Is your child resisting doing homework or studying for a class assignment? Many parents know these worries all too well. It's perfectly normal for children to sometimes feel listless when it comes to school. However, to prevent a small slump from becoming a permanent condition, children should be motivated. We'll explain how this works below.
Motivating children is an extremely important educational component that is essential if your child is to mature into a responsible adult. Trusting that your child will master everything at his or her own pace is not always the best way. Sometimes a little encouragement is needed, but this does not mean excessive pressure to perform.
By motivating your child, he or she will experience how good it feels to achieve success. They experience that efforts are worthwhile in order to achieve important life goals. This is not only a great advantage during their school career, but also later in their professional life.
In order to motivate your children, you need to understand and target the basics of child motivation. In the following, we will look at the basics of children's motivation in detail.
The three essential prerequisites for motivation are that your child sees the task at hand as meaningful, feels up to it, and feels a certain urgency. The latter could be the case, for example, if the homework has to be handed in the very next day.
From the motivational factors mentioned above, it is easy to deduce which aspects have a negative effect on children's motivation. For example, if the child does not see any sense in a task, he or she will not complete it voluntarily.
Overchallenging and underchallenging also affect children's motivation. Surely you know it from yourself: If you feel overwhelmed, you usually give up quickly, since no success can be expected anyway. In the case of underchallenge, the child's boredom plays a role. This is the reason why numerous highly gifted children stand out due to demotivation and poor school grades.
In turn, encouragement, recognition and a sense of achievement have a positive effect on a child's motivation. When the child realizes that he or she can succeed and receives recognition for this in the school and parental environment, his or her joy in learning will return.
You want to motivate your kids, but you're out of ideas on how to do it? Then the following eight tips may be helpful for you.
In the case of school frustration and refusal to learn, it is obvious that you as a parent focus only on the current problem. If the child does make an effort, this fact is often lost in the hectic family life. It is extremely important to praise children for every effort they make. Even if the situation is difficult at the moment, there are certainly things that your child masters well.
The fact that praise has a motivating effect on children is even scientifically proven.
Take an interest in the topics your child is currently dealing with at school - or in general:
Honest interest awakens motivation and conveys the feeling of being taken seriously. In addition, your child does not feel left alone with difficult tasks.
Children should learn in a quiet, orderly place where they feel comfortable. The latter is especially important. Sometimes negative conditioning has taken place, which affects motivation and thus learning success. In this case, the child associates his workplace with stress, tears, arguments and hardship.
If your child is already defensive at the sight of his or her desk, it may be a good idea to change the place where he or she learns. Let your child learn in the kitchen, in the living room, or even outside in the garden or on the terrace. A positive atmosphere increases the willingness to learn.
Every person has their own internal clock. This also applies to children. While one child is still fit after school, another needs a breather before he can devote himself to learning and homework. In this case, guide yourself according to your child's needs and don't try to force anything. Or how would you feel if your lunch break was canceled?
Children are naturally inquisitive. Unfortunately, the natural urge to explore often diminishes when learning is suddenly perceived as a compulsion. However, you can reawaken your child's curiosity by giving him or her plenty of room for creativity while learning.
Learning is often much easier if you illustrate the subject matter with funny example stories, act out arithmetic problems with units of measure or think up mnemonic devices.
Especially when there is a lot of homework, it makes sense to create a structure first. Your child should first complete the small and easy tasks to have a sense of achievement and get into a work flow. Afterwards, it will be much easier to devote themselves to the more complex tasks.
If there are difficulties at school, leisure activities that give the child a sense of achievement can work wonders. In this way, your child feels that effort is worthwhile (e.g., in sports). This insight can then be transferred to the school environment.
It is important that your child enjoys his or her leisure activities and does not see them as an annoying obligation. There should be no additional pressure to perform, but rather a mental balance.
Depending on how old your child is, he or she may already understand the broader purpose of school, homework, and learning. For example, explain that you, as well as every other adult, had to learn at school in order to get your dream job and earn money later. If you want to shape your life according to your own wishes later on, you first need a good school-leaving certificate.
Sometimes parents reach their limits and external impulses are needed to motivate children. This is especially true when the situation is already very tense and messy. However, the latter is of course not a basic prerequisite for making use of learning coaching.
Learning coaching is based on the child's individual needs and provides help for self-help. The child is guided to discover and exploit his or her own resources in order to have fun and success in learning again.
If you are interested in learning coaching training yourself, take a look at here over. Many parents have already taken advantage of this option with success. Also our free E-book could be very interesting for you.
Self-regulation requires a certain mental maturity, which develops individually in each child. Self-regulation means recognizing the necessity of certain tasks and setting priorities that are guided by reason. Put simply, the child learns even when he or she would prefer to meet with friends because he or she knows that this is important.
You can encourage your child's self-regulation by giving him or her age-appropriate tasks for which he or she must take responsibility. This can start on a small scale, e.g. by giving them smaller tasks around the house or allowing them a flexible time window in which to do their schoolwork.
As mentioned earlier, you should support your child through praise and recognition. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. If you want to motivate children, you should not (only) criticize their weaknesses, but emphasize their personal strengths. In this way, your child will gain self-confidence, which in turn will have a positive effect on his motivation.
Motivating children is not only important during their school years, but forms a foundation for their entire lives. Those who have positive learning experiences in childhood and acquire a functioning learning routine can benefit from this throughout their entire working lives.
To be able to motivate children, you need above all patience, empathy and your own positive attitude towards learning. Do not work with pressure and coercion, but try to rekindle your child's joy of learning. In many cases, learning coaching is a suitable option in this regard.
