Motivating the Kids

Motivational Monday

Pop over to Co-Host A Party of Seven

Hi and welcome to the last Motivational Monday for February. Thank you for joining in and well done on keeping going.

This week I am thinking about how to Motivate the Children.

My oldest has his GCSEs this year and all we hear is how his friends don’t have to revise lol. We tend to motivate with rewards.

stickers

Whether that is with stickers

bikeride

We like to give them praise (yay well done you got it to forwards – yaaay!)boysonbikes

You are doing so well I think we can take those stabilizers off.bike

Or quality time, or going to a place they want to.park

But when we took our 9 year old to a Cubs Gala (for 8-10 year olds) we heard a very different approach to motivating a child

“Tabitha, you can do better than that!” shouted this woman as her daughter swam, “push, push, push,” she yelled, “stretch those arms!”

 swimminggala

How do you motivate your children?


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Mother of 4 boys.

  • sabrina montagnoli

    Well as a mum of only a just turned 2 year old it is mostly “clever boy” or “good job”. The general theme is that nothing is really impossible and we could at least give it a try. His daddy is very big on giving everything a try and I swear sometimes I have to close my eyes!

  • coombemill

    Looks like some good outdoors half term fun going on there, I would be motivated with swimming and cycling! Lovely photos, thank you for linking with Country Kids too.

    • pinkoddy

      Wasn’t our half term, we had it the week before. Thank you.

  • http://twitter.com/RealMummyDiary Me, Myself & Shy

    Well, Shys about to turn 1 and motivation for her at the moment is a lot of clapping with “yayyyy good girl” thrown over which always puts a smile on her face and makes her clap too! Because she likes it so much, she will amost certainly do whatever it is again to receive such praise!

  • http://www.tercets.blogspot.com/ Elisa

    We also motivate with rewards, usually the children pick a special place they want to visit or a special treat they want to make.

  • http://www.facebook.com/michele.bodenheimer Michele Bodenheimer

    I have no children-but this can be observed in a workplace as well–some bosses, like you, praise the good–others seem to focus only on the bad or “doing better”–from my experiences praise of accomplishments will cause a person (or a child) to try even harder–while negativity will eventually cause that person to give up!!

  • Rachael DeBruin

    I motivate with various methods: some the same as you as in rewards and incentives, but sometimes I motivate them with consequences which are more negative (if you don’t do ‘x’, then ‘y’ is not going to happen). I try to be varied and I find it depends on the age of the child.

  • http://javajohnz.blogspot.com/ John Zukowski

    Bribe them with food… :) No actually, that is the one thing my wife won’t let us do. Typically, it involves consequences if they don’t do something they should.