Motivation

This is Part Three in a series in which I'm taking off the Consultant’s hat off for a bit in order to let the Parent’s hat show through. Being a dad of four, it is ground I’ve covered for several years, though with no shortage of shortcomings and mistakes.   As a school leader, I’ve been around even more of what comes with helping kids grow up. Here at Christmas, I’ve brought my own experience in more than usual, and that experience includes spiritual dimensions which are an important part of my own reality. I hope these posts may be of some interest, and perhaps a slight bit of help. {Part One} {Part Two} {Part Four} {Part Five}

This topic in the series doesn’t always come up in parenting manuals. The key in this topic is not the amount of motivation, but the type. External or internal? Extrinsic or intrinsic?

Many parenting books and teacher training programs don’t seem to care where motivation for children and students comes from, just as long as it can be used to move them along. There’s a psychological theory called Behaviorism propounded most influentially by B.F. Skinner which argues that people are only the sum total of stimulus and response, doing more of what gets a positive response and less of what gets a negative one. Not many of us would want to accept a theory that says the heart and motive don’t matter, but sometimes our strategies of motivation say just that. Perhaps too often, we reward and punish only to get the behavior we want from our children.

How do we practice this for the good of our children? Punishment and reward are certainly part of it. These, and the behaviors they discourage and encourage, are never an end in themselves, though. We are always to be teaching and modeling and encouraging a higher and deeper purpose for all that we do.

Manipulating behavior by candy and gifts and money and praise – both withheld and given out in miserly proportions – exalts the desired action as the ideal along with trinkets and trifling approval as the glorious reward. That our children see through this farce is the best thing about it.

In just a word or two, excellence and achievement can be intrinsic, valuable rewards along the way with God’s purposes for our children as the greater reward. A gift or a grade aren’t bad things in the process, but they are never the ultimate for which we want our children to strive. To fulfill God’s design is the passion and fire of a life. As we model and teach this to our children, we are giving them a gift greater than any bauble they could pick up in the quest.