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Speaker 2Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. This is episode 131 and today's episode, Unmotivated Children. I'm tackling the age-old hair-pulling problem. The age-old hair-pulling parental challenge of children's motivation. I hear so many parents saying, why don't my children care about doing well? Why don't they care about getting good grades? Why do they not care about giving of their best? And I guess it's this question that should we push our children or not? Now, if you subscribe to my newsletter, you'll know that I've recently talked about this very issue itself with an article that talked about this idea of jellyfish parenting. Now, you know, how I feel about labelling parenting styles. I don't find it helpful. I don't think it's useful. In essence, we all parent full stop. We don't need special names for the type of parenting because I think that that makes it much more divisive because we place people in camps and then we make judgments about them. Anyway, jellyfish parenting is characterised by, and I quote, few rules or expectations on children. And that kind of raised for me a very interesting question, which I wanted to cover in a podcast episode. So here we are the question, I guess. Well, there's a couple of questions here is, is it our responsibility as parents to create opportunities for our children that they wouldn't otherwise create for themselves? And by this, I'm talking about pushing our children to work harder, to enter into specific activities, to get, be tutored for selective schools, to be taking up specific sports, to be taking up languages and in a very strategic way. So that's one question that I have personally always adopted. This. And the other question is, is it our responsibility as parents to create opportunities for our children that they wouldn't otherwise create for themselves? And by this, I'm talking about pushing our children to work harder, to enter into specific sports, to get, be tutored for selective schools, to get, be tutored for selective sports, to get, be tutored for selective sports, to get, be tutored for selective sports, and leave them to choose approach with my children. Because I have felt that that has been really instrumental in them taking ownership. But I guess how we approach this particular question is actually depends on what we believe around life. So bear with me as I sort of talk you through this. Now, I personally believe that the poor choices, the dead ends, the failures, which our parents can often have foreseen, in my view, are an inherent part, of the journey. And it's a journey which eventually spits us out exactly where we're meant to be, warts and all. So my view is that I feel that when we push our children to reach their potential, because let's say we can see the mistakes that they're making, and for whatever reasons, our children allow us to direct them. I think that we do them a disservice. Because the likelihood is that they're going to end up somewhere they're not meant to be. So it's this idea. Is a perfectly smooth path through life of little or no errors fundamentally better than a great big wobbly path where you've made quite a few monumental errors? And in my honest opinion, I don't believe a perfectly smooth path with little or few errors is the right way to approach it. The second option, watching our children take the wobbly error-filled path, I believe is actually harder. As it really requires us to let go of our own ego. What we want for our children, the fear that we have of other people judging our parenting because we've allowed our children to fail and make poor choices. I think it is so much more difficult to do that, where we're just able to let them be and just let them choose. Not worrying about their choices maybe, we feel may reflect on our parent. What will people think? I sort of think creatives, innovators and disruptors, just to name a few, people who become creatives, innovators and disruptors, they don't follow the conventional path. Now that's not to say that your child is going to be any of these, but they might be stifling that with a very linear, neat, ordered path. I don't believe is the best way of going about it. So is my approach idealistic or do children really need active directing? So I wanted to do a bit of digging around. When I prepare for a podcast, I sort of jot down my own views. But for this, I'm going to do a bit of digging around. I'm going to do a bit of digging around. Particularly, I wanted to do a little bit of digging around in terms of whether there's any sort of evidence in terms of research. So I'm not going to blast you with science because I don't think that's it. You know, you listen to the podcast because you want my honest opinion. And my honest opinion is that we need to allow our children to fail. But there are a couple of things from a context perspective that we need to be aware of. Now, researchers have identified two types of motivation. And I think that these are crucial at helping us understand whether pushing our children is the ideal sort of way of going about things. Intrinsic motivation is one type of motivation that leads to doing something, whether that's a task or an activity, but doing it for its enjoyment. Or from a perspective of knowing that that is something that should be done and worthwhile engaging with. So intrinsic comes from within. Extrinsic motivation leads to doing things. An activity, a task, some homework, a piece of work, not for its inherent enjoyment or for its understanding its purpose, but for a separate outcome, which is usually an outcome of either fear or being told that they need to do something. So if we think about it, what we really want to do is we want to develop and promote, and we'll look at it when we look at my top tips. But we want to develop intrinsic motivation, a motivation that comes from within that the child or the child is able to do. The child or the teen has an understanding of why it's important to do that task. Now, intrinsic motivation doesn't necessarily mean that the child or the teen is doing it because they love it. They're doing it because they know that that's an important aspect of a longer term plan. Now, obviously, initially, it quite often is doing things out of the enjoyment. You know, when our children are younger, they'll play, whether that's Lego, whether that's building blocks, whether that's playing with train sets, whether that's playing with dolls, whether that's make-believe, whatever it is, it comes from an intrinsic, it comes from a motivation and a passion from inside. And when we're talking about it long term, and most people, when they ask me, most parents, you know, they're more interested in motivation from the perspective of academics. Let's remember that. Or for a child that may well be demonstrating some musical talent or some athletic talent that they're not necessarily seeing through. So intrinsic is the gold standard. That's what we want to work towards, because if we go along the extrinsic, this is about doing something because of something outside of them, an external driver. And so if we understand that those are the two types of motivation, what that can lead us to as parents, I've put it, there's probably multiple options. I've written it down. I've considered it as three options. One option is that we are the driving, motivating force. Now, if we are the driving, motivating force, then we are creating extrinsic motivation. And that leads to our constant pushing, nagging, arguing. Now, some of you may be listening to this and just think, do you know what, Mary-Han? It's absolutely worth it. I staunchly believe in academic success or in athletic success or in musical success or whatever it might be, and I'm going to go down that route. That's a decision that we all have to make in terms of parenting. I'm simply offering an alternative view. So when we're the driving force, it has to come from us. And so we can't expect where the motivation and the drive and the push and the nag has come from us, that our children will necessarily make that link between extrinsic, we're nagging, we're pushing, we're nudging, to then it becoming intrinsic. It doesn't work that way. So that's one option. We can just simply say, that's what I'm going to do. That's how I want to parent. But we have to understand that when we adopt that particular route, that's what we're buying into. That's what we're agreeing to. The other way we could do it is we could just simply, in lots of ways, the jellyfish parenting, if we want to give it a label, which we really don't, is that we leave them to find their own way. Now, the question and the concern for most parents is, but what if they don't find their own way? What if they make some monumentally poor decisions? Are we a bad parent because we've just allowed them to choose? And that, again, is a decision that we have to make. But obviously, if we leave them to find their way, then that tends to be much more intrinsic. So it's about them. And finding motivators from inside. The third, which is my preferred, is that we help unlock the motivation from within. So we're really helping our children find the things, the areas that they're particularly motivated and interested in. So we still set high expectations and boundaries. We just focus our energies on helping our children find the levers from within. Now, I know some of you will be listening to this saying, Mary-Han, I have tried. I have had my child. I'll introduce them tomorrow. multiple musical instruments, multiple activities. I've tried waiting for them to lead in terms of their homework and they are just fundamentally not intrinsically motivated. My reply is, hold on, my top tips are coming and hopefully that will be helpful. That's kind of the context because I think it's really important that we understand that context. All right, so here are my top five tips. The first is obviously if we're working on the basis that we want to focus on intrinsic, not extrinsic motivation. We're not the driver of the goals and achievements using rewards and punishment. That's extrinsic. What we want to do instead is look long-term at developing intrinsic motivation. Now, what's really crucial with intrinsic, this is not about sort of a bit of a cop-out and just allowing our children not to do anything. It's about setting high standards and expectations within your home. You create the family culture within your home. And as part of that, developing intrinsic is around setting high standards. We have high expectations and standard within our home. So for example, we expect you to try your best in all things that you choose to do. And within our home, within our family, we have an expectation that you take up one hobby or one interest and that you see that through. So when we talk a lot, there's a lot of research with Angela Duckworth has looked at, in terms of specifically around grit. And grit is this idea about sustained interest in a task, despite plateaus and periods of time where there's little or no progress. And we really want to develop grit because motivation occurs and continues to be intrinsic when our children take ownership and they see the direct result between their efforts and the reward. And we'll look at that a little bit in the second one, when we talk about the growth mindset. But intrinsic does not mean that we just wash our hands and we allow our children to do whatever. We don't. We talk regularly in a kind and compassionate way and an interested way around high standards and expectations. What are our children doing in order to achieve of their best? What are the choices they're making in terms of behavior? And also, what is this one hobby and one interest that they're going to see through? Now, some of you will be thinking it's really difficult for young children to achieve their best. And I'm not saying that. I'm not saying it's difficult for young children. It's difficult for any child, really, to necessarily know their passion. And I think we should avoid using language around finding your passion and your lifelong purpose. That's not helpful because, of course, what that does is that creates a huge amount of pressure, particularly on children who don't have anything particularly that they're interested in or that they really sort of have that strong passion towards. So this is really encouraging our children to select something that they agree with and that they're going to to put their effort and sustain that effort for a duration. And that duration is not weeks. It's not months. We're looking at years. And so it's just simply making a decision about what that might be. Now, of course, what can happen is a child can pick up one particular interest and then it's then sort of something else comes up that they're much more interested in. So I think we have to take a view with these things is that initially our children are probably going to want to try lots of different things and then they can find something. And this isn't doesn't have to be the passion piece. This just simply is a case of I am going to commit myself to this particular thing. I'm going to talk about the difference in terms of performance goals shortly. But just simply know that the first one is about setting.
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Speaker 2High standards and expectations, really talking language about trying your best in all that you do and then taking up one specific hobby or interest that you see through. Remember that our children are much more likely to do what they see than what we say. So remember that with all of these, my flip side is always going to be, what are you doing to demonstrate the high standards and expectations within your home that you are always trying your best and that you too have chosen to do what you see through. So I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. One thing that you are going to see through over a sustained period of time, despite setbacks, despite maybe peaks and troughs, and that you're going to continue with that. So that's the first one. The second one is remember growth mindset. So this is the notion that we can achieve anything that we choose to. It just requires practice. So this is this idea that our brain is a muscle, just like any other aspect of our body, that if we train, if we flex that muscle, if we repeatedly practice, then that muscle gets stronger, more powerful, and we're better able to do that. So promoting growth mindset is all around praising process rather than outcome. We're praising the efforts that our children put in on the basis that effort ultimately will lead to longer term success. So it's really thinking about how do we praise that in line with outcome? Oh my goodness me, you've done, you did incredibly. You got 10 out of 10 in your spellings. Or are we saying, I'm so impressed with the fact that you sat down every single night and you put each word into a sentence and you tried really hard. And I can see that you got two out of 10. That is not important. What was really important is the fact that you came home every day and that you tried really hard. Because the idea is that when we focus on process, when we that sends the message that actually trying your best within these high expectations and standards that we have, that we give of our best each and every time, that leads to an intrinsic motivation. If I understand that my efforts are fundamentally what's being rewarded, then that is much more likely to lead to intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic, particularly where we get children who for whatever reasons in a particular task, it seems to be something that they have a natural aptitude for. And that's what we're trying to do. And actually, if we're then praising outcome, if we're praising results, that child is much more likely to be extrinsically motivated. And when things become much more challenging and much more difficult, they don't have that internal mechanism that says, I need to step up a gear. I now need to work harder. What has been easier in the past is I can't do that anymore. I now need to step up and do that effort. So it's really remembering how important growth mindset is in terms of practice. Let's use, let's use language around the brain being a muscle that needs to be flexed and it needs to be exercised. And the neurons within our brain create these pathways, neurons that fire together, wire together. If we repeatedly do things over and over again, the connections become hard wired and things become easier, but it takes time. So it's really thinking about that growth mindset. And again, it's really thinking about that growth mindset. And again, it's really we flip that. What are you doing as a parent to demonstrate growth mindset? Are you constantly talking about outcomes for yourself? Or do you talk about the process? Do you give yourself that verbal congratulations in front of your children around the effort that you've put in? Or do you not? Do you constantly focus on the fact that you didn't achieve an outcome despite your children seeing you working really hard? So it's really important with all of these five points that we and we also ask ourselves, am I demonstrating this? Because so often we become frustrated as parents. We're really pushing that boundary. Why do they not care? Why are they not putting in the effort? But we don't always ask ourselves, well, how am I demonstrating this to my children as well? So the first one's around the setting high standards, which then leads to the intrinsic motivation. The second is growth mindset. The third one is a really important shift. And this is really important. So mastery is all about acquiring a skill or an ability for its own sake. Performance goals are about goals which are compared to others. For example, a mastery goal might be to be able to pick up a sheet of music and play piano confidently. A performance goal is passing a specific grade piano exam. Now, when we encourage and we talk about and we shift our children's thinking and their framing of things to much more around mastery, wanting to be able to, then that is much more likely to instill that intrinsic motivation because it's about just being able to reach a certain level of performance for the sake of it. And that's also really crucial when we go back to that first point that we talked about, about setting high standards and encouraging our children to take up one hobby or interest. Now, it may well be that they don't have anything that they're particularly, you know, hugely fascinated by but they make a commitment to gain mastery and so that's a much easier framing for our children it's much more likely to get that motivation and that intrinsic motivation I'm so sorry just a brief interlude I have got my dog who is nagging me to be fed so if you hear lots of noises in the background it is because she's literally all over me nudging me and simply saying can you feed me apologies let's go back to what we're talking about but the mastery goal is a really crucial one for all aspects and sometimes we can't necessarily talk about mastery goals because there is a very very specific when our children are working towards specific exams in the UK whether that's GCSEs or A-levels in lots of ways we can think that it's very much a performance but we can shift our language around mastery so when they're looking at learning and revising a master in that topic being able to this is where we could shift it it's not about getting an A in something or getting a an eight or nine if you're talking about the UK system for GCSEs but instead of talking about grade it can be mastery goals and master can all be about I want to gain enough mastery in that specific topic so that I can explain it to somebody else and help them so that they can understand it so that's another way that we can take what would look typically as a performance one to much more a mastery so that's a really really important shift that we have to kind of take so the first one's about setting high standards the second is around growth mindset the third is making a shift from for to mastery goals rather than performance goals number four is give children a sense of autonomy and this is such a crucial one quite often when we see our children not necessarily taking the initiative or struggling is that we often then take charge of our children instead it's much more important from a really young age so if you're listening to this podcast episode and you've got young really young children then really encourage and promote autonomy our your children are still going to love you if we encourage them to be independent but what happens is when our children are given autonomy they're giving their ownership they're allowed to make choices and those choices might not always be the best choices but they learn through the consequence and I don't mean consequences in a negative way as in you know but they learn what happens as a result of the decisions that they make but we really need to build that sense of autonomy rather than over parenting our children and smothering them and doing too much for them it's encouraging them to have autonomy making that developmentally appropriate it's not about age it's about stage is my child able to do their homework on their own is my child able to get themselves ready for bed on their own is my child able to get themselves to school on their own is my child able to make their bed is my child able to help with with laundry help around the house is really thinking about autonomy make choices about things we really need to encourage that and that can be supremely difficult if you happen to be like me and be a bit of a control enthusiast it can be really difficult because we often step in and fix and do for our children without even thinking about it so I would encourage you with that one to be really self-aware and really think to yourself right I'm going to almost audit myself I'm going to spend this next day two days really noticing how often I step in and do my children's shoelaces make sure that their bags are ready for school pull you know get books together or tidy up after them or whatever it might be really look at that and then ask yourself do I have an opportunity to flip that and for them to take ownership for them to have a sense of agency and a sense of autonomy in that particular situation that's a really crucial one if we want to go for that intrinsic because it's driven by the child for the child and they can see directly the impact of the choices they make so number one setting high standards number two's growth mindset number three is around mastery goals rather than performance goals number four is around giving our children a sense of autonomy and number five is challenging them around just enough and what I mean by just enough is not about doing just enough just doing the bare minimum it's really thinking about how we challenge our children if we challenge them with something that is too easy they'll get bored if we challenge them in terms of something that is too difficult they will avoid or they will opt out for this particular one it's about really thinking about what is that little challenge you know I often talk about this idea about a ladder yeah a ladder takes you from where you are to where you want to be it takes you up in steps we don't just take one huge step from the bottom rung of the ladder to the top we take small ones that take us all the way up so when we're thinking about challenging them just enough so it's not too easy and it's not too difficult what we're looking at doing is giving them small challenges that are just difficult enough to stretch them but not too difficult that that then demotivates because the idea about that slight stretch is that it's not just about challenging them it's about challenging them it's about challenging them and it's about challenging them and it's about challenging them is what it does is it allows them to try and it also allows them to feel a sense of achievement and success and then we can keep upping the ante they can do another stretch goal and another stretch goal and another stretch goal so it may well be that there's a task that your child is really struggling with their motivation for because they're just finding it too difficult it feels a stretch too far for them and feels too difficult for them to attain and what we can then do is looking at breaking it down break down and break it down and break it down and break it down what feels like something that's huge and difficult and challenging and make it smaller in these smaller stretch goals and help them navigate up that ladder so just to recap the first is setting high standards the second is growth mindset the third is a shift to mastery goals the fourth is about giving our children a sense of autonomy the fifth is about challenging them just enough so my give this week is going to be these five top tips in my usual checklist with a little bit of a gap so you can play around you can make some notes use the back of it in terms of doing the audit all you need to do is head over to my free resource library www.drmaryhand.com forward slash library where you'll find the link to download this resource all you need to do is pop in your email address and you'll get instant access not only to this week's resource but all the other free resources across all my other podcast episodes as ever if you have enjoyed this episode i would love it and be eternally grateful for it and i'll see you in the next one bye if you could follow and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love so until next time mr monopoly here miss me monopoly is back at
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