Practical Tips for Motivating Kids

Taken from: http://www.parents-and-kids.com/parenting/en/practical-tips-for-motivating-kids/

Not well-motivated kids, students usually underachieve and even fail in a classroom, although most of them are
usually bright and have good potential. We as the teachers/parents should guide our children to motivate
themselves to be successful, which is an inner change in the child by motivating them to be ambitious,
confident, patient and persistent. Here are some tips to practice.

1. Start early on as possible as you can, set up reasonable goals, begin with small tasks and give them
time to improve. For example, have the child state the goal, the grade on their upcoming report card
for their classes, math, English, science, history, etc.
2. Tell your child that you love him/her and wish to help him/her to have a bright future, then start the
conversation with patience on his/her daily school activities, homework, test, class projects, etc.
Prepare to hear some “bad news”, if it did happen, do not be angry with him/her, be calm down and
help your child find the problem and try to find a way to help him/her to solve the problem.
3. In order to build a strong work ethic, need to set some rules and ask your child to follow, be strict
and tell him/her why. For example, finish homework before watching TV. Why? Homework is the
key to understand and master what teachers taught, which leads to his/her success in school. This
rule helps him/her be stronger on self-control as well.
4. Encourage and praise the child wisely, not too much, otherwise would mislead him/her to think
he/she is the best. Namely, let him/her know that the best needs continuous learning, although did a
good job today, need do better tomorrow.
5. Teach your child to have passion for learning new knowledge by showing fun stuff for the project
and try to get his/her interest.
6. Tell your child successful stories. Help them to understand to get a good education and succeed in
school is one of the most important things for his/her life.
7. Tell your child to make friends with those who are successful in school. Do your best to get your
child into a good school, because a healthy competition environment challenges the kid and help
him/her to develop better.
8. Introduce some real role models to your kids, who fighting hard with difficulties and succeeded at
last, gained people’s respect. Help him/her to learn that if we suffer a set back, we don’t give up.
Instead, we try harder.
9. Just like parenting, motivating your children is a life-long job. Keep investing your time, efforts to
motivate your kids no matter how busy you are, because it is the most important investments in your
life. Kids are our future!