbage. And anytime like someone's like, look. The main way is garbage. And he talked about like, what does normal mean? And he started doing some of the tangible normals, like what's the normal I. heighth for a teenage boy and he told us the normal and then he is like, what's the normal range? The range was huge. He's like, yeah, it's normal to be six six. Like that's still in the realm of normal. It's normal to be under five foot. Like a lot of parents, they look at the. I'm not a math genius. I don't even really know what I'm talking about. Like they look at like, what's the, the exact normalness. Like okay, an average 15-year-old male should be five foot seven. And they're like, whoa. Oh my goodness. My son's only five foot five. He is not normal. We forget about the range and I guarantee you your teen. No matter what they're dealing with, no matter how big of a knucklehead you think they are, sometimes they're still a normal teenager dealing with normal teenage stuff and dealing with a lack of motivation, especially in today's world. I hate to tell you this, it is completely normal and don't catastrophize don't. Start breeding the seed of fear that, oh no, my teen's gonna live on my couch in my basement for all of eternity. No, your teen's motivation's gonna change. And by the way, a lot of teens aren't motivated to do school, which I. I hated school when I was a teen. I hated school when I was a teacher. The only time I liked school was when I was a principal and we made it fun. But the thing is, if your a teen isn't motivated in something, let them suffer the consequences. Like when my oldest wasn't motivated to go get a job, I quit paying for his cell phone. I quit paying for a bunch of stuff. All of a sudden he was motivated to go get a job like. Your teen is normal. Their motivation is going to change and let them deal with the consequences of their choices, and I promise it will have a positive impact on their motivation.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Yep.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Okay. Um, let's talk about a couple of things that you can do to motivate your kid. A lot of people are like, don't bribe your kids. It's the worst thing you can ever do. I love bribing kids. It worked great when I was a foster parent. It works great with my kids. It worked phenomenally well with my students when I was a principal. And if you think about it, most of us wouldn't go to a job if they didn't bribe us with a paycheck. So one of the things that I like to do when it comes to bribing, first of all. I don't usually call it bribing because people just think poorly of it, but
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:we call it an incentive?
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Yeah. But it's still bribing. But yes, an incentive. One of the things I like to do is I like to identify what are my teen's values, and I can incentivize them based on their values. Like I've had jobs where they're like, Ben, we'll pay you more. I, I don't want more money. I want more freedom. Gimme more time off. I'd rather have that than money. When we can understand what our teen's values are and when we can incentivize them based on their values, that's a powerful way to motivate them. When I coach football, there are certain kids that are highly, highly motivated by. Like the crowd and looking cool and having approval. There's kids that don't care about that at all. They care about having a good connection with their friend that they're playing next to. When I can understand my players' values, it helps me better coach them and helps them to be motivated. Cortni, what do you think about understanding your teen's values and incentivizing them based on their values?
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:I mean, I think it's important to know what their values are. Um. Just, I don't know. So you know their priorities, what's important to them, and then you can meet them at, at that point you can connect with them based on their values, not what you feel their
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Should be.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Right?
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Yeah. And here's a little warning, like if your teen's, number one top value is smoking weed. That might not be the value that you want to motivate them with. If their number two value is just getting totally plastered over the weekend, that might not be the value that you want to motivate them with. Keep finding values. If you know that there's a movie that they're excited to go see, offer to take'em. Your teen probably doesn't want you to take them to the movies, but you could offer to send them and a friend to a movie. Like you don't have to do your top. Your teen's top value if it's out of alignment with your top values, but just move down their value list and find one that you can get behind, and that's a powerful place to start.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Mm-hmm.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:So if I were to just, I don't know, kind of distill this into its most powerful form, number one, what, Cortni, if you.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:No, it was great because, no, you're great distilling. Yeah. I think,'cause I've caught moonshiners on TV here and there, and so I, I totally understand what you're saying.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Yeah,
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:going. I
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:I haven't even seen moonshiners. I don't don't even know where we get the term distilling, but If I could just give it in a little powerful little message when it comes to motivating your teen, understand what they're thinking, that's keeping them from being motivated, and then I. Realize that they're responsible for how they think, but know that how you think impacts how they think and show up and be the parent that you want to be,
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Mm-hmm.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:that'll help you inspire new thoughts that might help motivate them. But ultimately, whether or not they're motivated, they're responsible for that. So you don't have to take that burden on as their parent
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Mm-hmm.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:I.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:In its purest form.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Pure. Yeah. No imperfections in that. Okay. I wanna remind you, if you have a question about parenting teens, you're welcome to On your podcast app, there's a little link that says, text Ben, you can hit me up with any questions that you might have. You can ask anything you want, and. Cortni and I will answer that to help you know how to best parent your teenager in a way that aligns with you and your values. So with that, we're gonna let you go, Cortni, tell all the good people goodbye.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Goodbye so long farewell
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Oh man, we're gonna, that's the second time this podcast you've broken out into song.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:I just must be feeling it today.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Yeah. Yeah. The next time, oh, we should do a live event where we do karaoke.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:Oh, I would love karaoke.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:See, I have never done karaoke in my life.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:What?
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Well, I don't drink, so like, you're not gonna get me up there by accident.
cort_3_03-14-2025_124814:something tells me you don't have to have cocktails to sing karaoke and be goofy.
ben_3_03-14-2025_114810:Well, I'm just saying someone who's resistant. Like I know of people that are like, oh yeah, we'll just get you drunk and then you can do it. Yeah, I'm not gonna do, that's the reason I don't drink. Okay guys, we'll see you next time.