How to Motivate Your Child

How To Motivate Your Child

Homework can be an important tool to help children review and practice the skills taught in school and can improve their learning. In addition, homework can help enhance children’s personal growth by teaching them responsibility, independent work habits, organization, and time management. However, when problems arise, homework can be quite disruptive to family life by creating parent-child conflict and interfering with other important family priorities, such as recreation and social activities. One of the more common homework problems reported by parents is poor motivation, particularly in families with children with learning or attention deficit disorders. Children who are described as motivated to do homework do it by themselves, begin and complete it on time, actively participate in checking it, respond well when told to correct it, pay attention during it, and stick with it even when it gets difficult. When children display problems with any of these areas of homework, they are frequently described as being unmotivated. The tips described below are specific strategies and techniques parents can use to motivate their children to successfully do their homework on time and on their own.

Tip #1: Provide well-lit work area, equipped with needed supplies

• You can support your child’s efforts to complete his homework by providing him with the right workspace at home. A good work area is one that has adequate space, is well lit, has the needed supplies (see list to right) and is relatively free from distractions.

Tip #2: Control and limit meaningful distractions

Some children and adolescents frequently choose to do their homework while listening to a radio or watching TV, claiming that it helps them focus. In many situations, this may be true. However, certain types of noise in certain situations may be distracting.
Audio and visual distractions will tend to interfere more with difficult assignments than with easy and routine assignments. In addition, meaningful background sounds, such as TV, speech, and vocal music, tend to be more distracting than instrumental music or other nonvocal background noise. As a general rule, you should try and control and limit meaningful distractions, such as telephone, TV, vocal music, and interruptions from others during homework time, particularly during difficult assignments. Do not worry as much about nonvocal background noise during easy and routine assignments, if your child is completing her work.

Tip # 3: Help your child develop a daily and weekly schedule of homework and other activities

One of the benefits of homework is that it can help children develop their skills in organization and managing their time. Homework can interfere with important social and recreational activities if the child does not plan ahead. Teach your child how to make both daily and weekly schedules for her activities (see figure below). On a daily basis, have your child decide what needs to be done that day and when to do it. This should include a listing of all homework assignments and other activities and responsibilities. It is often a good idea to decide ahead of time on the order of homework assignments, sandwiching the harder assignments in between the easier assignments. At the beginning of the week, it is helpful to list out all the activities for the coming week. This will help your child plan. For example, if your child has a Social Studies test on Wednesday and she needs two days to study for it, she can plan on bringing her Social Studies book home Monday and Tuesday nights.

Tip #4: Find out how much and how often homework is expected