How to make your kids motivated
It is not unusual for a parent to worry about the long-term prospects of their children.
Especially during the child’s teenage years, when they go through that ‘everything is boring and uncool’ phase, it can seem like they are rejecting everything, have no ambition and be the opposite of motivated.
Parents can take solace in the fact that they are not alone in their worries.
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise."
This could be said today by pretty much any Boomer.
But of course it was famously said by Greek philosopher, Socrates, in the 4th Century BC.
(You can read the full Socrates quote here, although it is not recorded if he shouted this while sitting in a comfortable armchair and wearing slippers).
So, firstly, remember that teenagers have been troubling adults for pretty much forever.
Secondly, it’s quite interesting to learn from scientific research that ‘The problem with kids these days’ phenomenon also says something about the grown-up part of the equation too.
Kids these days!
In a 2019 study, University of California researchers asked adults to rate today’s youth on 3 characteristics -
Respect for their elders
Intelligence
Reading
But before the participants were asked this, they themselves were rated on these 3 traits.
The research findings were clear.
When the researchers compared the two sets of responses, a distinct pattern was clearly observable.
The higher a ‘grown-up’ rated themselves for a particular characteristic, the lower they considered the youth of today.
However, this trend did not spill over to the other tested traits.
For example, being a strong respecter of authority did not predict if an adult someone thought that teenagers had less intelligence.
So, if you’re worried about your kids lacking motivation, it might be worth considering if being highly motivated is a key factor in your own life and whether that is being projected on to your offspring.
But even more interesting regarding motivation are the case studies that stress the amount of praise that you should give…
Motivate by giving praise or not giving praise?
Intuition might say that giving someone praise is motivating.
But the type of praise is crucially important.
A remarkable study was carried out in 1998 with 400 American 5th graders that had a focus on giving praise for talent and giving praise for effort.
The power of different types of words were dramatic.
STEP 1 - Six words of praise
All the 5th graders were given a simple test of puzzles to complete.
Then their tests were marked and given back to each child with 2 groupings.
50% were told 6 words of ‘intelligence praise’ - ”You must be smart at this”.
While the other 50% were given 6 words of ‘effort praise’ - “You must have worked really hard”.
Did these words manipulate the children’s minds to success or failure and have an impact on persistence and performance?
STEP 2 - Choose your next test strength
The next step in the research was to give the children a choice on what type of test to take next.
They could voluntarily choose to take an easy test or a hard test.
2/3 of the group praised for Intelligence, chose easy task.
They didn’t want to risk losing their smart label and potentially fail.
However, 90% of the kids that were praised for effort, chose the hard task.
They were more interested in taking on a challenge and prove how hard working they were.
Step 3 - The impossible test
No matter which test the children chose to do, both groups were given the same test which was designed to be so difficult that it was impossible to pass.
The group praised for intelligence interpreted their failing at the test as proof that they were no good at puzzles.
The group praised for effort, persevered longer with the test, enjoyed it more and didn’t suffer any loss in confidence.
Step 4 - An easy test again
The final step was to give all the children from both groups the chance to do another test that was the same difficulty as that first easy test that they had completed.
The group praised for intelligence showed a 20% decline in performance, compared to their own first east test.
The effort praised group on the other hand, increased their scores over the first test by 30%!!!
Failure had given them more motivation, perseverance and enjoyment of new challenges.
The researchers were so amazed at the results that they repeated the experiment at 3 different locations across the country and with 3 different ethnic background groups.
The results were identical.
Effort based praise results in high levels of motivation
Praising children’s intelligence harms their motivation and harms their performance.
This type of ‘you’re so talented/brilliant/intelligent praise’ teaches children to pursue easy challenges at the expense of real learning.
However well intentioned, intelligence/talent based praise results in over confidence, entitlement to easy work and resulting lack of motivation.
Always choose to praise because of the level of effort given to a task if you want your children to continue in their pursuit of difficult challenges and remain motivated.
Matthew Syed - Bounce
This last section detailing the praise experiment was taken from the the excellent book, BOUNCE by Matthew Syed.
Chapter Four, ‘Mysterious sparks and life-changing mindsets’ goes much deeper into this this topic and is mind bending if you are interested in increasing motivation in yourself, your family or your work colleagues.
The whole book is rammed full of fascinating case-studies from the world of sports and behavioural science on how to improve performance and mindsets to achieve success.
Highly recommended!
