What Should I Tell My Siblings To Get Them To Work Harder? Tips That Don’t Lead To Fights
The crumbs from our pepperoni pizza were still glued to the kitchen table Sunday night when I looked over and saw Jax, my 14-year-old brother, had his phone tucked under his algebra textbook, scrolling fast enough to make my eyes hurt. Across from him, 16-year-old Lila’s college application draft sat open to a blank second page, while she painted her thumb nails a very pale pink. I’m 22, and I spend most weeknights here while my mom works 12-hour shifts at the local hospital, so getting them to do their school work is mostly my job these days. Six months ago, I would’ve slammed my coffee mug down and said something like “Put that phone away, you’re never gonna pass that test if you don’t work harder.” That would’ve ended with Jax rolling his eyes, shoving his textbook in his bag and locking his bedroom door, and Lila snapping that she knew what she was doing and to leave her alone. I’ve been there enough times to know that line doesn’t work.
When I first started taking on this role, I thought my job was to be the enforcer. If I just reminded them enough how much is riding on their grades now, they’d buckle down, right? I pulled out every generic line I’d ever heard: “You’ll regret this later,” “Hard work pays off,” “Do you think I get up at 6 a.m. for my college classes for fun?” None of it stuck. After one particularly bad fight where Jax yelled that I didn’t get it and stormed out, I sat on the back porch drinking cold coffee and thought back to when I was his age, failing my first high school chemistry test. My dad yelled at me for not working hard enough, and I just thought, what’s the point? I already know I’m bad at it, studying won’t change that. I wasn’t lazy. I was scared I’d put in the work and still fail, and the whole test felt so big I didn’t even know where to start. That’s when I realized I’d been asking the wrong question this whole time. I wasn’t asking what’s stopping them from working harder, I was just telling them they needed to work harder.
That Sunday night, I tried something different. I didn’t say anything at first, just folded the clean laundry that had been sitting on the couch for two days, then walked over to Jax’s side of the table, leaned against the edge instead of standing over him like a drill sergeant. I said, “That midterm’s got you stuck, huh?” He paused, then put his phone down, said yeah, all this factoring stuff makes no sense. I study for an hour and I still get half the problems wrong. I didn’t say “No you won’t, just try harder.” I said, “How much have you gotten done so far?” He showed me the page, he had two problems done, both wrong. I said, “Let’s just do the first three together, that’ll take 10 minutes, max. Then you can get 5 minutes of TikTok to yourself. Sound okay?” He sighed, but said okay. We did the three, he got two right. When he solved the second one on his own, I just said, “See that? That’s two more than you had 10 minutes ago. That counts for something.” He didn’t say anything, but he closed TikTok and did the next three on his own.
After that, I walked over to Lila. I said, “What part of the essay are you stuck on?” She said “Everything. All the ideas I have are stupid. I don’t know what colleges want to hear.” I didn’t say “Your ideas aren’t stupid, just write something.” I said, “Let’s just write down three random things that happened to you this month, no matter how boring. No fancy writing, just list.” She thought for a minute, wrote down “Got a flat tire on the way to work, had to change it alone,” “A customer yelled at me at the coffee shop because I got his oat milk wrong,” “Found a stray cat behind the grocery store.” That third one turned out to be the thing she wanted to write about, how she and the neighbor got it vet care and found it a home, and it made her realize she wants to study veterinary nursing. We spent 15 minutes just jotting down notes, no pressure to make it perfect, and she ended up writing more that night than she had in two whole weeks.
What I’ve learned over the past few months is that the right things to say aren’t big, inspiring speeches. They’re small, specific, and they don’t put kids on the defensive. Instead of “Why aren’t you working harder?” ask “What’s the hardest part of this right now?” Nine times out of ten, they’re not avoiding work because they’re lazy, they’re avoiding it because the whole task feels too big to tackle, or they’re scared of failing, and no one has asked them what’s actually getting in their way. Breaking the work into tiny, 10-minute chunks takes that overwhelming pressure off right away. I also started giving them control over their breaks, instead of demanding three straight hours of work. I just say “Once you finish this section, you can take 10 minutes to do whatever you want,” and that’s way easier for them to agree to.
I also stopped tying their effort to some big, far-off reward. I don’t say “If you work hard now you’ll get into a good college” because that’s years away, and it feels abstract to a 14 or 16 year old. Instead, I celebrate the small effort, not just the final grade. Jax got a B- on that algebra test, which is lower than he wanted, but I pointed out that that’s a whole letter grade higher than his last test, and he studied way more this time than he did then. That’s the win, right there.
It doesn’t work every time. Night before last, Lila still put off finishing her essay to watch a show with her friends. Jax still sometimes hides his phone under the table and skips homework to play games. I still get annoyed, and I still slip up and nag sometimes. But we don’t scream and slam doors anymore, which is a bigger win than any perfect test score. I used to think I needed the perfect speech to get them to turn it around, but turns out all you need is to stop yelling about working harder, and ask them what’s getting in the way. Most of the time, that’s enough to get them to start.
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