How Parents Accidently Teach Their Children to Have a Shortcut Mindset
I write often about motivation and mindset. Motivation is the energy to act. Mindset is a thought pattern that directly impacts how one leads their life. Today I want to point out a common parenting scenario that links these two together.
I always tell parents specifically that they should avoid using extrinsic motivation with their children. Parenting with extrinsic motivation is basically when a parent uses carrots and sticks to convince a child to do what they want them to do. On the other hand, intrinsic motivation is when a child does something on their own inclination. In other words, an intrinsically motivated child has self-motivation.
For the difficult things in life, developing a child’s intrinsic motivation is hard. It takes both patience and strategy. In short, it’s a process. A process in which a child may fall behind their peers while working through it. For obvious reasons, parents with high expectations have a hard time accepting this.
The Shortcut Mindset
As a result of not wanting to see their kids fall behind, parents rely on extrinsic motivation as a shortcut to the process of developing intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, taking shortcuts is a mindset. When someone has a shortcut mindset, they never learn how to enjoy the journey. The problem with not learning how to enjoy the journey is that in everything you do, your goal is to get done faster. What’s more, always being focused on faster causes you to miss out on the learning from experiencing the long path.
Coach John Wooden has a great quote on shortcuts that illustrates this point.
Wooden states:
If you’re working on finding a shortcut, the easy way, you’re not working hard enough on the fundamentals. You may get away with it for a spell, but there is no substitute for the basics. And the first basic is good, old-fashioned hard work.
When a parent makes the decision to rely on shortcuts to motivate their child, they are also deciding that shortcuts are part of their core values. Furthermore, once a parent does this the message they’re sending to their child is that results matter more than process. This mindset has implications beyond just motivation. This could lead to the use of dangerous performance enhancers as a shortcut. Lying as a shortcut. Cheating as a shortcut. Stealing as a shortcut.
Unquestionably, teaching a child to have a shortcut mindset is risky at best. History shows that getting ahead in the short run is not worth the consequences one may face in the long run.