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How To Motivate Unmotivated Kids

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How To Motivate Unmotivated Kids

“Just do it,” as Nike says is catchy but most people don’t become highly motivated by a picture and an inspirational saying. If that worked, I would not hear from parents, “My child is unmotivated and lazy.”  Why are some kids so difficult to motivate? Does your child get too much screen time or is it the absence of recreational programs due to COVID?  Does your child have a developmental problem?  Maybe it’s just that many kids in our area live in the land of entitlement.

Start at Home

Start at home if you want your child to be a motivated self-starter. Give your child age appropriate responsibilities rather than doing tasks yourself just because it’s easier as compared to nagging your child. Kids feel better about themselves when they feel like they are contributing to the family. Regardless of your child’s age, start now. Ask yourself, “What am I doing for my child that he or she needs to do for him or herself?”  Make a short list and then have a sit down to discuss your child’s new responsibilities.

Motivate with Prestige, Power, Praise

Most parents try to motivate their child using incentives including toys, screen time, or events such as a play date.  While that works for some children, other kids are motivated by either prestige, power, or praise.

If your child is motivated by prestige, then reward him for a job well done with a best kid award to put on the refrigerator, a public compliment in front of friends, or something that makes him feel prestigious.  If she is motivated by power, give her choices.  “When your work is done, you can do this or this. Which one do you prefer?”  Or say, “When the work is done, you get to pick the restaurant for dinner.”  If praise motivates your child, lavish authentic verbal praise upon him.  If he had great behavior at school, verbally praise him and then place a praise note in his lunchbox so the praise encourages another great day.  Motivating kids occurs in small steps and motivators change with time.  Check out Rick Lavoie’s book, “The Motivation Breakthrough.”

7 Steps to Help Reach His Potential

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As a parent, it’s frustrating to know (and most parents assume they know) that your child is intelligent but yet, in school, does not work up to what you perceive to be his or her potential. Parents become discouraged and call their child lazy, unmotivated, slacking, and other similar words.  When describing her son’s lower than expected grades a parent recently told me the old adage, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.”   I agreed but responded with, “You can salt the hay.”  This means we can entice our children to perform better academically but ultimately the best drive to perform must come from within.  So, how do you help your child reach his academic potential?  It’s an ongoing process since your child did not spontaneously arrive at their current state overnight.  Of course, you must believe in your child, encourage and affirm their efforts, provide homework help, and be her advocate.

But how do you really help your child reach his or her academic potential?  Here are 7 steps to help you help your child reach his or her potential. 

Step 1.  Determine his or her potential through a comprehensive evaluation.  You can’t really know how hard to push your child without knowing where your child is at cognitively.  It could be like your car not performing the way you want it to and instead of looking under the hood, you just yell at it.  Open the hood, check out what’s really going on.

Step 2. Based on the evaluation, set up a realistic plan.

Step 3. Specify short and long term rewards as well as consequences.

Step 4. Explain the plan to other key players and obtain their support.

Step 5. Implement the plan.

Step 6. Evaluate the plan weekly.

Step 7. Adjust the plan based on the weekly feedback.

Repeat as needed. Often it’s helpful to have a counselor, therapist, etc. available as a
mentor to help you work through these steps. If you need ongoing help then one of my associates can help you with the process.  I can help you with the assessment to determine your child’s true potential.  It’s not as expensive as you think so call me to discuss your child.

If you like to read books to help you gain new insight, read Rick Lavoie’s book called “The Motivation Breakthrough.”  I especially like his advice on competition in schools.  You might enjoy it too.  He explains that many teachers say it’s good for school to be competitive because that’s how things are in the real world.  Rick argues that is not always the case because in the real world we only compete when we want to.  In schools a child can’t tell his or her teacher, “I’m not doing the class spelling bee.”  They are forced to compete.  He suggests parents and teachers have students compete to do their personal best rather than being the best. He has some other good points too.

 

You Can’t Motivate Teenagers

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…Unless they want for them self.  Face it– adults have motivation problems just like teenagers. A few years back I used to regularly work out but now I don’t. Why? I’m not motivated. I know I should work out. I have incentive to work out. I get punished if I don’t work out (weight gain). It’s not that I physically can’t work out. It comes down to this: I don’t want to work out. It’s my choice.

To be effective, motivation must come from within. In order to motivate your teenager from within they must learn to want it (whatever that ‘it’ may be: good grades, entrance into the college of their choice, achieving a goal, money, etc.). They should have the above components and most of all they have to want it. It is difficult to motivate a person if they don’t want it for themselves. Parents can’t always do it for their teens and if your teen does not want, for example, good grades then sometimes they must hit bottom before they learn to want it. Hitting bottom may be contrary to what you were thinking.

Do you want your teen to hit bottom now within the support of your family or hit bottom when they are in college or out living on their own? I vote for having my teen hit bottom while living at home and I’m around to help prop him or her up. I don’t want to rescue my teen and make it all disappear but I do want her to experience the consequences of real life. Let’s assume my teenager failed a course and had to retake it during summer school. I’m not going to gripe that it was the teacher’s fault and demand a grade change. Nope, she can retake the course and work harder.

In order to motivate my teenage daughter I encourage her and speak positive words to her. I reward the effort and not the grade. I offer tangible rewards. I impose consequences for lack of effort. We keep up with her grades on Edline.

All these components take a lot of work from my wife and me. Our daughter is a high school junior and is an excellent student. We support her but she understands that if she fails, she faces the consequences and we’ll hold out a hand and help her up.

Dr. Forgan is a licensed school psychologist in the Jupiter, Florida and Palm Beach Gardens, Florida area. I can evaluate your child for ADD/ADHD, testing for Palm Beach gifted programs, or a learning difficulty such as dyslexia.