Good Parenting

You’ve probably been there:

You’re tired. You come home from work, and the simple things you asked your child to do to help out remain undone. A poor report card is sitting on the table, and a video game console is sitting in the middle of the floor in front of the television, surrounded by cartridges and snack crumbs.

Frankly, you’re not too happy about it. You’ve told your kid countless times that he needs to help out around the house. You’re exhausted when you get home. Is it too much for him to set the table and pop some ready-made bread dough in the oven? Or at least refrain from making a mess that wasn’t there this morning when you left for work?

Not to mention your child’s future. You’ve told your child countless times that grades are very important for getting into college and getting a good job. So why isn’t anything getting through?

In this article I’m going to share four things your child needs to develop excitement and motivation, both in studies and around the house, and some unwitting mistakes parents and teacher sometimes make in trying to boost the unmotivated child. These four elements are encouragement, a conducive environment, example, and balance.

Encouragement: When a child fails to do something, it’s so much easier to notice than when a child obeys, because obedience doesn’t cause a problem. Everything is smooth sailing when a child does what he should. So children tend to hear about the bad things more than the good, and this creates two serious problems in a child’s motivation. First, hearing mostly the bad news can be very discouraging to a child who makes a mistake, forgets something, or just isn’t very good at something. Between these three elements, discouragement can cover a whole lot of ground. I’ve seen smart, eager-to-please children simply give up. In more advanced cases, a discouraged kid will stop caring what people (you) think. For a parent or teacher, losing a child’s respect has disturbing consequences. When a child no longer cares about pleasing you, you’ve lost considerable influence to guide him in the right direction, in any area of life. The good news is, this can often be reversed, since most children are very resilient when conditions change.

The other problem with discouragement is that, if it’s the only attention the kids receive, they figure bad attention is better than none, so they misbehave on purpose just to hear from you. So quality time together is important, and it’s important to make a permanent habit out of looking for the good and commenting on it. Rewards are nice too for spectacular achievements, but too much of that can create an expectation of entitlement that will ultimately disappoint the child in life, or the temptation may crop up to substitute quick, convenient rewards for the quality time and encouragement that any child needs, no matter how full a schedule is, for healthy development.

Besides too much or too little praise, other encouragement killers include setting expectations that are too high or too low, promising rewards for performance and then failing to give them for any reason, and comparing children to others (including yourself) in either a positive or negative light.

Conducive environment: In order for a child to obey or succeed in anything, he has to have what he needs to do the task. If you fail to notice too many things, your kid won’t explain after a while. It’s possible you believe he’s just making excuses to get out of work, and eventually that may become the case. He’ll just get lazy, even when you do remember to provide everything. This is especially true if he gets an earful for not living up to his expectations and you’re not hearing him when he tells you why. So to succeed in his studies he needs a clean, well-lit, quiet study area with a comfortable temperature, freedom from hollering and other distractions, time to do the work, regular hearing and vision checks, an assignment notebook, communication with teachers, tutoring if there’s an area where he’s struggling, transportation to tutoring and the library, all necessary school supplies, proper diet, exercise, health checks and rest, and motivated friends who aren’t getting into trouble. Too many household chores, and he won’t have time to study. Too few and he’ll develop an addiction to entertainment. If there’s marital discord being expressed withing his hearing, he’ll be thinking about that rather than his studies. If there’s a lot of hollering when he’s studying, either directed toward him or simply within his hearing, he may associate studies (or worse, the home) with fear. Fear is unpleasant, so he’ll develop an avoidance attitude toward anything he associates with it.

Instead, create a strong association between work and enjoyment. Why not turn off the television at dinner time and keep some encyclopedias by the table? Have fun quizzes and entertaining facts during dinner to encourage a love of learning. The child has to agree it’s fun, which will take some creativity on your part.

Also, you can leave a healthy but particularly favorite treat on your child’s desk at the beginning of study time. It’s best to avoid sugar, which can make your child tired and moody. Honey is much better. Alternatives to food can include fun pencils, cool assignment books, tickets to educational events like science centers with good programs for children, etc. Of course you can’t leave little presents every day, but the idea is to get a child to feel pleasure whenever he thinks about work…fun things associated with work. Leaving toys will only create another distraction.

Example: Children who love to read often have parents who read a lot. Children who enjoy work not only have parents who make it pleasant, but who take pleasure in working themselves. I know-this can be a challenge if your boss is unreasonable or your job is stressful and the tasks you face at home only add to the complete exhaustion you already face. Sometimes treating yourself to some well-chosen morale boosters can have a big impact on your kids as well. This also helps prevent the exhausted parent’s temptation to have the kids do everything, from making dinner to fetching shoes and glasses, taking care of the baby, bringing everyone drinks, and doing all the housework when guests are coming. If the kids are doing too much around the house, they’re not studying and it may lead them to the wrong impression about what you think of work. They need to see you enjoying being busy, too. If it means cutting down on activities, that’s fine-in the end you’ll feel better and more rested, too.

Balance: Too much of a good thing can be bad. Praise for a child’s success is good, but too much praise for very small accomplishments can diminish the impact of the praise and make a child disrespect your efforts. Unduly withholding praise in order to increase its value can discourage a child, too. Too much of anything isn’t good. Time to study is important, but if it robs a child of family time, that will impact your kid’s development and attitude. Chores teach a child to keep a neat house, teach him the value of work, prevent him from having time to get into trouble or developing an addiction to video games or entertainment. Too many chores, or chores that are above a child’s development level, and you can end up with a child with a bad attitude or even health problems.

The bottom line is, if you make it easy for a child to do what you ask, he’ll develop inner motivation and rely less on parental policing to get things done to the best of his ability. This is the key to creating positive, permanent habits that won’t disappear as soon as he heads off to college and into the real world.