where does motivation/work ethic come from?

Parent Cafe
1

<p>i have a nine-year-old sister who is very bright (IQ 135). she reads voraciously and surprises us all the time with her contributions to our conversations (everyone else is 18+). she has plenty of initiative to participate in intellectual activities that she chooses, like playing scrabble, writing stories, doing sudoku, etc. </p>

<p>however, she doesn't care very much about schoolwork, and she's not motivated by academic competition. she rushes through assignments and gets irritated if someone tells her to be more thorough. she doesn't care about besting either her own records or that of other students. </p>

<p>my mother was discussing this with me, and we both agree that trying to force her to perform her best is a bad idea. my mother is very hands-off (i used to wish that she had put more pressure on me when i was little). i know that when i was young, i rushed through assignments as did my other sister and brother, and we all ended up motivated in the end. </p>

<p>i don't consider this something to be alarmed about. i mean, she's nine for one thing and has plenty of maturing to do. plus, she may just be someone who marches to her own beat. i am certain she will find her way. however, it made me wonder about the influence of the environment and parenting on motivation/drive/work ethic/competitiveness....like can one parent these traits into a child or do those attempts tend to backfire (as my mother and i expect they would)....how, if at all, did you try to incite these in your children? or are these largely personality-based (i've been pretty competitive since i can remember...)?</p>

2

<p>She is nine…I mean, what is that, third grade? I would wait a couple years before starting to worry too much about “motivational strategy.” I know I was a totally different student in elementary school than I was in later years.</p>

3

<p>I think competitive feelings come from within. Work ethic is a little different. I have always expected my children to do their assignments and do well in school because I know they are capable of these things, and they do always do their homework, but my son is not really competitive, while my daughters are. I think he does his work because I expect it, not because of any internal motivation. My daughters are motivated by grades and recognition for their efforts, as well as feeling pride in their work. Son doesn’t care much for school or recognition.</p>

4

<p>Young children tend to fulfill parental expectations (unless the expectations are unreasonable). Some kids are internally motivated to do their best, but most aren’t. Setting reasonably high expectation is a part of parenting, and it helps the kids to develop work ethic that lasts a lifetime.</p>

5

<p>At nine schoolwork was boring. And it doesn’t count for much either. My older son found his passion (computer programming) and spent a lot of free time doing that, but most of his bright friends were a lot more normal. Younger son spent the year he was nine reading Redwall books and The Lord of the Rings and watching Star Wars movies over and over. Neither ever cared about grades.</p>

6

<p>I agree with nngmm. My younger daughter would read books all day long if we let her. Beginning of this year (9th grade), she got a D+ on a geometry test. Her teachers (math and advisor) told us math probably wasn’t her thing because she seems so attentive in class. I knew my daughter better than that (instead doing proofs, she was reading her novels). We told her that she wasn’t allow to read another book until she brought her geometry grade up. Her math teach was shocked she has been getting A+ (not just a regular A) on her tests.</p>

7

<p>School is just not some peoples thing. My school measured my iq at 141 yet I score B’s and A’s on almost every grade I get. This is partially due to my dysgraphia but is also due to the fact that I have very little interest in anything being taught and most of the homework I receive is like coloring or stupid poster projects…in AP classes. My view on it is it’ll work itself out in the end, if I don’t get into a top school who cares, many very successful people are simply average and go to average schools. Plus it’s third grade you learn like how to share/social skills for the first like 5 grades of school it’s not really indicative of anything.</p>

8

<p>motivation/competitive nature at least within the 4 kids I have, is self directed. Two with two without. 10 year old wrote a research paper for his G/T class unassisted bar the taking him to the library. 8 year old average grade wise does all her own homework to perfection without asking. The two older ones, fire and bombs are needed to motivate them to do anything above the requirement, always choosing the paths of least resistance. Same parents, same lectures, it is self driven, as far as my experience has been.</p>

9

<p>mazati, I think the answer to your question is embedded in your question itself:</p>

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<p>Evidently your mother wasn’t trying to do the most “perfect” job of parenting (I don’t mean this in a bad way). Maybe your sister is like her own mother- not trying to turn in the most “perfect” homework assignment? </p>

<p>I wouldn’t change a thing- let the girl be herself. It is not always a good thing to be a perfectionist.</p>

10

<p>My two kids are complete opposites. S1, self motivated, hard worker, driven to achieve his goals…school work came easily for him since day one.</p>

<p>S2 , happy (or should I say relieved?) from day one to get by with the minimum required, never cared about his grades compared to others, only worked as much as he did because he knew he would be in trouble with DH and me (which he was frequently) if he did not. School work never came easily for him as it did S1.</p>

<p>They are 3 years apart. Same parents, same household expectations, two different kids.
Nothing we could say or do changed S2’s academic adventures.</p>

11

<p>I agree with hands off. Pushing usually results in resistence. Instead, think of a way to set her up to become selfmotivated. Nine is very young. However, my D. was only 5 when she got her very first tiny homework in kindergarden. She just started on a competitive swim team and absolutely loved it. When it was time to go to swim practice, I asked her if she completed her homework. She was surprised because she thought that swimming was the most important activity in her life. I told her that school and homework is most important, everything else comes after and we cannot leave for practice until she is done her homework to the best of her ability. I have never repeated it. She is a sophmore in college now, graduted at the top of her class from HS. She was involved with swimming and a lot of other EC’s all thru HS and continues being very busy now. However, academics is always #1.</p>

12

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<p>While I was apparently a more competitive kid and thus more motivated by competitions (I did great in the Spelling Bee and the Geography Bee!), the rest of this paragraph could have described me at about any time through age 14 or so.</p>

<p>I mean, for a smart kid at that age, schoolwork is boring as heck, trivial beyond belief. It’s nothing but a hoop to jump through. Why on earth <em>wouldn’t</em> such a kid rush through assignments, spending as little time as possible? And of course she will get irritated if you tell her to be more thorough. I’m sure she doesn’t understand why you care. And why would she care about besting her own records or those of her classmates, on something so (probably, in her mind) meaningless? There’s just no point at all in getting a 100 instead of a 98 on your 4th grade math homework.</p>

<p>(I’m sure this sounds cocky, but it was definitely how I felt when I was nine, and I don’t think it was an unreasonable feeling.)</p>

<p>Of course, the major plus to her developing a work ethic now is that she’ll have it when she actually gets to a point where work is challenging and interesting, or when the results matter, when she actually <em>needs</em> it. If this is actually a concern, she can develop work ethic the same way I did, through sports or the arts or other extracurricular activities, or all of the above. Sports were particularly good for this with me, because they didn’t come naturally at <em>all</em> and I had to work very hard to even be adequate at a very non-elite level.</p>

<p>It worked okay. It got me through MIT (which I did find challenging - VERY challenging - and interesting). It’s serving me fine for work and grad school. As long as you learn the habits of hard work <em>somewhere</em>, you can call on them when you need them.</p>

13

<p>I’ve never encountered a successful person with poor work ethic, so I can’t speak to that. Unsuccessful and poor work ethic? Hundreds. Thousands. But I’ve also had the misfortune to know many people with good work ethic who were not successful – who were in fact chronically unsuccessful. And I think parenting has some part in this. As MiamiDAP points out, parents can help children become aware of “what’s important.”</p>

14

<p>My children and I absolutely despite busywork. However, completing boring though relevant homework assignments has value. It teaches respect for authority and discipline, for one thing. Let’s face it, most of us end up working for someone else whom we have to please, and most of us have to perform on a regular basis some tasks that we consider menial, boring, beneath us, and otherwise distasteful. IMO, too many kids and parents today believe everything should be fun and interesting. Life isn’t fun a lot of the time, and doing dishes, pulling weeds, writing expense reports, calling for appointments, etc. aren’t interesting.</p>

15

<p>mazatl, I understand you don’t ask for advice but just want to discuss a theoretical question… Well, I have three kids: two of them are perfectionists, the third is… errr… well, one of those “brilliant underachievers who don’t give a damn”, you can find plenty of threads about them here on this board. Same expectations, same family, same school requirements, same teachers… you get my drift. Nothing worked. Ever. No cartoons until the homework is done? No playdates? No sport? That’s fine, he can do without. Easily. The only thing I never tried was reading: I remember all too well that for me as a kid it was a real “cruel and unusual punishment”. I think I would rather go without food than without books; it was not the case with this child (at the time), but I could never bring myself to try it anyway. </p>

<p>Well, I only tried to push him because he chose to go to school, and homework was his obligation, “part of the package deal”. By the time the “black sheep” was 10, we moved into a school district where homework was not expected by the school itself (“it’s your choice, but you will have to face the consequences”) - sooo… I washed my hands and decided to let him be. I knew he was reading a lot and picking up his education outside of school. He was readily facing the consequences (what’s the big difference which letters are there in the grade report?), but somehow he was getting better and better and by the time he went to college he had about the same “work ethic” as his siblings. Was it ADD? Who knows…</p>

<p>There was a moment when one of the perfectionists behaved just like his brother. That was when we switched schools, and he was placed two grades below his level (where he “belonged” according to the school district policy). Oooh, just one month was enough to get rid of all the perfectionism, motivation, work ethics, whatever… Yes, he did try to do the work just because it’s the school work that has to be done. He could not. His brain was just blocking it, completely. It was a big lesson for me: up until than, I was sure that I had a kid who was a perfect student capable of learning in any school environment. Everything came back (well, almost… experiences like that can be quite damaging) when he could work at his level again.</p>

<p>And then, there’s this problem with perfectionists: they are greedy. They sometimes bite off more than they can chew, and they refuse to spit it. Then they start to procrastinate because they feel they can’t do the work perfectly… and that can turn out ugly, too. </p>

<p>So, from my experience, the motivation and all those other things come within, but it all depends heavily on the current environment. If a kid has to do work that is significantly below his level (or overwhelmingly higher), one can expect problems even if the kid has all those fine qualities. If the work is appropriate (preferably, interesting, too), then “black sheeps” can do quite impressive work.</p>

16

<p>Oh, and I probably should add that what I’ve written is about learning and other mental work. Doing dishes, laundry, paying the bills and all that stuff that has to be done (really HAS TO, not because Mom or Ms.Brown said so) - all that does get done.</p>

17

<p>I wouldn’t fuss about an otherwise curious and energetic 9 year old. Lots of school “homework” these days is busywork and she may just want to get done and on to more interesting things because she has good judgment. But if this topic interests you look up the social psychologist Carol Dweck’s work (she’s currently at Stanford). There is also material on her on the Cal (Berkeley) site Science for the Common Good She has done a number of studies that show the critical importance of parents praising effort-not outcome (eg: how hard someone worked on a subject/test–not on the A). Parents who focus on the grade undermine long-term success and diminish work ethic/integrity.</p>

18

<p>jessiehl:

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<p>I agree completely.</p>