There are few things that can turn me into a motivational speaker faster than one of my kids getting a bad grade.

It usually starts reasonably enough.

“Did you study for the test?”

“Yeah.”

“How much?”

“A little.”

And somewhere around there, I can feel the speech beginning to form.

Because I'm not really thinking about the test anymore.

I'm thinking about effort.

I'm thinking about work ethic.

I'm thinking about college.

I'm thinking about the job he'll have ten years from now and apparently how his future boss is going to react when he asks to retake the quarterly earnings report because he didn't prepare enough the first time.

Before long, something that started with one test has become a lecture about his entire future.

My wife and I are both guilty of this.

And the strange thing is, we usually know when we've lost them.

The answers get shorter.

“Okay.”

“I know.”

“I get it.”

Eventually, they stop responding altogether.

At that point, a reasonable person might conclude that the conversation is over.

As parents, however, we sometimes arrive at a different conclusion:

Maybe I just haven't explained it well enough yet.

So we try again.

A different example. A different analogy. One more warning about college or jobs or what the real world is going to be like.

If I just explain it one more time in a different way, he'll get it this time.

Except I'm not sure he does.

Mostly, I think we both end up more annoyed.

And lately I've been wondering whether the problem isn't how well I'm explaining the lesson.

Maybe it's that I'm the one doing all the thinking.

The Lecture Usually Isn't About What Just Happened

I don't think most parents lecture because we enjoy hearing ourselves talk.

Although my kids might dispute that.

We lecture because we can see something our kids can't yet see.

I've been working for decades. I've been to college. I've made good decisions and plenty of bad ones. I understand consequences that a teenager simply doesn't have the life experience to understand yet.

So when I see one of my boys put very little effort into something important, I don't just see that one decision.

I see where that behavior could lead.

“You didn't study, so now you have to retake the test.”

becomes:

“You don't get retakes in college.”

which becomes:

“You definitely don't get to keep redoing things at work because you didn't prepare.”

And underneath all of that is the thing I'm actually worried about:

What does this tell me about the person he's becoming?

Does he value hard work?

Is he willing to do things he doesn't particularly feel like doing?

Is he okay with mediocrity?

Will he take his future seriously?

Those are much bigger questions than whether he got a 74 on a test.

And because the stakes feel bigger to me, I talk more.

That's the irony I've started to notice.

The more important I think the lesson is, the more likely I am to lecture about it.

And those may be exactly the moments when lecturing works the least.

The More We Care, the More We Talk

There's a basic problem with the parent-teenager relationship:

We have perspective they don't have.

That's part of our job.

But it also makes it very easy to believe that if we can just transfer enough of our perspective into their brains, they'll make the same decisions we would.

So we explain.

And explain.

And when they don't seem to be taking it seriously enough, we interpret that as evidence that they still don't understand.

Which means, obviously, we should explain some more.

But think about what's happening from their side.

They probably understood our basic point three minutes ago.

Now they're not thinking about the decision anymore.

They're thinking about when we're going to stop talking.

That's a very different mental exercise

Why Pushing Harder Can Create Pushback

There's actually a psychological concept that helps explain some of this: reactance.

When people feel that someone is trying to control their choices or beliefs, they can become motivated to resist—even when the person doing the persuading may have a perfectly reasonable point.

That matters particularly during adolescence, when kids are developing more independence and autonomy.

Research on adolescents and emerging adults has found that controlling parenting can be associated with greater feelings of pressure and psychological reactance.

That doesn't mean teenagers should get to do whatever they want.

I'm still the parent.

There are rules in our house. There are expectations. Sometimes the answer really is, “Because you need to do it.”

But there's a difference between setting an expectation and needing my kid to sit there until I am personally satisfied that he has absorbed the full wisdom of my explanation.

And I'm increasingly convinced that those are two different jobs.

Who's Actually Doing the Thinking?

This may be the biggest problem I have with lecturing.

Imagine I'm concerned about my son's effort at school.

I tell him:

“You didn't prepare enough.”

“You waited until the last minute.”

“You assumed you'd be able to get by.”

“You need to take this more seriously.”

“If you keep approaching things this way, it's going to catch up with you.”

I may be completely right.

But look at who's doing all the work.

I'm identifying the problem.

I'm analyzing what caused it.

I'm connecting it to a larger pattern.

I'm predicting the consequences.

I'm deciding what should change.

And what's his job?

Listen.

Or at least look enough like he's listening that I eventually stop talking.

Now imagine instead that I ask:

“What do you think happened?”

“How much did you actually prepare?”

“Do you think that was enough?”

“What would you do differently if you could take the test again?”

“What happens if you approach something the same way next time?”

Now he has to do something much harder.

He has to think.

That's an important distinction.

When I lecture, I'm asking my kid to understand my reasoning.

When I ask questions, I'm asking him to develop his own.

I've Seen This Work Better With Jobs

Interestingly, grades are probably one of the areas where I'm worst at practicing this.

Jobs have been easier.

Like a lot of teenagers, my son can be pretty particular about what kind of job he wants.

I don't want to work there.

I don't want to do that.

There's a desire to find the “right” job.

My wife and I could respond by giving them a speech about how your first teenage job isn't supposed to be your dream career.

And sometimes I'm sure we have.

But we've also had better conversations by asking questions.

What jobs did Mom and I have when we were teenagers?

Did those become our careers?

What did we get out of those jobs anyway?

What might you learn from a job even if you don't particularly like the work?

Why do you think having any job as a teenager might help you later?

The conclusion may end up being almost exactly what I wanted to tell them in the first place.

But there's one important difference.

They had to participate in getting there.

There's Something Powerful About Coming Up With Your Own Reasons

There's research behind this idea, too.

Psychologists have studied something called self-persuasion: instead of simply giving someone arguments for why they should believe or do something, you create conditions where they generate some of those arguments themselves.

Research suggests that, under the right circumstances, self-generated arguments can be particularly persuasive.

That makes intuitive sense to me.

If I tell my son:

“Having a job will teach you responsibility.”

he can agree, disagree, shrug, or wait for me to finish.

If I ask:

“What do you think you could learn from having a job besides how to do that particular job?”

now he has to search for an answer.

Maybe he says responsibility.

Maybe dealing with people.

Maybe showing up on time.

Maybe learning how to work for someone he doesn't particularly like.

Maybe he comes up with something I hadn't considered.

That's no longer me depositing wisdom into his head.

We're having a conversation.

And more importantly, he's practicing the thinking I want him to get better at.

And Then There Are Grades...

This would be a much easier article to write if I could now tell you that I stopped lecturing my kids.

I haven't.

Grades still get me.

There are times when I'm halfway through a lecture and I'm completely aware that there's probably a better way to handle the conversation.

And yet...

I keep talking.

I'm a work in progress.

And sometimes the difference has very little to do with parenting philosophy.

Sometimes I'm tired.

Sometimes I'm trying to finish something for work.

Sometimes I'm watching a show I'm interested in.

Sometimes there's a game on and I really don't feel like spending the next twenty minutes patiently asking questions until my teenager arrives at a conclusion I reached approximately eight seconds into the conversation.

Parenting advice sometimes seems to assume we're all operating under laboratory conditions.

We're not.

Our patience changes.

Our moods change.

Sometimes we handle a situation really well.

Sometimes we fall back into whatever habit comes most naturally.

For me, the important change may simply be that I'm more likely to recognize when I'm doing it now.

And occasionally that recognition is enough to make me stop talking and ask a question instead.

Probe, Don't Pounce

Of course, asking a question creates another problem.

Your kid might give you the wrong answer.

Let's say I ask: “Why do you think you didn't do well on the test?”
 
And he says: “The teacher made it way too hard.”

There it is. The opening.

Every parenting instinct in me wants to jump in:

“No. You didn't study enough.”

And maybe that's true.

But if I immediately correct him, I've just disguised a lecture as a question.

I didn't actually want to know what he thought.

I wanted him to give me the answer I had already decided was correct.

It's one reason Ask, Don't Tell became one of the guiding principles behind Food For Thought.

I call this: Probe, don't pounce.

Instead of immediately arguing back:

“What makes you think the test was too hard?”

“How did everyone else do?”

“How much did you study?”

“Do you think studying more would have changed the result?”

“What part of this do you think you had control over?”

Maybe after thinking it through, he still believes the teacher made the test too hard.

That's possible.

Teachers aren't infallible either.

The goal isn't to trick him into agreeing with me.

The goal is to help him examine whether his explanation actually holds up.

That's critical thinking.

And it's much harder to practice when Dad has already supplied both sides of the argument.

Sometimes You Should Just Tell Them

I don't want to turn every moment of parenting into a Socratic seminar.

“Put your seatbelt on.”

does not require:

“What do you think might happen if our vehicle suddenly decelerated?”

Sometimes kids need information.

Sometimes they need instructions.

Sometimes they need rules.

Sometimes parents need to say no.

And sometimes I have five minutes before kickoff.

The distinction I've found useful isn't telling versus asking.

It's thinking about what I'm actually trying to accomplish.

If I need my kid to do something right now, I may need to tell him.

But if what I really want is for him to understand something, examine his behavior, or make a better decision the next time...

​I should probably ask.

Try One Question Before the Lecture

I'm not suggesting you prepare an elaborate list of Socratic questions every time your teenager forgets to take out the trash.

Try something much simpler.

The next time you feel a lecture coming, ask one question first.

“What do you think happened?”

“What do you think you could have done differently?”

“Why do you think I care about this?”

“What do you think happens if this keeps happening?”

“What would you do if you were me?”

Then—and this is probably the harder part—let them answer.

Don't rescue them from five seconds of uncomfortable silence.

Don't turn their first sentence into an opportunity for your rebuttal.

Be curious.

Ask another question if there's something worth exploring.

You can always give them your perspective afterward.

The difference is that now you're adding your thinking to theirs instead of replacing theirs with yours.

Maybe I'm the One Who Needs the Practice

I don't think Food For Thought turned me into a parent who asks questions.

In some ways, Food For Thought exists because I've always been curious about why my kids think what they think.

I want to know why they believe something.

I want to know how they arrived at an answer.

And yes, there are times when I'm pretty sure they're taking a ridiculous position solely because they've discovered that it gets Dad more animated.

Teenagers have their own methods of experimentation.

But creating Food For Thought has made me more aware of the moments when I stop being curious.

Usually those are the moments when I care most about the answer.

The grade.

The job.

The decision that makes me wonder what this says about their character or their future.

Those are the moments when I feel the strongest urge to make sure they understand.

So I talk.

And talk.

And if they don't appear to be taking it in, I try explaining it one more time.

Maybe that's when I need the reminder most.

My job isn't always to explain the lesson until they finally understand it.

Sometimes my job is to ask the question that helps them discover the lesson for themselves.