How to Motivate Your Child - Spot and Nurture Their Natural Motivations

My husband and I stood in our back garden this morning looking at the lawn my youngest son (14) had mowed the day before.

He had offered to mow it in the morning and then did it that same afternoon. There are so many skills that culminate in a child wanting to contribute to the household. Adapting your parenting style to identify and nurture your child's natural motivations is one skill that helps build their intrinsic desire to want to help. 

As I looked at the lawn and saw the odd lines in different directions, my perfectionism tendencies would have had me believe it was a job done, but not very well. My way of thinking would have wanted neat, straight lines. Of course, I was happy he mowed the lawn but that would have been a secondary thought following primary thoughts on what he could do better next time. And if I had expressed these thoughts, the message he would have received is that his natural approach wasn’t good enough. 

So I focused on leading myself in the first instance and refrained from making these comments. 

I've learned that my son has a motivation for chopping and changing and this motivation for chopping and changing is entrepreneurial. He is comfortable being able to adapt if a procedure he attempts doesn’t work. Entrepreneurs rarely have a known path so this way of thinking gives them an enormous capacity to chop and change as needed in order to succeed.  Understanding this allows me to understand why he mows the lawn in different directions (chopping and changing) and accept that that is the way he operates. 

Is the lawn perfect? No.

Does it need to be perfect? I no longer believe it does.

Is the need to help my child feel seen more important than needing the lawn to be perfect? Absolutely, yes. 

I didn’t always think this way. But I do now. 

When we see our children through our lenses, we can sometimes miss seeing them through their lenses. We also miss an opportunity to help them own their uniqueness. 

Leading ourselves is not an easy path in parenting. But tweaking our parenting style is essential in helping our children to feel seen and heard, leading to what they eventually believe about themselves and about who they are. 

Leading and motivating your child to like and love who they are is the greatest gift you can offer your child and ignites an intrinsic motivation to contribute to the family in ways we could previously only dream of.  They feel good and so do you. 

Where can you slightly adjust the lens through which you see your child’s behaviour and help them own a little bit more of their unique self?

Love,

Dina