Click for full show notes, exercises, and word-for-word scripts from this episodeDoes it ever seem like your teen purposely does the exact opposite of what you ask? This is a perfectly normal part of adolescence and the experts say not to worry about it. But, let's face it, sometimes as a parent you really do need to be able to persuade your teen to do what you are asking. How can parents be more influential? In this episode I got some answers from persuasion researcher Jake Teeny.Jake has published a number of studies on persuasion and has even created a free online course called The Science of Persuasion to teach research-based influence techniques. So this guy knows what he's talking about. He explained to me that there are two different routes through which people can be persuaded. If you want your teenager to form a lasting attitude as a result of your persuasive attempt, then you want to persuade through the central route. This means that you need to get your teen to invest some energy and carefully consider your message.How do you make sure this happens?Jake told me there are two factors: motivation and ability. Your teen has to be both motivated and able to carefully consider what you are saying. Most likely your teen has the ability unless he or she is really tired or feeling particularly lazy. So Jake taught me some strategies to increase motivation. For instance, he explained how to frame a message in terms of your teen's values so that he or she will view it as more self-relevant and will be more motivated to consider it.