Educational contract for teens

An effective educational contract can solve many problems at home. If you know how to use this tool well, you will be able to improve your teenager’s education and establish a good coexistence in your family.
You can use our digital resources to create educational contracts. Thanks to this application you can set goals, rewards and associate their fulfillment with a points system.

Thanks to our platform you can generate a contract for your teenage child with our educational contract creation tool.

Commitments your child makes in the behaviour contract.

First and foremost, and as the most important aspect of the educational contract, your child will be responsible for a series of commitments. Keep in mind that they are the key element of a behaviour contract.
For promises to be valid and to be used effectively in a contract, they must meet three conditions:

1. Realistic commitments: your child must be able to keep his promises. There is no point in promising to attend an English course in the summer if you both know that he will eventually go to camp. Set goals that can be met and that are not hindered by other activities.
2. Clear commitments: an objective that states that your child will take care of his oral hygiene is not the same as one that clearly specifies that he will brush his teeth three times a day. The difference is obvious. The better you measure an objective, the easier it will be to evaluate it later. Keep in mind that the way in which you express the commitment to be fulfilled is also fundamental.
3. Individual commitments: In this type of behavioural contract, it is better to establish commitments regarding behaviours that your child can fulfil on his own. If other people intervene in the development of the action, everything can become very complicated. Responsibility must be personal so that it has a direct impact on behaviour. For example, imagine that your child agrees to buy bread every day and bring it home before lunch. If you have to give your child money every day to buy bread, it may be that one day you are not at home and he cannot buy it. Try to make the responsibility direct and that there are no third parties on whom his target behaviour depends.

Rewards set out in the educational contract.

The second part of a behavioural contract is the rewards. This is where your promises come into play. Although secondary, this part is necessary in the contract and serves to establish a counterpart for your child.
As with commitments, a good reward must meet a series of characteristics to be effective:

• Personal rewards: for a contract to be attractive you should establish a reward that your child appreciates. Bear in mind that if your child’s request is punctual, the contract may lose interest for him if he does not value the reward. This can happen if you establish very long contracts and propose a technological reward. A video game console or a mobile phone can go out of fashion in a short time and your child could lose motivation for them. This would affect his compliance with the contract and would make it ineffective.
• Real rewards: the more specific you are about the reward, the better. If you can associate the contract with a real object, you will be avoiding future problems. Your child will be motivated by something tangible and when it comes time to grant it, you will have no problem finding it and delivering it. For example, a reward that is stated as “Spend a fun day with the family” is not the same as one that specifies in a real way: “Spend a day at the amusement park in my city.”
• Feasible rewards: As a parent, you should be able to achieve the rewards you set as rewards in a behavior contract. Sometimes you may commit to doing activities with your child, such as going to the pool for a day. When it comes time to redeem the reward, you may be less available than you thought and the reward may be delayed. Ideally, you should set a reward that you can assume immediately upon fulfilling the contract.

Also, keep in mind that there are a number of special conditions that a good behavior contract should meet.

And don’t forget to use our behavior contract creation app.

And don’t forget to use Our behavioral contract creation application.

References for writing “Educational Contract for Teenagers”

• Anderson, J. (2002). Individualized behavior contracts. Intervention in School and Clinic, 37(3), 168.
• Williams, R. L., Long, J. D., & Yoakley, R. W. (1972). The utility of behavior contracts and behavior proclamations with advantaged senior high school students. Journal of School Psychology, 10(4), 329-338.