5 tips to motivate your child with home learning | Kensington Mums

What motivates children?

In order to motivate your child, you need to identify their reasons for doing something, and it’s unlikely to be because they think homework is really cool! Have a think about something your child always wants to do. If they had the choice to do anything right now, what would they choose? Now think about what they are getting out of the experience, even if you don’t think it’s healthy… This is their motivation.

Children are motivated by all sorts of different experiences… enjoyment, socialising, expressing feelings, etc. Sometimes children are motivated (or not) by their own thoughts, beliefs and attitudes, such as how difficult a task will be or whether they’ll be successful. Most importantly, children are motivated by things they find interesting and exciting. So you’re going to have a better chance of engaging your child if a learning activity relates to something they are personally interested in and can explore in a way they think is fun.

1. Setting meaningful goals

It’s important to help your child understand the purpose of a particular task. What’s the point of doing it? This begins with setting meaningful and personal goals. But in order for goals to be meaningful, you cannot set them for your child. It’s something that you need to support them to do for themselves.

The key is to help your child understand the difference between performance goals and mastery goals. Performance goals tend to be short-term and where the aim is to be the best at something, or to gain public recognition. Mastery goals are long-term and are focused on wanting to improve a specific skill. For example, think of the difference between participating in a sport to win a trophy or participating because you enjoy it, and enjoy the feeling of being able to do something you couldn’t do before. With school work, it’s the difference between studying to get a good grade, or studying because you find the topic interesting. Spend some time with your child exploring goals that are personal to them, in the short or long term. This diagram gives some examples:

2. Refocusing the purpose of a task

Some children may need help refocusing the purpose of what they are doing in order to see the end result in a different light. How will an activity make a difference to your child’s life? To them as a person? Why is learning a specific skill important for them? For example, instead of, ‘You have to do writing for your teacher / to get good grades,’ explain how doing writing tasks will help to make them a strong thinker. Or instead of, ‘You need to revise to pass your exams’ change the focus to, ‘revising will help you know lots of information about a subject.’ You can refocus the purpose of project work by explaining how it will enable your child to develop life skills. Whenever you’re refocusing a purpose, always try to link the learning task with how it will help your child achieve one of their personal goals.

3. The 4 Cs

It’s okay to get creative and adapt home learning tasks to encourage your child’s engagement. The purpose of homework is to practise skills they have already been taught at school, so they understand and remember information better. For learning to be most effective for your child, think about ways you can promote the 4 Cs:

Calmness

Curiosity

Creativity

Concentration

Practising mindfulness techniques together is a great way to help your child feel calm and ready to learn. Curiosity can be nurtured by exploring objects or watching videos related to tasks, before starting homework. Games and crafts are great for helping to make learning more fun, and engaging in activities that use all the senses will help your child remember information more effectively (think pictures, tactile materials, rhythm and music, etc). And you can support your child to concentrate by thinking about their learning environment- what works best for your child? Inside or outside? Table or cushions? Music or quiet? You can also view my free Facebook Live on helping children with concentration here:

Helping Your Child with Home Learning: Concentration and Focus

4. Emotional barriers

Stress, anxiety, frustration, tears, tantrums, worry, anger, boring, hopelessness… many of the parents and carers I work with use these words to describe their child’s responses when they attempt to engage them in home learning. You may be familiar with some of them too. So why do children experience such negativity, for what can sometimes be quite a simple task, even one you know they can do?! And what can you do to help?

It’s helpful to try to think of the emotions as separate from your child, and identify what makes the frustration, anxiety or fear appear in the room and prevent your child from learning. Perhaps the feelings come because homework reminds them of previous negative learning experiences? Maybe they are scared of making mistakes or are worried because they don’t understand the instructions? Understanding the reasons that emotions overpower your child will give you a starting point in how to help engage them in learning. Instead of trying to ‘fix’ their feelings, focus on addressing what makes the feelings come in the first place.

I believe that understanding is the first step in knowing how to help your child. If you’d like to find out about a range of practical strategies that will help you engage your child in learning at home, then you can view my free short course here:

Engage Your Child in Home Learning: Motivation Made Easier

The course is designed for families who have children with special educational needs, but the information and approaches are useful for all children, particularly the 10 top tips at the end! My favourite top tip is ‘model first.’ Show your child how to complete a task, then encourage them to join in with you. Do this a few times before asking them to try by themselves, but reassure that you can help if they get stuck.

5. Be a parent not a teacher

It’s a common mis-conception that you should use rewards to help a child be motivated, what is know as external motivation. Whilst this can help in the short-term, if a child is genuinely interested in something, then they will learn without the need for a prize at the end. This is because the personal satisfaction they experience through doing the activity is the reward. We call this internal motivation. Giving too many rewards can actually lower a child’s self-motivation. Try surprising your child with a sticker or high-five in the middle of an activity. And be specific when giving praise, e.g. “I really like how you tried different ways to solve that problem.” Or, “Well done for using a dictionary to help you spell.” Focus on giving praise for how your child completes tasks, not just the end result.

If your child has persistent difficulties doing homework then you should discuss this with their Teacher and consider an assessment from an Educational Psychologist to see if there are any underlying reasons why learning may be hard for them. The most important thing to remember when trying to help your child with home learning, is to be a parent not a teacher. Your role is to provide opportunities, be encouraging, show an interest and celebrate their successes. So if home learning is stressful and overwhelming, just remember the first step for motivating your child is simply to have fun learning together.

Article By Hannah Morris, Educational Psychologist www.edpsych4kids.com. Hannah specialises in the psychology of teaching, learning and child development. An independent Educational Psychologist, Hannah has 13 years experience of assessing children’s strengths and difficulties, as well as advising families and schools for how to help with learning, behaviour and development.