HOW TO MOTIVATE
When I was young, whenever my parents would tell me to do it with the reasoning "because I said so" I would not do it. I was stubborn and defiant. I kicked against the pricks so to speak. I was able to shape up after my mission and I learned that obedience was important and that my parents knew very good things that would help me so after I came home from my mission I felt like the defiant days were over. I truly had no desire to challenge what my parents said and I never felt the need to but then me and my husband moved in with them. Me and my husband went to live with my parents during the COVID semester to get help with my newborn baby and our toddler while I was trying to finish my semester. I never expected any sort of trouble with them especially since I had changed my attitude and viewpoints about helping my parents. I was wrong. Little by little my mom would suggest things. At first they were just suggestions that I was grateful for. Then one day, we were sitting in the back yard and I was wearing something my mom didn't approve of. She told me to change and I snapped. As I snapped at her my attitude changed to complete defiance. As I started to talk back to her I wanted to swallow my words but I couldn't and my mom ended up walking away very angry. After that moment I asked myself what made me want to be so disobedient, why did I get so defensive and angry when I know better, and where did my attitude of defiance come from. It was a subject that I actually agreed with her on. I like to be modest and I do not want to offend my parents by the things I wear so why did I decide to disagree with her? I will get back to these questions.
Telling me what to do and trying to control my ability to change turned me into something that I wasn't. I no longer wanted to do what I knew was right. Motivating your children is more than just telling them what to do. It is promoting their ability to change and helping them want to change and learn and grow in their goals and have a good outcome. A Childs want to be better and
A big focus on parenting is promoting obedience. Sometimes parents try to control the outcomes of their children's behavior without inspiring them to change. As fear, frustration, anger or control is a tactic to fix the child's immediate behavior this will not help in the long run. A parents goal should be to inspire and guide and lead with the ability to motivate your children to the correct good behavior. This can be done as a parent attempts to promote grit in a child and learning how praise effects this grit.
According to google grit is defined as the ability to apply long term persistence toward a goal instead of fearing doing something that you don't feel you are able to do. A gritty person tries hard to learn new things, will have persistent effort.
Promoting grit has to do with the way that we praise our children. The way we praise our children can also help our children want to do the right thing because it is positive reinforcement.
According to Holland (2015) praising effeort rather than outcome is the best thing we can do to premote gritty children. This also can go hand in hand with using priase instead of threatening, or fear tactics to make someone want to change and do better.
For instance instead of saying "You need to practice or else you will look bad in front of someone." or "Practice or I will ground you." You can say, "I appreciate that you practice when you don't want to. That shows a lot of perseverance and imagine the things you will learn that way!"
This will help the child understand why practicing is good and help the child learn how it could benefit them. This in turn will motivate them.
The following video clip shows a gritty person. Imagine what you would say to this runner after she won the race to promote grit.
If I were this girls nurse after her win I will ask her what she felt when she got back up after falling. What went through her head when she did that and what the outcome was after she attempted to overcome her failures. This would be such a good learning experience to promote this outcome in the future as well.
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