People commonly ask, "How do I motivate my child to study?" Well, I'm Nicholeen
Peck. I'm a mother of 4 and I'm the previous foster parent of many. And in this video,
we're going to talk about ways that you can help motivate your child to study.
My foster children all went to the public school. But my own children were homeschooled. And if
there's one thing I learned homeschooling my children, it was that the most important
thing that a parent can ever know about teaching their children anything is how a person learns.
This is vital. So, how does a person learn? That's going to help us solve this question for how we're
going to motivate our child to study. There are certainly ways not to motivate the child or ways
that will not motivate your child. And then there are ways that definitely can motivate your child.
So, we're going to start this video by talking about what not to do, how to not motivate your
child, if that's your goal. But if you really want to know how to motivate your child then we will
give you some solutions for that. There's quite a few things that don't work. If you're trying to
motivate your child with guilt for instance, it's not really going to work. At least for the long
term, it won't work. For a little while maybe. But then soon, they feel manipulated and they
stop being motivated to do better at remembering their studies or caring about their studies.
Also nagging, no. Doesn't work. Parents often try nagging. The reason why they try nagging is
because they don't want to do correcting or giving negative consequences. They want the child to just
get it done and I understand that. But nagging is not good. It shows a lack of consistency on
the part of the parent. Which means in the child's eyes, you are no longer the leader.
You're now just the person that they have to put up with which is totally different. So,
nagging is not your friend. Don't remind and remind and remind. There needs to be some
consistency in place. We're going to talk about how to do that. But first, let's finish this list
for what not to do. Another thing you don't want to do is threaten the children. So, I think a
lot of parents who really get in a manipulative mindset think what could I say to my child that
would make them want to do it right now? Or maybe they try to bribe their child, that doesn't work
either. That's another way of manipulating the emotions of the child to try and get a desired
result. Another thing that's manipulative that you definitely don't want to do is start taking
things away. So, a lot of parents think, "Well, if I want my child to care about this, I've got
to take away something that they care about in order for that to happen." I know that seems like
it makes sense in your brain but in reality, it just looks like, "Well, they don't care about me.
They're taking away something that I like just to try to make me do what they want me to do."
It feels like they're being manipulated. And you know what? It just isn't necessary to manipulate
our children. Another thing that does not work for motivating children to study is getting angry. So,
that should be a no-brainer. If you get angry, all of a sudden, you're pushing someone away.
When you get angry, it automatically forms a disconnection between you and the child.
If you want to motivate them to do something, that's got to come from a place of connection,
not disconnection. Another thing that parents do that I think they figure must be the solution,
must be the way to not get angry, not nag, not bribe is they just do nothing. And they say,
"Well, maybe if I do nothing, the child's grades will motivate them all on their own. Maybe if I do
nothing, the child will just learn the hard way." I got to tell you something about doing nothing.
It doesn't usually work. Especially if prior to that, you were nagging and trying to give
negative attention to the child when they didn't want to do their studies. So, doing nothing is
not going to bring you the results you want. So, hopefully, you're not hopeless by now. Because I
said don't get angry, don't manipulate and don't do nothing. So, then you're thinking, "What in the
world do I do? How do I motivate my children?" Well, definitely we need to get in touch with
what does motivate our children. We're going to be talking about that. But first, I want to just show
you this book. Parenting: A House United by me Nicholeen Peck is actually a great book that will
help you after this video put all this stuff into practice. And it will teach you how to identify
what motivates your child and what doesn't so that you can really clue in to how to help your child
succeed in everything that they pick. You can find this book on teachingselfgovernment.com.
So, we can't do nothing. So, we must do something. What are we going to do? One of the principles
that I try to follow with education is to inspire, not require. So, as a homeschooler, I realized if
I wanted my children to love learning and to decide that they wanted to know how to learn
and get the most out of their education without me nagging them around the clock,
I had to inspire learning and not just require learning. So, if you are requiring this before
this and requiring this before this and requiring this be done on this day then soon the child just
develops a hate of learning instead of a love of learning. But if the learning feels inspirational,
if it feels like something they're getting something out of, if they can feel their brains
growing then they're inspired and motivated to want to put in some of their own time on their
studies. Now, as a student, I loved learning. In fact, it was something as a young girl
that I craved. Because I could literally feel my brain growing. But when I hit those times of just
boring worksheets and everything else, it just wasn't inspiring. If your child comes home from
school with things that seem meaningless or not motivating to them or they're just not inspiring,
then you know what? Don't sit them there staring at it like it was a plate of broccoli or brussels
sprouts. Instead, sit down with them and just get it done. Just get it done quick. Talk through it
with them. Make it come alive because your connection to them during that time of doing
the homework is actually the most powerful thing. Sometimes I wonder if there's some secret plan to
ruin parent-child relationships by making parents be overlords over all of the homework. That's not
how it should be. Make it a connective moment and your child will actually love that time with you
when they get to learn. Now, I know some of you are thinking, "That's great for you to say but
I've got 8 children. How do I sit down with all of them at the same time?" Well you might have
to stagger it. And probably there will come some days when they're perfectly motivated on their own
so that you don't need to be there for everything. But if some of those projects they're working on
for school are really just kind of humdrum, just help them through it so that they can
start learning something that really is inspiring. Another important thing for inspiring learning is
a person has to have enough time. So, often, students only have this short amount of time to do
all of their homework and all of their social time and their family responsibilities and everything.
And so, that can feel like stress. Once they get anxious or start feeling stressed about all the
things they want to do versus have to do then their brains shut off. They can't think anyway.
And the schoolwork is always going to take longer. So, putting that schoolwork first is not always
the very best idea. But here's the thing: They need time. If they want to be inspired to learn
something, they've got to have time to really get into it. So, maybe pick up a project with them in
the evenings. Something that is true learning. Don't worry about if it's a project that they're
working on for school. Pick anything. You could study genealogy. They don't study that at school.
You could study painting and maybe she's not studying it in her painting class. Just
study things that matter to you and matter to her and take the time to really invest. This
will increase the love of learning in every area that the child is pursuing. There is a skill that
you can teach your children. This is a skill I teach on my website teachingselfgovernment.com.
It's called following instructions. This skill is vitally helpful for parents whose children don't
want to study. Let me explain how the skill works. To follow instruction, you look at the person,
keep a calm face, voice, and body. Say okay or ask to disagree appropriately. Do the task
immediately and then check back. So, if I say to my child, "I'm going to give you an instruction.
I need you to get your math homework done before you go play, okay?" Then they just look at me,
keep a calm face, voice, and body and they say, okay and they do it. And then they will check
back to me and I get the opportunity to praise them. So, if it really gets down to it and you've
inspired but the child still doesn't want to do their responsibilities, you might have to give
them an instruction and then just consistently correct them afterward. Now, this whole
program that revolves around skills like this is called teaching self-government. That's on
my website teachingselfgovernment.com. Another thing that inspires a desire to study and learn
is having discussion. So, have discussion with your family members.Have discussion
one-on-one with each other about the things that you're learning because this motivates a person
to want to learn more so that they have more things to discuss with you. Another thing that is
really helpful is creating a friend culture that also does discussing. When my children were young,
we decided to have a book discussion group with other families. And the families would
get together and they would discuss a book. And then we moved that group to be groups of people
children and families that would get together and discuss what they were learning in their lives
and showing their projects that they've been working on and stuff like that. And it was
so motivating. So, one child was playing a violin piece and all of a sudden my children were like,
"I want to learn the violin." If they'd never even thought about it or thought that they were
old enough to do it. But because one of their friends was doing it, then they did it too. So,
having an attachment to friends and families who are doing inspiring academic things will
also help your child want to study. This is a big one. If you want your child to love studying and
to feel like they're going to invest and study and get something out of it, then you got to
show them what kinds of golden nuggets are there. That means you've got to teach them hard things.
You've got to help them learn stuff they would never learn anywhere else so that they realize
some of these humdrum things they have to do are just things that they have to get out of the way
so that they can start learning the things they really want to learn. And really,
that's what it's all about. If your child finds that area of study that he wants to study
then everything changes in his life. Studying becomes rich and alive and then they want to do
it. In our family, we set goals. Academic goals, personal goals, spiritual goals and fitness goals
and we do that by having a meeting every week with the children. We have what's called a mentor
meeting. In our mentor meeting, we talk about what the child wants to accomplish. This journal by the
way is a mentor meeting journal. Each child has their own and they keep track of what they want to
set goals for. And they keep track of what goals they've set and then they track their progress
on their goals in the journal. It's a once a week meeting and it's super powerful and motivating for
them. You can find this mentor meeting journal and many other resources to teach your children
self-government at teachingselfgovernment.com. It is super important to be deliberate about talking
about study and maybe what's getting in the way of them wanting to study. Because sometimes,
there's just an anxiety about it or they're bored by it or something. Those are all things that you
can fix. You can be there. You can make it go faster or easier or maybe they just feel like
they never get to do anything for themselves. Well then, set a goal for that in their
weekly mentor meetings and plan for what they want to learn. Because if they're never having
time to learn anything they want to learn, then all learning is going to seem empty and boring.
But if they love learning something then they learn to like studying everything else as well.
If you've enjoyed this video about motivating your children to study, I think you'll really enjoy
my next video which is what are the main causes of sibling rivalry. If your family knows how to
govern themselves then sibling rivalry becomes a thing of the past. Watch that video today.