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Raising Self Motivated Kids {Episode 81}
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Self motivated kids are every parent's dream! In this episode we discuss in depth the 3 components of raising self motivated kids; autonomy, mastery and purpose. We share how to encourage and discourage each of these elements in kids. Finally, we give examples from our own experiences of raising self motivated kids.
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Transcript
Introduction: Components of Self-Motivation
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 81 of Outnumbered the Podcast. We are thrilled to be bringing you this episode on self-motivated kids. Do you feel like your kids are motivated enough? Well in this episode we're going to break down exactly what self-motivated kids
00:00:15
Speaker
Do there's three main components of self motivation autonomy mastery and purpose and we talk in depth of each of these parts and we give you examples of how we are encouraging each of these components in our kids and how you can encourage your kids to become self motivated too.
00:00:40
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumber the Podcast. I'm Bonnie. And I'm Audrey. We're experienced moms to a combined total of 18 children. Our mission is to help overwhelmed parents find peace in parenting and humor in the chaos. Come join us as we attempt uninterrupted conversation about parenting with joy and intention.
Defining Self-Motivation in Kids
00:01:05
Speaker
Okay, let's talk about raising kids who are self-motivated. And we're going to tell you what this means to us and what it means to your kids and what it doesn't mean. So get ready to learn and maybe be a little disappointed too.
00:01:22
Speaker
in a good way. It'll help us all, right? Right. Okay. So briefly before we started, we wanted to tell you guys about a little something we've got going on on our Patreon account. So if you're not familiar, we have a Patreon account. It's a place where people can come to help support us in our content creation. And we've started doing something new over there. We have a unique
00:01:42
Speaker
exclusive episode every month for just our patreon supporters and this last month we did it in a video format so it was really fun it was just a kind of like a regular podcast episode with me and Audrey chatting only there was a video on it and so go check us out over there if you guys are interested in that it's a lot more laid-back relaxed we talk about whatever you guys want us to talk about and it's just a lot of fun so go check us out on patreon
00:02:07
Speaker
Yes, patreon.com slash outnumbered. Okay, so we're gonna talk about self motivated kids. And before we hopped on recording, we were talking about what self motivated kids, what we wish self motivated kids meant.
00:02:24
Speaker
But this isn't what we mean by self-motivated kids. So we wish that kids being a self-motivated kid meant that they did whatever we said almost even before we had to ask them. And they kept their rooms clean and they did. They were motivated to do exactly what we wanted them to do.
00:02:39
Speaker
Yeah. And they did it just because they wanted to. Yeah. But that is not what we mean. What is meant by self-motivated kids? That would be like, I don't know, raising obedient kids or something. But what we mean by self-motivated kids is, okay, so there's this common thought that we hear a lot as homeschoolers. We hear when we tell people we homeschool, they say, oh, I could never homeschool my kids or I could never teach my kids. My kids would never learn from me.
00:03:08
Speaker
But we proposed to you, what if your kids were motivated to learn by themselves and teach themselves and not just book learning subjects, but anything?
Homeschooling and Internal Drive
00:03:16
Speaker
So we're going to talk in this episode all about raising kids who are self motivated. So I try to communicate when I get that kind of feedback about homeschooling. Like I could never homeschool my kids. They wouldn't listen to me. What I try to communicate is that a lot of what goes on in traditional schooling, you know, in a school house, what are they called now? School house, school building.
00:03:37
Speaker
In a traditional school room with a teacher and a bunch of kids the same age, there's a lot of external factors acting on the kids. The teacher is lecturing. The teacher is requiring some homework. The teacher is testing. The teacher is grading, right? At home,
00:03:53
Speaker
A mom cannot do that. A mom cannot do all those things. And there's that added conflict of, you know, actually wanting to have a good relationship with your child outside of schooling. Like your teacher doesn't really have to have to have a relationship with your kid outside of the classroom, right? But we do. And so at home, when it comes to homeschooling, kids have to be internally motivated to get things done. And that is the hugest, hugest difference between the two. That is why homeschooling works is because we find ways to get kids
00:04:21
Speaker
motivated to pursue their own education rather than always pushing it on them externally, if that makes sense. So more of an internal thing than an external thing. So self-motivation really means, like I said, being motivated by internal things. That can include their own ideas, their goals, thoughts, desires, drive, energy, feelings, attitudes, you name it.
Impact of Society on Self-Motivation
00:04:44
Speaker
Anything that comes from the inside of them and creates action towards something that they want is self-motivation.
00:04:51
Speaker
Right. That's when they get excited about something and you see them taking off on tangents and things that they want to do all by themselves. And you're like, wow, they had that energy about cleaning their bedroom. Exactly. No, but that is exactly what self-motivation is. And we're going to tell you in this episode, the three main components of helping your kid become a self-motivated kid.
00:05:19
Speaker
I saw some research that said kids are naturally self-motivated until they're around seven or eight. And after that point, self-motivation can wane. But you can probably think of times with your three-year-old and they were motivated to learn how to do something by themselves. And they were not going to stop no matter how many times. It would just be easier and faster for you to tie them shoes for themselves for them. But they were motivated and they were going to learn that thing by themselves.
00:05:43
Speaker
So, we see that natural instinctual motivation in young kids.
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah, and I think part of that is because there's so much for them to learn in those first seven or eight years, right? They have to learn to walk. They have to learn to talk. They have to learn to crawl. They have to learn to run and kick a ball and, you know, so many life skills and a lot of preliminary educational skills as well. But then, you know, around later elementary, middle school, high school age, we see some of that self-motivation wane. And I think there are a few reasons for this.
00:06:16
Speaker
So first of all, they start to kind of lose a little bit of that love of learning. It's so, so, so powerful in those early years. But sometimes we kind of drag it out of them. Life kind of drags it out of them. They lose that that love of learning or the opportunity for exploration and imagination. Right. Oftentimes they're in school all day. They get a lot of chores, et cetera. They gain more as they gain more responsibilities. Then they learn to distinguish between work and play. And maybe they they're less likely to do something that looks like work.
00:06:46
Speaker
So like my three, four, five year olds are dying to help in the kitchen at all times. As soon as I pull out a bowl, what are you doing? Can I help? Can I help? Can I help? Can I help? My 10 year old is like, nope, I'm good. Thanks. Her self motivation, I think maybe what it is is she becomes a little, or they become a little bit more focused on what they want to do. And if something looks like it's
00:07:10
Speaker
on someone else's agenda, then they probably don't want to do it, right? Now, if it's my 10-year-old's idea to make cookies, sure, she's 110% there. That's the self-motivation, right? But if it's anybody else's idea or agenda, then it sounds more like work, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's such a good example of the kids in the kitchen. And yeah, I don't know. I thought I could think of a better example myself.
00:07:36
Speaker
But yeah, that's a good one. I've always got little kids underfoot in the kitchen too. I think we talked way back in our episode on, I don't know, way back at the beginning, like kids and chores, about how you have a helper of the week and so that you don't have five kids in the kitchen at one time. Yeah.
Fostering Autonomy in Children
00:07:56
Speaker
All right, so we're gonna dive into the three main components of self-motivation in kids. And they are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. And we're gonna talk about each of these in depth and then how to encourage it and discourage each of these in your kids. Yeah, so starting off with number one, we're gonna talk about autonomy a little bit. And what autonomy means is acting with choice. So it's pretty simple.
00:08:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You see little kids driving for autonomy all the time with the words, I can do it or me do it, you know, but basically about as soon as they learn to talk, they're like, no, me, me do it. Well, that's autonomy. They're choosing that they want to learn how to dress themselves. And yes, their shirt will be on backward and their shorts upside down. But hey, they got themselves dressed. Right. So this is the autonomy that is just like just driving them. I can do it. Right. And it's super adorable, except for when it's not.
00:08:54
Speaker
except for when you're late to run out the door and they are demanding to buckle their own seatbelt and you're like, we are gonna be here for 30 minutes, but okay, kid, go for it. So older kids lose a little bit of this autonomy, I think because they're conditioned to be compliant to the adults around them, right? You have to do your work this way, you have to do your this this way, and then this has to happen, and then this has to happen. So sometimes they lose some of that, and sometimes it actually comes out in rebellion, right? They still wanna be autonomous beings,
00:09:23
Speaker
But if they're not allowed the ability to do that then sometimes it comes out a little bit like well I'm not gonna do what you want because it because it doesn't take into account their own ideas and and drive right I think the autonomy is really valuable for older children because as they get older they start to gain that independence from their parents right they have this desire to
00:09:43
Speaker
to become a separate entity from their parents. We talked about this in the puberty episode about how as kids get older, it's important for them to become their own person and to have different opinions and values than their parents. But that happens in this autonomy as well.
00:10:01
Speaker
Yeah, that is so true. We can hinder their desire for autonomy so much by just sit down and be quiet, that kind of attitude with them. And I think they get that probably more in a public school setting than in a homeschool setting. My kids don't know how to respond when a bell rings when they're at a school. They're not conditioned to that because they're not used to it.
00:10:28
Speaker
Yeah, I guess you could say that homeschool kids are quite autonomous because they need to take responsibility for their own education a lot of times. And if they want to, you know, like that's their motivation. We'll talk more about this later when we talk about the purpose. But yeah, I try really hard not to
00:10:48
Speaker
not to control my kids to the point where they are unable to be autonomous. So we can encourage autonomy in our kids by giving them opportunities, both opportunities to succeed and opportunities to fail. So we give them opportunities to succeed. We know they can do something and we set an opportunity before that so that they can succeed and they can have that happen. Like, you know, we help them out. That's like self confidence building.
00:11:16
Speaker
But then we can also give our, we can and should give our kids opportunities to fail because that also helps them learn more about autonomy. I acted, I chose to, you know, I was acting with choice, I chose this, I wanted to try it myself and I failed. And then, you know, that's, we'll talk more about this in the next section too. But we do need to give them opportunities that we know they can't do yet because that's part of autonomy.
00:11:42
Speaker
Right. Because we're talking about schooling, I just have to share that a couple of years ago, I was still a little bit nervous about my oldest education simply because he hadn't really shown a lot of self-motivation in most subjects. There were some things he enjoyed, but for the most part, it was me pushing like, come on, don't forget to do this. Don't forget to do this.
00:12:01
Speaker
And then a few years ago, he spent some time with some neighbor friends and started to realize that he was a little bit behind on the level of the public school kids or whatever.
00:12:13
Speaker
And it really bothered him. And I told him that it wasn't a big deal that, you know, that's kind of the beauty of homeschooling is that sometimes you're behind, sometimes you're ahead. It doesn't matter. You're just on your own path. But he knew that he could be working harder and at a more advanced level, but he had chosen not to because it wasn't important to him. And it wasn't until he got into that like 11, 12 year old range where he started caring what other people thought.
00:12:36
Speaker
comparing himself with other people, that all of a sudden he realized, oh, I don't want to be the slowest person in the room. I don't want to be somebody that doesn't get what everybody else is talking about because I haven't pushed myself. And all of a sudden, boom, it was like a light switched on for him. And his schooling just kind of blossomed because all of a sudden he cared enough to put in that effort. And honestly, for many years I was
00:12:59
Speaker
really nervous. Like, is my kid ever going to, is this ever going to click? I can't force him to learn anything, you know? And so being able to see him, see that autonomy, him like grab onto that and say, yes, this is my choice and this is where I'm going to put my effort.
Role of Parents in Encouraging Autonomy
00:13:13
Speaker
It was really, really awesome. Oh, what a good example. Yeah.
00:13:18
Speaker
So part of this, we want to talk a little bit about being a helicopter parent, right? We all know that term, one who hovers, right? Who's always there to fix things for their kid. And admittedly, I don't consider myself a helicopter parent, but I am a perfectionist parent. So it's really hard for me to see my kids fail. I really want them to succeed. I'm like right there. Come on, don't you want to do it like this? Why don't we try it like this? I think this is a better idea. I'm kind of controlling.
00:13:41
Speaker
But an alternative that we might want to think about is being a quote-unquote elbow parent. So what that means is that you envision a parent who's sitting on the side of a kid, right, instead of hovering right over top of them and being ready to swoop in any time they have a need. An elbow parent is one who is right there at the side of the child, ready to help them as they need it.
00:14:05
Speaker
but allowing them the autonomy to do most things on their own. And I just thought that was a really awesome visualization and is hopefully going to help me step back a little bit. Right. Yeah. Yeah. A good example of an elbow parent is, um, you know, going back to your kitchen example. So you've got your, you're cutting up zucchini in the kitchen for supper and you've got the little three year old and they want to cut up zucchini too. Well, you give them
00:14:30
Speaker
you don't give them a sharp knife, you give them a butter knife and a little piece of zucchini that they can hack away at themselves, right? So cutting up all the zucchini for supper and making it for supper, that's too difficult of a task. But then when you sit down to supper and you serve the zucchini and you say, oh look, so-and-so helped me make this zucchini, they're like, wow, I did it myself, you know? Right. Yeah.
00:14:53
Speaker
All right, so moving on to the second part of second component of self-motivation is mastery. So, mastery doesn't mean like you're at the top of the class and no one's better than you at whatever it is, but it's the desire to get better and be competent at something that matters.
00:15:13
Speaker
Yes. And because we're talking about self-motivation, it's something that matters to the self, to the child who is practicing self-motivation. Again, we can be distracted by thinking, well, that doesn't matter to me. It doesn't matter to me whether they can identify every type of
00:15:31
Speaker
Lego figurine that is in the entire collection, that doesn't matter to me. But if it matters to them, then it can be something that they're motivated to become a master at, to obtain mastery at. And we have to value all learning for its own sake, whether we think it's valuable or not.
00:15:50
Speaker
So we can encourage mastering our kids by encouraging their interests, okay? So when they deep dive into one thing, that is the road to mastering that thing, right? And if you think for a second about the things that you have willingly mastered, so there are some things I've become pretty good at because I was forced to.
00:16:07
Speaker
And some other things that I've become pretty good at because I wanted to. So sewing comes to mind for both of us, right? Because we've been sewing for years and we love it. And the reason we're good at it is because we love it. They go hand in hand, really. We're good at it because we love it and we love it because we're good at it. But before you're ever good at anything, you have to have a passion for it, right? And you've probably seen your kids do the same thing. A kid who's really into
00:16:30
Speaker
mechanics might be out there tinkering with the tools and trying to build themself a go-kart or trying to take a part of microwave or whatever. You notice these interests in your kids usually at very young ages and as you encourage that then you can encourage mastery in that area.
00:16:46
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Another good example is with music. You know, you have a group of kids taking some sort of music lesson, and you know when you go to the recital, you know which of those kids is really passionate about that instrument. And they're not just doing it because mom and dad don't make me have piano lessons.
00:17:06
Speaker
But you can tell which child is really passionate about that and they're wanting to get better at it and be competent at it because it matters to them for some reason, whatever reason. Of course, in music, you can hear it in the way that a kid plays, not just their technical ability to play the Maple Leaf Rag or something, but you can hear it come through, their passion come through.
00:17:27
Speaker
So music is a really good example. You see other kids, you know, these, I just marvel when I look at these young preteen gymnasts and they can do, oh my goodness, the things they can do with their bodies is just crazy. But they have this desire to get better and get better. And like they push themselves and they practice and they're in that mastery phase. And it's really awesome to watch a kid when they're in that phase.
Encouraging Mastery through Interests
00:17:52
Speaker
So, teen and tween kids actually have a psychological need to feel competent. They don't want to be, what's the phrase my kids use? Vanilla. They don't want to be vanilla. They want to be really good at something.
00:18:09
Speaker
One thing that I have found is just really special for my kids is when I love to share a way that my older kids are more competent than me in their own interest. So for example, I have a daughter that's more proficient than me in playing the piano and I love
00:18:27
Speaker
to have her sit, you know, brag on her piano playing to other people because it's so beyond my ability. It's incredible. And then I have, of course, this happens when your kids, you know, get older and they've been in their mastery journey for a while. They get really good at stuff and to be able to step outside of yourself and say,
00:18:50
Speaker
This isn't about me anymore. This is about this kid and how important they are and how amazing they are. And they've got this talent and this skill and they've mastered this and it's bigger and better than me. I remember when my son was able to do multiplication races faster than me and he could beat me and he was so proud of that. And I love to see that in kids.
00:19:14
Speaker
Yeah, that's so powerful. And they just think, oh my gosh, the sky's the limit. If I can beat mom, this is fantastic. So I wanted to bring up two potential hiccups in this mastery phase of learning things. The first one that came to mind was for kids with special abilities or learning delays, this can be really frustrating because you'll see them become passionate about something, but their abilities might be a little bit slower than other kids or than they want them to be. They'll want to become a master at things, but things are just a little bit slower for them.
00:19:44
Speaker
There's a couple things we can do for these kids the first one is obviously get them all the external help that we can you know tutors or special ed resources etc and then in addition to that i myself have had to learn to accept
00:20:00
Speaker
a lower level of competency from these special needs kids. And this is hard for a perfectionist. Honestly, it's like, well, come on, if you just try a little bit harder, I bet you could get better at it. I guess I'm terrible because in my mind, I know that every kid has different abilities. But when one is significantly slower or it's significantly more difficult for this child to grasp things, it's really frustrating for everyone involved. And so I just had to throw that out there that if you have a kid like that,
00:20:27
Speaker
It's okay. It's okay. They are going to develop a level of mastery that is perfect for them and it will look totally different from yours and totally different from their siblings or their peers, but they can also develop that self-motivation and that mastery in something that they're passionate about. It will just look a little bit different.
00:20:44
Speaker
Yeah, one tool that I have found super helpful when I have a kid who is in this situation is to compare them to themselves. So say, look, don't don't look at other people and say, OK, you know, I can't play this piece on the piano. Just going back to that for an example, as well as so and so say, but but think compare yourself to yourself two months ago. You couldn't play this piece at all. And now, you know, don't look at so and so that you can't play as good as them. Look at yourself two months ago.
00:21:13
Speaker
And wow, look how far you've come. And I find this a lot in when my kids are doing art. Ooh, hers is better than mine. Say yours is better than yours was two months ago, you know, or something like that. And I really found it helps. One way to help them is to compare themselves to themselves and put their focus on their past self instead of other people around them who are better than them, ahead of them. Right. Yeah, totally. And that will hopefully teach them the habit of
00:21:42
Speaker
comparing themselves only to themselves, which will become very beneficial as they get older and want to compare themselves in even more arenas like we all do, right? Yeah. The other little potential hip-hop I wanted to mention is, I know a lot of parents are probably thinking, yeah, but I have this one kid who doesn't care about anything. He's not interested in anything. He just wants to sit around and watch TV. He just wants to sit around and whatever.
00:22:09
Speaker
do nothing, right?
Strategies for Unmotivated Kids
00:22:11
Speaker
But in reality, every kid has something that will motivate them to mastery. They really do. But there are a few things that we can do to help them. Number one, we can eliminate distractions, right? Screens are a number one distraction. If your kid is not showing a massive interest in anything enough to develop any sort of mastery, it's probably just because there's something that's easier, right? If TV and games are an option, it's like, well, I'll just sit down and do that. Why would I work hard to become proficient at something like piano or
00:22:38
Speaker
you know, building a go-kart when I could just stare at screen. So eliminate distractions. And then also it might just require a little bit of creativity from us to get them started. Like kind of watch for cues. What kind of interests of other kids are they interested in? You know, do they ever ask about a sibling's musical or athletic ability? Or do they like to watch specific sports? Or do they like to, you know, whatever, whatever sparks even just the tiniest bit of curiosity from your child.
00:23:05
Speaker
Go with that, right? And look for ways to inspire them. Look for ways to show them people who have mastered it. So let's say, for example, you think your child might be interested in gymnastics. They've shown a spark of interest for that. What about showing them some old Olympic videos, right? Of gymnasts doing amazing, incredible, death-defying feeds, right? And see what that does for your child. They just might practice flips on the trampoline for the next week, and you're thinking, okay,
00:23:34
Speaker
they felt a little bit inspired, right? Maybe this is something they're interested in. Right, right. In that situation, I think you're definitely right on the mark when you say, you know, eliminate distractions. Because there are things that our poor kids, they can just steal their energy and their creativity and everything from them. So maybe some energy management, creativity and management, and definitely take away the screens. Because if they get bored enough,
00:23:59
Speaker
They'll develop a passion for something. Exactly. Okay, I have one example of this, and I feel like I've shared this in a past episode, so if I have, forgive me, but in a homeschooling book I read years ago, the author was talking about one of his children. He was talking a lot about inspiring your children to learn rather than requiring them to learn. One of his children was a very late reader, and nothing they did could motivate this child to learn to read.
00:24:23
Speaker
And he was maybe eight or nine at the time, still just barely a beginning reader and they didn't know what to do. So they noticed that this child was very interested in construction. So there was a construction site on their block, a house was being built, and this kid was over there every day watching the construction guys and watching all the diggers and everything else, just fascinated. So finally the dad went over to the construction guys and when the son wasn't there and said,
00:24:47
Speaker
I just have a request from you. Next time my son comes to watch, would you give him a small little task to do something that requires reading, right? Like, I don't know, make him haul a bag with a word on it or something and ask him what it says. I don't know, something like that, right? So they did. The next time the kid came over, they said, hey, kid, pass me that bag. It says cement on it. And the kid's like, uh.
00:25:08
Speaker
Sure enough, that night he runs home and says, dad, dad, how do you spell cement? Write it down for me. So all of a sudden this kid had all this motivation to read because something that was fascinating for him and another aspect of his life, totally unrelated, all of a sudden required him to develop this skill that he had previously no interest in. And everything's really tied together. There are really so many ways of helping our children become motivated to do something we know they need to through one of their interests.
00:25:38
Speaker
Yeah, that's a cute little story. So one tip that I have for helping a kid with mastery is to encourage inner optimism. Because I
Teaching Optimism and Managing Failure
00:25:51
Speaker
think everybody, but especially kids and especially now in the mastery stage, they're usually in the tween or teen years. And we just know there is a whole negative self-talk loop going on.
00:26:05
Speaker
But if you teach your kids inner optimism, how to be positive, how to think positive things about themselves, it will help them so much on their road to mastery. Because if they listen too much to this negative, I can't do it, I'm stupid, inner voice, then they're gonna give up and they're not gonna make it very far down on their road to mastery and whatever their interest is. And they will actually,
00:26:33
Speaker
lose the desire to go you know go learn anything get be competent at anything and and that's really discouraging and hard to see in a kid so definitely like when they're little start it when they're little don't wait until they're in the negative loop years but encourage that inner optimism and we're going to get onto the purpose but we have talked about this a lot is encourage a big picture view of life so make life about more
00:27:02
Speaker
than them, give them a bigger picture and they can, that will help them draw them out of that kind of that narcissistic, it's all about me phase of life. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I love that. And I think that we sometimes subconsciously fall out of the habit of encouraging our kids to do anything right around that same age, seven or eight or so. Like we would never tell our three-year-old that she couldn't grow up to be a princess, right?
00:27:29
Speaker
Oh, of course you'll be the prettiest princess. It'll be so great, right? We're like, the sky's the limit, whatever. All of a sudden our kids eight, nine, 10, we're like, well, you know, you can't really grow up to be a princess, right? Like part of that is just teaching them about the real world. But I also noticed that sometimes I do it simply because I want my child to be based in reality.
00:27:48
Speaker
Right. Rather than, you know, some dreamland. But really, who's to say what they can and can't accomplish? You know, we've talked about this in previous episodes, too. I'm I'm the first one to say, well, that's probably not a great idea because of XYZ. I don't want to see them fail, basically. But by doing that, then I'm kind of curbing their dreams before they ever have a chance to get off the ground.
00:28:06
Speaker
And they learn the most when they themselves do fail. And so by preventing them from doing that, it kind of, I'm kind of robbing them of the learning experience, right? So it's, it's tough to watch, but it's definitely beneficial to let the, let them just run with it and see what happens. Okay. So quick thought about a work life balance. So.
00:28:24
Speaker
As kids, I think even at a young age, we can kind of read their personalities a little bit and understand what motivates them. Some kids are really motivated by play, others are more task-oriented and they really want to get things done. And as we learn about their personalities, we can hopefully train them to have a positive balance between those two things.
00:28:45
Speaker
For example, we've created kind of a school slash chore system that hopefully allows for a decent amount of balance between the things that they have to do around the house and the things that they want to do, while simultaneously allowing enough of that kind of unstructured playtime for them to explore their passions and become self-motivated for things. So they have to have the time and the energy to do it.
00:29:09
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think that is a super important tool to help a kid be able to master something, is to teach them a good work ethic. If your kids don't know how to work hard, then they're gonna have a desire to master something, to get down to this goal that they have, but they're not gonna be able to get there if they do not have the tools, if they don't know how to
00:29:37
Speaker
Yeah, how to work. Like, for example, learning to play, or let's just go back to the maple leaf rake. You don't learn that in a day. You don't learn it in even a month. I mean, maybe if you're, I don't know, Mozart's genetics or something, you do, but...
00:29:57
Speaker
But you have to fail and make so many mistakes and start over so many times. And you just have to work at it. If you don't play the maple leaf rag every day for a set amount of minutes, you're just not going to learn it. And there's going to be a lot of failures when you're learning it. But if your kid doesn't have the tool of knowing how to work, like the self-discipline to sit down and work,
00:30:21
Speaker
they're going to have this desire like, I want to be able to play the Maple Leaf Break, but they haven't been taught how to get there. So definitely a good work ethic is one of the tools that kids need, that kids need to be able to master anything. And it's like training. Chores are like training for when they want to do something themselves, because then they have that tool that they can pull out and use it to apply to the thing that they really want to do.
00:30:49
Speaker
Yeah. So really they should be thanking us for giving them chores to do around the house. You're welcome kids. Yeah. That's a really good point though, because I think about the things that I love to do and that I'm proficient at. Let's go back to sewing. And I mean, have I enjoyed every minute of every sewing project I've ever done? Heck no. There have been some that I just want to pull my hair out. I just want to stab my eyeballs with a steam ripper like, this is not working. It's so frustrating. And there's been a lot of trial and error and a lot of failures.
00:31:15
Speaker
But with everyone, I'm learning things. And because I'm passionate about it, I want to come back and keep going. But had I not learned how to work on things that I didn't want to do, I don't think I'd be motivated to do it even if it was something I wanted to do. So that's a really, really important concept. Put the same ripper down, Bonnie. Sorry, that was a little violent. OK, so we are moving on to our third component of self-motivation. And that is the purpose or the why behind the action.
00:31:43
Speaker
Yes,
Intrinsic Purpose vs. External Rewards
00:31:44
Speaker
okay, so this needs to come from within. No, it's the self part of self-motivated. You cannot motivate a child. Like we can see things that motivate them and kind of use those tools to help them learn the things that we want to do. But for them to be truly self-motivated, to truly become, go back to mastery, to truly become the master or be competent at something that matters to them, it's got to matter to them. It needs to come from
00:32:11
Speaker
from within themselves. And so, really, we cannot motivate a child externally. It has to come from internal. Right. Really, anything external is a bit of a coercion, right?
00:32:26
Speaker
And we think that we're motivating because we're like give them rewards that makes them want to do it right but really they just want the reward. And sometimes those external rewards can actually be detrimental to self motivation because they're performing for the rewards instead of for that intrinsic feeling of contentment or satisfaction that they just
00:32:46
Speaker
finish something that they wanted to do, right? So we have to be cautious. I mean, there's definitely nothing wrong with some sort of reward system to get kids to do their chores or things they don't want to do, but we would be cautious about creating external rewards when it comes to something that you want them to be self-motivated to do.
00:33:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's like taking away some of the, I've seen it happen before with me and my kids, and it's like taking away some of their reward for themselves about it is when you reward them externally. It's almost like taking it down a notch for them.
00:33:19
Speaker
Yeah, cheapens it. Yeah. We can't motivate them from externally. So how do we teach them to have that internal motivation? Well, one thing is to teach them about our own purposes and values. Like when we're motivated about something, share the why of why we're motivated with them. Like, you know, Bonnie and I talk about sewing all the time. And so just a sewing example for me is I wanted to learn how to sew with knit fabric. And so I bought a lot of really bad knit fabric.
00:33:46
Speaker
because I didn't know how to buy knit fabric, but each failure is a lesson, right? And then my sewing on my first knit fabric garments was hideous. But I wanted to learn. I had this goal to learn to sew with knit fabric on knit fabric and be able to make my own t-shirts or whatever. And so like every failure was like, okay, I just learned something and
00:34:08
Speaker
That's step number one on this journey to mastering knit sewing. I'm still sharing our own purposes and values with them. And then we have a whole episode, 49, about raising moral kids. And we want to share with them
00:34:25
Speaker
Um, like give them a purpose for their entire life. This is going back to that big picture view. And we want to give them the morals and like everything we said in that episode, I, you know, I don't have time to re-say it here. So go listen to that episode again if you need to, but kids with no higher vision, um, are rarely self-motivated.
00:34:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's an excellent point and something you might not think a lot about, but there's definitely a connection between a kid who is super motivated to accomplish great things and a kid who believes in a higher purpose for sure. So we're each just going to share one example of how our children have shown themselves to be self-motivated. And I
Anecdotes of Internal Motivation
00:35:04
Speaker
just have a really simple little one that I want to share.
00:35:07
Speaker
I, four of my girls share a room. And as you can imagine, it's always a disaster. It's clothes and toys and all kinds of things on it at all times. And pretty much at least two or three times a week, I'm asking them, okay, time to go clean your room. Time to go clean your room, right? And they're rarely, you know, very competent with it or very reliable. So the other day I happened to walk in to put something away and the room was spotless. And I was, you know,
00:35:36
Speaker
mouth was agape like what happened in here there's nothing under the bed there's no like wads of underwear in the corner you know just everything the kids are always doing it was just spotless and i and the beds were made and everything and that's another struggle so i left the room and later on asked hey who cleaned up the room it looks amazing
00:35:55
Speaker
And my 11-year-old said, oh, I did. We were playing dorm room, and my job was to keep the dorm room tidy. I had to check off my checklist, and so-and-so was the RA, or I don't know what rules they each had. But I was like, are you kidding me? I asked you to isolate to clean your room. And all it takes is playing dorm room. And all of a sudden, it's immaculate. And yet, there we go. Every other time, it was me trying to force them to do something that was on my to-do list.
00:36:24
Speaker
when all of a sudden it was something that they cared about, and it was done better than I'd ever seen it done in the past. I was like, well, let's play dorm room every week. Hey, guys, want to go play dorm room? I think that's today's a great day for that. Oh, fun. That's really cute.
00:36:42
Speaker
Okay, so I wanted to share an example and I know that I have mentioned this before, I think specifically in our episode 25 on how to afford kids. But I mentioned that our kids are paying for their own education and for their own college education.
00:37:00
Speaker
They are very, very motivated. Not only are they paying for their own education, but we have challenged them to graduate with no debt from college. And I don't know, I guess maybe this is just a little update here, but both of my kids graduated this spring with their two-year associate's degrees, and both of them have paid for all their expenses so far, and neither of them have any debt. So two years in, halfway to their goal, they're still self-motivated enough to
00:37:30
Speaker
work through the summer and to work on the weekends and on vacations and part-time and whatever they need to do so that they can reach this goal of paying for their own college education and graduating debt-free. And Bonnie and I were chatting before we started recording that
00:37:49
Speaker
There's other little self-motivated things that are coming out of this. Like one of them was not motivated to do math very well at all, like at all during homeschooling. And so, you know, they graduated proficient in the skills of math that they needed to graduate, but they weren't as advanced as some of the others that have graduated from our personal home school with math skills. But when they got to college and they needed to take higher level classes and their math wasn't
00:38:18
Speaker
up to snuff on what it needed to be. Then they were motivated to go and get those math skills up to where they needed to be so that they could continue with their goal of graduating, getting a degree, graduating without debt, and all that. It's a really neat thing to see. I don't think that we could have given this
00:38:40
Speaker
that we could have challenged our kids to be self-motivated like this if we hadn't have been working with them from the time they were little, working with them on these three main components of self-motivation, autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Like I don't think you could take a high school senior just out of high school that graduated and say, okay, now I challenge you to go get your college education and graduate with no debt and pay for it yourself.
00:39:07
Speaker
without having prepared them ahead of time. But we know that a lot of our listeners have young children and that's why we share something like this with you now so that you can start working with your kids at whatever ages they are so that they too can be self-motivated. Not just so that like maybe that's not your kid's goal to to go to college but whatever they want to do in the future that they'll be self-motivated to be able to achieve that.
00:39:30
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. I think that's such an inspiring example. I want my kids to do the same thing. It's so awesome. Just as a review, well, the three components of self-motivation are autonomy, so allowing them to act with their own choice, right? Mastery, allowing them to really push through on something that they love until they're proficient at it. And then number three, purpose, allowing them and helping them to find a greater purpose in everything they're doing.
00:39:55
Speaker
All right, we're going to link in the show notes a couple of those episodes that we referred to. And we're also going to link a really neat article that we found about it's titled Eight Ways to Raise Self-Motivated Kids. And it does a deeper dive into some of these things that we've been talking about. So if you want to learn even more, go check out our show notes and click through on that link. Thanks so much for tuning in. Did you know you can help the podcast in several ways? First up, we're on Patreon. And there are three different levels to support us there.
00:40:25
Speaker
Just head to patreon.com slash outnumbered. Next step, if you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a written review on iTunes. It helps other parents find the podcast and receive the help you're enjoying. And finally, you can follow us on Instagram at outnumbered the podcast. We're always having fun over there too. As usual, if you have any questions or ideas for future episodes, you can reach us at outnumbered the podcast at gmail.com. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.
00:40:54
Speaker
But you, you, you can think... How many times can I say you in a row? Oh my goodness.