The Fastest Way to Kill a Child’s Motivation and How to Avoid this Mistake
Raising a self-motivated child is the metaphorical holy grail of parenting. Some parents get lucky and their kids find a passion (other than video games and being social with friends) that peaks their self-motivation from a young age. For the rest of us it’s a struggle.
This struggle often leads a parent to dangle carrots out in front to try to jump start their child’s motivation. Maybe even in a worst-case scenario use a stick. Either way, the hope is that a little external (i.e., conditional or tough) love can motivate a child to develop self-motivation.
When done with the right touch external motivation can lead to self-motivation, but without that right touch it can also kill a child’s motivation completely. Simply stated, proceed with caution.
With this in mind, there is one mistake that’s easy to avoid yet parents who use external motivation still make it far too often. This mistake will almost instantly kill a child’s motivation.
Here’s an example scenario…
Your child is struggling in math class. She may possibly fail the class if she doesn’t make a drastic change in her study habits. So, you offer her a reward! You tell her if she passes the class you will buy her the latest and greatest iPhone. As a result, your child’s excitement is through the roof at the possibility of getting a phone upgrade and her motivation is at an all-time high to study.
It’s at this point you think your work is done, but it’s not. Your child fails the next test anyway and her motivation to try any more is completely destroyed. It turns out that she isn’t struggling in the class because she wasn’t doing her best to study before. She is struggling in the class because she doesn’t know how to study and what to study.
The mistake you made was you didn’t find out the root cause of the problem. Instead, you just assumed the only problem was motivation. While motivation may be part of the problem, solving a motivation problem without solving the “what” and “how” problem is counterproductive. In this case your child did need some motivation, but she also really needed a tutor. Motivation like this without a plan for success is like getting all dressed up with no place to go.
In short, providing a child with a carrot or stick motivation without having a plan to set them up for success is a huge and avoidable mistake.