Helping Your Child Find Motivation
If you have a strong enough “why” you can endure any “how.” This is a paraphrased idea courtesy of Friedrich Nietzche that I find to be very true in life. But man! Constructing a “why” strong enough to do something difficult can be pretty tough in our adult lives (for example, I procrastinated on writing this blog post), let alone our children’s lives.
So how do you give your child the motivation to do something they don’t currently feel like doing?
Many situations would cause you to click on this blog, but they all likely fall under the umbrella of, “I want my kid to ______, but they don’t want to.” You might want your teen to join a team sport, do their chores, achieve a certain level of academic excellence, or you may want your 7-year-old to stick with their piano lessons. Whatever situation brought you here, I’ve got you; it can feel difficult to motivate your child, but the bulk of that process comes down to agency, agency, agency.
If you’ve read any of my other blogs, you know I’m an absolute fanboy for personal agency. For the purposes of this blog, I’m defining personal agency as the ability of a person to affect desired change in their environment.
Agency is the water and sunshine to the tree of motivation. If you don’t think you have the power to change anything in your world, why even try? Children don’t have nearly as much agency as adults do, and there are good reasons for that. But when I talk to children and teens whose parents tell me they are unmotivated, I find that those children and teens don’t feel like they have any control over their life.
For example, many children report that they don’t like school at all. If coupled with activities or extracurriculars that they didn’t choose or that they don’t enjoy anymore, it’s easy to see why they may not be tremendously motivated. The crux of this is that most children have more agency than they think they do.
With this knowledge, our mission becomes helping our children and teens understand the agency they have; we can do that by offering them an opportunity to earn something they really want by doing something you would like them to do.
This can be offering an allowance for chores, or more screen time for better grades–the formula is the same as long as you have something your child wants and something that you want them to do.
For the practical example, I’ll give you the one I hear most often. “He only seems to want to play video games. Instead of playing video games, I wish he would do ____.” This is something many parents face–I know mine did. For some families, it feels like a battle between video games and everything else.
Usually, when I encounter these situations there is some sort of screen time limit in place already, but the child definitely wants more. So what I like to ask these parents is, “What would your child have to do to earn more weekly screen time?” Most parents have no trouble answering this because typically it isn’t the video games that are the problem, it’s the exclusion of other activities. If your child has a good group of friends, other activities that he enjoys and gets good grades, you probably wouldn’t mind if he also played video games.
With this question, we have already defined both of our variables: what the child wants and what desired action he can take to earn it.
I know some parents may dislike the idea of using video games as a reward, but I would argue that if you were to play video games in adulthood (as I do sometimes) it would fit into your life best as a reward. Once all your responsibilities are fulfilled and the day’s work is done, you get to play a video game (or experience whatever media you choose). Because of this I think video games can work great as a motivator for your child to do what you need them to do.
By now you may be thinking, “Ok Ben, fine; we’ll use video games as a motivator. But how do I set that up? How do I give them agency, control, and power while still motivating them to do what they need to do?”
As usual, I’ve got a bulleted list of actionable steps for you! My hope is that you’ll use these steps to hatch a plan in tandem with your child or teen that will be a win for both of you.
Identify what motivates your child, and what you would like them to do. We have a practical example of something that your child might want, and most parents can usually come up with something their child really likes, even if it isn’t video games. Likewise, many parents can envision what they want their child to work on; the key here is to be as specific as possible with the desired action. That way, your child knows exactly what they need to do to get the outcome they desire.
Decide how much of the reward you’re okay with giving. This is a really important part of the process, given the next step. You have to know what boundaries you’re going to hold. It’s completely up to you to decide what you’re okay with giving or not giving, and under what circumstances. In the screen time example, you can say, “If you do ____ every week, you can play as much as you want on Friday night. But you can’t play at all on Friday if you don’t do ____.” You can do it however you want here, just as long as you feel like the reward is commensurate with the amount of effort the child will put in, and you know you’ll be able to give the reward as consistently as possible.
Have the conversation: I usually advise families to have these conversations when the child is regulated, on a good day. The car can sometimes be a good place to do this or in a child’s room before bed. As for how to start the conversation, I like to use something like, “I want to make a deal with you,” or “I want to make you a proposition.” if you want to just incentivize something. For something you really need to happen, such as the video game example, you would say, “We need to restructure how screen time works. From now on, you’ll need to earn screen time by doing ____.” They’ll definitely protest, then you’ll say, “This can actually be really good for you–you’ll be able to earn more screen time if you keep up your end of the bargain.” And then you’ll explain the structure of the reward system you have come up with. I like to advocate for parents to invite their child to have a say in how/what they earn; after all, agency is the name of the game, right?
At the end of the day, how you structure the reward system is up to you. No one way works for every family, but hopefully, these steps can help you put some structure in place that will reward your child for doing something you need them to do.
Interested in booking a session with Ben?
WRITTEN BY BEN KINSEY, LCSW (HE/HIM/HIS)
Ben uses an eclectic approach to therapy, based on the needs of the child and their family to work toward their goals of treatment. He practices Child-Centered Play Therapy with toddlers and younger children, and employs Cognitive-Behavioral, Dialectical-Behavioral, Systems and Existential approaches with adolescents and teens. In any case, the trust and rapport between his clients and himself is the most important aspect of what he does; he believes the most powerful motivator for growth and change is through relationships.
