Who Is Your Teenager's Role Model?

• Kids choose positive or negative role models based on whether they have a growth or prevention mindset.
• A growth mindset looks toward goal accomplishment while a prevention mindset focuses on avoiding misfortune.
• We can help kids find positive role models using strategies such as nurturing their strengths and teaching them about failure.

Source: Belchonock/DepositPhotos

As teens grow into young adulthood, they look to others for ways to respond to life challenges. They learn strategies for achieving goals as well as notions of socially acceptable behavior. A substantial number of studies have shown that humans learn through modeling others. This is especially true during adolescence when young people struggle to develop a self-identity separate from their parents.

We most often think of role models as people with outstanding qualities, including their abilities to inspire others, express positive values, serve their communities, be selfless, and overcome obstacles. But it is important to understand that role models can have positive or negative effects on young people.

Does your teen have role models? Why do they admire them?

A Teen’s Mindset Determines Role Model Choices

Researchers have discovered why some teens are drawn to positive role models and others to negative ones.

The answer lies in the mindsets they adopt toward achieving goals. For example, young people are more likely to be inspired by positive role models when they have growth mindsets — when they see themselves as active learners and achievers who accomplish goals through hard work and perseverance. With this type of mindset, youth strive to achieve their best selves. And they look toward adults to show them the way.

A growth mindset can be contrasted to a prevention mindset. When youth approach life with a desire to prevent or avoid disasters and negative outcomes, they are more likely to gravitate toward role models who will help them learn avoidance strategies. These strategies might include cheating on tests or using drugs and alcohol to escape life challenges.

Simply put, when young people have a growth mindset, they are more likely to choose role models that provide the kinds of strategies that support their way of thinking. When they have a prevention mindset, they are more likely to choose role models who provide them with preventative strategies.

Positive role models boost young people’s motivation by modeling a guide to achieving success. They illustrate for youth a way of achieving goals and a sense of self-worth. Youth who have a growth mindset are likely to gravitate toward these types of positive role models.

Negative role models also boost young people’s motivation, but in different ways than positive ones. They do so by guiding youth toward strategies for avoiding failure. They often have a deep personal fear of failure and have found various coping mechanisms and strategies to avoid misfortune at all costs. Young people who have developed a prevention mindset are likely to find these types of role models helpful because they share similar fears.

Help Youth Find Positive Role Models

It is obvious that helping youth find positive role models is not a clear-cut or simple task, particularly if they have adopted prevention mindsets during their growing-up years. We must dig deeper — to help raise kids with growth mindsets.

Below is a list of five things you can do as a parent or teacher to understand growth mindsets and help children grow in ways that bring positive role models into their lives.

1. Read the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Carol Dweck’s groundbreaking research on growth and fixed mindsets gives parents and teachers tools to help kids achieve success.
2. Teach children that failure is necessary for success. Research shows that learning happens when kids get the wrong answers or make errors. You can help children see the good side of getting things wrong by adopting strategies that help kids learn from mistakes.
3. Encourage children to develop initiative. Young people with initiative are motivated from within to direct attention, effort, and action toward a challenging goal over time. This ability develops in pre-adolescence and plays a significant role as teens seek to define their own identities.
4. Nurture and discuss their inner strengths. These include empathy, curiosity, resourcefulness, and resilience. Research shows that young people who develop inner strengths during childhood and adolescence are more likely to flourish in school, careers, and adult life.
5. Talk with youth about inspirational heroes from movies and books. Heroes show children how to overcome a variety of life challenges and encourage a growth mindset from an early age.