When kids pursue their desires, whether they allow you to motivate them or not, they face difficulties and may be discouraged many time along the way. In fact, every unsuccessful event may cause them to give up. Their natural reaction may not be “I should try something else” but “Maybe this is not important enough to me”. After all, they are just kids and this is a natural reaction for most people.
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Sometimes, the hardest thing for parents is to get their kids to accept their attempts to motivate them. Kids may treat parental attempts to motivate them as nagging or forcing when they have not given their permission to help them. Whether you like it or not, help is something that needs to be accepted.
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For some kids, working together is a great motivator. Many times, when kids need to do something they do not know how to do, it is a big relief for them if someone else is experiencing the same challenges. Suddenly, they are not alone.
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It was the summer of my first year of Special Education studies and I was initially given a group of 12 kids in Grade 5. They were mostly boys (for some reason) and the dynamic of the group was problematic. The camp was located in a wonderful forest with a creek running through it and overlooked by beautiful ruins of an ancient village.
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Planning is a great motivator for many kids and helps overcome many of the fears kids have. When kids learn to plan their time, their actions, their budget, their social life and their activities, they get a sense of control instead of feeling overpowered by external sources.
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Fear is our emotional reaction to something we perceive as danger. Fear is the most painful stick in the motivation toolkit and unfortunately, it is the most common tool parents use to motivate their kids, mainly because their parents used it and their parents used it…
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One good way to inspire motivation is to use others who have succeeded as role models and try to learn from them. Can you imagine kids growing up to think that many people around them, both younger and older, are sources of inspiration?
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Success depends on the ability to move forward and requires persistence. We succeed at work, in our social life, our parenting, relationships, love life, finances and health only if we can keep moving forward in spite any setbacks.
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Just like praise and appreciation, rewards are a wonderful way to motivate kids. I think it is very important to understand that rewards are second-level “carrots”. Usually, rewards are required when you have exhausted all your praises and they do not seem to work. Sadly, this usually happens when your kids do not trust that you mean what you say.
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Every person has different motivation tools. Some people are motivated by “carrots” (encouragement and rewards) and others by “sticks” (threats and punishments). Some want to get something for their efforts and others do things to avoid being hurt or feeling bad. I will describe all the motivation tools, but I would like to encourage you to shift away from sticks and towards carrots. In my opinion, sticks are short term motivators, but they are draining and stressing both for parents and for kids. Success on a test to avoid negative parental reaction has an expensive emotional price attached to it – fear, stress and loss of trust.
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