December 4, 2013 — Janine Caffrey, EdD

with Louise Kuo Habakus and Alison MacNeil

If you have middle school kids, then saying the words “tween drive and motivation” may make you roll your eyes.

Do you struggle with setting limits on how much time your kids can spend on the iPad?

Does the world feel upside down sending a misbehaving tween for a time out in a bedroom full of games, screens and devices?

Do you find yourself starting the day off on the wrong note because you had to yell to get the kids up, or out the door in time for school?

Do you have a bright child who is under performing at school and pretty apathetic about it?

These are the kinds of parent struggles that drew us to Janine Caffrey’s book, DRIVE. This book didn’t hit my radar when it came out in 2008 because my oldest was only a second grader. Now fully immersed as a middle school parent, I am all over this stuff.

Janine Walker Caffrey, EdD has over 20 years’ experience in education. She founded the Renaissance Academy, a private school in Florida, and is the Director of the Drive Institute.

Janine became concerned with the trend of young adults who have been given everything yet lacked the motivation to do anything for themselves. Plainly speaking, they’re too comfortable and have no drive. She delved deeply into the dynamics of “Generation Me” and found:

• Kids today are over-scheduled with no time for imaginative play.
• They have every need and want–physical, emotional, practical–anticipated and provided by parents.
• The result is young adults with poor problem solving skills, rampant entitlement, and no passion.

Horrible, huh? And this is from parents with only the best intentions. Parents who want to get it right! Enough with the negative… Janine lays out simple pragmatic solutions for parents to implement immediately such as:

• Pushing middle schoolers back outside to play in the neighborhood.
• Limiting screen time to two hours per day.
• Putting your child 100% in charge of waking themselves up for school!
• and much more.

Janine says, “If you continue to provide all the comforts of home, your children will never want to leave.”

I don’t know about you, but that’s not what I had in mind.

Fortunately Janine notes that middle school is the perfect time to intervene and change behavior because kids this age are still open to trying new things.

We’re all ears as we gear up for our interview with Janine on nurturing the internal drive of our middle schoolers and we hope you will join us for this vital conversation on December 4th on PRN.fm and archived on iTunes.

Louise Kuo Habakus is Executive Director of Fearless Parent, lead host and producer of Fearless Parent Radio, and mom of two. She is a published author, runs the non-profit Center for Personal Rights, lectures widely, and has appeared in numerous media outlets, including ABC World News Tonight, Fox & Friends, and The New York Times. Louise was a Bain consultant and a C-level executive in the financial services industry. She holds two degrees from Stanford University. She is an advisory board member of GreenMedInfo.

Alison MacNeil, MSW, LICSW is a social worker and psychotherapist with more than 15 years of clinical experience. She holds degrees from Trinity College and the Smith College School for Social Work. Her professional background includes positions with a community mental health center in southeastern Massachusetts, Family Services of Greater Boston, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s Healthcare Associates. Alison is a published author and a co-founder of the Thinking Moms’ Revolution.

Photo credit: Doug Haddad