What motivates your child to learn? Well, we're going to be talking about that in this
video. I'm Nicholeen Peck and I'm a parenting expert and I love the topic of motivation.
In this video, I'm going to share multiple tips for how to motivate your child to learn
and I want you to know that I'm saving the best for last. In order to motivate your
child to learn, you actually have to know how a person learns. Learning is environmental,
it also has a lot to do with relationships. So, whatever your child learns and really holds on to,
that child is learning through relationship or bond with whoever is doing the teaching
or the mentoring. So, remember that because if you want your child to be motivated to learn,
you've got to be connected to the process. It's no good to remove yourself and just nag from the
sidelines. That is never motivating, there's no connection there. In fact, if anything,
there's a disconnection. So, we have to create the right environment for learning to occur.
This environment is just motivating by nature. It's upbeat, it's not negative. In fact,
it's proactive. So, the child is seeing themselves moving forward. In fact, the whole family usually
has a feeling of moving forward. Of all of my 4 children, I've never had a problem with one of
them lacking motivation. The reason why is our whole family is motivated. We are always going
and doing. We don't spend our day just sitting in front of the TV and waiting for life to come by.
Because we see ourselves as people who are supposed to make the world a little bit better
place. Which is what I'm trying to do here today. So, what else can we do to make this environment
better to help our children be motivated to want to learn and grow? The best learning environment
has a teacher who is present. Whether that's the parent or whether it's a teacher or some other
mentor, they need to be present. And when I say present, I don't mean there. I mean they're there.
I mean they really invested in the child. They're focusing on what's going on. They're discussing
with the child about the things that they're learning. They're asking good questions. They're
not just hoping it happens so they can check it off the list. They want to be part of the process.
That's what it means when the teacher is present. So, whether you're teaching your children at home
or whether you're teaching children at school, make sure that you're the type of parent or
teacher that is right in there doing the learning with the children because that
is motivating. In order for the environment to be inspiring or motivating for somebody to learn,
they have to have enough time to do the learning. If you want them to do their
learning and then check move on to something else so you can get out the door really fast,
it's not motivating. They need the time to invest where there's no stress no worry. Maybe they even
have to stay up late sometimes. That's okay. If they're really in the process, in my family,
I let them stay up because that learning, that love of learning is the thing that is the very
most important. The third thing is the child needs to feel trust from the teacher. So, if the child
is going to be motivated to learn, they've got to feel that the teacher knows they can do it. So,
there's no worry or feeling of uncertainty. "I don't know if this child would get this.
This child may not be smart enough". We never entertain those thoughts in our minds. If we
are teaching the child, we think they can do this, they can learn. I've seen people learn again and
again. I've even learned myself. No matter how long it takes them, they can learn. We have to
maintain that mindset because if we feel confident in their ability to learn, then they will feel
confident in their ability to learn too. And this feeling of confidence between you and them
creates motivation that leads toward increased learning. Next, be sure to read to your children.
When you read to your children whether you're the teacher or the parent, this motivates them
to want to learn more things. And when I say read to them, I want you to know, I'm actually picky.
I don't just pick up any book that happens to be popular at the time and read it to my children.
We read a couple of fluff books. But usually, what we read are things that elicit great discussion.
The reason why is because a component of a great motivating learning environment
is discussing. That means everybody gets to share and talk about it. And there is no time limit.
When great discussion is happening, it can be as short as needed or as long as needed. That's why
that time factor is so very important. If you want your children to be motivated to learn,
then make sure you discuss things that matter to them. Things that they can apply to their life.
Things that make them become a better person. And things that their parents would agree with.
Why would I say to discuss and read things with them that their parents would agree with? That
seems a little strange, right? Well, no. If you are the parent, that's a given. Hopefully, you
already agree with it. But if you're a teacher, why would I say that? Well, the reason why is
because if a child hears something different from their parents, then they hear from their teacher.
Then what happens is there's a conflict in the child. The child has to hide from one or the other
or both. This makes the child not engage in the learning. They're not sure if they can trust it.
If it doesn't match what they've already heard from their trusted source which is their parent.
So, teachers should always try to be in alignment with what the morals and ideologies of the parents
would be. This keeps the child in that optimum state of motivation so that they will want to
learn even more from both sources. And isn't that the goal? Think back to your childhood.
What motivated you most? Was it learning alongside mom or dad? Was it that certain teacher that had
that certain quality that really drew you in? What was the motivator for you? I think everyone would
love to hear what motivated you because those might be the same kinds of things that motivate
our students that we're working with. So, in the comments below, list what motivated you most and
that will give everybody ideas of what they can use to help motivate their students to learn too.
Another thing that's really motivating to learning is to know other learners. It's important. And it
doesn't matter on the age. They can be the same age or not the same age. I know one thing that
always motivated me as a child was my grandpa and my grandma. So, my grandma and grandpa were always
learning new things even though they were way before the real technology generation. As they saw
the technology coming in and booming, they wanted to learn how to do it. They also wanted to learn
how to do all kinds of things. My grandfather in his 70s and 80s would go on vacations
and come back with new musical instruments that he would actually learn. He would perfect them and he
was just always picking up something new. Anytime I went to visit grandpa, he would sing me a song,
play me a song, tell me a story, read me something inspiring. He was always learning. So, your child
needs to be connected with people like that. They don't have to be children their same age. Although
it is kind of cool if they meet someone their same age who is doing some incredible learning. But
they can get the same inspiring, motivating feeling just by talking to somebody of any age
who is always engaged in trying to learn something new. A motivating thing for anyone really is to
set goals and then accomplish goals. Of course, the accomplishing is super motivating at setting
more goals. But if you never set the first goal, you'll never accomplish the first goal. Which then
means you probably won't be motivated to set the second goal. So, starting with the first goal is
important. In our family, we have weekly meetings called mentor meetings where me and my husband
meet with my children and we fill out forms in this book, the Mentor Meeting Journal. They each
have their own journal where they keep track of their goals in various areas of their development.
We talk about their weekly schedules, we talk about their spiritual goals, their personal goals,
their physical fitness goals, their academic goals. We talk about friends
and social experiences that they want to have or that they have had. They set fun goals. And they
plan how to improve their relationships with all the people in their lives. When we meet each week
and they see how they've progressed on some of these goals even if they're not all the
way there yet, they recognize that they are able to accomplish things they set their mind to. This
motivates them to want to learn more things. So, have a place to write down your learning goals
and then you'll stay motivated throughout the week. One of my favorite principles for
motivating people to learn is kind of surprising to some people. And that is that in order to
really feel motivated to learn, you have to learn something really hard. If everything's too easy,
you're never motivated to learn. But if you do something hard, if you learn something you never
thought you'd be able to learn, if someone teaches you a skill that is a powerful skill or something
that you've never learned before, then suddenly, you desire to learn more things like that. You
actually feel your brain grow. My parents always made me do hard work. And when I was young, they
set me loose with hammers and nails and building supplies and saws and me and my older brother and
younger brother would be out in the backyard for hours and days working on clubhouses and things we
were trying to build. We developed so many skills, spatial skills, and problem-solving skills during
those projects. We became different people. All of us motivated. Every child in my family, because of
the way they were raised by my parents to take on adult skills and to tackle hard projects,
they all feel confident and are very successful people in life. Your children crave independence
of thought. They want to be able to think for themselves. One of the reasons that they maybe
are not motivated is because everything's being done around them, for them, to them. In fact,
this is a very big problem. Our society today is micromanaging more than ever before and we're over
scheduling the children more than ever before too. And once a person spends enough days just
going from thing to thing to thing; this activity, this play date, this school, this family thing;
soon, they just feel like they're being pulled around. In order to have independence a thought,
a person needs time to do thinking. They need to have that time to invest into their
own activities. And they need to be surrounded by other people who have time and know how to think
too. Really, I think grandparents are the best for this. Grandparents usually know how to slow down.
They know how to put the first things first and analyze the priorities. And they teach that to
their grandchildren because they don't try to accomplish everything at once. Generally,
I don't want to put all grandparents into a box. I realize everyone is very different from
each other. However, I have noticed in our case that grandparents are able to teach my children
priorities in a very unique way. And I know that in my case, my grandparents formed me into the
motivated person that I am today in a very special way. They were people who were thinking so I
became a person who wanted to have independent thoughts too. They took time to do what was
required so I wanted time to do my things too. If our children don't get the time that they need
to pursue some of their own ideas and interests then what happens is, they lose motivation. Now,
that's a gold nugget. That's something I was saving here at the end. Because I want parents to
understand that if we rush too fast through life, if we throw too many activities in our children,
we actually could be destroying their motivation and not even know it. We may think all these
activities are meant to motivate the learning. But in the end, it sometimes does just the opposite.
A key component to any great motivating, learning environment is how the environment feels, the tone
of the environment. The tone of a great learning environment should be a tone of calmness. Calm
doesn't mean you can't be excited. It just means that you're not taking things emotionally and
personally. In fact, in our family, I felt times where there are sparks flying because people are
so motivated with some of the projects they're working on. Just yesterday, my 16-year-old son
handed me a paper that he wrote without anybody telling him that he needed to write a paper. And
it was a paper about what is going on in the social climate right now in our world and what
he sees wrong with things and what he sees as the solution to things. He's been doing thinking. He
had some time to sit down because he's just doing his schooling at home and he was able to write his
thoughts out in a way that he knew I would love to read. And when I read that paper, I was so excited
at the sparks that were flying, the motivation that he clearly had to put some of his thoughts
on paper. And I felt like, "Look at this. Look what happens when our environment is calm enough.
When our communication is good enough" that he could hand me anything. Even if he thought it was
something I might not agree with and I would appreciate his effort and want to discuss it
with him. Our environment is key to success in all ways in our family relationships and
in our academic and our business pursuits. So, we've got to be getting along at home.
If you've liked this video, I know that you're going to love my next video which
is What Are The Main Causes of Sibling Rivalry? I'd like to help you a little bit more create
that family feeling, that family environment where everyone can learn and grow in calmness.