Motivation

What I tend to hear when I have conversations with parents and teachers is that they can’t seem to get their young people motivated to study.

Is your child motivated about their studies? What motivates them?
If they’re not motivated, why do you think they lack motivation and what can you do to help them?

Children will fall into two main categories in the area of motivation. You would either have a child who is self-motivated, knows what they want in life and will put things in place and get into action. Whereas on the other hand is the less motivated child who lacks motivation and will need help to get them motivated.

As parents, we all know that our children need to study and work hard and smart to achieve top grades in order to achieve that dream to get a place in the university of their choice. So, there is a need to get the skates on and get to work.

So how do you motivate the less motivated child? Let me share a story of a 15- year old girl called Serah. Serah enjoys life and is very sociable, always looking for any opportunity to socialise and spends a great deal of her time on social media. She wasn’t bothered about school and had no ambition. Though she wanted a good life with an expensive taste, she wasn’t concerned about her school grades.

As the months rolled by, it became a concern for Serah’s parents who knew that if nothing was done, Serah will end up with no grades in her forthcoming GCSE exams. Her mum had to do something different to her constant nagging behaviour, which always ended up in uncontrollable arguments.

This is what Serah’s mum did.

She had a heart to heart conversation with her daughter. During that conversation, she asked Serah what she’d like to be in the future, the type of lifestyle she would like to live, her interests and why she loved them.

Whilst Serah wanted to be a famous person, she had no clue on how she was going to achieve that aspiration.

Serah’s mum response was what gave Serah a wake-up call. This is what she said, if you’d want to become a famous artist and maintain a good lifestyle, you’ll need to work for it and the same goes for your grades. If you don’t make those grades, you don’t stand the chance of sustaining a good lifestyle, let alone become famous.

What do your children have an interest in? Use this to draw them back to the reality of things.

Here are some tips to help:

– Start the conversations about ambitions early

– Expose them to other learning opportunities -show interests in their passion

– Explore other places of learning – such as planned visits to universities, museums

– Show them that you believe in their potential, giving them the feelings that they are entitled to get a place in their desired choice of higher education