Tween & Teen

Calgary parent educator Judy Arnall, author of Discipline Without Distress, has a 10-year-old son who often needs some motivating nudges himself. She offers these tips:

Motivating tips

• Remember that you have the most power before kids turn on the computer or TV or get involved in some other activity. It’s much harder to drag them away once they’re watching the show. So if you need your child to brush her teeth or complete a chore, insist it gets taken care of now, before the TV is turned on.

• Don’t underestimate the power of solid routines. If your kids know that they always do homework before supper, or that chores are done first, and they can then have an hour on the computer, you won’t have to fight about it every day.

• Give them choices. Make a list of chores to be done and ask everyone in the family to sign up for two or three — and the last person to put her name down is likely to get the least desirable options. If there’s homework to be done, let them pick their preferred time to do it — that might be right after school for one kid, and just before bed for another. You offer to support their decisions by making sure the computer or TV is turned off when it’s time to work.

While those tips may make it sound as though motivation is all about getting chores and homework done, it’s not. Your goal is to help your child become a well-rounded adult, and part of that is exploring interests and developing skills. Parents can help their children develop other interests, Desmarais says, by looking for areas where they show some natural ability or a spark of enthusiasm, and acknowledging and supporting that. If you’d like your son to be more physically active, for example, don’t try to push him into hockey because you loved it as a kid; it may be bowling or martial arts that appeal to him.

This seems to be the secret with kids who are highly motivated: They work hard because they are doing something they’re interested in and enthusiastic about, and that comes from inside, not from external pressures. As a parent, the most you may be able to do is offer your child as many options as you can.

Originally published in Today's Parent, April 2009