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Although the importance of school cannot be understated, its importance is also thoroughly documented. For instance, the link between such things as earning potential and job satisfaction are web established. Additionally, equally important connections between school and such things as length of life and overall health are also established. Simply put, everyone knows remaining in and doing well in school is of absolute importance for children.
What is not as thoroughly documented is how to keep kids interested in subjects that they might not otherwise be interested in. In fact, keeping a child in school is not worth much at all if the student is not motivated. Attention span falls. Attitudes drop. Knowledge retention declines. The end result of a poorly motivated student is a combination of poor grades and even poorer post-graduate options.
That said, if you implement a variety of behavioral, environmental, and subject-based motivators, you can help peak your child’s interest in school and keep him or her motivated to do the very best possible.
7 Tips to Motivate Your Child Who is unmotivated
1. Feed your child
This tip is, perhaps, one of the most basic strategies possible, but it is also one of the most important ones. A hungry student is a distracted student. To prevent hunger-based distraction, ensure your student eats a high-protein, low-sugar breakfast prior to departing for school. High-protein breakfasts will stave off hunger. Conversely, the same amount of calories of a high-sugar breakfast will ultimately increase hunger, and in this instance, the student will be starving and distracted on a full stomach.
If you want to do your very best by your child, the breakfast should have no more than 5-percent fat content, and saturated fats should be entirely excluded. The result of this type of dedication is a breakfast that will successfully keep your child full until lunch. As with breakfast, lunch should follow the same high-protein, low-sugar, minimal fat template.
2. Encourage two types of passion
It is understandable that you are busy, but you should take special note of your child’s interests with an emphasis on the balance between passion for that interest and its real-world application. For instance, as you monitor your child’s interests, you should encourage at least one passion-based interest, whatever it is. These will likely change as the child ages, but you must allow him or her to experiment and explore.
However, you should also identify and encourage your child to pursue STEM-based subjects. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and math. It is important to encourage functional subjects because these types of subjects, by and large, expand real-world options upon graduation. Additionally, most highly successful people are in many way polymaths and develop a variety of skills beyond the primary ones that spark extraordinary passion.
3. Integrate exciting, real-world applications
Encouraging a student to pay attention to and do well in a subject in which he or she may not be interested or may be less than enthusiastic about can be alleviated by pairing the subject with real-world applications. For instance, chemistry can be paired with forensic cases in which students solve a hypothetical case. Physics can be related to NASA exploration or the manufacturing of a cell phone. The determination of a curve in calculus can be applied to 3D printing. Connecting subjects to real-world applications help anchor what can otherwise be very abstract subjects.
4. Encourage social, extra-curricular activities
Of course, extra-curricular activities, such as music, football, or tennis, spark interest, but what might not be immediately obvious is that they also stimulate the entire brain, making other activities increasingly interesting. Additionally, these types of activities make your child more social. As a child becomes more social, he or she becomes aware of interests that new his or her new friends are engaged in. By default, these types of activities become more interesting as well.
The key is, in part, to remove isolation. Children in all stages of their education often feel alone, different, or apart. Changing the student’s home or school environment in such a way as to eliminate or contradict these negative feelings helps your child experience a supportive and friendly environment. This social environment will then increase motivation in a variety of subjects, events, and people.
5. Make the extra-curricular activities a part of the home life
Making learning a part of the home is common. For instance, hiring a tutor helps support learning. Simply Google “Tutor Brisbane,” and you will find all the tutors you will ever need. However, this type of integration must also be done for other interests. Once your child is engaged in a variety of activities and once the supportive framework provided by these activities is in place, it is important to embrace, emotionally support, and promote these activities in the home. The home, for all intents and purposes, should be a continuation of school, learning, and motivation.
For instance, in addition to asking how your child is doing in his classes and activities, you, as a parent, can encourage and foster increased ability in his subjects by bringing home books or buying a tablet on which your child can download e-books from the library.
Additionally, it is important to make sacrifices and set aside funds that can be used to financially support your child’s endeavors. For instance, an interest in music is not of much use if you do not set aside money to rent or purchase music equipment.
Finally, it is extremely important that the family take part in the educational lives of the children. Examples of this might include attending recitals or games.
6. Gamify
Using games to enhance the learning experience is a common practice, and it is one parent must use if they are to keep their children motivated in school. Games reward the behavior by introducing a prize or celebration at the end of the game. For instance, spelling bees earn winners prestige and a skill that will last a lifetime.
Additionally, games can subdivide the learning experience, making any subject easier to master. Finally, instead of simply devising individual games for a single student, the games should involve a social aspect that involves friends. For instance, when working toward an education-based goal alongside friends, your child will likely embrace two attitudes. The first is that he or she will want to have fun and do well with his or her friends. Your child will definitely not want to let down the team. Additionally, friendly inter-team competition is a natural part of games, and your child will likely have fund trying to out-compete his or her friends.
Gamifying subjects works largely because it exchanges the stress of learning and passing tests with the seemingly unrelated goal of winning a particular challenge. Additionally, the learning that takes place will involve visual, auditory, and tactile experiences, so the knowledge gained will be longer lasting than the knowledge gained from simply reading a book and studying for a test.
7. Celebrate
In the same way games usually, end with a reward for winners, families should build the habit of celebrating hard work, progress, and perseverance. Celebrating these three components is just as important as celebrating an important win because these skills are required to succeed.
Of course, with the skills in place and the hard work complete, it is important to celebrate wins. In fact, for most parents, this is the easiest part of the process because it is nearly impossible not to celebrate wins–with the entire town and everyone on Facebook, for instance. This might embarrass your child, but after all that hard work, a little embarrassment is a natural by-product of enthusiastic joy for a child’s educational success.
I am Bhagwati Suthar, Founder of Jobiba & TezLife.com. I am a Blogger, Affiliate Marketer and a Digital Marketer from Udaipur, India. At JobibaBlog, We share articles about Blogging, Marketing & Advertising, Business and Tech Tips.
