What motivates kids to work hard? I sure don’t have the answer, but would love to discuss …

Fear, to me, is a paralyzer not a motivator. Can you actually be motivated by fear or do you use fear to clarify your goal and then go after your goal? You fear a bad grade, but your goal is to get a good grade. If you have learned, and have the confidence, that through hard work you succeed, you put in the work and get a good grade. Perhaps it started with a “fear” but it’s really important that you a) have the confidence that working hard will bring success and b) you have the focus as to what you want to attain. To be truly brave, you must feel the fear but then drive yourself through that fear. So are you fearful or brave? Your fears keep you awake at night, but your confidence in your ability to succeed gets you out of bed and allows you to succeed at what you “fear.” Kids/people who do not have the confidence that through hard work they will succeed, don’t try.

When someone says they aren’t “interested” or are “bored” many times that’s a sign that they don’t understand it and/or don’t have the confidence that they ever will get it. If they haven’t learned through their own experienced that hard work equals success, they will not be “motivated” to try. But what about the intelligent kid who has the ability to ace the test, yet chooses to do only enough work to “get by” because they aren’t “interested”? How to motivate them? Since I view fear as a paralyzer, asking them to worry about their grade doesn’t give them a tangible goal nor does threatening them with consequences. Neither method, it seems to me, works toward teaching them how to motivate themselves. To me, that’s a parenting goal: instilling self-motivation into my kids because lets face it, there is value in hard work and sometimes you have to “suck it up” and work hard whether or not you’re “interested” in what you are doing.

I’ll try to keep that in mind as I go worry myself into working and then drill my one year old on his colors while worrying that I won’t be able to pay for the private school where I will no doubt worry that he’s not taking enough interest in his schoolwork.