Three Ways to Motivate Children

Many parents know the difficulties of trying to motivate children to do things that they know for sure that they are for their children’s own good. How any times have you tried to tell your child to do something that will serve his long-term interest only for him to turn up his nose at your “out of touch views?” How many times has your child been so eager to disobey you? This should however not to be confused with being manipulative. Manipulation is usually done with a selfish motive that may ultimately end up hurting the child in one way or another.

Give them guided freedom

Children feel very good to know that they are free and that their thoughts count. Guided freedom means that the parent provides parameters within which the child operates in. Freedom has limits and the limits are necessary to ensure that they (the children) do not get hurt in the process of trying to learn life.

Give them responsibilities.

Children would like to know that they are growing up. As it is usually said, when children are young, they want to grow up fast; when they are adults, they want to grow younger (or at least appear younger.) Giving children responsibilities makes them know that they have been recognized as people who are growing up. These responsibilities may include budgeting, for household income and stuff like that. With this, the child knows about the difficulties that you as a parent face in managing the household income. This will stir him to be more responsible with his contributions in the home.

Communicate more

To properly motivate children, you need to listen to them and then take your time to explain why you think a certain position is important, or why certain things must be done in a certain way. If you take your time to explain why you would want things done in a certain way, your children will know that what you are telling them is for their own good. Care must be taken to ensure that beyond a certain point, some things are not negotiable. It won’t make sense to tell your one year old daughter to stop crawling towards the fire. You just say “no”. On the other hand, you’ll be happy to see you 12 year old daughter helping to prepare dinner.

Motivating children can turn out to be a very difficult task. The aim of it is not to make the child happy so that he/she can say “dad I love you.” It means leading the child to do what is right. He or she may be disappointed at first or sometime he or she may be very happy. It all depends – the greatest reasons for motivation are mainly about fear of pain and desire for gain; either of this will either make her happy or sad you must therefore be very ready to see your child getting disappointed with you.