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    Tamarra Malone

    English 101: Rhetoric

    Mr. Newman

    Textual Analysis

    Complementing Your Teen

    Most parents think that praising their children every time they do something good is the

    best way for them to ensure repeated good behavior but psychologist Richard Weissbourd says

    that even though the parent says well done the child will not know what specifically they did

    well on. Parents often shower there kids with phrases like way to go to boost their childs self-

    esteem but in all actuality the child would not repeat this behavior because they do not know

    how to apply the skill that they got a compliment on, to different situations. In the article The

    Right Way to Praise and Compliment Your Teen from the January 2014 issue of Family Circle

    MagazineElizabeth Foy Larsen applies ethos and pathos to effectively tell about the right way to

    compliment teens.

    In the beginning of the article Larsen uses pathos to connect to the reader and show her

    experience with giving her teenager a compliment. The author tells a story about her 13 year old

    son who has not been following the rules and misbehaving. She says Peter, had been pushing

    his limits of his allotted 30 minutes of screen time. Wed been arguing about his gaming

    addiction, particularly after I woke up at 1 a.m. and found him tapping away in the dark,

    mapping out his futuristic metropolis and the breaking of a third school-owned laptop, and his

    insistence that not finishing his homework in time for hockey practice was somehow Mom and

    Dads fault.(Larsen). Larsen then explains how her son was all of a sudden doing something

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    right in the mist of his wrongness. She tells a story about her teenage son behaving and

    controlling his anger toward his brother and sister who are making a lot of noise while he was

    trying to do his homework. Larsen then describes how proud she was and says So if it seems

    strange that this moment made my heart swell with pride, its partly because there have been way

    to many times when Peter hasnt been able to control his temper. Not blowing up at his siblings

    was a great leap forward for him(Larsen). She states that she wanted to give her son a

    compliment in that moment but she did not know how. She did not want to compare her son to

    his siblings and imply that he behaved better than they did and she believes that kids receive too

    much praise(Larsen), so she did not give her son the compliment. The author described her

    family situation to make the reader connect to her and her family. She wanted to create a sort of

    bond with the audience so they could see why she wrote this essay.

    Later in the article Larsen uses ethos so that she could give more credible information on

    how to compliment teens. The first piece of information Larsen gives is from psychologist

    Richard Weissbourd who says The main goal of praise is reinforcementthat is, encouraging

    children to continue to act in ways that lead to positive outcomes.He thinks that teenagers

    should get compliments but not on easy tasks like taking out the trash our putting their laundry

    away. He says This kind of reflexive praise makes too big of a deal about ordinary

    responsibilities that should be apart pf family life. Arguably, Dr. Madeline Levine says that

    parents should give compliments, just not all the time because they will eventually lose all

    meaning to the teen. She says that parents should be more subtle with their compliments so that

    they seem more sincere. Teens usually respond better to casual compliments rather than

    compliments that seem to be overly positive. Dr. Levine also says that teens who get

    compliments that seem to be phony or fake they start to feel manipulated and they do not see the

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    compliment as a compliment but as a manipulation. On the other hand, Dr. Wendy Mogel says

    that parents should not give compliments at all because teens know when they have made good

    decisions and mature choices. She says And the intrinsic gratification they get is its own

    reward. Larsen utilizes Richard Weissbourd, Dr.Levine, and Wendy Mogels ideas to give her

    article more credibility and make it a more reliable source.

    In her article Larsen uses pathos and ethos to successfully tell how to compliment teens.

    It gives the reader a connection to the author and makes the reader see that the article is reliable

    enough to use the ideas told in the article on their own teenagers. Larsen utilization of ethos and

    pathos makes her writing more reliable and relatable.

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