On a whim, I picked up the book “The Motivation Breakthrough: 6 Secrets to Turrning On the Tuned-Out Child” by Richard Lavoie. Especially given our recent posts on self-learning, I was interested in motivation. And, I was hoping I could find something to motivate myself to keep my house clean!
The book is written for public school teachers by a man who specializes in working with kids with learning disabilities. So it’s a very different audience, and I don’t know if any of it will apply well. But here goes:
He says there are six main things that motivate people, and every person has a few preferred motivators. He gives them names all beginning with P: Praise, Power, Projects, Prestiige, Prizes, People.
The PRAISE chapter is mostly based on “Mindset.” Check out that thread for more info. He also suggests that good accompaniments for praise are encouragement (promoting effort and focusing on what the child does well), sincere interest, expressions of gratitude (I use this one a lot), and enthusiasm!
The POWER chapter is long. He says that this type of child gives adults the most problems, so he gives lots of ideas. I’ve heard most of them before, though, so I’m just going to give a sampling; I can put in more detail if anyone cares. He talks about how important it is to give children power without diminishing parental authority. His main point is, “Choose your battles!” Let natural consequences do the teaching whenever possible. Don’t try to control everything. Give them choices and control within your boundaries; seek input and follow advice. Offer minor choices, give responsibility, allow yourself to lose. But when it matters, state commands and rules clearly and positively, one time, and then enforce the rules and set deadlines. He suggests that when a child wants to draw you into a battle over a rule, use the Broken Record Technique: repeat the rule and nothing else (not your instructions, the rule: not “go to bed,” but “you go to bed at 8 o’clock”), lower your voice and spread the words out, and keep body language neutral. Try to prevent power struggles by reiterating the rule BEFORE getting into a situation that is likely to cause problems. To use power to motivate, give responsibilites and opportunities to help others as motivators. Power kids don’t like praise as much, but like adults to express interest in what they’re doing.
PROJECTS: he is a big fan of projects in the classroom; if he were a homeschooler, he’d love unit studies. But he also talks about letting project-oriented kids design their own long-term independent projects, with a “contract” at the beginning that spells out exactly what they’ll be doing and how it will be assessed.
PRESTIGE: This one is me! Prestige people are perfectionists and react badly to criticism. We need people to focus on a lot of positive feedback for every negative one we get. We need to be taught that mistakes and errors are not the end of the world. I still struggle with these. He also suggests that the way to motive prestige children is through awards, certificates, plaques, etc. Also, responsibilites can be motivators for these kids; they like to feel that others depend on them. Focus on their strengths to keep them from getting overwhelmed by all the challenging areas, and teach them to value effort (hearkening back to “Mindset” again).
This is a good description of me, but it doesn’t help me like I’d hoped. I’m sorry, my husband printing me up a little certificate to hang on the fridge whenever I clean the house is not going to motivate me… Nor is giving me more household tasks as a reward. The fact that I can’t make it apply to me makes me wonder if it really will work for kids.
On the other hand, I explained this to my husband, and he said, “Clearly, the way to keep the house clean is to invite people to come over every day.” I had to laugh. It’s true, I clean quite well when someone outside the family is going to see my house. Then, it gives me prestige to have a clean house. So maybe I just need to think harder to apply it to individuals.
PRIZES: He doesn’t like reward systems. He doesn’t even think kids should be paid for chores or have to eat dinner to get dessert. I don’t agree, but here’s what he says. I think part of his basis for saying this is that he works with special-needs kids; he says outright that reward systems assume that kids CAN do whatever-it-is with proper incentive, but often these kids simply CAN’T. This may be true in the classroom, but probably doesn’t happen as often with us as EL parents; we tend to have a pretty good sense of what our kids can do. He talks about the “Punished By Rewards” type research that shows that rewards don’t help long-term. He especially doesn’t like rewards of no homework; he says this teaches kids that homework is both undesirable and unnecessary. I do agree with that one, but I don’t think reward systems or “payment for work” is as awful as he says.
He does have some forms of rewards he accepts. Intermittent, unpublished rewards, as a special bonus for hard work, are appropriate for him. Favorite activities can be used this way, as well as big things like trips and food. He also says that an audience for work is a great reward.; invite people to listen or post work where it can be seen. Give intermittent, spontaneous rewards that are meaningful to the individual child. Play educational games as part of the curriculum and as a reward, at the same time. He also says to split large projects into steps and reward each step, which seems contrary to his overall no-regular-rewards strategy.
He really likes a strategy called “Get a Chance to Take a Chance.” The child earns “chances” by doing something predetermined: doing homework, for instance. But instead of just getting a reward, they toss a die, flip a coin, or some other game of chance. If by luck they win, they get the prize; otherwise, they don’t. That one sounds interesting and I’ll try it.
Reading this chapter, I noted that the first half of the PRAISE chapter was the same: quoting research debunking the way we usually use praise and pointing out its problems. But then the PRAISE chapter shows the new research saying it is good in the proper fashion. The PRIZES chapter is stuck with, “A system that pays/rewards a child for performance is BAD.” I feel like there should be something similar here, rehabilitating payment for effort put in. I wish someone would do it!
I read in a book on teaching children music (wish I could remember the name) a suggestion to have prizes apply to the work at hand: prizes for practicing should be new sheet music, not new ski boots. I like that idea, but have trouble applying it. Practice reading and I’ll read to you, that’s easy. But math? Money might make sense here, since using money is mathematical. Or eating the manipulatives :). I’ve told my daughter she’ll get a watch when she can tell time. These seem like appropriate prizes to me.
PEOPLE: This chapter has a lot on teacher-student relations and ethics, which is less useful as a parent. But it does talk about treating kids with the same respect we do adults: don’t embarrass them, yell at them, ignore or disparage their interests and activities, or belittle the efforts as cavalierly as some parents and teachers do. This was not really surprising to me, but that was the thrust of the chapter: be friends with your kids (without losing parental authority, of course). And help them make friends.
So, some of the ideas were more helpful than others. I have no idea how to tell which group my two year old fits in. And quite a bit of it was parenting techniques I’d learned, but I’d never thought about them as motivational techniques. I’m thinking about how to motivate a kid using all these strategies. With an older kid, I can imagine it. Mandabplus3 (I hope you don’t mind me using you!) talked about motivating her daughter to do math. PRAISE: focus on her effort every day and encourage it. POWER: talk about how math will free up choices in the future, allow her to choose when and where to do math, let her help younger siblings. PROJECTS: Um… let her set up her own schedule to get through it? Or a project using the math she’s learned? PRESTIGE: certificates for “no-mistakes” days or a certain number of lessons done. PRIZES: she was promised an iPad, I believe. PEOPLE: I’m not sure how to apply this other than having a good relationship with the kid.
So how to motivate my 2 year old to do RightStart? PRAISE: focus on the effort she puts in to solving new problems. POWER: let her run the abacus, decide on manipulatives, let her teach her baby sister math or be in charge of counting how many pieces of fruit at the grocery store if she does her math. PRESTIGE: “Let’s tell Daddy when he gets home what hard work you did to solve that!” PRIZES: intermittent rewards instead of every time she does math, or using edible manipulatives and letting her eat them. PEOPLE: have fun doing math together. Will it work? I’ll have to try it and see.
How do you motivate your kids to do EL? Does any of this ring true (or false) to you?
