Inner Inspiration: How To Motivate Your Children?
As the New Year begins, adults are setting goals for the following 12 months. The New Year motivates us, and inspires us to new achievements. Why don’t we help our children feel the same?
Motivation is what forces us to act in a certain way or to repeat certain patterns of behavior. Motivation can be external or internal.
While external motivation is mostly translated with material goods, the internal motivation is more about our inner desire to achieve goals.
A child who has internal motivation moves forward to success willingly, looking with pleasure and joy for the ways to achieve the goal. In contrast, external motivators make the child dependent. When there is no more reward, the kid stops behaving the right way.
How to keep your child motivated? You need to know him/her as a person: what he/she likes, what inspires him/her, what gives positive emotions, and on the contrary – what makes your child feel exhausted.
I want to offer you some tips you can use with your kids, depending on their hobbies.
1. Set the goals for your child. They will become landmarks for your little one. Let the goals correspond with the age and desires of your kid. The goals can be as simple as studying a poem or getting up for kindergarten or school on time.
2. Plan. Divide the target into small regular steps. The poem can be learned one line per day. To wake up on time in the morning it is necessary to go to bed earlier. Help your child plan all these little details.
3. Appreciate, encourage and inspire. Encourage your child by talking about his achievements. Motivate your little one to try again if he/she has failed. This way the kid will understand that you believe in him/her, and it would be enough to make the kid seek success. Support your child, praise not only for achievements but for making effort and trying as well. Show by your own example how great it is to achieve your goal, explain how it helps you in life, what impressions you get due to your perseverance.
4. Give options and don't be intrusive. Remember that motivation should be enjoyable. Motivation will stop charging your kid for success if it becomes a routine, an uninteresting duty. Give the child a freedom of choice, let him/her do what brings him or her more pleasure. The more positive emotions we receive, the more energy we accumulate for the new achievements.
When encouraging a child, do not turn it into a bribery: as soon as the encouragement disappears, the desired behavior of the child will vanish as well. Material encouragement works in certain situations, but it will not help in creation of character and life values. Finding pleasure in the process of doing something can also be a good encouragement.
With love, Elizabeth Cole