With the benefit of experience, you likely want your child to do well in school, so they have greater opportunities down the road. But, adolescents often weigh present rewards more than working hard for future rewards. If your child puts more effort into Fortnite or their Instagram account than their final exams, what should you do?
You can't and shouldn't be the enforcer, personal secretary, or driving force behind your child's achievement. At some point, any significant achievement in life requires internal motivation. Read on for some tips.
We all make calculations weighing the short- and long-term benefits and costs of the choices we make. Adolescent brains, however, are particularly wired to weigh present rewards more than future rewards. Neurologically, the present feels incredibly intense and exciting in a way it never does in the years before or after this phase. And, teen brains also overweigh potential positive outcomes versus potential negative outcomes. So they’ll take bigger risks and gamble everything on what seems important in the moment (which is not usually their English paper.)
So how can we strengthen their resolve to work on difficult tasks, which may have great rewards in the future, but feel challenging or boring in the moment?
First let’s talk about two common strategies that do not work well:
Rewards - While it's extremely common to use rewards, such as money or prizes, to motivate behavior we want, unfortunately rewards only work in the short term, while the reward is on offer. Large amounts of research has shown that people seem to conclude that they were doing the thing for the reward, and they become *less* internally motivated to do it than they were before the reward.
Fear - Trying to motivate your child to work hard using fear or threats, such as, “You’ll end up on the street if you don’t start applying yourself!” is also counter-productive. Raising a child’s fear and anxiety puts them into the lower brain flight / fight / freeze response, in which they are looking only to defend themselves or disappear. This is the opposite brain state from that required for learning, comprehension, and growth, which require a brain that feels safe, connected to other people, and well resourced.
So if neither inducing fear nor offering rewards are good ways to encourage a future-oriented work ethic, what does work? Fortunately, a large body of research points to three universal human desires that will help foster genuine, internal motivation in your teen.
Autonomy – Adolescents need to feel like agents in their own life, and make choices and decisions according to their own calculations and desires. Decades of research has shown that, across cultures, increasing an individual's choices and control increases their motivation for a task or subject, as well as their wellbeing and satisfaction. Conversely, external control, such as lack of choice, deadlines, and even external rewards for compliance, all decrease an individual's inherent motivation and satisfaction.
Competence – Your adolescent needs to feel control over the outcome of a task, and experience the satisfaction of mastery. Unexpected positive feedback has been found to increase motivation for a task by increasing the feelings of competence, whereas negative feedback has the opposite effect.
Connection – Your adolescent needs to feel connected and important to other people in relation to a task, in order for it to feel meaningful and worthwhile to them.
Read on for ways to tap into your child's inherent desires for autonomy, competence, and connection to increase internal motivation in schooling.
