Encourage and Encourage Some More

Find as many opportunities to acknowledge how hard our youth are working. It takes five words of encouragement for every one word of criticism for our youth to internalize the encouragement. “Thank you for helping,” “You’ve worked so hard,” “I appreciate that you helped your friend,” “Thanks for cleaning up” are examples. Recognition of efforts made is the key to further and continued good acts being done. Be careful though, and try not to over-praise.