How to Motivate an Unmotivated Child
Soaring with your child to greater heights
Published on 07 June, 2024
Parents would be familiar with the challenge of motivating their children toward learning. More specifically, the lack of motivation toward the things that require delayed gratification, such as completing their homework in a timely manner or preparing for upcoming assessments.
Once getting them on task, the next challenge is helping them to stay motivated for the longer-term. And the question that all parents face is – how?
Every child is a precious gift, with unique strengths and dispositions that call for more than a one-size-fits-all solution. As parents, we intuitively want to solve all our children’s problems to spare them the suffering, but what if it isn’t so much a problem to be solved quickly, but a challenge to be properly understood first?
In this article, I suggest 4 general principles for helping our unmotivated child to become motivated and to stay motivated:
1. Begin with ourselves
For parents, the goal of helping our children to discover and sustain their motivation cannot be achieved without first taking a step in the right direction, which is to examine our own relationship with motivation, and checking that we’re modelling the best possible example authentically and consistently. Our children are always watching, observing, and imitating us, even when we least want them to. “Walking our talk” therefore requires that we regularly calibrate what’s in our hearts, for everything we do flows out of it.
Whether we prefer journaling or taking a slow walk in the outdoors, it helps to use simple reflective questions as regular “checkpoints”:
- What motivates me as a parent, and where does my motivation come from?
- What am I inspired by?
- How well do I model delayed gratification, and where can I do better?
- Why am I on this journey of motivating my child, and what is my end-goal? (more on this toward the end)
Motivation comes from knowing that you are able to become better at what you are learning, academically or otherwise.
2. Build our ‘trust capital’
Have you noticed that your words land differently when you take on a caring, reconciliatory tone? This is the power of cultivating a trusting relationship with our children, one where they know we are their safe harbour. Even in their most trying moments, they feel safe to bare their hearts to us. This “trust capital” isn’t built overnight, however; it takes cumulative, consistent actions over a period of time. It’s the deeper “whys” of our child’s unmotivation we want to work on.
For example, unmotivation can be due to repeated feelings of discouragement or defeats from our child’s lack of mastery in an area. In such cases, we can meet this need by intentionally looking out for and celebrating every bit of progress, followed by fine-tuning the next goal for them to ensure it is age-appropriate and achievable. Motivation comes from knowing that you are able to become better at what you are learning, academically or otherwise.
I remember when my son would drag his feet to football lessons and show no interest toward it no matter how much we cheered him on. It turned out that he was overwhelmed by the significant difference in abilities between him and his peers, and had internalised the belief that he was simply not good enough. It took us some time to establish enough trust before he felt safe enough to open up. After he did so, we were able to address it immediately by switching him to another class that better matched his needs.
The deeper “why” can only be uncovered and addressed adequately if we share a deep, trusting relationship with our child.
3. Include ‘fun’ in the everyday
Injecting moments of bite-sized fun into the everyday is likely to be more impactful than a once-in-a-while fun activity. As a family, what are some fun things you can do daily to inspire one another toward growth? Making it a family endeavour has the added bonus of forming deeper relationships. (Big Life Journal has some great ideas you can adapt for yours!)
Grocery shopping is my golden opportunity to engage my son in seeing real-life benefits to all his mathematical learning from school. I would set aside a budget for the grocery list, and we would hunt for the best deals together.
Besides doing simple additions and subtractions, he’s learnt to appreciate that divisions and multiplications are especially helpful in stretching our dollar, such as when there are bulk discounts. Apart from being a fun activity for us, any unused part of the budget also goes toward his savings, which motivates him toward becoming better at the numbers game.
Undeniably, our grocery trips end up taking time. But I’m assured that this investment of time toward our “trust capital” will yield its due rewards at some point.
The purpose of explicitly modelling a healthy response to unmotivation is so that they are led to discover intrinsic motivation for themselves eventually; it is not for us to be their motivation.
4. Keep the end in mind
As parents, we’re the ones with the knowledge and experience necessary to make decisions in the best interests of our child. Identifying the right goal starts with us being clear about our role – ultimately, we want to raise children who will grow into independently functioning adults. This may mean having to fight against the reflex to quickly swoop in and “rescue” our child from every unmotivation, and recognising that some struggles may be necessary and does not always mean we (or they) are failing.
The purpose of explicitly modelling a healthy response to unmotivation is so that they are led to discover intrinsic motivation for themselves eventually; it is not for us to be their motivation. The former nurtures independent individuals with a growth mindset, while the latter creates dependent individuals. Since switching to a different football class, my son has been able to experience the intrinsic reward that comes from simply knowing that he is able to become better at the sport. He no longer needs repeated reminders to get ready for his training.
The journey of motivating an unmotivated child is long-term, as different life stages of our child bring different challenges to be overcome together. However, the privilege of getting to do this with them in ways that no others can, keeps us going.
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