4 ways to deal with a child who's not motivated to do schoolwork
At a standstill. (U.S. Postal Museum)
First of all, as a wise friend pointed out, your child is motivated.
She’s motivated to watch YouTube, play video games, read, draw, ride her bike, play with the pets, and hang out with friends.
If she’s under the age of 13, she’s also highly motivated to please you. (For teenagers, I make no such guarantees.)
You may long for your child to be intrinsically motivated to succeed in school. That can come later.
Believe it or not, children who are not intrinsically motivated to succeed in school are what we call normal. They don’t have enough information or perspective to understand how what they are doing today (working on reading fluency, organizing a five-paragraph essay, or even brushing their teeth) benefits them in the long run. Heck, how many of us adults struggle with the same thing, whether it’s in the realm of fitness, finances, or relationships?
The point is that there is nothing wrong with your kid. That’s important. In the meantime, there are a few things we can do for a child who isn’t motivated to do schoolwork.
We can use schoolwork and other duties to earn privileges each day. This is not the same as “If you don’t do your work, your iPad gets taken away.” We are starting at neutral and going up, rather than starting at neutral and going down.
We can address underlying issues that may be present. These can be undiagnosed learning disabilities, difficulty with teachers (“she doesn’t like me”), or in-the-moment distractions like hunger, fatigue, a TV that’s on in the other room, or a medication that’s wearing off.
We can praise the heck out of the work that is getting accomplished, building on what’s working.
These can be used in tandem with a more radical strategy: We can drop the rope we’re pulling on and allow the child to experience the consequences of her own actions (or lack thereof).
This can be very scary for parents. Letting your child fail seems like an abdication of parental responsibility. But in fact, it might be exactly what your child needs in order to see the value of doing schoolwork.
She may discover what it feels like to show up with the work undone and decide that she does not like that feeling.
She may find that she enjoys having the schoolwork be hers instead of yours.
She may adopt the time-tested strategy of doing just enough to pass each class. One some level, you gotta admire the pragmatism of that.
She may actually come to you for help, either with the work itself or staying on track with it.
If you can get to the point where you’re not afraid of the outcome, you can approach the entire situation in a more collaborative way. Instead of judging your child for being lazy and unmotivated, you’ll be able to see her for who she is and who she’s becoming. This will shift the way she responds to you. I’ve seen dramatic, positive turnarounds between parents and children and between teachers and students.
This doesn’t mean that the person is going to instantly get better grades. But if the poor performance is partly an effort to say “screw you,” removing the need and desire for that kind of pushback may, in fact, eliminate it. In other words, if she doesn’t have to fight you in order to prove that she has some power in her life, she won’t sabotage herself just to piss you off.
That said, your child still may not care about school performance as much as you do. Children (that is, people) are who they are; our guidance goes only so far in influencing their trajectory. As adults, they will be able to take their lives in any direction they choose and set their own rules for measuring (or not measuring) success. We can try to inculcate our own values and opinions, but regardless of what we do, they will eventually decide for themselves what motivates them. We might as well make a little room for that now.