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 selfesteem 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
Magazine Elizabeth 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

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

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.